Artificial intelligence has entered the personal chat. What does that say about human relationships?

Earlier this spring, Nik Vassev heard a high school friend’s mother had died. Vassev, a 32-year-old tech entrepreneur in Vancouver, Canada, opened up Claude AI, Anthropic’s artificial intelligence chatbot.

“My friend’s mom passed away and I’m trying to find the right way to be there for him and send him a message of support like a good friend,” he typed.

The latest instalment marks a return to form after some recent duds, with all the expected Spielberg-style set pieces and excellent romantic chemistry between the leads

What a comeback. The Jurassic World film series had looked to be pretty much extinct after some increasingly dire dollops of franchise content: Fallen Kingdom in 2018 and Dominion in 2022. But now, against all odds, these dinosaurs have had a brand refresh: a brighter, breezier, funnier, incomparably better acted and better written film, with unashamed nods to the summer smashes of yesteryear, that makes sense of the dino-spectacle moments that earn their place.

Screenwriter David Koepp and director Gareth Edwards have been drafted in to take us back to basics with a new story, all but retconning the drama with a “17 years previously” flashback at the start that entirely (and thankfully) ignores the tiresome convoluted dullness of what has recently happened. Then we’re in the present day, when the existence of dinosaurs in the wild is accepted but they’ve all pretty much died out – except in and around the lush fictional Île Saint Hubert in the Caribbean.

The biggest show in Netflix history isn’t allowed to ride off into the sunset – it has to be exploited until its back breaks. It’s a tragedy

Spoiler warning: before we start, I need to make it clear that I’m about to discuss the ending of Squid Game. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now. But if you have seen it, my goodness – what the hell just happened?

We knew the signs weren’t great going into the final season. Prior to its release, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk – a man who takes his role so seriously that he lost eight teeth during the production due to stress – said that the series wouldn’t have a happy ending, going as far as calling it “bleak”.

Experts stress that a weakened Iran isn’t in a position to attack on US soil and doesn’t want to invite Trump’s wrath

As the war between Iran and Israel intensified, teasing the eventual involvement of the US military, American security agencies began to warn of a looming threat of Tehran-backed “sleeper cells” known to be active stateside that could be called in for retaliatory attacks.

But as the B-2 bombers struck nuclear sites across Iran and the Iranian military responded with a missile barrage on US bases in the region, a ceasefire took shape. In the end, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s elite military and intelligence branch, wielding a global web of terrorist groups and agents acting on its behalf – didn’t appear to sponsor or carry out any covert operations inside the US, nor has it since.

The vicious reaction to his New York mayoral success tells us this: the establishment will not countenance mainstream voters making common cause with Muslims

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win in New York’s mayoral primary has been a tale of two cities, and two Americas. In one, a young man with hopeful, progressive politics went up against the decaying gods of the establishment, with their giant funding and networks and endorsements from Democratic scions, and won. In another, in an appalling paroxysm of racism and Islamophobia, a Muslim antisemite has taken over the most important city in the US, with an aim to impose some socialist/Islamist regime. Like effluent, pungent and smearing, anti-Muslim hate spread unchecked and unchallenged after Mamdani’s win. It takes a lot from the US to shock these days, but Mamdani has managed to stir, or expose, an obscene degree of mainstreamed prejudice.

Politicians, public figures, members of Donald Trump’s administration and the cesspit of social media clout-chasers all combined to produce what can only be described as a collective self-induced hallucination; an image of a burqa swathed over the Statue of Liberty; the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, stating that Mamdani’s win is what happens when a country fails to control immigration. Republican congressman Andy Ogles has decided to call Mamdani “little muhammad” and is petitioning to have him denaturalised and deported. He has been called a “Hamas terrorist sympathiser”, and a “jihadist terrorist”.

Posts mocking strangers for cracking open classics have become popular. So where are we supposed to read them?

I consider no activity more luxurious than posting up at a bar solo with a good book. The creasing of a paperback in one hand, the weight of a wine glass in the other, the feeling of being alone in a crowd of people all make for a lovely evening. Or at least, I thought so, until recently, when two twentysomethings approached me during this ritual. “Are you reading alone?” one asked. “I could neverrrr,” the other said, and then uttered the universal mean girl slight: “I wish I had your confidence.”

Reading in public – not cool. Or at least “performative reading”, as it’s been dubbed on social media, is worthy of ridicule.

Senators vote on potentially long list of amendments; White House confirms negotiations will restart after tech tax scrapped

• Thom Tillis says he will not seek re-election after Trump clash

Nearly 300 current and recently terminated employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency published a declaration of dissent today, outlining five major concerns about how the Trump administration’s politicization of science and severe job cuts were undermining the agency’s mission.

The declaration to administrator Lee Zeldin was sent as another expected round of staff reductions looms and as the agency undergoes a major reorganization, including the dissolution of its office of research and cancelling of billions of dollars in grants.

Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come. EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.

Scores of Palestinians reported killed as senior Netanyahu adviser due to arrive in Washington for ceasefire talks

Israel ramped up its offensive in Gaza on Monday, with new displacement orders sending tens of thousands of people fleeing the north of the devastated territory and waves of airstrikes killing about 60 Palestinians, according to local officials and medical staff.

The violence in Gaza came as a senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, was due to arrive in Washington for talks on a new ceasefire, a day after Donald Trump called in a social media post for a deal to end the 20-month war and free 50 hostages held by Hamas.

Oleh, 19, was offered $1,000 for a paint attack on a police station – but the bag he was given contained a crude bomb

Oleh found the job via a Telegram channel offering day work and side gigs. It sounded easy enough: he was to travel from his home in eastern Ukraine to the western city of Rivne, pick up a rucksack containing a paint canister and spray it outside the local police station.

It would require nimble feet to flee the scene without being caught, but the money on offer – $1,000 – was good, fantastic even, for what amounted to a morning’s work for the 19-year-old.

Trump officials hail U-turn as Mark Carney says decision to rescind digital services tax means revival of trade talks

The United States has said that Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney “caved” to demands from the White House after his government abruptly scrapped their digital services tax on US technology companies, which was set to go into effect on Monday.

“It’s very simple. Prime minister Carney and Canada caved to president [Donald] Trump and the United States of America,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a daily briefing.

Memo says those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.

The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.

Grisly finding comes at end of worst month in war between Sinaloa factions as government tries to stop killings

Mexican authorities have found 20 bodies in the state of Sinaloa, a region gripped by a war between factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel that is reaching new heights of violence.

The state prosecutor’s office said on Monday that four of the victims had been decapitated and their bodies had been found hanging from a bridge on a main road near Culiacán, the state capital.

Norsk Tipping informed thousands of people they won big sums of money after mistake in currency conversions

Norwegian lottery bosses have sent a text message apologising to tens of thousands of disappointed players who were accidentally told they had won large sums of money.

Norsk Tipping, the state-owned gambling operator, had admitted “several thousand” people were mistakenly told on Friday they had won life-changing sums of money after an error in converting from euros to Norwegian kroner. It was not until Monday, three days later, that a text message was sent to 47,000 people apologising for the error.

Palace accounts show Treasury finding to remain at £86.3m, while duchy of Cornwall will waive some charity rents

The royal family’s private “royal train” will be decommissioned as part of King Charles’s drive to modernise the monarchy and reduce costs.

The train has been used to transport members of the royal family around Britain’s railway network since 1840, but it has become increasingly costly to maintain and store. Rolling stock from the 1980s would need to be updated for modern railway networks, and two new more fuel-efficient helicopters offer a suitable alternative.

Investigation into public order incident comes as US revokes Bob Vylan’s visa ahead of tour later this year.

Police have formally opened a criminal investigation into comments made by Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury after reviewing video and audio footage of the performances.

Avon and Somerset police said the performances had been recorded as a “public order incident at this time” and the investigation would “consider all appropriate legislation, including relating to hate crimes”. A spokesperson added: “There is absolutely no place in society for hate.”

Growing popularity of mysticism can also be connected to increasing sense of cultural confidence as Chinese brands and products go global

Pass my exams. Meet Mr Right. Get rich. Pinned to a board by the entrance of a dimly lit fortune telling bar in Fengtai, an urban district in the south of Beijing, handwritten notes reveal the inner worries of customers coming for cocktails with a side of spiritual salvation.

