Osama bin Laden shook the world on 9/11. Today it is clear how his wider plans failed | Jason Burke

The al-Qaida leader envisaged an economically battered US withdrawing from the Middle East – and a global Muslim uprising. Then the tide turned

On 11 September, 25 years ago, Osama bin Laden drove with a small number of al-Qaida retainers and aides to a remote location in eastern Afghanistan. His convoy of SUVs was accompanied by a minivan converted into a makeshift communications centre.

The van’s rudimentary equipment did not allow Bin Laden to watch the 19 men he had started sending to the US more than a year before fly planes into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon near Washington DC, killing about 3,000 people. But he listened as shocked radio announcers broke the news.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 pm

‘It was all hands on deck’: how the CIA responded to 9/11

Veterans recall chaos and confusion as the attacks unfolded – followed by a ‘war on terror’ that left agency with a tarnished reputation

A generation of spies had lost an enemy but not yet found a role. Then came 9/11.

A decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, al-Qaida’s devastating attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 announced to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that the long era of battling communism, for which it had been founded, was officially at an end.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:11 am

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: Second Song review – shaky album occasionally strikes gold

(Reprise)
The 80-year-old continues his tireless output, delving into the past for inspiration to variable results – though two lengthy brand-new songs are real showstoppers

You can’t fault Neil Young for his industry. Second Song is his second new album of 2026: the first, a double live set called As Time Explodes, was released just over three months ago. Indeed, at 80, his work schedule seems mind-boggling. Since 2020, he’s released nine new albums, a 30-minute EP, five self-directed films and three more films directed by others, 10 archival live albums, six archival studio albums and two immense box sets. He has embarked on tours with his longstanding backing band Crazy Horse, his recently convened backing band the Chrome Hearts, and solo. He has gone to public war with Spotify, Amazon, Ticketmaster and – briefly – the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury, and penned umpteen op-ed pieces about politics, the environment and corporate media for his online newspaper the Times-Contrarian. When he recently cancelled a European tour citing exhaustion, it was hard not to think: well, I’m not surprised.

You do find yourself wondering if his workload is such a good thing: not just for an elderly gentleman’s health but also for the quality of his output. Young has always prized spontaneity over finesse, but some of his more recent releases have suggested that at least a soupçon of finesse might not go amiss. Last year’s Talkin to the Trees, however, seemed to cross the line that separates the instinctive from the dashed off. Young frequently sounded as if he was making the material up as he went along, with nugatory results: “When today has come and gone, I might be singing my new song,” he offered on Family Life. “Might be short, it might be long, but I’ll be singing my new song.” If some of the melodies sounded familiar, that’s because they were. Not one but two tracks echoed the tune of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land; First Fire of Winter was essentially Young’s 1970 masterpiece Helpless with different lyrics; Thankful rewrote 1992’s Harvest Moon.

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:30 am

Crowd of 100,000 laps up relentless sensory experience as NFL woos Melbourne | Jack Snape

The morning kick-off provided ‘incredible’ vibes for a sell-out crowd clearly different to that which attends AFL and cricket games at the venue

At 9am on a Friday, Melbourne’s tongues would usually be tinged with toothpaste. Beer, however, was the flavour craved by this throng of bros brought together by the visit of one of the United States’ great institutions.

Dressed in San Francisco 49ers red, LA Rams blue and every other colour of the 32-team NFL rainbow, the 100,021 fans had come to the competition’s first regular season match in Australia. They were there in droves, and 90 minutes from kick-off their thirst had already forced the closure of the pop-up pub adjacent to the MCG.

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:35 pm

Trump-a-palooza: why are Republicans avoiding the president’s convention? – podcast

Donald Trump has thrown a convention to amp up the Republican base ahead of the midterm elections, but not everyone is thrilled about it. Dozens of officials running for re-election have stayed away, choosing instead to campaign locally. Are they worried about Trump’s current unpopularity weighing down their ticket?

This week Jenna Amatulli is in for Jonathan Freedland and speaks to Guardian US politics correspondent Rachel Leingang

Watch Jonathan Freedland on our new Politics Weekly YouTube channel

Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com

Subscribe to The Guardian Investigates podcast and listen to season 2 of Black Box

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 pm

‘People think fame is a magic wand’: Jarvis Cocker on old songs, young fans and his granny’s verdict on Pulp

Before the release of a joyful film on the history of the Sheffield band, frontman Cocker and director Garth Jennings talk dark times, taking inspiration from Abba – and why there could yet be another record

When the director Garth Jennings first moved to Paris, Jarvis Cocker, who was living there, dropped in on his old friend. “And I nearly got you arrested,” the Pulp frontman recalls. It was bonfire night, and Cocker had taken some welcoming fireworks over to Jennings’ place. “It turned out Garth’s apartment was quite near to the – not an army base, but what’s it called?”

