Bland, easy to follow, for fans of everything: what has the Netflix algorithm done to our films?

When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending?

When the annals of 2025 at the movies are written, no one will remember The Electric State. The film, a sci-fi comic-book adaptation, is set in a world in which sentient robots have lost a war with humans. Netflix blew a reported $320m on it, making it the 14th most expensive film ever made. But it tanked: though The Electric State initially claimed the No 1 spot on the streamer, viewers quickly lost interest. Today, it doesn’t even feature in the company’s top 20 most viewed films, a shocking performance for its most expensive production to date. It became just another anonymous “mockbuster”, crammed with the overfamiliar, flashy signifiers of big-screen film-making: a Spielbergian childhood quest, a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland, Fallout-style retro-futuristic trimmings.

Another way of classifying The Electric State is as an example of the “algorithm movie”, the kind of generic product that clogs up streaming platforms and seems designed to appeal to the broadest audience possible. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo, whose style might be politely described as “efficient”, specialise in this digital gruel; they also made the similarly forgettable action thriller The Gray Man, starring Ryan Gosling.

Published: August 28, 2025, 4:00 am

Picture perfect? How one of the best tennis photos of all time was taken at the US Open

Photographer Ray Giubilo’s half terrifying, half sublime one-in-a-million image of Jasmine Paolini had more than an element of fortune to it

Of the scores of photographers from across the globe snapping thousands upon thousands of photos at this year’s US Open, one image has stood out above all the others so far at the tennis grand slam in New York.

A slight imbalance from seventh-seed Jasmine Paolini and a relentlessly steady hand allowed photographer Ray Giubilo to nail a one-in-a-million shot at Flushing Meadows this week.

Published: August 28, 2025, 7:24 am

‘We had to up the ante’: Robin Wright on her tense TV tale of incest and violence among London’s billionaires

The Girlfriend is a nail-biting drama that centres on a love triangle between a mother, her son and his girlfriend. Its director and co-stars take us behind the scenes

A too-pure young man, training to be a doctor, scion of the wealthiest imaginable family, meets a smoking hot young woman, but is she who she seems? His mother thinks not. The quickest way to describe The Girlfriend is to say that it’s sort of perfect. The perspectives shift between that of Cherry, the girlfriend (Olivia Cooke), and that of Laura, the mother (Robin Wright, who also directs). Whoever’s take you are watching, that’s who you believe. Baroque events, blood and guts, flagrant lies – it all unfurls in exquisite interiors and idealised London street scenes.

It is compulsive. I bit my nails to shreds. It’s not clear who’s the psychopath, but someone is – and the crisscrossing erotic tension gives it the inevitability of Greek tragedy. People this irresistible to one another never end up at peace.

Published: August 28, 2025, 5:00 am

Unhinged tweets and absurd self-promotion? Two can play at that game | Margaret Sullivan

Gavin Newsom’s counterpunching against Trump serves as a master class in flipping the script – and boosting his own profile

Just when you thought Donald Trump was parody-proof, Gavin Newsom comes along to prove you wrong.

Unhinged all-caps tweets with nonsensical punctuation? Insulting nicknames for political enemies? Self-promotional merchandise for sale?

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:00 am

‘It’s a warning, set to a dance beat’: Jon Batiste on his new song urging climate action 20 years after Katrina

The global music star, whose home town of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane in 2005, says ‘people power’ can change the world

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home town of New Orleans, Jon Batiste has released a new song imploring people to take action against climate change “by raising your voice, and insisting, and voting the right people into office”.

“As an artist, you have to make a statement,” the global star said in an interview on Tuesday with the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People power is the way that you can change things in the world.

Published: August 28, 2025, 11:00 am

My favourite childhood outfit: ‘Batman is one of my finest looks ever – I’d use this on my passport, if I could’

It was Christmas, and my father introduced me and my brother to the gathered family as Batman and Robin. We kept wearing the disguise for a week

What I love about this photo is that it couldn’t look any more early 80s if it tried. Everything from the velvet curtains to the plastic flowers, the old-school cathode-ray tube TV to the MK1 metallic purple Ford Escort just in view (the one in which I would later learn to drive), screams 1981. Pictured, we have Pandy the bear; my younger brother Jon, five; Sooty; and yours truly, aged seven, all of us covering a variety of skin and hair colours between us. (Like all the best superheroes, I’m adopted.) The photo would have been taken by my dad using his Kodak camera with flash cube, sporting bell-bottomed jeans and sideburns, while my mum, with her beehive haircut, sipping a Babycham, would probably have been on hand for moral support.

These outfits were made by our gran (my mum’s mum), who was as much a whiz with the sewing machine and a knitting needle as she was with a wooden spoon, and would make us outfits for birthdays and Christmases, as well as baking us a seemingly never-ending supply of chocolate cake. This photo would have been taken at a time when the unwritten rules of being an older brother had already been established. I got the top bunk – because I’m oldest. I got the biggest slice – because I’m oldest. I got to sit in the front seat – because I’m oldest. I’m Batman and you’re Robin – because I’m oldest. Although thinking about it, an R for Richard on my chest would have been more fitting.

Published: August 28, 2025, 11:00 am

Minnneapolis wakes to aftermath of Catholic school shooting

Officials say critically injured people expected to survive after attack that killed two children during mass at church

Minneapolis woke on Thursday to the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Catholic school in which two children were killed and 17 people injured, stunning the close-knit community and prompting the FBI to investigate the act as domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.

A shooter at the Annunciation Catholic school in the south of the city killed two children, aged eight and 10, in church pews during morning mass. Fourteen other children, aged six to 15, were injured, two of them critically, though officials said they were expected to survive. The shooter killed themself.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:10 pm

CDC chief Susan Monarez refuses to resign amid ‘targeted’ ousting – US politics live

Monarez issues statement saying she had ‘neither resigned nor received notification’ of her termination from the White House, plunging public health agency into chaos

Donald Trump doesn’t have any public-facing events today, according to his official schedule. He’s due to sign executive orders later, but that remains closed to the press. If anything changes we’ll bring you the latest.

We can expect to hear from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at 1pm today. She’ll hold a briefing, and we can expect questions on several topics: the school shooting in Minneapolis that killed two children and injured 17 people on Wednesday, the fallout of the CDC director’s firing, and the latest on foreign policy – particularly after Russian airstrikes on Kyiv killed at least twelve people overnight.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:28 pm

Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv kills at least 18 people

Zelenskyy says Moscow ‘chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table’ after strikes on more than 20 locations

• Europe live – latest updates

Russian airstrikes on Kyiv have killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens in the most deadly night raid on the Ukrainian capital since the Alaska summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Seventeen people were reported killed when a five-storey residential building in the eastern Darnytskyi district was struck in the middle of the night, said Svitlana Vodolaha, a spokesperson for the state rescue service.

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:48 am

Trump serious about pursuing a third term, Gavin Newsom warns

In an interview hosted by Politico, the California governor said the US must ‘wake up’ to the the threat posed by the president’s disregard of democratic norms

Donald Trump is gravely serious about running for a third term in violation of the US constitution, California governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday, warning Americans to “wake up” to what he described as the president’s flagrant disregard for democratic norms.

“I don’t think Donald Trump wants another election,” Newsom, a Democrat, said during a live interview at a summit hosted by Politico in Sacramento. “This guy doesn’t believe in free, fair elections.”

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:04 am

Second woman accuses ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan of sexual misconduct

Exclusive: New accuser tells the Guardian she was subjected to a ‘constant onslaught’ of advances by Khan. He denies any wrongdoing

A second woman has come forward to an inquiry investigating sexual abuse allegations against Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), the Guardian has learned.