One As All is one of several fortune telling bars to have opened in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities in recent years. Hidden on the 12th floor of a commercial building, the bar serves a wide range of drinks starting at an auspicious 88 yuan (£9) (eight is considered to be lucky number in China). As well as enjoying a sundowner with a view over Beijing’s skyline, customers can consult the in-house fortune teller who specialises in qiuqian, known in English as Chinese lottery sticks, an ancient style of divination often found in Taoist temples. From a private side-room, the smell of incense burning in front of a genuine Taoist shrine wafts into the bar.

Warning: this article contains extremely graphic and distressing testimony and images

Tens of thousands of Tigrayan women report brutal wartime abuse by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers, such as gang-rape and the insertion of objects into their uteruses. But justice seems a distant prospect

• Photographs and reporting by Ximena Borrazas

For two years, Tseneat carried her rape inside her. The agony never faded. It attacked her from the inside out. The remnants of the attack stayed in Tseneat’s womb – not as a memory or metaphor, but a set of physical objects:

Eight rusted screws.

From vintage finds to Spotify and savings goals, four gen Zers share what budgeting looks like in their real lives

From no-buy-years to second-hand shopping, gen Z seems to have its own unique spending habits. A global rise in the cost of living combined with a highly competitive job market means that 69% of gen Z use some sort of budget to manage their finances.

Their priorities, and what they choose to save for, are different from their boomer counterparts. Gen Z is more likely to spend money on subscriptions, from meal kits to Spotify. There’s also the trend of “doom spending”, which is purchasing non-essential items to cope with either personal or wider political issues.

$40 for electricity

$40 for internet

About $85 on average for gas

$110 for car insurance

$100 for upcoming medical procedure [not included in medical healthcare]

$530 for six months of medical testing, so about $89

$120 for supplements such as painkillers, vitamins, collagen powder and protein powder

$45 for phone

$25 for internet

$8 for renters’ insurance

$150 for gas

$250 for car insurance

$100 for car repairs

$75 for public transport

$250 for food

$25 for bathroom supplies

$10 for household supplies

$111 for insurance

$105 for food

$20 for Spotify

$12 for Hulu

$8 for Apple arcade

About $1,825 for rent

$25 for phone

$60 for gas

$600 for six months of car insurance, so about $100

$10 for food

About $40 for medicine and vet bills

From Fable and Life Is Strange to Last of Us, Thirsty Suitors and Unpacking, five queer game developers and writers pick their sweetest, realest, most meaningful scenes

Life Is Strange, as a series, is really characterised by a patented mix of earnestness and cringe for me – but you can’t fault its determination to put queer characters front and centre. It has been variably successful at this – the messy relationship between shy, photography-obsessed Max and chaotic blue-haired Chloe in 2015’s original Life Is Strange was left somewhat ambiguous, but Alex Chen in Life Is Strange: True Colors was openly bi and pretty laidback about it. My favourite queer moment from the series, though, came in last year’s Double Exposure.

The global fragrance market is bigger than ever as small makers are buoyed by PerfumeTok – and teenage boys

“Will the girl who I just met at the perfume store please comment the perfume you recommended,” wrote Chappell Roan on Instagram last month. “You said it smelled like lipstick.”

The post went viral and the scent – Girl of the Year by the Los Angeles perfume house Thin Wild Mercury – instantly sold out.

‘We added a level of sophistication to garage. When we were trying to get it on the radio, one station said it was too intelligent and they wouldn’t play it’

People say Battle reminds them of some really good years for Britain as a country. We were entering a new millennium, everyone was running their own business, making money and the underground record industry was thriving. I wanted to do a UK garage version of Southern Freeez, by the 80s UK funk band Freeez. Initially, Battle was going to be another instrumental, and then Lain, the singer, came in the room and goes: “Let me put something on this.” I was like: “I’m not sure it’s really a vocal song.” But Lain stacked the vocals, and someone compared it to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, with all the harmonies.

Working with the Trump administration, the data company could be used to target the president’s opponents

Draw a circle around all the assets in the US now devoted to artificial intelligence.

Draw a second circle around all the assets devoted to the US military.

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Like Putin, Israel’s prime minister sees continuing destruction as an opportunity to boost support and outflank his enemies

The war is over! Except it’s not, not by a long chalk. The verbally agreed Iran-Israel ceasefire could be ripped to shreds at any moment. An aggressive theocratic regime still holds power in Tehran. The same is true of Jerusalem. In Washington, a president whose stupidity is matched only by his vanity prattles about making peace, but the angry old men in charge have learned nothing. Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians lie dead, thousands are wounded and millions have been terrorised.

The war is over! Except only the naive believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and prime warmonger, is done fighting. Even if Donald Trump is right and Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “obliterated” (“severely damaged” appears more accurate), its nuclear knowhow and elusive stockpile of enriched uranium have not. At the first sign, real or imagined, of rebuilding, Netanyahu and his cronies will surely attack again. Trump called them off last week. But this is a man who can change his mind three times before he’s even had breakfast.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian columnist

The city was once the pinnacle of inclusivity, with working- and middle-class people alike living in social housing – then the private landlords arrived

• In this series, writers discuss the causes of – and solutions to – the housing crisis in key European cities

• A broken housing market is driving inequality right across Europe

• How Lisbon became Europe’s least affordable city

When I moved to Amsterdam, I felt incredibly lucky to find an illegal six-month sublet 15 minutes by bike from the centre, secured through a friend of a friend. The cost was €1,000 a month – a bargain by market standards but still well over double what my downstairs neighbour, Henrika, paid under the lifelong social housing contract she had obtained four decades earlier.

In the intervening years, Amsterdam had shifted from a pinnacle of inclusivity and progressive housing politics to one of Europe’s most unaffordable markets. In the last year, Dutch house prices have surged by more than 10%, homelessness has risen by more than 20%, and rents in the private rental sector have climbed by more than 7%.

Amber Howard is a researcher in social policy at the University of Bristol. Her work examines housing inequality in high-income countries, with a focus on the Netherlands

We have laws to deal with crimes linked to protest. What this is really about is a government complicit in the Gaza atrocities seeking to silence dissent

• Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor

Strongly worded emails are not doing it. Appeals to MPs are not doing it. Taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands with banners and placards is not working. Elected representatives from every party in parliament have stood in the Commons and asked the government to act. Some government ministers themselves have condemned Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Every poll of public opinion shows that the nation demands we stop arming Israel, and wants to see an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. But none of these things are working.

Keir Starmer and his cabinet remain impervious to all calls for humanitarian intervention, and Israel is still killing children in Gaza with the support of the British government.

Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor

These supposedly serious cetaceans have been spotted massaging each other with kelp stalks. This is the sort of performative nonsense you’d expect from dolphins

I’ve thought for a while that it would be nice to be an orca. Not because I hate boats and they sink them (though I get it – the briny depths are none of our human business). What actually appeals is the idea of being charismatic megafauna – I love that phrase – and also important as a post-menopausal female. Orcas are one of very few species that go through menopause, living for decades after their reproductive years. These older matriarchs remain an integral part of the community, improving pod survival rates thanks to being “repositories of ecological knowledge”, caring for young and even, research suggests, keeping their giant adult sons safe from being attacked. The fact that they’re fashion-conscious is a bonus: the 80s orca trend for wearing jaunty salmon fascinators was revived, intriguingly, in some pods last December; other orcas have been observed draping themselves artistically in kelp.

But new research is giving me pause. Now orcas in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington state have been filmed picking kelp stalks and “massaging” each other with them. In sightings of this behaviour, reported and dubbed “allokelping” by the Center for Whale Research, “the two whales then manoeuvre to keep the kelp between them while rolling it across their bodies … During contact, whales roll and twist their bodies, often adopting an exaggerated S-shaped posture.”

Clean tech’s key minerals now drive western rearmament, reviving extractive ambition and exposing the toxic cost of dependence

It’s an irony that the minerals needed to save the planet may help destroy it. Rare earth elements, the mineral backbones of wind turbines and electric vehicles, are now the prize in a geopolitical arms race. The trade agreement between Washington and Beijing restores rare earth shipments from China to the US, which had been suspended in retaliation against Donald Trump’s tariffs. Behind the bluster, there has been a realisation in Washington that these are critical inputs for the US. They are needed not just by American icons such as Ford and Boeing but for its fighter jets, missile guidance systems and satellite communications.