“The École Militaire,” says Jennings.

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 pm

Mistakes, mistrust and misdirection: 25 years after 9/11, its dark legacy continues to unfold

The world’s most powerful country responded to the worst terrorist attack in its history by inflicting terror of its own – around the world, and at home

As clear as that cloudless September morning, Jenna Jacobs McPartland remembers the moment everything changed. “I was cleaning the bathroom and watching the Today show in the background and nine months pregnant,” the 52-year-old recalls by phone. “I think they were showing ‘Today throws a wedding’ when the news broke in.”

A plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. McPartland did not know that her husband, Ariel Jacobs, was attending a conference at its Windows on the World restaurant. “I called his office to say, ‘Hey, turn on the TV. Do you guys know what’s going on?’ His assistant said, ‘Oh my God, Jenna, he’s there.’ The whole world disappeared and there was this sort of hollow collapsing feeling.”

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

JD Vance pitches himself as Trump’s political heir on day two of Republican midterm convention

Vice-president dog-whistled, exaggerated claims of success and echoed Trump talking points to excited audience

JD Vance made a clear pitch that he should be the heir to Donald Trump on Thursday night, closing out the Republicans’ midterm convention with a blistering speech that featured exaggerated claims of success, criticism of Democrats as “lunatics” and an aggressive dismissal of a protester waving a Mexican flag.

Speaking in Dallas, the vice-president showed he could channel the basest instincts of his boss, filling his remarks with dog whistles and echoing Trump’s false claims that Democrats “cheered” the 7 October massacre of Israelis.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:52 pm

US supreme court again rejects Missouri maps drawn to boost Republicans in midterms

Latest decision appears to set the stage for the state to use its old electoral maps this year

The US supreme court again rejected a push backed by Donald Trump to overhaul Missouri’s congressional maps in an effort to hand Republicans an edge in November’s midterm elections.

Its latest ruling, after days of confusion, comes less than two months before the pivotal midterm elections in which control of the narrowly divided US House of Representatives could be determined by a handful of seats.

Published: September 10, 2026, 1:55 pm

Anthropic details bad actors’ efforts to misuse its AI for bioweapons

Report comes two days after former employee quit claiming company’s models could cause human extinction by 2030

Criminals, state-sponsored groups, spyware vendors, scientists and propagandists have attempted to use Anthropic’s powerful artificial intelligence models to design missiles and bombs, create deadly pathogens and surveil dissidents, according to a threat intelligence report the company published on Thursday.

“The cases we share here aren’t typical misuse, but rather examples of the most notable and novel threat activity we’ve identified to date,” Anthropic wrote in its 154-page report. “We’re publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services.”

Published: September 10, 2026, 3:35 pm

Secret systems used by Israel in mass killings of Gaza civilians revealed in new film

Testimony from Israeli military insiders involved in surveillance and remote killings features in documentary produced by the Guardian

Testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders ​on the secret ​systems used in ​the war on Gaza​ has been revealed in a new documentary film about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

NAZA, a film from the Oscar-winning Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, was shown at the Venice international film festival on Thursday as the only documentary competing for its prestigious Golden Lion award.

Published: September 10, 2026, 6:42 am

Texas reports first equine infection of New World screwworm on ranch horse

The flesh-eating parasite had been largely eradicated, but now authorities are racing to contain an outbreak

A horse in southern Texas has been infected with the New World screwworm, marking the first US equine infection as health authorities race to contain an outbreak of the flesh-eating parasite.

The pest was discovered on the hind limb of a working ranch horse in Presidio county, according to a statement on Thursday from US Equestrian Foundation.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:00 pm

Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer asks judge to find her not guilty after mistrial

Kevin Reddington says prosecution did not offer evidence that client’s killing of her children constituted murder

Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer on Thursday asked the judge who oversaw the Massachusetts woman’s murder trial to declare her not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, saying prosecutors had failed to ⁠prove that, despite being mentally ill, ⁠she knew killing her ​three young children would be wrong.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington made the request to Judge William Sullivan six days after the trial ended in a deadlock, and as a fourth member of ⁠the 12-member jury went public to describe how a single juror had prevented the panel from reaching a unanimous verdict.

Published: September 10, 2026, 1:43 pm

Iceland to submit bill that could ban whaling in its waters

The country is one of just three that still permits commercial whaling, while its government has faced mounting pressure to ban the practice

Iceland will submit a bill in February 2027 which could permanently ban whaling in its waters, a move that would leave Norway and Japan as the only two countries to permit commercial whaling.