The woman has alleged that while working for the prominent British lawyer earlier in his career, he behaved inappropriately, subjecting her to unwanted sexual advances, abused his authority over her, and repeatedly sought to pressure her into sexual activity.

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:00 am

Jury awards $2.2m to LA protester shot in face with less-lethal projectile in 2020

Cellin Gluck alleged in lawsuit that he was subject to excessive force during protest against police brutality

A jury has awarded at least $2.2m to a protester who was shot in the face with a less-lethal munition by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy during a demonstration against police brutality in 2020.

In the verdict last week, the jury found LA county liable for the injuries sustained by the man, Cellin Gluck, and determined that he suffered $3.5m in damages. They also awarded his daughter, who was there with him that day, an additional $300,000 for emotional distress.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:40 pm

Tony Blair attends White House meeting with Trump on postwar Gaza

Former prime minister in Washington DC on Wednesday for talks that reportedly also included Jared Kushner

The former British prime minister Tony Blair has attended a White House meeting with Donald Trump to discuss plans for postwar Gaza, the Guardian understands.

After stepping down as prime minister in 2007, Blair took on the role of Middle East envoy until 2015 and spent time in Jerusalem trying to formulate a plan for a two-state solution.

Published: August 27, 2025, 10:28 pm

Democrat flips Iowa state senate seat and breaks Republican supermajority

Catelin Drey beats extremist Christopher Prosch, flipping district so Democrats can block governor’s appointments

A Democratic candidate has defeated an extremist Republican in a state senate election in Iowa, claiming that voters are “waking up” to realise Donald Trump’s party “sold the working class a bill of goods”.

Catelin Drey flipped Iowa state senate district 1, beating Christopher Prosch in a special election held on Tuesday to fill the seat of the late senator Rocky De Witt.

Published: August 27, 2025, 5:02 pm

Humans inhale as much as 68,000 microplastic particles daily, study finds

Particles are small enough to burrow into lungs, says report, with health impacts ‘more substantial than we realize’

Every breath people take in their homes or car probably contains significant amounts of microplastics small enough to burrow deep into lungs, new peer-reviewed research finds, bringing into focus a little understood route of exposure and health threat.

The study, published in the journal Plos One, estimates humans can inhale as much as 68,000 tiny plastic particles daily. Previous studies have identified larger pieces of airborne microplastics, but those are not as much of a health threat because they do not hang in the air as long, or move as deep into the pulmonary system.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

Rwanda accepts seven people from US as part of deportation deal

Trump administration pushing controversial deal to send people to non-home countries including South Sudan and Eswatini

Seven people have arrived in Rwanda as part of a deal to accept deportees from the US, the Rwandan government has said.

The Trump administration has been negotiating arrangements to send people to third countries including South Sudan and Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, as part of its wider deportation drive.

Published: August 28, 2025, 11:58 am

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ to be vacated in compliance with court order to shut it

Reported email by Florida official confirms state will shutter prison though governor Ron DeSantis has appealed

Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.

The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism for its harsh conditions, must be dismantled within 60 days.

Published: August 27, 2025, 7:22 pm

National guard troops deployed in DC rake leaves and clear homeless camps

Trump turns national guard troops deployed in DC into jacks of all trades

National guard troops have spent their last days of the summer mulching cherry trees, collecting trash and clearing homeless camps across Washington DC, as Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the capital evolved the guard from makeshift cops to armed jacks of all trades.

More than 2,200 soldiers from states including Mississippi and Louisiana have been stationed across the city since Trump declared a “crime emergency” on 11 August. However, their responsibilities now encompass clearing out Union Station and what officials term “beautification” projects, including trash collection, mulching around cherry trees at the Tidal Basin, and potential graffiti removal.

Published: August 27, 2025, 3:37 pm

Judge blocks Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Ábrego García again

Federal judge says man wrongfully deported to El Salvador cannot be expelled until October as asylum case proceeds

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October, according to multiple reports.

CNN reported that the US district judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over the case, scheduled an evidentiary hearing for 6 October, and said that she intends to have Trump administration officials testify about the government’s efforts to re-deport Ábrego.

Published: August 27, 2025, 3:05 pm

How Elon Musk’s billionaire Doge lieutenant took over the US’s biggest MDMA company

Antonio Gracias is part of the growing movement among Silicon Valley’s right wing enamored with the therapeutic and commercial potential of drugs like MDMA

Months before Antonio Gracias took a leading role in the “department of government efficiency’s” dismantling of the federal government, he was at Burning Man.

In the dusty Nevada desert, Gracias, a billionaire private equity investor and one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, attended Nova Heaven, a sunrise rave tribute to victims of the Hamas-led 7 October terrorist attack, and found himself dancing next to Rick Doblin – the US’s most prominent advocate for psychedelic drugs.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘A perfect symbiosis’: planting vines and other ways hot cities are creating cool spaces

Living – or crocheted – canopies and a 3,000-year-old Persian technique are among methods being used to cope as temperatures soar

As Spain takes a breath after yet another brutal summer heatwave, with temperatures above 40C in many parts of the country, the residents of the sherry-making town of Jerez de la Frontera have come up with a novel way to keep the streets cool.

Green canopies of grapevines festoon the town, reducing street-level temperatures by as much as 8C. “We’re planting vines in the old city because we hope that in two or three years we’ll be able to brag that this has put an end to stifling temperatures,” said Jesús Rodríguez, president of Los Emparrados, a group of residents who aim to beautify and green the city’s streets.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

Where have all the crabs gone? How development is squeezing out southern Malaysia’s sea people

In the waters of the Johor strait, Indigenous communities are struggling to survive as nearby cities expand and fishing stocks dwindle

• Words and photographs by Izzy Sasada

Aween Bin Terawin submerges himself in the mangrove swamp to reach a crab cage on the riverbed below. After a moment of suspense, he lifts the cage above the water’s surface and inspects its interior. Empty.

After stowing the collapsible cage away in his boat, he continues his journey through the vast swamp to retrieve the 40 cages he set early that morning, each marked by a floating bottle tied to string.

Published: August 28, 2025, 4:00 am

Jamaica’s Maroons keep their culture alive – and spearhead fight for justice

Mama G, a spiritual leader of descendants of Africans who escaped enslavement to form their own communities, says what was taken from her ancestors must be restored: ‘Restoration is reparation’

The wooden walls of the village hall in Charles Town, Jamaica, are adorned with a procession of shadowy figures: a tribute to the resistance struggle of the Maroons – African people who escaped enslavement and created their own free communities in remote and hilly parts of the island.

Set in the lush embrace of majestic Jamaican hills and mountains, the idyllic settlement is quiet, but for the crowing of unseen roosters. Maroon spiritual leader Gloria Simms, affectionately called Mama G, warmly greets neighbours as she walks towards the hall – hair wrapped, her colourful dress moving with the gentle breeze.

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:00 am

David Strathairn: ‘Authoritarianism is a very frightening concept when it comes to the arts’

Oscar-nominated actor, known for Good Night, and Good Luck and the Bourne franchise, talks about his new film

When George Clooney brought Good Night, and Good Luck to the stage earlier this year, it set a record for the highest-grossing play in Broadway history. Clooney, making his Broadway debut, was nominated for a Tony award for his portrayal of Edward R Murrow, a giant of broadcast journalism.

But for diehard fans of the original 2005 film of the same name, which was made in response to US involvement in the Iraq war, something was missing. In that version, Murrow was played by David Strathairn, one of the US’s most perceptive, subtle and compelling character actors. Why did he not reprise the role on stage?