This understanding suggests that Washington will scale back some of its countermeasures once Beijing resumes delivery of rare earths. The paradox is that to reduce its dependence on China, the US must depend on Beijing a little longer. This is not yet decoupling; it’s deferment. That, however, may not last. Mr Trump has signed an executive order to boost production of critical minerals, which encourages the faster granting of permits for mining and processing projects. He eyes Ukraine and Greenland’s subterranean riches to break dependence on China.

• Reigning champion wins 7-5, 6-7 (5), 7-5, 2-6, 6-1

• Spaniard: ‘I was really nervous at the beginning’

Carlos Alcaraz said he was proud to have squeezed into the second round after struggling with his nerves and the heat on Centre Court during his dramatic five-set win against Fabio Fognini on Monday.

In searing temperatures, Alcaraz started his pursuit of a third consecutive Wimbledon title by outlasting the veteran Italian 7-5, 6-7 (1), 7-5, 2-6, 6-1 after 4hr 37min on-court.

We pick half a dozen contenders to lead the scoring charts in Switzerland, from the WSL Golden Boot winner to France’s formidable finisher

Russo is coming into this tournament in the form of her career. Her 12 goals in the Women’s Super League played an integral role in the Gunners’ second-place finish and earned her a share of the Golden Boot, alongside Manchester City’s Khadija Shaw. She was also Arsenal’s top scorer in their run to securing the Champions League. Her productivity in front of goal has been the biggest improvement to her game.

• India yet to decide if fast bowler will play at Edgbaston

• Moeen Ali joins England backroom staff for the match

One of the many delights of leafy south Birmingham is when an international cricket team is in town and residents stumble across them training on the Colts Ground at Edgbaston. Folks could be heading for a stroll in Cannon Hill Park, or their weekly shop at Aldi, only to suddenly find themselves watching Jasprit Bumrah let fly.

Sadly, the fences were covered with tarpaulins after some hecklers over the weekend. There was a decent subplot playing out inside as India trained, too, over whether Bumrah will play the sold-out second Test that starts . Having bowled these past few days, the man himself offered a passing “hopefully”.

• Union says 20-minute pause could be ‘significant’

• Temperatures at tournament have exceeded 40C

Half-time breaks should be extended to 20 minutes in extreme heat, the global players’ union has said. Fifpro is calling for extra measures to protect footballers after what it describes as the “wake-up call” of the Club World Cup, which has been plagued by extreme temperatures over the past two weeks.

Fifa protocols allow for a cooling break lasting for three minutes in each half if temperature thresholds are exceeded. According to Fifpro’s medical director, Dr Vincent Gouttebarge, an extended half-time break would provide a necessary additional tool in helping to keep players’ core temperatures within their normal range.

Club captain on coming back from injury, the importance of his family and Trent Alexander-Arnold fitting in well

Dani Carvajal misses his family. The good news is that in return he’s about to become reacquainted with something he has missed as much. For some players, this is a competition too far, played on poor pitches in half-empty stadiums and suffocating heat, something they could do without, but it has been good for Real Madrid’s captain, something to aim at.

Now, 270 days later and 4,400 miles away, just as the Club World Cup gets real, he is back to face Juventus in the last 16 in Miami. “And I know what I’m like: if they let me loose, there’ll be no fear,” he says.

• Inter 0-2 Fluminense (Germán Cano 3, Hércules 93)

• 44-year-old goalkeeper Fábio makes series of fine saves

The Brazilian side Fluminense stunned Inter by knocking the Champions League finalists out of the Club World Cup with a 2-0 victory in the last 16 in Charlotte.

The reign of the new head coach, Cristian Chivu, who took over following Simone Inzaghi’s departure just days after that humbling 5-0 defeat against Paris Saint-Germain a month ago, has not started well as they exited the tournament before the quarter-finals.

Club have history of promoting from within and remain pragmatic about potential departure of Bryan Mbeumo

Phil Giles had already given the update on Christian Nørgaard. “It’s more likely than not,” the Brentford director of football said, suggesting that the club captain was close to sealing a £10m move to Arsenal, which is expected to feature £5m in add-ons. Then it was time for Giles to do likewise with Bryan Mbeumo, who is the subject of a bid from Manchester United. Brentford value their 20-goal top scorer from last season at about £65m. United are nearly there with it.

“We’ve made our point clear,” Giles said. “If Bryan earned a massive move now and it was right for us financially, we’d be open to it. But if he ended up here with us next season, I wouldn’t be massively surprised. We’d be delighted. And it would save me a massive headache, frankly.” With that, Giles glanced at the man to his left – the new Brentford head coach, Keith Andrews, presumably the source of said headache if Mbeumo were to leave.

• Steelers land Jalen Ramsey in trade with Dolphins

• Pittsburgh sends Fitzpatrick, late pick to Miami

• Jonnu Smith also joins Steelers in blockbuster deal

The Pittsburgh Steelers acquired All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey from the Miami Dolphins, multiple news outlets reported Monday.

Ramsey confirmed the development on X, posting: “Break my own news! #HereWeGo @steelers.“

• WNBA to add Cleveland, Detroit, Philly by 2030

• All three new teams backed by NBA ownership

• Expansion fee now $250m, five times Golden State’s

The WNBA is expanding to 18 teams over the next five years, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia all set to join the league by 2030.

Cleveland will begin play in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia the season after, assuming they get approval from the NBA and WNBA Board of Governors. Toronto and Portland will enter the league next year.

Extreme heat ‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue health warnings

A vicious heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of mainland France under alert.

Extreme heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first major heatwave of the summer.

Footage of three-a-side game shows humanoids struggling to kick the ball or stay upright

They think it’s all over … for human footballers at least.

The pitch wasn’t the only artificial element on display at a football match on Saturday. Four teams of humanoid robots took each other on in Beijing, in games of three-a-side powered by artificial intelligence.

Firm says results of research create ‘path to medical superintelligence’ but plays down job implications

Microsoft has revealed details of an artificial intelligence system that performs better than human doctors at complex health diagnoses, creating a “path to medical superintelligence”.

The company’s AI unit, which is led by the British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, has developed a system that imitates a panel of expert physicians tackling “diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding” cases.

Victoria police allege Point Cook man Joshua Brown sexually abused eight children at a western suburbs childcare centre

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

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

A Melbourne childcare worker has been charged with more than 70 offences after allegedly sexually abusing eight children in his care.

Victoria police issued a statement on Tuesday confirming they charged 26-year-old Point Cook man Joshua Brown last month with offences including sexual penetration of a child under 12, attempted sexual penetration of a child under 12, sexual assault of a child under 16 and producing child material for use through a carriage service.

The Oscar winner will appear alongside Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough when they play the same character at different ages in Tracy Letts’ play Mary Page Marlowe

Susan Sarandon is to make her UK theatre debut alongside Andrea Riseborough, when the pair portray the same woman at different ages, in Tracy Letts’ drama Mary Page Marlowe.

The play will be staged this autumn at the Old Vic in London by Matthew Warchus, in his final season as artistic director. Several actors portray the title character, which is described as a “time-jumping mosaic” spanning 70 years in the life of an accountant and mother of two in Ohio.

Cold spell expected to push northwards as storm system that has brought torrential rain in Bolivia and Brazil clears

A sharp cold spell affecting the southern half of South America is expected to intensify and push northwards in the coming days as a broad area of high pressure builds over the continent.

Over the weekend, large parts of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay had temperatures 10-15C below their seasonal averages. Night-time lows plunged well into the negative double digits. One weather station in Chile – located 69 metres above sea level at an airport near the city of Puerto Natales – recorded a minimum of -15.7C on Sunday evening, nearly 14C below the average June minimum.

For years, Puerto Ricans have faced high electricity costs and regular blackouts. The town of Adjuntas, in the central mountains, boasts the island’s first community-owned solar microgrid

These starfish relatives have lots of remarkable features and are a keystone species. My hope is that we will recognise how vital these charismatic creatures are

Brittle stars have a lot of remarkable features as a species. Many of them are bioluminescent and can flash blue light; some will have patterns and do displays. These slender relatives of starfish can be very beautiful to look at and come in a range of colours – in the tropics, for example, they can be red, black or orange. And they’ve got spines all over them, so they can look quite ornate.

They can also regenerate. Fish and other creatures will often nip off bits of their arms – known as sublethal predation – so they are constantly regenerating themselves. You can even break off all their arms, and sometimes even half the disc, and the brittle star will still regenerate.

Rapporteur calls for defossilization of economies and urgent reparations to avert ‘catastrophic’ rights and climate harms

A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused.

Dealing with very serious blazes means fire and rescue service has limited ability to respond to other emergencies

Firefighters battled wildfires in the Scottish Highlands for a third day on Monday in a situation the first minister has called “extremely serious”.

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA), which has helped tackle the blazes, warned the fires are “becoming a danger to human life” that are leaving “stretched” firefighters unable to attend other incidents.

Death of former winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK was a misadventure, Cheshire coroner says

The drag artist known as The Vivienne died from misadventure after suffering cardio-respiratory arrest after taking ketamine, a coroner has ruled.

James Lee Williams, 32, was found in the bath by a neighbour at home in Chorlton-by-Backford, Cheshire, on Sunday 5 January. The last time anyone had contact with Williams was two days earlier, a court was told, when a friend said it was evident the entertainer had taken ketamine.

MPs including select committee chairs express doubts that concessions agreed last week go far enough

Downing Street’s plans to see off a major Labour welfare rebellion were in chaos on Monday night, amid continued brinkmanship between MPs and the government over the scale of the concessions.

There was significant division between government departments over how to respond to rebels’ demands – with seemingly little idea how to quell continuing anger ahead of the knife-edge vote on Tuesday.

Mary Dainton ‘stunned’ when police told her DNA evidence led them to man who raped and murdered Louisa Dunne

• Man, 92, convicted of raping and murdering Bristol woman in 1967

When police officers sat Mary Dainton down last year and told her they needed to talk about her grandmother, she asked at once: “Have they caught him?”

The officer confirmed they had a suspect for the rape and murder of Dainton’s grandmother, Louisa Dunne, almost 60 years earlier.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis sets up taskforce over alleged scamming of EU agricultural funds after resignation of five senior officials

The Greek prime minister has vowed to get to the bottom of how a scheme of fraudulent EU subsidy claims could have operated undetected in the country for years, as he admitted that the scandal had revealed “the state’s inadequacy” in dealing with corruption.

Faced with revelations that “fake” farmers had been scamming designated agricultural funds to the tune of a reputed €290m (£249m), Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday a special taskforce would be set up to “immediately and exhaustively” investigate the illegal payments.

Advocates say the move could turn the tide for other British overseas territories battling for LGBTQ+ rights

A court in London has upheld a Cayman Islands law legalising same-sex civil partnerships, in a move that campaigners say could turn the tide for other British overseas territories battling for LGBTQ+ rights.

On Monday, the privy council, the final court of appeal for the British overseas territory, rejected an appeal that had argued the Caribbean island’s governor had no right to enact the bill, after lawmakers had rejected similar legislation.

Twelve-member jury in New York starts to deliberate following closing arguments from both sides

After seven weeks of testimony from more than 30 witnesses, jurors in the high-profile federal sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs have begun deliberations, but ended their day with no verdict.

The 12-member jury – made up of eight men and four women – began deliberating on Monday, following closing arguments from both sides that concluded on Friday and lengthy instructions from the judge.

Bryan Kohberger to be spared death penalty but will be given four consecutive life sentences, ABC News reports

Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four Idaho college students in 2022, has agreed to plead guilty to all counts, a move that would spare him from the death penalty, ABC News reported on Monday, citing a letter sent to victims’ family members.

Kohberger, who previously pleaded not guilty on charges of murder in the fatal stabbings, will be sentenced to four consecutive life sentences and waives all right to appeal, according to ABC News.

Vin Diesel says ‘reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner’ was a condition for agreeing to a Furious finale, which will no doubt require a CGI resurrection

If you’re a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise – and you’re only human, so of course you are – then you’ll know that Fast X ended on one of the most operatically daft cliffhangers of all time. In short, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson are apparently dead, having been shot out of the sky by a double agent. Vin Diesel seems certain to die, having ended the film at the bottom of a dam that Jason Momoa just exploded. And Gal Gadot is back. And the Rock is back.

All these threads need to be resolved urgently. And yet, Fast X was a box-office disappointment. The fourth most expensive film ever made, Fast X was the fifth highest-grossing film of 2023 and still managed to lose $20m. And suddenly the prospects of a sequel looked dimmer and dimmer. Or at least they did, until Vin Diesel stumbled across a foolproof plan to revive the franchise forever: human resurrection.

In this astonishing and gross series, we stand witness as teams battle to clean up blood, guts and body fluids. Viewer discretion is very much advised – there will be maggots

It has been a while since we had a good, honest point-and-boke documentary, is it not? “Boke”, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, means to be sick. I use it here because the onomatopoeia gives a better sense of the fight that precedes the act, especially if – say – a programme is unspooling in front of you that keeps the nausea building until you are past the point of no return. Viewer discretion – and a plastic bowl – is advised.

So, then, to Crime Scene Cleaners, a 10-part documentary – yes, 10! – that does exactly what it says on the tin. It follows teams from British and American companies as they move in after bodies have been removed and evidence bagged and tagged by police to clean up anything left behind. “Anything” can mean blood – spattered, accumulated in the bottom of a bath tub, trailed along a floor, soaked into a carpet, stained into grouting, arterially sprayed along skirting boards. Hepatitis B, we are informed via a dramatic voiceover, can survive for up to seven days in dried blood, hepatitis C for up to six weeks on hard surfaces. Clever pathogens.

The next in our series of writers on their go-to comfort watches looks back at Wong Kar-Wai’s unusual and profound romantic comedy

Chinese auteur Wong Kar-Wai is not a director you’d immediately seek out for a cosy feelgood experience. His films delve into loneliness, yearning and doomed love affairs, carried along by a melancholy undercurrent. Chungking Express, the story of two Hong Kong cops reeling from being dumped by their respective partners, doesn’t deviate from these obsessions of his but the quirky romantic comedy also manages to be his most joyous and uplifting offering.

The film has a playful energy and is brimming with offbeat humour. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro play the heartbroken policemen, both deep in denial over the end of their relationships. We watch them cope in very different ways with their heartache. Kaneshiro’s Cop 223 pines outside his ex’s flat, buys cans of pineapple because they were her favorite food and goes on jogs so his body has no water left for tears.

Ross Whitaker’s documentary using 1990s TV footage and interviews tells of Stefan Klincewicz and his crew of chancers – and an Ireland very different from now

Harking back to a simpler, more innocent, less gambling-saturated era, this Irish documentary tells the story of how a syndicate of entrepreneurs and semi-professional gamblers tried to game the Republic of Ireland’s national lottery in 1992. Mustachioed ringleader Stefan Klincewicz, interviewed here, looks exactly like the kind of provincial accountant he originally was, neither a smooth master criminal nor a geeky Moneyball-style statistical genius. Klincewicz merely worked out that the capital needed to buy a ticket for every possible combination of the six numbers in the Lotto game would cost less than IR£1m. That strategy would significantly lower the 1 in 2m odds a punter usually faced, but only if they could manage to buy all the tickets needed.

When a rollover weekend came around, making the pot worth the gamble, Klincewicz and his micro army of chancers, including teenage daughters and friends press-ganged into the effort, went to work. But the accordion-playing head of the national lottery at the time tried to foil their scheme by limiting how many tickets individuals could buy at once. The concern was that the public would feel discouraged from playing Lotto if they thought syndicates would usually win.

A careworn husband is accused of murdering his wife in a story inspired by a real life case that dispenses with the genre’s familiar brutality

Here is a fictionalised true crime drama, but one that is more stately and sedate than the garish procedural brutality of regular true crime. There is one gruesome crime-scene photo, but otherwise this could really have been based on something by Ruth Rendell. It is co-written and directed by its star Daniel Auteuil and the original French title is Le Fil (The Thread), after an incriminating thread of material found on the corpse – or perhaps it means the thread of logic behind a legal argument, the loose thread which, if pulled sufficiently, might cause the whole thing to collapse.

The action is based on a case recounted by Jean-Yves Moyart, a criminal defence lawyer, who blogged under the name “Maître Mô” and who died in 2021. Grégory Gadebois plays Nicolas Milik (“Ahmed” in Moyart’s blog), a devoted, careworn husband to his alcoholic wife Cécile and caring dad to five children. When Milik is accused of murdering his wife, with a local bar owner apparently an accomplice, principled lawyer Maître Monier (Auteuil) takes the case; passionately convinced of his client’s innocence but finding himself in an increasingly tense situation.