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:11 am

Nate Landman on life as an African NFL player: ‘People don’t believe me at first’

The Rams linebacker spent the early part of his life in Zimbabwe. But he has kept his childhood memories alive as his football career has grown

For Nate Landman, surprise has become routine. The Los Angeles Rams linebacker has lost count of the raised eyebrows, smirks, and awkward pauses when people learn where his story begins.

“They don’t believe me at first,” Landman said. “I’ll show them I’m covered in African tattoos, and some will say I’m still lying until they look it up or someone will vouch for me.”

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:00 am

Taylor Swift’s romantic travails were the soundtrack to mine. What does her engagement mean for fans’ love lives? | Hollie Richardson

The singer’s breakups were anthems for emotionally bruised youth. Now she’s happy, I look forward to hearing yet more poundingly relatable lyrics – based on real, lasting love

• Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announce engagement on social media

Taylor Swift wrote today’s headlines when she was only 17 with her country hit Love Story: “Baby, just say yes!” Now, at 35, she has announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, her American football player partner of two years, who got down on one knee and popped the question. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she captioned the subsequently staged engagement photos of them in a rose garden. It’s gaudy, it’s cringe, it’s gleefully too much – some even say it makes the Bezos wedding look classy. But it’s perfect and it made me cry.

When the pop star who has soundtracked your entire adult love life gets engaged, it’s discombobulating. Especially when they are similar in age. Over two decades, Swift has gifted a song for every crush, relationship, situationship, and heartbreak. (I even once plagiarised All Too Well lyrics in a very embarrassing email to an ex-boyfriend; he never did reply to my calling him “so casually cruel in the name of being honest”.)

Published: August 28, 2025, 8:00 am

Is it wrong to throw a birthday party for my dog? | Frances Ryan

A whopping 64% of pet owners in the UK now celebrate their animal companions’ birthdays … even though it’s not entirely clear who the celebrations are for

I’ve been telling Mabel she’ll be four soon for about a month. I bought her present similarly early, though I am unsure whether to wrap it. When the Amazon guy delivers a gift from my sister on the day, he wishes Mabel “happy birthday” through the gate. As I sing the opening bars, the build-up has clearly worked: she jumps up with excitement and licks my knees. I should clarify at this point that Mabel is not my child – she’s a cocker spaniel.

If this sounds unhinged, I’d like to stress it’s statistically very normal, actually. “Pet birthdays” are a booming market, with the UK industry alone now worth an estimated £1.7bn. A recent survey by Moonpig found 64% of pet owners in the UK celebrate their pets’ birthdays, with as many as 83% of gen Z embracing gourmet treats or even themed parties.

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:00 am

Beavers were welcomed back to the Netherlands. Until they started digging 17m-long tunnels | Renate van der Zee

Reintroduced for environmental reasons, beavers are now in danger of causing serious flooding. Should there be more culls?

The beaver has made an amazing comeback in the Netherlands. Extinct in the early 19th century, it was reintroduced in 1988, and now there are an estimated 7,000 beavers roaming around. Compared with England, where the beaver population is estimated at 500, that’s quite a feat.

But there’s a significant downside to the booming Dutch beaver population. Beavers are increasingly digging burrows and tunnels under roads, railways and – even more worryingly – in dykes. For a country where a quarter of the land sits below sea level, this is not a minor problem – especially as beavers are not exactly holding back when digging.

Renate van der Zee is a Dutch writer and journalist

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:34 am

Bluefin tuna are miraculously returning to UK shores – only to be tormented for ‘sport’ | George Monbiot

A tournament in Cornwall will pit anglers against these magnificent creatures, as part of a rising trend for so-called ‘sportfishing’

It’s the UK equivalent of bullfighting. Next week, in Falmouth in Cornwall, anglers will compete to fish for bluefin tuna in a three-day tournament. Sponsored by companies including Suzuki and Shimano, it’s a festival of cruelty and destruction, waging war on a magnificent giant which, in a rare instance of ecological hope, has begun returning to our shores.

Where’s the sport in this “sportfishing”? While some forms of angling require knowledge and skill, in this case the paying customer (the angler) sits in a boat while the professional skipper motors up and down, trailing a set of lures. When a tuna is hooked, the angler, strapped into a harness, either stands or sits in what is called the “fighting chair” and “plays” the fish to exhaustion: a one-sided fight of 30 minutes or more. It’s a risk-free means of pitting yourself against nature, a truly pathetic form of macho gratification. You can imagine my surprise on discovering that Nigel Farage is a big fan.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The Guardian’s climate assembly with George Monbiot and special guests On 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and Emma Pinchbeck as they discuss the forces driving the big climate pushback, with an address by Feargal Sharkey

Published: August 28, 2025, 7:00 am

Think you actually own all those movies you've been buying digitally? Think again | J Oliver Conroy

New lawsuit aimed at Amazon questions the legitimacy of the word ‘buy’ when it comes to owning a movie on your devices

A possible class-action lawsuit against Amazon Prime, one of the world’s biggest platforms for streaming film and television, has raised an odd question: what does it mean to buy something?

The proposed lawsuit, which was filed last week in federal court and first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, alleges that Prime’s practice of offering users the chance to “buy” (as opposed to “rent”) content is inherently deceptive. The suit argues that buying something implies perpetual possession – but that Amazon, like many other streaming services, is really just selling its customers viewing licenses that can be revoked at any time, in keeping with fine print that most customers do not read or understand.

Published: August 27, 2025, 5:09 pm

The Guardian view on France’s latest political crisis: François Bayrou’s gamble on austerity does not deserve to pay off | Editorial

The likely fall of another prime minister is a further blow to Emmanuel Macron’s becalmed presidency. A change in priorities is needed

Following a startling victory for Marine Le Pen in European elections last June, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, foolishly called a snap legislative poll. The idea was to give voters a salutary wake-up call, daring them to repeat their embrace of Ms Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in a domestic election. The unanticipated result was a suddenly deadlocked parliament, in which the influence of the National Rally and the left significantly increased, and a lame-duck status for Mr Macron’s second term.

That failed gamble has now led to another, which appears equally doomed. This week, Mr Macron’s fourth prime minister in two years put the future of his minority government on the line, in an attempt to pass a deeply unpopular budget this autumn. François Bayrou, intending to deliver his own wake-up call to MPs, has unexpectedly called a confidence vote to take place early next month. MPs will be challenged to either endorse in principle Mr Bayrou’s view that austerity is necessary to reduce the public deficit, or vote for the government to fall.

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

Published: August 27, 2025, 5:25 pm

Ostapenko and Townsend confront each other after US Open match: ‘She said I had no education’

• Pair involved in exchange after American’s upset win

• Ostapenko denies comments had racial undertones

Taylor Townsend and Jelena Ostapenko were involved in a heated exchange at the end of their second-round match on Wednesday at the US Open.

The two met at the net for post-match handshakes after Townsend had completed a 7-5, 6-1 victory. But instead of heading to the locker rooms, they exchanged words and Ostapenko wagged her finger at her American opponent. The home crowd appeared to get behind Townsend and she approached the stands spurring them on as the noise rose on Court 11.

Published: August 28, 2025, 1:14 am

Pandemonium and pure joy: how my club Grimsby beat impossible odds to stun United | Jason Stockwood

Heart, organisation and bravery found a way on a night that will be talked about in pubs and playgrounds for decades

Some nights you know, even as they’re happening, will stay with you for ever. Wednesday night at Blundell Park was one of them. A full house, the world’s media watching, and Grimsby Town delivering the sort of performance that will be told and retold in pubs, workplaces and playgrounds for decades.