Despite the dryly informational tone, this documentary guide to the prophet Muhammad’s final resting place features breathtaking footage

Here is a tour guide of the Islamic holy city best known in the UK as Medina in Saudi Arabia, a major destination for religious tourism, second only to Mecca. It is home to Islam’s first mosque, and the prophet Muhammad’s final resting place. For anyone planning a visit, this documentary about the city’s sacred sites is well worth a watch. Non-Muslims may find themselves reaching for their phones to look up terms and historical events.

There is an antiquated, mildly academic feel to the voiceover, like a BBC documentary from the 1970s. It begins with a brief overview of the prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622AD, marking the start of the Islamic calendar. In the present day, the faces of pilgrims are a window into the significance of this spiritual journey for those with faith – but none are actually interviewed.

It’s not all about the headliners. Away from the big stages, feminist punks are singing songs about UTIs and Elvis has been reborn as Kurt Cobain

With 80 stages hosting more than 3,000 performers, there is a terrifying amount of things to see and do at Glastonbury. While the headline acts dominate the coverage, what of the lesser-known artists listed further down the bill? Is anyone stumbling to their strange shows?

From an Elvis-fronted Nirvana tribute act to a feminist punk group singing songs about UTIs, via a taxidermy mouse circus and a singalong performance of school-assembly hymns, we went in search of Glastonbury 2025’s most obscure acts.

Follow the Sunday festivities with the Guardian’s photography team as Turnstile turned up the energy, Michael Rosen spun some stories and Olivia Rodrigo blew us away

Sunday at Glastonbury kicked off in wholesome fashion in the Kidzfield, with Michael Rosen speaking to a young audience, preceded by a children’s disco party.

Michael Rosen speaks to children about literature and language in the Kidzfield.

Pyramid stage
While you might quibble that Chic’s set has become more reliable than revolutionary, you can’t argue with the effects of the greatest pop music ever made on the crowd

Sunday at 6pm is a point in the Glastonbury experience what you really need is something dependable. You are sunburnt. The heat is still brutal. You are exhausted. The state of the toilets is unspeakable, and you crave a certain straightforward reliability. And, despite his attempts to reboot the Chic brand with a new album a few years back and a handful of fresh production gigs, Nile Rodgers seems largely content to see out his days in the business of straightforward reliability, simply touring the world playing his old songs. In fairness, if you’d written the catalogue of material he has, you might be inclined to ensure people don’t forget about it.

The initial shock you may have felt at seeing a reconstituted version of the greatest disco band of all playing Glastonbury’s West Holts stage in 2013 has long disappeared – Chic have become a ubiquitous live presence in Britain in the ensuing years – but the meat of their set remains preserved in aspic, more or less the same as it was 12 years ago. That said, anyone who quibbles with the quality of said meat – Everybody Dance, I’m Coming Out, Upside Down, He’s the Greatest Dancer – is the kind of person who shouldn’t be allowed to express any opinions about music whatsoever: this is unequivocally some of the greatest pop ever made.

Pyramid stage
Returning to headline the Pyramid for the first time in 30 years, Jarvis Cocker and co are as dark, grubby and joyous as ever, instantly turning the audience to misty-eyed displays of devotion

“Sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork,” says Jarvis Cocker, in reference to the mysterious name that appeared on the Glastonbury bill in lieu of Pulp’s. “How did you know we were going to play?”

In fairness, Pulp did their best to conceal their appearance at the festival (as Cocker says, it’s 30 years and four days since they were parachuted into the Glastonbury headlining slot, a now-legendary performance that sealed their ascendancy). Keyboard player Candida Doyle even gave an interview to a local Somerset newspaper insisting that while they wanted to play, Glastonbury “weren’t interested”. But clearly no one was convinced – the Pyramid stage is headlining-set heaving.

Stretching from Indiana to North Korea, the US writer’s sixth novel is a study of absence, alienation and affection in a family rocked by tragedy

The millennium is back – not just in fast fashion or TikTok remixes, but in the mood of American fiction. Think peak Chabon and Eugenides; the intellectual gymnastics of Helen DeWitt; the last profane and puckish gasp of Tom Robbins. That brief window – before 9/11, smartphones and the chokehold of autofiction – when the novel felt as playful as it did expansive: bold and baggy as wide-legged jeans. Joyce Carol Oates channelling Marilyn Monroe. Jonathan Franzen snubbing Oprah. You can feel that early-00s energy jostling through a new crop of American novels: Lucas Schaefer’s The Slip, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! and Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle are top-shelf examples. They’re big in all kinds of wonderful, infuriating ways: antic, overstuffed and richly peopled.

While it’s less hyperactive than some of its book-fellows, Susan Choi’s Flashlight still has the wide-legged feel of turn-of-the-century fiction: domestically sprawling, geopolitically bold. Stretching from a strawberry farm in Indiana to the North Korean border, Choi’s sixth novel reckons with the lies that undo families and underpin empires.

The Hideous Kinky author has always drawn inspiration from her own experiences. Now her sister Bella is writing her own version of their childhood. Does fact or fiction come closer to the truth, she asks

I’m four and I’m pretending to be dead. I’ve been lying here behind the sofa, and I’m hoping I’ll be missed, but more than that I’m hoping it will make a story. The story of the games I like to play, and how I profess to remember my past lives. It is 1967, a few months before we set off for Morocco – my mother, my sister Bella and I – travelling overland by van, taking the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier, breaking down on the road to Marrakech. From then on everything becomes a story. The camel festival we visit, the path into the hills so steep that Bella and I are packed into saddlebags while the donkeys’ hooves skitter and slip. I can’t remember later whether it is a camel that is sacrificed when we reach the top, or a chicken. But either way I keep the description of the chicken to myself, running in circles, blood spouting from its headless neck.

For all the decades since, I’ve been the family chronicler, as much in my novels as in our lives. I’ve kept the few possessions from those years in Morocco. The kaftans we bought in the souk when we arrived, the corduroy patch that I unpicked from a pair of too small trousers, embroidered with a flower by a boyfriend of my mother. “Are you my Daddy?” I’d asked him, as I’d asked others, not because I thought he was, but because I’d read about another little girl asking the same question in a book. I can still see the look of consternation on the boyfriends’ faces, hear my mother’s embarrassed laugh.

A drunk old man’s report of sighting an angel opens on to much broader mysteries

Nest Box

When the drunken old fool
saw the barn owl,

The author’s new book Sweet Nothings follows four women who, like her, dated their professors – and explores how even a consensual pedagogical relationship can result in ‘a unique harm’

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

At the tail end of 2023, the author Madison Griffiths posed a question on her Instagram: “Has anyone here ever been in a relationship with a professor or a tutor?”

Hundreds of responses flooded in. There were those who revealed that their parents had met in the lecture hall. Younger women reported they’d been involved with a university superior. Their experiences were diverse but what united those who messaged her was gender: no men came forward to say they had been in relationships with a professor or tutor. In Griffiths’s inbox, at least, it was all women.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Generative AI is causing new and unusual problems for developers as players become more sensitive to the use of artificially generated ‘slop’ images

In April, game developer Stamina Zero achieved what should have been a marketing slam-dunk: the launch trailer for the studio’s game Little Droid was published on PlayStation’s official YouTube channel. The response was a surprise for the developer. The game looks interesting, people wrote in the comments, but was “ruined” by AI art. But the game’s cover art, used as the thumbnail for the YouTube video, was in fact made by a real person, according to developer Lana Ro. “We know the artist, we’ve seen her work, so such a negative reaction was unexpected for us, and at first we didn’t know how to respond or how to feel,” Ro said. “We were confused.”

It’s not wrong for people to be worried about AI use in video games – in fact, it’s good to be sceptical, and ensure that the media you support aligns with your values. Common arguments against generative AI relate to environmental impact, art theft and just general quality, and video game developers are grappling with how generative AI will impact their jobs. But the unexpected problem is that the backlash against generative AI is now hurting even those who don’t use it. “I would rather people be overly cautious than not,” veteran game developer and Chessplus digital director Josh Caratelli said. “But being collateral damage does suck.”