The pitch looked perfect under the lights. The performance was even better. When Manchester United’s manager, Ruben Amorim, admitted afterwards that “the best team won”, it felt like a moment of truth. For once, the cameras weren’t pointing at the Premier League’s aristocrats but at a small port town on the Humber. For once, the headlines belonged to us.

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:08 am

US Open: Daniil Medvedev fined $42,500 for racket meltdown

• Russian enraged by umpire decision in first-round exit

• Former world No 1 destroyed racket after match

Daniil Medvedev was fined $42,500 by the US Open on Wednesday – more than a third of his $110,000 prize money from this year’s singles at the tournament – for his meltdown after a photographer wandered on to the court at match point.

Tournament referee Jake Garner docked Medvedev $30,000 for unsportsmanlike conduct and another $12,500 for racket abuse. When Sunday’s first-round match ended in defeat for Medvedev he repeatedly smacked a racket against his chair, destroying the equipment.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:01 pm

US money comes to Saudi Pro League as Ronaldo commits for two more years

American investment has recently arrived and the ‘big five’ clubs will contest the title in an increasingly strong league

The Saudi Pro League season kicks off on Thursday, just before the international break, when Cristiano Ronaldo will probably make headlines by saying the Saudi Pro League is one of the top five in the world. If so, the 40-year-old is bound to reference Al-Hilal reaching the quarter-finals of the Club World Cup, drawing with Real Madrid then beating Manchester City 4-3. There is now something else, though, that the league has in common with its European counterparts – US money.

In July the ministry of sports announced that three clubs had passed into private hands. Al-Kholood, the only one in the top tier, have been taken over by an American investment company, the Harburg Group, run by the venture capital investor Ben Harburg. “The first three Saudi sports clubs have been privatised through a public offering – Al Ansar, Al Kholood, and Al Zulfi – with their ownership transferred to investment entities,” the ministry said

Published: August 28, 2025, 7:00 am

F1 race to the title: Norris and Piastri go toe-to-toe as Hamilton and Verstappen seek uplift

Returning from the summer break and with 10 races to go, there are plenty of targets remaining across the paddock besides McLaren’s shootout

Revitalised after the summer break, 10 races remain between this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix and the finale in Abu Dhabi in December – and it will be Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris going head to head for the title.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:10 pm

Grimsby deepen ridicule for Ruben Amorim as he ploughs on with flawed, final stand | Jonathan Liew

Carabao Cup humiliation is the latest setback for a coach who may actually be the last real thing at Manchester United

Further and deeper into the jungle. Taunted by the quivering vines, mocked by the rubber trees, bitten and bruised by the asphyxiating vileness of nature. Ropes groaning, extras muttering, mud and rock resisting. Rasmus Højlund to Napoli, maybe tomorrow, maybe not. Alejandro Garnacho to Chelsea, maybe this week, maybe next.

Grimsby in the evening. Grim faces in the morning. Kobbie Mainoo wants out. Carlos Baleba wants in but is not going to go on strike or down tools; plenty of time for that once he actually gets to Old Trafford.

Published: August 28, 2025, 7:15 am

‘Really tough decision’: US captain Keegan Bradley does not pick himself for Ryder Cup

• World No 11 decides to stick with non-playing role

• ‘It broke my heart not to play. It really did’

Keegan Bradley hopes a selfless act can turn into US points after the Ryder Cup captain resisted strong temptation to combine his role with ­playing duties at Bethpage in September. His confirmation ended the prospect of a first Ryder Cup playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.

The US turned to Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, ­Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young and Sam Burns to back up the six automatic qualifiers in an eagerly awaited announcement made by Bradley on Wednesday.

Published: August 27, 2025, 3:36 pm

NFL gives Chiefs’ Rice six-game ban for crash that left multiple people injured

• Player was given 30-day jail sentence earlier this year

• Will miss crucial games, including Super Bowl rematch

Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice has accepted a six-game NFL ban for his part in a high-speed crash that left a number of people injured.

The 25-year-old pled guilty in July to two third-degree felony charges of collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and was required to pay $115,000 in medical costs to the injured parties. The incident took place on a Dallas highway in March 2024. Prosecutors say Rice was driving a Lamborghini Urus SUV at 119mph when he made “multiple aggressive maneuvers around traffic” and struck other vehicles.

Published: August 27, 2025, 4:54 pm

Argentina’s president Milei pelted with rocks on campaign trail amid corruption scandal linked to sister

Argentinian president campaigning for midterm elections – the first big test of his popularity – when protesters threw bottles and rocks at his vehicle

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, was pelted with stones while campaigning near the capital Buenos Aires on Wednesday by demonstrators protesting about a corruption scandal.

The far-right leader, who was whisked from the scene by his security detail, sustained no injuries after his motorcade was attacked, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni wrote on X.

Published: August 28, 2025, 1:28 am

Tesla sales in Europe slump 40% as BYD new car registrations more than triple

Electric car business run by Elon Musk continues to lose ground to Chinese rival despite recent revamp of Model Y

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Tesla sales slumped 40% across Europe in July compared with a year earlier as Elon Musk’s electric car company faces increasingly tough competition from its Chinese rival BYD.

There were 8,837 sales of Tesla cars last month across the EU, the European Free Trade Association and the UK, according to figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). That compared with 14,769 at the same point last year.

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:57 am

Malawi set to run out of TB drugs in a month after US, UK and others cut aid

Gains in cutting deaths from tuberculosis at risk as health officials warn clinics forced to ration drugs and testing

Malawi is facing a critical shortage of tuberculosis drugs, with health officials warning that stocks will run out by the end of September.

It comes just months after the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the country had successfully reduced tuberculosis (TB) cases by 40% over the past decade.

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:00 am

Final arguments conclude in Jimmy Lai national security trial in Hong Kong

Government-picked judges consider verdict in high-profile case against pro-democracy media mogul

Final arguments have concluded in the national security trial of the pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong.

Government-picked judges are retiring to consider their verdict in the case, seen internationally as a crucial test of the rule of law in the city.

Published: August 28, 2025, 10:40 am

Porepunkah shooting: Victoria police ‘throwing everything’ at manhunt in ‘severe weather’ for shooting suspect

Police say heavily armed suspect has not been seen as they continue to scour bushland around rural property where two police officers were killed

• Victoria police shooting live updates

• Who is Dezi Freeman? Porepunkah shooting suspect has association with ‘sovereign citizen’ ideas and called police ‘terrorist thugs’

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Police have urged Porepunkah shooting suspect Dezi Freeman to call triple zero and surrender as their “protracted” manhunt in difficult terrain enters its third evening.

Victoria police said on Thursday they had conducted searches on multiple properties near the rural township, warning anyone who harboured the alleged gunman would be prosecuted.

Published: August 28, 2025, 8:34 am

Taipei City council in the dog house over Chinese-made patrol robot

Opposition councillor in Taiwanese capital accuses authorities of sending ‘Trojan horse’ into citizens’ daily lives

Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military.

Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan’s capital, introduced a “new patrol partner” for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in a post on Facebook on Tuesday.

Published: August 28, 2025, 11:01 am

Liz Truss warns there is ‘a reckoning coming’ for central banks, and backs Trump in battle with Fed – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as former PM criticises Bank of England and claims UK faces ‘economic doom loop’

• People in the UK: how have you been affected by the rise in food prices?

The FCA’s investigation into Drax comes five months after the company’s former top lobbyist accused it of “misleading the public, government and its regulator” over its sourcing of wood for biomass pellets.

In a claim for unfair dismissal, Rowaa Ahmar, Drax’s former head of public affairs, said evidence suggested Drax was “unable to prove that it only sourced sustainable wood for its biomass, and that it was in fact using unsustainable wood”.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:44 pm

Ontario premier Doug Ford’s party spent nearly $300,000 on novelty ‘Canada is not for sale’ hats

The Progressive Conservative party of Ontario reportedly paid C$278,910.71 on the viral hats during the province’s election campaign

Dealing with the unprecedented threats from Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty have required unconventional strategies from federal and provincial leaders, including barring liquor sales and cancelling contracts with Tesla.

But among the more unorthodox strategies to hit back against the US is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on novelty hats.

Published: August 27, 2025, 11:49 pm

Sting sued by former Police bandmates over alleged lost royalties

Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland claim they did not receive songwriting credits for hit Every Breath You Take

Sting has reportedly been sued by his former Police bandmates over alleged lost royalties from their hit song Every Breath You Take.

In the suit, filed in the high court in London, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland claim they never received songwriting credits on the 1983 single. The pair also allege they have never been paid for their writing contributions.

Published: August 27, 2025, 7:49 pm

‘They’re beautiful’: 13-year-olds lead audacious project to save harvest mice in Devon

Spurred into action by the species’ threatened future, two best friends embarked on a project to release 250 of the animals in Devon

Doing somersaults in the corner of a field in Devon this week were the fluffy results of an audacious wildlife project by two 13-year-old girls.

Best friends Eva Wishart and Emily Smith had become devoted to harvest mice, and were upset, a couple of years ago, to find out the species is threatened in England due to farming practices and habitat loss.

Published: August 28, 2025, 5:00 am

The unlikely alliance pressing Trump to regulate Pfas on US farms: ‘This is a basic human right’

A group of farmers, bikers, truckers and scientists from the political left and right are working to bring attention to the health risks of using toxic sludge as fertilizer

An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.

Sludge often teems with Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:41 pm

Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds

Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

Published: August 27, 2025, 9:00 am

When science meets music: Florida’s oyster decline is being told through jazz

A professor teamed up with student musicians to inspire interest in data about the ‘catastrophic scale’ of the crisis

A university professor has set her team’s research on the plight of Florida’s declining oyster population to music, aiming to inform a receptive new audience about the “catastrophic” scale of the crisis.

Heather O’Leary, professor of anthropology at St Petersburg’s University of South Florida (USF), partnered with student composers and faculty from its music department to create Oysters Ain’t Safe, a soft jazz alternative to crunching data into a “boring” technical report.

Published: August 27, 2025, 11:00 am

New Orleans archbishop accused of personally hiding child abuse in lawsuit

Lawsuit has most direct allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Aymond, who denies them, in court filing to date

A lawsuit newly filed against the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans and its top two officials alleges the city’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, personally covered up child sexual abuse by priests and deacons – and asks a judge to reject a guarantee on his future retirement benefits as punishment.

The archdiocese responded by saying the allegations brought by the plaintiff, Argent Institutional Trust Co, are baseless.

Published: August 27, 2025, 8:25 pm

Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

Democrats voted against appointing two candidates known for election denialism and voter registration challenges

The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.

The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.

Published: August 27, 2025, 7:16 pm

Teen killed himself after ‘months of encouragement from ChatGPT’, lawsuit claims

Open AI to change way it responds to users in mental distress as parents of Adam Raine allege bot not safe

The makers of ChatGPT are changing the way it responds to users who show mental and emotional distress after legal action from the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who killed himself after months of conversations with the chatbot.

Open AI admitted its systems could “fall short” and said it would install “stronger guardrails around sensitive content and risky behaviors” for users under 18.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:14 pm

Grand jury declines to indict alleged Washington DC sandwich thrower

Sean Charles Dunn was arrested after allegedly throwing food at a Customs and Border Protection agent

Grand jurors have rebuffed federal prosecutors by refusing to approve a criminal indictment against a man who allegedly threw a sandwich at a law enforcement agent in protest against Donald Trump’s deployment of armed troops on the streets of Washington DC.

It is the second time in recent days that a grand jury had declined to vote to indict a person accused of assaulting a federal officer and signaled strong public objection to Trump’s decision to send national guard troops and federal agents onto the streets of the US capital, purportedly to crack down on violent crime.

Published: August 27, 2025, 5:32 pm

Iran faces return of sweeping sanctions from UK, France and Germany

Decision by European powers follows Iran’s failure to readmit UN inspectors to all of its nuclear sites

The UK, France and Germany are expected to announce on Thursday that they will reimpose sweeping sanctions on Iran for failing to readmit UN inspectors into all of its nuclear sites.

The decision, under consideration for months, is likely to provoke the worst crisis in Iran’s relations with the west since Israel’s attacks on the country’s nuclear sites in June. Iran is already preparing countermeasures.

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:52 am

Japanese town wants residents to limit smartphone use to two hours a day

Draft ordinance in Toyoake has triggered a backlash from locals, with some calling it an attack on individual freedom

A town in Japan is to urge all residents to restrict their smartphone use to two hours a day in an attempt to tackle online addiction and sleep deprivation.

Officials in Toyoake, Aichi prefecture, said the measure would target not only children but also adults, amid growing concern about the physical and psychological toll excessive smartphone use is taking on people of all ages.

Published: August 27, 2025, 11:30 pm

Old master painting looted by Nazis disappears from home in Argentina

Search for artwork seen in estate agent’s photo continues after police raid on house finds tapestry hanging in its place

Argentinian police have said they will continue hunting for an old master painting looted by the Nazis and spotted by chance in an estate agent’s listing after a search of the property in the seaside town of Mar del Plata failed to uncover the work.

“The painting is not in the house … but we’re going to keep searching for it,” the federal prosecutor Carlos Martínez told local media. He said items that could be useful for the investigation, including two firearms, engravings and prints, had been seized.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:50 pm

Denmark summons US diplomat over alleged Greenland influence campaign

Danish media reports three men with ties to Donald Trump are accused of attempting to infiltrate Greenlandic society

Denmark has summoned the US charge d’affaires for an urgent meeting over an alleged influence campaign in Greenland aimed at shaping public opinion and the future of the Arctic territory.

It comes after reports from Danish media, confirmed by the Danish foreign office, that at least three US men with ties to Donald Trump and the White House had been accused of trying to infiltrate Greenlandic society.

Published: August 27, 2025, 3:06 pm

‘I turned down $20m to do Terminator 3. I can’t be bought, dude’: Ridley Scott on directing, Daleks and ... cherry jam

The Blade Runner and Alien film-maker on his run-ins with critics, the space suits he keeps in his cellar in France – and his love of swearing

You’ve explored worlds of dystopia, historical epics and perplexing moral aspects of the universe. What idea or question has haunted you the longest? RemyNaylor
Who’s up there. He’d better show himself shortly, because we’re getting into a terrible mess down here. I mean, we are the fucking plague, 7.5 billion people, we can’t handle the planet. As you get older, you do wonder: is it going to be a guy with a long beard and long, flowing white robes, or is it just going to be a void? I don’t dwell on it. It’s weird. I feel like I’m still 21. It’s odd and strange.