Xbox is putting a lot behind its new space action-RPG sequel – which will be the first $80/£70 video game from Microsoft. Does it earn its price tag? We asked the developer what went into it

The Outer Worlds 2, from RPG makers Obsidian, will be the first first-party Xbox game to cost $80 (£70). Given that Nintendo Switch 2 games are already priced at least that high, and Sony’s own PlayStation 5 games have been pushing towards it for a while, you might not expect this development to ignite a pricing debate among gamers – but it did. The increased cost of video games is a hotly contested topic, given the unsustainably ballooning budgets that most blockbuster games are working with these days. But I can say that The Outer Worlds 2 is a much larger, more in-depth game than the 2019 comedy sci-fi original. If we’re going to talk about value, it can certainly be argued that its higher price point is justified.

I loved The Outer Worlds, which was jam-packed with the kind of wry, sardonic humour you’d expect from an Obsidian RPG (this is the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas, after all). Its super-saturated space world, populated by colourful flora, bumbling corporations and strange zealots, was a joy to live in for 20 or so hours, though its combat left much to be desired.

PS5; Sony/Kojima Productions
This is a mystifying and provocatively slow-paced game with more celebrities than you would find on a Cannes red carpet

What is Death Stranding 2 trying to say? It’s a question you will ask yourself on many occasions during the second instalment of Hideo Kojima’s hypnotising, mystifying, and provocatively slow-paced cargo management simulator series. First, because during the many long and uneventful treks across its supernatural vision of Mexico and Australia, you have all the headspace in the world to ponder its small details and decipher the perplexing things you just witnessed. And second, because the question so often reveals something profound.

That it can stand up to such extended contemplation is a marker of the fine craftsmanship that went into this game. Nobody is scribbling down notes to uncover what Doom: The Dark Ages is getting at or poring over Marvel Rivals’ cutscenes for clues, fantastic as those games are. It is rare for any game to invite this kind of scrutiny, let alone hold up to it. But Death Stranding 2 has the atmosphere and narrative delivery of arthouse cinema. It’s light of touch in its storytelling but exhaustive in its gameplay systems, and the tension between the two makes it so compelling. At first you brave one for the other; then, over time, you savour both.

With a four-decade career beginning at Capcom in the 8-bit era, Shimomura is one of the most acclaimed names in gaming. She recalls her early struggles – and explains why her beloved classical music fits best with RPGs

Alfred Hitchcock, David Attenborough, Harold Pinter, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Hideo Kojima – these are just a few of the recipients of the Bafta fellowship, the highest honour the academy can bestow. Japanese composer Yoko Shimomura is the latest to receive the accolade; one of only 17 women and four Japanese people to have done so. She is also the first video-game composer to be recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the first composer recognised at all since John Barry in 2005.

It is with good reason that the academy has honoured her. Shimomura is an icon. You’ll know her music from Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana, Streets of Rage and more than 70 other games she has contributed original compositions or arrangements to. Her 37-year-long career has seen her record at Abbey Road Studios, have her music played by symphonic orchestras around the world, and work in genres ranging from rock to electronica, ambient to industrial, pop to opera. And yet Shimomura seems unchanged by her success.

Pyramid stage
With a genuinely surprise appearance from the Cure’s Robert Smith and a magnificent theatricality to her lovelorn songs, Rodrigo totally steals the entire festival

Olivia Rodrigo’s first Glastonbury appearance in 2022 was the stuff of minor legend. Aged 19, already the author of an 18m selling debut album, but something of an unknown quantity in festival terms, she turned out to be rather more feral and off-message than you might have expected a former Disney Channel star turned teen-popper to be. At one juncture, she named each individual judge responsible for overturning Roe v Wade that weekend, shouting “We hate you! We hate you!” then performing Lily Allen’s Fuck You in duet with its author.

Three years on, with another huge-selling album in the bag, and lifted to the status of headliner, nothing quite so likely to stir up controversy on Fox News happens. But the singer is still capable of springing surprises, when she announces the arrival of a special guest – “perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England … a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine”, you somehow automatically expect Ed Sheeran to appear from the wings, acoustic guitar in hand. But this does Rodrigo something of a disservice. It turns out to be Robert Smith, who duets with her on versions of Friday I’m In Love and Just Like Heaven.

At the Phoenix Arts Museum, a new exhibition displays different approaches to comedy within photography

Humor stands in a strange relationship to the art world. Often ranked as a lesser aspiration for the work of a true artist, when humor does find its way into the graphic arts, it’s as more of a condiment than the main dish.

How refreshing then to see the Phoenix Art Museum’s substantial new exhibition, Funny Business, which boldly and decisively leaps into the realm of comedic photography. Showcasing humor from a wealth of angles, including slapstick, whimsical, acid, surreal, ironic, parody and so many more, the show offers ample opportunity to consider just what purpose laughter serves – and to enjoy a hearty laugh or two on a summer’s day.

British actor-director joins Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci for a long-awaited follow-up to the comedy hit

Kenneth Branagh is joining the original cast of The Devil Wears Prada for the much-anticipated sequel which begins filming this week.

The actor-writer-director will play the husband of Meryl Streep’s vicious fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Streep returns along with Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Desiree Burch returns, Bridget Christie drops in and Toussaint Douglass flies while Joe Kent-Walters goes beyond the grave and Jazz Emu has a midlife crisis

It’s six years since Desiree Burch’s last standup show, in which time she’s become a fixture of small-screen comedy. Always compelling and thoughtful onstage, the theatre-maker turned standup now returns with a set described as “a madcap voyage” through midlife crisis and menopause.
Monkey Barrel, 28 July to 10 August

A weak grip goes hand in hand with higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and is linked to everything from diabetes and obesity to muscle loss. Here’s what to do about it

Anyone who has ever dropped their phone in the toilet – and isn’t that all of us? – knows something about the importance of a good strong grip. We come into the world ready to grasp anything placed in our hands, and if we are lucky we leave it the same way. In between, grip lets us cling to our parents, hold our lovers, rock our babies. The morning I wrote this, before I was even dressed, it enabled me to strap on my watch, lock the kids out of the bathroom, wash my hands, insert my contact lenses, strip, shower, brush my teeth, take my medicine and check my phone. A few hours later, as I hung upside down on some gymnastics rings, it stopped me slipping off and cracking my head on the floor.

But you know what? This just scratches the surface. Not only does grip help you work, play and pull your trousers on in the morning; it offers an immediate insight into your health. To put it bluntly, the weaker your grip, the more likely you are to die early.

Not even 30, I was spending more and more of my life in the same few places with the same few friends. Then came an invitation to something new

I take a calming breath, then step up to the microphone. Here, in this crowded bar, I know that, despite my nerves, reading out my poetry will be a joyous experience.

I had been attending these open mics for a year and this was my first time performing. As a student, I had been active and sociable, but a period of mental ill health in my early 20s dented my confidence. I am partially sighted, too, which means going somewhere new can be daunting; I can miss the visual cues for striking up conversation, while navigating unfamiliar surroundings is tricky. By the time I was 28, I was stuck in a cycle of safe activities, such as dinner with my circle of friends in our go-to restaurants.

Summery and light, nutritious and beautifully textured – and on the table in about half an hour

This is such a lovely, summery dish: it takes under 30 minutes from start to finish, and I found it immensely reviving after a long day. The grated courgette melts into the pasta, and works perfectly with the lemon, trout and a hit of chilli. If you have one of those multi-nut and seed mixes (the M&S 35-plant one is excellent), by all means add a scoop to finish; otherwise, a scattering of toasted pine nuts will add a welcome crunch. An elegant dinner for two.

What does our chief perfectionist choose as a birthday treat? This sumptuous coffee and walnut cake, which you, too, can whip up in less than an hour

Today is my birthday, so I’m celebrating with a classic that, for all the sticky tres leches and sophisticated sachertortes I’ve enjoyed in recent years, remains my absolute favourite, my desert island cake: that darling of the WI tea tent, the coffee and walnut sandwich. The great Nigel Slater once named it his last meal on Earth, and I’m hoping to have it for tea.