Did you score a lifetime’s supply of bread for directing the Hovis adverts back in the 70s? TeeDubyaBee
No. But I ate enough Hovis as a kid in Stockton-on-Tees, with cherry jam and butter, toasted – holy shit. I did five Hovis commercials. They were all classics. The most famous is the boy walking up the hill. The first one I shot up near Halifax, in a mining town. Oddly enough, I might go back up there to do my next movie, which is a war movie [Battle of Britain], so I’m well versed in the area.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

Blood Orange: Essex Honey review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

(RCA)
Gorgeous melodies ground Dev Hynes’s questing fifth album, via dancefloor rhythms, indie pop and languorous funk – and cameos from Lorde and Zadie Smith

Dev Hynes’s fifth studio album as Blood Orange opens with a series of unexpected musical juxtapositions. The first track, Look at You, starts out with softly sung vocals over a cushion of equally soft synthesiser chords, before stopping dead, then re-emerging as almost an entirely different song: harmonies over guitar chords strummed so slowly you can hear the plectrum hitting each individual string. The second, Thinking Clean, offers a piano over pattering hi-hats: there’s something anticipatory about it, like an intro that’s about to burst into life, but when it does – complete with dancefloor rhythm – the song swiftly falls apart. The piano becomes increasingly abstract, before everything gives way to scrabbling, apparently improvised cello.

It’s a lot to cram into six minutes, but anyone familiar with Blood Orange’s back catalogue might reasonably ask: what did you expect? Since he adopted the name, Hynes’s career has occasionally intersected with the mainstream, although never in a straightforward way. His biggest track, Champagne Coast, was belatedly hoisted to platinum status by a burst of TikTok virality, 14 years after release. As a producer and songwriter, his name has appeared in the credits of albums by major pop artists including Mariah Carey and Kylie Minogue, but never as a dependable hit-maker, more a signal that said artist is craving a hint of left-field cool. His albums exist in their own world, filled with unexpected musical jump-cuts, their variety indicated by the featured artists: Skepta and Debbie Harry, Nelly Furtado next to Yves Tumour, A$AP Rocky alongside Arca.

Published: August 28, 2025, 11:00 am

Ghost Elephants review – Werner Herzog embarks on a mission to track down giant jumbos

In his inimitable fashion, Herzog follows a South African naturalist’s quest to discover a new species of elephant in Angola

Werner Herzog has once again shown his flair – his genius, perhaps – for locating passionate quests and obsessions at the limits of the imaginable. This new film is about South African naturalist Dr Steve Boyes and his mission to discover if there is a hitherto undiscovered mega-species of giant elephants, or “ghost elephants”, living beyond the human gaze in the vast highland plateau of Angola. He also wants to see if these fugitive elephants – if they exist – are genetically related to a particular huge elephant, the biggest on record, which is on show at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, named the “Fénykövi” elephant after the hunter who shot it in 1955.

Boyes has been nurturing this hunch for many years. It is not clear what the scientific basis for his hypothesis is, but he is in constant touch with Kalahari bush trackers in Namibia, whose instinctive understanding of elephants has led him to this vision. He and his team conduct an expedition into Angola, intent on finding the “ghost elephants” and getting a DNA sample to take back to the Smithsonian – rather like a Jurassic Park movie – having first gained permission to do so from a tribal king in a ceremony treated without mockery.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

Mother review – Noomi Rapace is a fanatical Mother Teresa full of fury

Rapace plays the canonised Kolkata nun with hard-bitten intensity in a complex, lurid story that veers between faithful telling and bouts of fun

The convent is a pressure cooker in this fevered, energetic account of a pivotal week in the life of the young Mother Teresa, which jump-starts the Orizzonti sidebar at this year’s Venice film festival. Macedonian writer-director Teona Strugar Mitevska ticks down the days from seven to one and wrings a performance of flayed, hard-bitten intensity from Noomi Rapace, who marches down the corridors with a face full of fury. Rapace is a long way from her breakout role in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; tonally, though, not so much. If Mother Teresa never goes so far as to set about the sisters with an axe, the sense that she might injects Mitevska’s film with a pleasing dose of danger.

It is 1948, we’re in the broiling heart of Kolkata and Sister Teresa has tired of her teaching role at the Loreto Entally convent. “I’m a woman in a system run by men,” she complains to sympathetic Father Friedrich (Nikola Ristanovski), although she has also heard a call from the big man upstairs.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:00 pm

Vice Is Broke review – epic levels of hubris on show in downfall of millennial media darling

Documentary about the rise and fall of a publishing empire, from edgy magazine to billionaire-backing to bankruptcy has a ‘you had to be there’ vibe

‘Coolness is not a renewable resource,” says a contributor to this documentary about Vice magazine’s rise and fall. In the late 2000s and 2010s Vice grew from a punk magazine into a digital media empire by telling the world what was cool (more specifically by telling millennials, then in their cool-seeking prime). By 2017, it was valued at nearly $6bn; in 2023, Vice filed for bankruptcy. A man who saw it from the inside is TV chef Eddie Huang, the director and frontman of this film. He had a long-running show on the Viceland TV channel and says he’s still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.

Huang is also an advert for the best of Vice: fast, funny and authentic. The film begins with plenty of “you had to be there” stories about Brooklyn before gentrification, and interviews with early staff. This isn’t meant unkindly, but Vice Is Broke will be essential viewing for anybody who ever worked there, with its details about who had what job title and when. Clips show why Vice felt so edgy (like that time they took basketball star Dennis Rodman to North Korea to meet Kim Jong-un).

Published: August 28, 2025, 8:00 am

Katrina: Come Hell and High Water review – Spike Lee gets straight to the defiant, joyous soul of New Orleans

The finale of the Oscar-winning director’s three-part documentary about the biggest tragedy in 21st-century Black American history is a must-watch. It’s a stirring look at the city’s refusal to lie down

It’s hard to quantify the significance of Hurricane Katrina: the combination of a historic natural disaster and cold systemic indifference towards its impoverished African American victims makes it perhaps the most significant event in 21st-century Black American history. It’s no surprise, then, that more than one major documentary series has been made to mark 20 years since wind, water and a whole lot of racism devastated New Orleans, or that leading cinematic auteurs of two consecutive generations, Spike Lee and Ryan Coogler, have each executive-produced their own.

But watching Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, you do wish Lee and Coogler had got on the phone to check they weren’t doubling up too much. The new three-parter – the Lee one that arrives on Netflix to coincide with the week of the anniversary, has its impact dulled a little by the pre-existence of Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, the Coogler one which came out on Disney+ and National Geographic a month ago. For much of the screen time, this is a less comprehensive rendering of the same story, using many of the same clips and interviewees.

Katrina: Come Hell and High Water is on Netflix now.

Published: August 27, 2025, 9:13 am

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood review – a story that sings on the page

A young shrimp fisher’s horizons are broadened by the arrival of a stranger in this atmospheric Booker-listed tale

You don’t think you need a novella about a folk-singing shrimp fisher living with his mother on a fictional stretch of isolated coast until you read Benjamin Wood’s Booker-longlisted fifth novel, Seascraper. Wood conjures wonders from this unlikely material in a tale so richly atmospheric you can almost taste the tang of brine and inhale the sea fog.

As unexpected as his previous four books – which range from a campus intrigue (The Bellwether Revivals) to a sensitive study of a Glaswegian painter (The Ecliptic) – Seascraper follows the daily trials of Tom Flett, a “shanker” who scrapes the sand for its yield at low tide with his trusty horse and wagon, risking his life in a job that is simultaneously boring and dangerous. Tom is clearly in the Hardyesque tradition of unworldly young men who tend the land or work with their hands (Gabriel Oak, Jude Fawley), and it’s this that alerts us to his vulnerability to charmers and chancers.

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:00 am

Ruth by Kate Riley review – a very different kind of candour

This unusual debut explores the inner life of a woman in an insular American religious community

Inspired by the author’s own experience, Kate Riley’s debut novel depicts one woman’s life in the US chapter of an international Anabaptist sect. “The Brotherhood” is an insular and reactionary society founded by German emigrants. All property is held in common and centrally rationed in “a constantly recalibrating state of voluntary poverty”; collectivity is so rigidly enforced that even the family unit is considered a potential threat, with youngsters periodically rehoused in different families. Women (“sisters”) are assigned dowdy dresses in order to repress desire, and merely humming a tune is a guilty pleasure. This bleak way of life is rendered in a series of episodic dispatches, and the title character’s inner life is imparted in a free indirect third person as she grapples with doubt, shame and boredom.

Ruth is knock-kneed and clumsy, prone to malingering and fixated on language. She feels guilty if she rehashes a joke – because self-plagiarism might constitute “empty speech”, which is a sin. Having been raised in such an austere environment, her mind is blown on her first day at a public high school: “Enumerating the varieties of blue jeans made her think very seriously of infinity … The running list of exotic clothing she’d witnessed … ennobled her impulse to stare..” Time and again her thoughts circle back to the riddle of visual pleasure. “Beauty was an argument, but for what?” For Stendhal it meant the promise of happiness, and it connotes something similar here: life force, connection. Ruth is terribly lonely, plagued by a “constant lugubrious awareness of her own isolation”; “all she wanted was a friend who knew she was suffering but would not make her talk about it”. Instead, she marries a man she finds boring, has three children with him and sinks into depression. Decades pass in the blink of an eye. On a road trip for their 21st anniversary, we find her staring out from the passenger seat like a sullen teenager: “Every passing car was an opportunity to project pathos; she made eye contact and tried to look like a woman abducted.”

Published: August 27, 2025, 8:00 am

Esoteric Ebb: a Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign that lets you be as stupid as you like

Become the world’s worst cleric, speak to the dead or pick a fight with sea birds in this Monty Python-esque magical mystery from Swedish developer Christoffer Bodegård

Dungeons & Dragons is a rich playground of fantastical tales where warriors, wizards and elves can take on monstrous foes for unimaginable spoils … or you can spend an entire evening completely undermining your dungeon master by killing off important characters, focusing on unrelated items and improvising your own disastrous adventure. This is often where the best stories are and where Esoteric Ebb takes its inspiration.

Part tabletop game, part RPG, you play as a cleric who has been sent to investigate the destruction of a tea shop in the city Norvik, which is about to hold its first ever election in five days. You’ll talk (and occasionally fight) with the local residents to uncover the truth and affect the outcome of the election. Or perhaps you’ll just fight some seagulls. You can choose your own path, but, much like in D&D, your success comes down to dice rolls and having to live with the consequences if you fail them.

Published: August 28, 2025, 9:00 am

Saddle up for Wheel World, a leisurely, Lycra-less feelgood hit

When is a racing game not a racing game? When there’s more joy to be had in pootling around enjoying the view

Here’s an admission: I am 37 years old and have never learned to drive. I tried once, in the summer of 2021, and during my second lesson my instructor asked me if I played a lot of video games. When I answered yes, he said, “I thought so,” in a tone that was very clearly not complimentary. Regrettably, it turns out that hundreds of hours spent mercilessly beating my friends and family at Mario Kart and causing vehicular chaos in Grand Theft Auto do not translate instantly to real-life driving skills and judgment. I love racing games precisely because they are unrealistic.

Because I still don’t have my licence, I ride my bike everywhere. It’s a giant orange monster of a thing, big enough for my two children to ride on the back, and it looks ridiculous. It makes me look ridiculous, next to the Lycra-clad middle-aged men on their carbon-fibre frames who zoom past me on the regular. It’s not something I could ever take out into the countryside or down some mountain trail. For that, once again, I must turn to video games.

Published: August 27, 2025, 2:01 pm

Keeper is the ecological ‘fever dream’ where you play as – checks notes – a lighthouse

Double Fine’s latest is a whimsical action-adventure that takes inspiration from real-life biology as much as cult fantasy movies from the 1980s

Keeper is staking a bold claim to be the oddest game ever published by Microsoft. The setting is weird: an iridescent, far-future imagining of New England where organic and non-organic matter mingle in strange, alchemical ways. And the characters are undeniably quirky: one is a bird called Twig whose beak is made from driftwood. Strangest of all: you play as a lighthouse that has inexplicably become animate, sprouting tiny, spindly little legs to carry its wibbling, wobbling body.

In the sea of action-hero young men and, to a lesser degree, women, the lighthouse stands out as an unlikely star. Creative lead Lee Petty is a little fuzzy on the details of how it came to be. Rather, he talks about the creation of the protagonist as he does the broader action-adventure experience: as if it rose out of his subconscious. Despite the ostensible absurdity, Petty believes there is a certain intuition about it. “You have a light, and light has a very strong connection with life,” he says. “You can imagine the verbs for the player, and the actions, puzzles, mechanics that fall out of that.”

Published: August 27, 2025, 9:00 am

Michael Caine, Bowie and more: David Bailey’s iconic pin-ups – in pictures

A new retrospective shows how the lauded photographer shook up fashion imagery in the 1960s before reinventing the nude a decade later

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:00 am

You belong with me! Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce – a love story in 11 pictures

It began on the 30-yard line and led to the announcement of their engagement on Tuesday. Here’s a look back at their two-year romance

It’s a love story; she said yes. Taylor Swift, not long ago hailed as the world’s most famous “childless cat lady”, is tying the knot. She announced her engagement to footballer Travis Kelce, her partner of two years, on Instagram on Tuesday. The post was liked more than 14.5m times in just two hours, and reportedly crashed the platform for many users.

Kelce is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. He and Swift publicly debuted their relationship in September 2023, when she attended the Chiefs’ game against the Chicago Bears in Kansas City, Missouri. (The Chiefs won.) The fact she popped up in Kelce’s private suite alongside his mother, Donna, and other friends and family, and left with him for a private afterparty, led fans to speculate that this wasn’t their first date.

Published: August 27, 2025, 6:01 pm

The big heat: what ‘sunburn cinema’ tells us about the Great British holiday

Hot Milk’s mother-daughter meltdown or losers on the lash in The Inbetweeners Movie, some films leave us feeling as foolish as their protagonists for trying to escape reality

As we near the end of a hot, dry August, I’m longing for a Mediterranean getaway; salt-crisp skin, a Fanta lemon, and a tinge of pink across my shoulders. I’m also thinking about what I like to call “sunburn cinema” – homegrown films like recent release Hot Milk (adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel), which remind us we’re a nation uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the sun. Or, as one popular Letterboxd review puts it: “Oh no, the Brits are on trauma vacation again”.

Sunburn is the hallmark of a particular kind of Brit abroad, visual evidence of the lack of decorum that we notoriously display across the resorts and beach towns of Europe. Sunburn cinema, however, pinpoints what makes us inclined to chaos and self-sabotage.

Published: August 28, 2025, 5:00 am

The Burning Man Orgy Dome: welcome to the latest festival disaster

It featured a tent full of mattresses for one almighty love-in in the Nevada desert. Sadly, the revelries and ‘moresomes’ were not to be ...

Name: The Burning Man Orgy Dome.

Age: 22 years old.

Published: August 27, 2025, 3:36 pm

Meet the water sommeliers: they believe H₂O can rival wine – but would you pay £19 a bottle?

A restaurant in the English county of Cheshire has launched a water menu, as have a number of US establishments. Is it really possible, though, to tell one terroir from another?