Prep 30 min
Cook 25 min
Serves 8

Rice noodles topped with a rubble of tempeh and walnuts and tossed in garlic oil and a sweet, salty and tangy hot sauce

Up until now, I was sceptical about viral recipes. Is anyone still making the baked feta pasta from 2021? Has the “marry me chicken” resulted in an uptick in matrimonies? But the tossed noodles (guay tiew klook) currently doing the rounds on Thai social media platforms really whet my appetite. In short, they’re noodles tossed with mince, garlic oil and a dark, sweet, salty and tangy hot sauce, and they just make so much sense that they really couldn’t not be great. I love them, so I’m passing on the baton to you using a combination of crumbly tempeh and walnuts instead of the mince.

Save those bright green carrot tops from the compost bin by whizzing them up into a spicy sauce for topping a North African-spiced carrot stew

Today’s warming recipe makes a hero of the whole carrot from root to leaf, and sits somewhere between a roast and a stew. The lush green tops are turned into a punchy chermoula that is stirred into the sauce and used as a garnish.

Breasts have always been political – and right now they’re front and centre again. Is it yet another way in which Trump’s worldview is reshaping the culture?

It was, almost, a proud feminist moment. On inauguration day in January, the unthinkable happened. President Trump, the biggest ego on the planet, was upstaged by a woman in a white trouser suit – the proud uniform of Washington feminists, worn by Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in solidarity with the traditional colour of the suffragettes. In the event, the white trouser suit barely got a mention. The show was stolen by what was underneath: Lauren Sánchez’s cleavage, cantilevered under a wisp of white lace. The breasts of the soon-to-be Mrs Jeff Bezos were the ceremony’s breakout stars. The only talking point that came close was Mark Zuckerberg’s inability to keep his eyes off them.

Call it a curtain raiser for a year in which breasts have been – how to put this? – in your face. Sydney Sweeney’s pair have upstaged her acting career to the point that she wears a sweatshirt that says “Sorry for Having Great Tits and Correct Opinions”. Bullet bras are making a sudden comeback, in sugar-pink silk on Dua Lipa on the cover of British Vogue and nosing keen as shark fins under fine cashmere sweaters at the Miu Miu show at Paris fashion week. Perhaps most tellingly, Kim Kardashian, whose body is her business empire, has made a 180-degree pivot from monetising her famous backside to selling, in her Skims lingerie brand, push-up bras featuring a pert latex nipple – with or without a fake piercing – that make an unmissable point under your T-shirt. Not since Eva Herzigova was in her Wonderbra in 1994 – Hello Boys – have boobs been so, well, big.

Jonathan Anderson makes his sharp-eyed debut as creative director for the fashion house

Even Anna Wintour can only be in one place at a time. And rather than Paris, where Jonathan Anderson made his Dior debut on Friday, the most powerful person in fashion was in Venice for the Bezos/Sánchez wedding, shortly after relinquishing her role as editor-in-chief at American Vogue.

Unlike the so-called wedding of the year, Anderson’s show provided sweet relief with a cooler, more chic feel. Perched on wooden cubes within the Cour du Dôme des Invalides sat plenty of VIP clout too: Daniel Craig, Donatella Versace and Wintour’s occasional rallying partner, Roger Federer. Most of the Arnault family, who own Dior and routinely joust with Jeff Bezos over who has more money, were present. Even Rihanna, pregnant in a Dior pastel waistcoat, was relatively punctual.

Buying vintage and bespoke is great, but when you do need to buy off the rack, start with a few UK brands making sustainable and affordable garments

Last year, in the interest of sustainable fashion, I joined a pledge only to buy five new pieces of clothing. Despite thinking of myself as someone who doesn’t really shop, I found the restriction a real chore. Unless you’re buying vintage or spending a fortune, the dilemma of how to engage in the fun and newness of fashion without contributing to its environmental footprint is, it turns out, nearly universal: data in a new report reveals 74% of people want to dress more sustainably but most don’t know how to go about it.

The report – released by multi-brand retailer Zalando – found that 39% of consumers find sustainable garments too expensive and 27% say they are hard to identify. It’s little wonder sustainable fashion remains plagued by vague claims, convoluted supply chains and a call-out culture that’s left brands reluctant to promote initiatives to customers on the lookout for greenwashing.

It offers the silhouette of a vest top but with more structure and looks good when you layer (just don’t use a cardie)

What with being neither a page boy nor a snooker player, I had not given much thought to waistcoats until recently. I guess I thought of them as belonging to a wardrobe that didn’t concern me: a world of braces, cravats and flat caps. Of Guy Ritchie films, wedding rentals and carnation buttonholes.

Well, I guess the joke’s on me now, because waistcoats aren’t novelty or naff any more. They are happening, and I need to get up to speed on how to wear them. The waistcoat has entered the fashion chat in the slipstream of the trouser suit. Women have been wearing them for decades, but until the last decade it remained a slightly niche move – not weird or eccentric, just a bit of a statement. It is only in the past few years that suits on women have become unremarkable.

All children face difficulties in new schools – make sure he knows this, stick to the positives, and take the fact he’s already been invited to a party as a positive first step

My son is starting secondary school in September. He is the only child from his primary transitioning to a selective grammar school. He has always struggled with friendships and I feel this is due to his autism. He is high-achieving academically. I don’t want him to change who he is or feel as if he can’t be himself. At the same time I know he can be standoffish and overwhelming when he is so focused on his own interests.

He has just been invited to one of his new classmates’ birthday parties. He was shocked and grateful to be invited, and it was heartbreaking. I don’t want him to be isolated in his new school and I don’t know how to help him to be ready and open to a brand new social setting. I would really appreciate any help or advice you could give.

Mariana and Owen felt sexually frustrated in previous relationships, but are having the ride of their lives now
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Our sexual relationship is intertwined with our love for each other. It’s our love language

Does a good apology contain five steps, seven steps – even eight? And why do we find it so difficult?

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

Got something to say sorry for? Here are words that have no place in your apologies, according to those who have spent years analysing them: “It was not my intent”. “What I meant was”. “Sorry you misunderstood”. And any use of the word “obviously”.

Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy call it “bad apology bingo”. They have heard a lot of them as co-authors of Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies and the blog Sorrywatch, where they critique public apologies. “We’ve looked at so many studies, from so many different fields, on what makes an effective apology,” Ingall says.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Jessica Dettmann wasn’t ready to settle down when her boyfriend popped the question but his response made her realise he was exactly who she needed

• Find more stories from The moment I knew series

It was the day before my 25th birthday in 2005. I was living alone in a flat in Sydney and getting ready for a friend of a friend’s 30th that night. I wanted to look vengefully hot for the occasion – someone who had dumped me was going to be there. But later that night I forgot all about my ex.

As I was sitting in the back garden at the party, making balloon animals, I looked up and saw a man wearing a bright blue floral 80s outfit – a dress and matching jacket – with fishnet stockings and a floppy hat. It was a circus freaks-themed party and he was one of only a handful of other guests who had dressed up, the only Bearded Lady among us. His humour and confidence glowed as brightly as his pearl choker and matching clip-on earrings. I instantly sensed a strong connection.

Occasional sensitivity to lactose can occur as we get older, or through stress, but for most people it’s only temporary

Most of us aren’t inherently dairy intolerant, but we can go through periods where we become more sensitive to lactose in our diet, says Amanda Avery, an associate professor in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Nottingham.

She says that when people talk about being “dairy intolerant”, they’re usually referring to lactose, the sugar found in milk and dairy products, such as milk, cheese and yoghurt. In most people, that sugar is broken down by an enzyme called lactase, which is found in our small intestine. It helps our bodies digest and absorb lactose without causing discomfort. “We’re born with plenty of lactase. But as our diets diversify, our lactase levels decline,” says Avery. “If there is minimal milk in the dairy diet then lactase levels may be zero, thus people from some cultural backgrounds and countries where dairy intake is negligible may be intolerant.”

Sometimes you just need to treat yourself but you don’t always need to feel bad about it. Nutritionists recommend the smartest ways to indulge (including a healthy kebab!)

We all know we should be snacking on blueberries and eating more leafy greens. But what should you do when you’re stuck at a motorway service station with a choice between crisps and more crisps? If you can’t resist a glass (or two) of wine, what’s the healthiest option? And is it possible to hit the kebab shop at 1am without being struck down by the spectre of Gwyneth Paltrow?

Not all junk food is created equal. Top nutritionists suggest the treats, booze and ultra-processed foods that pose the smallest risk to our health – and the ones even they eat from time to time.

Some experts say we shouldn’t drink any fruit juices at all. Others point to the fibre, vitamins and anti-inflammatories they provide. Here’s what you need to know

When my sister saw me drinking a glass of orange juice at breakfast, she was horrified. “You’re drinking pure sugar!” she said.

Juice, once considered so virtuous people paid good money to go on “juice fasts”, has been demonised over the past decade. The epidemiologist and author Tim Spector has said orange juice should “come with a health warning” and he’d rather people drink Coca-Cola. Despite this, the global juice market is growing, with chains such as Joe & the Juice expanding rapidly – and in an umbrella review last year, Australian researchers found potential health benefits to drinking juice.

Turn the volume down, don’t use cotton buds and get your hearing tested before it’s too late. Here’s what experts recommend to keep your ears healthy

Hearing loss can make life difficult and lead to social isolation. But with extremely loud devices in our pockets, and earbuds in near-constant use, we are at more risk than ever. How can you take care of your ears to avoid problems?

I think it’s my way of avoiding my feelings – and that whatever they are, I’d be better off facing up to them

I recently found myself fantasising about buying a hairbrush that costs more than £100. It is a very beautiful hairbrush: it comes in a choice of seductive colours and it is fashioned from the keratin-rich fibres of south-east Asian boar and from biodegradable cellulose acetate (entirely free of petrochemicals). It was advertised to me on social media and I later sought it out, Googling it again and again, admiring photos of it from different angles and imagining the reassuring weight of its handle in my hand. If ever there were a hairbrush that could help me build a better life, I thought, this surely would be it.

How disturbingly close I came to buying this hairbrush I really cannot say. However, I can tell you when I knew that it was never going to happen. It was just now, when I realised with shock, after months of Googling and ogling, that I don’t use a hairbrush. I haven’t used one in close to 25 years – not since I was old enough to understand that my hair is curly and terrible frizzy things happen when I brush it. I use a wide-toothed comb once a day in the shower.

While other parts of Spain struggle with the pressures of over-tourism, these wild, expansive and almost tourist-free mountains are a lungful of fresh air

As with paint colours or lipstick shades, naming a mountain range requires serious consideration. It should suggest character, create intrigue, and kindle desire. Who doesn’t want to explore the Crazy Mountains of Montana, or make a fiery pact with California’s Diablo Range? While studying a map of Spain, my interest was piqued by a patch of grey and green emptiness bearing the enticing words: Sierra de la Demanda.

I’ve travelled all over Spain for work and play in the last two decades, but somehow these “demanding” mountains had eluded me. Located in the remote northern interior, halfway between Madrid and Santander, their isolation (and a dearth of English-language Google results) only added to the mystique. The Sierra de la Demanda covers a vast area across Spain’s least populated regions of Burgos, Soria and La Rioja. An investigation of more detailed maps revealed an almost roadless expanse of limestone peaks, valleys, ravines, rivers, gorges and glacial lakes, with the highest peak, San Lorenzo, towering at 2,271 metres (7,451ft). The calling was real.

They had different views on asylum seekers and income tax, but could they agree about what makes a bad landlord?

Barry, 72, Milton Keynes

Occupation Property manager

Two hours after Keira Alexandra Kronvold gave birth, her daughter was taken from her – the third child to be removed from her care following a now-banned assessment that disproportionately targets Inuit women in Denmark. Will she win the fight to get Zammi back?

‘Now your two hours begin.” The countdown started when Keira Alexandra Kronvold had just given birth in the early hours of 7 November 2024. Keira, 38, was originally granted just one hour with her daughter, Zammi, before her baby was to be removed from her and taken to foster parents – but the midwife begged authorities to give them more time. Before Zammi’s arrival, the midwife asked if Keira had any wishes. “I said, ‘I want hand and footprints. I want to grab her, I don’t want you to catch her when she is born. I want to catch her myself.’”

During labour – which lasted just an hour and a half – Keira kept checking whether her 20-year-old daughter, Zoe, who had never seen a birth before, was OK; and she was determined not to scream, to avoid waking up the other mothers and babies on the ward. But when Zammi arrived, everything else – the months of stress, worry and pressure – gave way to pure joy. “I just laid back,” she says, arms cradled and slowly reclining on her sofa, as she re-enacts the moment at home in the town of Thisted, northern Denmark, “because I had to keep her warm. She was so beautiful. That emotional feeling is indescribable. Right there: unconditional love, pure happiness, all that joy.” She wished Zammi a happy birthday and told her how much she loved her. She cried tears of joy, counted Zammi’s tiny fingers.

The plant medicine hayakwaska (ayahuasca), marketed as a mystical shortcut to healing and enlightenment, is an example of what the Indigenous storyteller Nina Gualinga, sees as commodification and extractivism in the Amazon. Nina is from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, Ecuador, and she speaks with the memory of her shaman grandfather about the ongoing cultural appropriation, environmental destruction and marginalisation of her people, questioning our very relationship to the Earth and the quest for healing

Militants, clans, Hamas and criminal gangs bring violence and anarchy as they vie for power amid Israeli strikes

For the beleaguered staff of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, one new casualty brought into the emergency department last week posed a particular challenge.

He had been wounded moments earlier in the southern Gaza city while fighting in a battle between rival armed gangs over hundreds of valuable sacks of flours stripped from aid convoys and, within an hour of his arrival, men with assault rifles had invaded the hospital. They roughed up medical staff, smashed equipment and set fire to vehicles. Other armed men soon arrived and automatic gunfire reverberated around the sprawling hospital compound, already battered by successive Israeli strikes close by or on its buildings.

Although gen Z may be getting laid less than their elders, they’re resisting older definitions of sex and gender – in the face of the right’s bid for bodily control

The journalist perched on a stool in a corner of the bedroom, pen in hand, ready to jot down the most intimate details of our sex lives.

Her name was Peggy Orenstein, and she was writing a book about girls and sex. As a 20-year-old college sophomore, I apparently still qualified as a girl, and I was having sex. So, one night in late 2013, I agreed to let Orenstein hang out at my sorority house.

Channels serving AI slop feature videos full of false claims about celebs and their involvement with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs for quick cash

This story was reported by Indicator, a publication that investigates digital deception, and co-published with the Guardian.

Dozens of YouTube channels are mixing AI-generated images and videos with false claims about Sean “Diddy” Combs’s blockbuster trial to pull in tens of millions of views on YouTube and cash in on misinformation.

We want to hear from people in the south of Europe who are experiencing high temperatures

A range of health and environmental alerts have been issued across Europe, particularly its southern part, as large parts of the continent continue to be gripped by a heatwave – with temperatures in mid to high 30s and low 40s Celsius.

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

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or just someone curious about the long-term effects, we’d like to hear your questions

A quarter of three- and four-year-olds in the UK now own a smartphone, but the impact of that is still being understood. From endless scrolling to constant notifications, smartphones expose children not just to their friends and classmates, but to a world of advertising, influencers, and algorithms. But how is all of this shaping how children see themselves, relate to others, and develop emotionally?

In a video series on our It’s Complicated Youtube channel, we’re speaking to experts to explore how smartphones might be affecting children’s mental health, attention, self-esteem and relationships. Are social apps making kids more anxious? What happens when children are targeted by ads that shape their sense of identity from a young age? What do we know, and what don’t we yet understand, about growing up in a world where you’re always online?

We would like to hear from people living in Iran and those who are part of the diaspora on the situation in the region

Israel’s attack on targets across Iran on Friday, has been followed by three days of escalating strikes, as both sides threatened more devastation in the biggest ever confrontation between the longstanding enemies.

We would like to hear from those living in Iran and who are part of the diaspora on how they have been affected.

We would like to hear from people living in Israel and those who are part of the diaspora on the situation in the region

Israel’s attack on targets across Iran on Friday, has been followed by three days of escalating strikes, as both sides threatened more devastation in the biggest ever confrontation between the longstanding enemies.

We would like to hear from those living in Israel and who are part of the diaspora on how they have been affected.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Kick off your afternoon with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Every weekday, we’ll deliver a roundup the football news and gossip in our own belligerent, sometimes intelligent and – very occasionally – funny way. Still not convinced? Find out what you’re missing here.

Try our other sports emails: there’s weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown, and our seven-day round-up of the best of our sports journalism in The Recap.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Meera Sodha and all our star cooks, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world

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