For diners at a fancy restaurant in Cheshire, there is now a new twist to the usual routine. First comes La Popote’s menu, created by the owners, the chef Joe Rawlins and Gaëlle Radigon, who live upstairs with their children. Next comes the wine list, which includes more than 100 bottles. And then, in what is very much a first for Cheshire, a water list.

Rawlins, 32, presents the new menu as I get comfy in the dining room in a converted redbrick barn in Marton, a village halfway between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. A choice of seven waters ranges from a £5 bottle of Crag, which comes from the nearby Peak District, to Vidago, a mineral-rich water from a Portuguese spa town, which will cost you £19.

Published: August 28, 2025, 4:00 am

You be the judge: should my girlfriend stop buying kitchen appliances?

Billie says cooking with gadgets makes her life easier, but Paul thinks their kitchen work surfaces are already full. You decide if the gizmos have to go

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

We have a tiny kitchen and Billie doesn’t even use the stuff that’s already cluttering our counters

You need the right tools to make good food, and as I do most of the cooking, I like to make life easier

Published: August 28, 2025, 7:00 am

Champagne taste, cider budget? Try these fizzes | Hannah Crosbie on drinks

You don’t need a champagne supernova for your bash to go off with a bang

Bad news for me: I turn 28 this week, and I don’t feel particularly wiser. I do feel older, though. So, as you read this, you can be sure that I am probably quite drunk on sparkling wine. There’s scarcely a better excuse than a birthday, but I think we can agree that what you’re likely to be drinking at any such event will vary greatly, depending on whether or not the birthday in question is your own.

It’s always good to start off with something sparkling, which is why, for the past few years, I’ve treated myself to a bottle of Billecart-Salmon in bed, but I think I might try something a bit different this year. My mind turns to Sip Champagnes, an independent, online retailer that connects consumers with the grower champagnes of the region. It even has a sub-£45 section, which, considering that many of the grandes marques are now pushing or exceeding £50 (eek!), provides a chance to taste something new for the same price or even less than usual.

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘It feels as though the mountains are ours alone’: family-friendly hiking in the French Alps

The ‘wonderfully wild’ Grand Tour de Tarentaise trail caters for both experienced hikers and first-timers, with cosy mountain refuges offering the perfect place to recharge

‘This is probably the wildest place in the whole of the Vallée des Belleville,” says Roland, our guide, sweeping one arm across a bank of saw-toothed peaks as though conducting a great, brawny orchestra. My husband, two sons and I are midway through a four-day stretch of the Grand Tour de Tarentaise hiking trail in the French Alps, and we’ve stopped near the top of Varlossière, a roadless side valley among a great arc of mountains that runs to the west of the ski resorts of Val Thorens, Les Menuires and Saint-Martin-de-Belleville. Hiking up here from Gittamelon, a rustic, summer-only mountain refuge in the neighbouring Vallée des Encombres, we’ve paused to exhale breath, and to inhale the primeval views.

High peaks loom either side of us, their shocking green flanks underscored by an elegantly designed bothy and its shepherd-dwelling twin, and we can hear the rush of water far below. It’s midmorning but the moon is low and large in a cloudless sky, adding to the otherworldly scene. Climbing higher, an eagle flies past almost at eye level, no more than six metres away. Though we meet three other hikers on the other side of the Col du Bonnet du Prêtre, the 2,461-metre (8,074ft) pass that leads from Varlossière to the Nant Brun valley – and detect from sheep bells that at least two shepherds must be somewhere among the great folds of these hills – it feels as though the landscape is ours alone.

Published: August 28, 2025, 6:00 am

How to find the plus-size dress that makes you feel like you belong on the red carpet

Separates can be tricky, but the right dress will make you feel ready for anything

As a plus-size shopper, separates are a tricky game: finding denim that doesn’t sag at the knee and gape at the back is a constant plight, I have yet to experience tailoring that contours my curves in a well-fitting way, and I have never met a co-ord that doesn’t make me look like a human Flump.

But dresses can be good to me. That said, a lot of plus-size designs on the market in the high street are, well, quite crap. They are frumpy, ill-considered and not fashion-forward or exciting. Which is why this summer I was inspired to launch a collaboration with dress brand Rixo – a 16-piece collection of size-inclusive dresses that evoke a sense of freedom, the idea that with one swish of a great dress over your head you are handled, you are stylish, you are good.

Published: August 27, 2025, 1:00 pm

Sali Hughes on beauty: if you think powder is ageing, you haven’t tried the right ones

The best modern formulations reflect light, mattify shine and give skin a smooth finish

I am rabidly defensive of face powder. “Powder is ageing” is one of those enduring beauty cliches that’s not necessarily true – especially now, when powders are often talc-free, softly blurring in finish, and frequently contain moisturising ingredients.

Powder is essential in keeping wet formulations such as foundation on your face, and if the appearance of skin ageing bothers you, then the right pressed powder is your ally.

Published: August 27, 2025, 9:00 am

‘A gay Mardi Gras’: the lesbian pop-up bar in New Orleans that was born after Hurricane Katrina

Grrlspot, a monthly event in New Orleans, stemmed from a desire to create spaces for queer women to gather after the storm devastated the city in 2005

A few months after Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in August 2005, Jenna Jordan went on a search for other queer women. She was looking for camaraderie with people like herself who had returned to New Orleans after the storm. Some neighborhoods with sizable gay populations such as the French Quarter were largely spared from flooding, but areas with queer people of color and lesbians, such as Mid-City, weren’t as fortunate.

On a Tuesday night in February 2006, Jordan and a few other graduate students from Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane University hosted a meetup for queer women at a dive bar called St Joe’s in the Uptown neighborhood. The gathering was spread via word of mouth and only about 20 people showed up the first time, but within five years it grew into a big dance party with hundreds of people. Grrlspot, a monthly pop-up event for queer women in New Orleans that still exists today, was born.

Published: August 27, 2025, 11:00 am

Immigration advocates alarmed over detention of Daca recipient: ‘No legal basis’

Border patrol arrested Catalina Santiago, who had been granted temporary protection as a Dreamer, on 3 August

Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago had already made it past the security line at the El Paso airport when two border patrol agents called her in for questioning and whisked her away to an immigration detention center.

Nearly a month after her arrest, she and her family still aren’t clear why she is detained. Santiago is a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program – which has allowed her to legally live and work in the US.

Published: August 27, 2025, 10:00 am

People over 60: share your experiences of dating in later life

We want to hear from people in their 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s who are actively dating other people over the age of 60

We’d like to hear from both single people and members of couples who very recently met the love of their life on a date. What is the best and worst date you’ve been on? Any funny or shocking anecdotes to share?

How do relationships compare to the ones you had at a younger age? How much does companionship or sex factor? What about exes – your’s and your partners’ children and grandchildren? Are you using apps and websites or relying on word of mouth? Have you been on a lot of dates? What about ghosting?

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:29 pm

US parents and teachers: share your experiences of AI in schools

We would like to hear what people think about the use of artificial intelligence in schools in the US

Students in grades K-12 have been invited by Melania Trump to take part in a nationwide contest designed to encourage the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help solve community issues. The first lady wants students to “unleash their imagination and showcase the spirit of American innovation” by participating in the government-sponsored contest.

We want to hear from parents and teachers on their experiences of AI in schools. How do you feel about it being used in education? Do you support it or are you against it?

Published: August 27, 2025, 12:02 pm

Strikes on Kyiv, wildfires in Algeria and sea turtles in Turkey: photos of the day – Thursday

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

Published: August 28, 2025, 12:26 pm