Whaling in Iceland has been put under intense scrutiny since a government-commissioned report was published in 2023 that found harpooned whales took two hours to die. The report led to a temporary suspension of the hunt that year.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 pm

Diana’s ‘revenge dress’, worn when Charles revealed infidelity, up for auction

Christina Stambolian dress from 1994 has defined a whole category of fashion and is expected to fetch up to £220,000

The dress that Diana, Princess of Wales wore one September evening in 1994 would have been memorable for its design alone – black, fitted, off-the-shoulder, skintight and short. However, it has another distinction, of defining a whole category of fashion – what has since become known as “revenge dressing”.

Worn by Diana the same night Charles would reveal his infidelity on TV, the dress was quickly labelled “the revenge dress” by the media. It has its own Wikipedia page, with the same title.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 pm

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the daughter of a hero remembers the mother she lost

Anna Sweeney Rossman was 5 when her mother, flight attendant Amy Sweeney, was killed onboard American Airlines flight 11 after helping authorities identify the hijackers

Anna Sweeney Rossman was only five years old when her mother, flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney, died onboard an airliner that terrorists hijacked and deliberately flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And for years, she said in an interview on Wednesday, Rossman’s grief primarily centered on her mother’s absence from certain milestones in her life.

She recalled how planning her 2023 wedding – particularly shopping for a dress – hit her especially hard without her mom there. And Rossman said it was as much a blow to not have her mom there for the birth of her daughters, each younger than two, as the US prepared to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Friday.

Published: September 10, 2026, 3:00 am

Victim families say it has ‘taken way too long’ to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for alleged support on 9/11

Terry Strada, whose husband was killed in the attacks, says she remains hopeful for justice as a lawsuit alleging Saudi support for the hijackers moves toward trial

The leader of one group of 9/11 victims’ families says it has “taken way too long” to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its alleged support of the terrorists who carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, whose 25th anniversary is being observed across the US on Friday.

As that grim milestone approached, Terry Strada – the national chair of 9/11 Families United – said she felt as if it had “been several lifetimes” for there to be progress in the effort “to achieve a modicum of justice through our court system” in connection with the deadliest act of terror against the US.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:37 am

‘We can’t stop for a second’: the centre tracking South Korea’s stalkers in real time

Since June, an app has allowed survivors, who are overwhelmingly women, to see exactly where their stalker is

On a large screen in a control centre in eastern Seoul, a dot representing a man closes in on a woman. The dot changes direction, and the distance reading between them falls from 845 metres to 792.

On the woman’s phone, the same map is loading. A probation officer rings her: the stalker is approaching, don’t panic, officers have been dispatched. The man is a stand-in and the scenario is staged, but the system is real.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:51 pm

Is Trump trying to buy votes with $5,000 midterm pledge? - The Latest

Donald Trump has pledged a payment of $5,000 to every adult American citizen if the Republicans win in the November midterms. The outlandish proposal, which would cost over $1tn, immediately raised legal and ethical concerns. It comes as the president’s approval rating has hit a record low, hovering at about 38%. Lucy Hough speaks to global editor Devika Bhat – watch on YouTube

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:56 am

While Puerto Ricans protest for reliable access to water, the governor washes her hands

Leaky aqueducts and mega-projects for the wealthy exacerbate a water crisis in the US island territory

Dhara Rivera de Jesús keeps at least 30 large water containers in her home at all times. After more than a year without consistent service in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she fills them whenever water returns, which sometimes only happens for a handful of hours every few days. Going without reliable water to bathe, flush toilets or cook has affected her ability to work and stick to a usual routine – a catch-22, now that she has to spend more money and time buying water and prepared food.

This summer, water levels in the island’s key dams fell below the thresholds needed to supply about half a million residents, leading to a severe drought that prompted Puerto Rico’s governor, Jenniffer González-Colón, to declare a state of emergency. But residents of San Juan, including Rivera, had already spent months grappling with water insecurity as the archipelago’s ageing and deteriorating infrastructure continued to fail amid government mismanagement.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:30 am

San Francisco mayor declares rent emergency as housing costs soar amid AI boom

Median rent for one-bedroom apartment in city tops $4,495 with a national median of $1,900

San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, declared a rent emergency on Thursday, proposing reforms aimed at curbing evictions and preventing rent spikes as the city grapples with soaring apartment prices.

The Bay Area city, home to a large number of high-earning tech workers, has long been one of the most expensive housing and rental markets in the country.

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:34 pm

100 years after John Coltrane’s birth, secret tapes are emerging. What can they tell us about jazz’s great rulebreaker?

The sax star turned his back on fame to embrace free jazz. Caught on a tape machine hidden in an overcoat, newly revealed recordings show how he did it

In August 1965, at the height of his fame, saxophonist John Coltrane headlined the DownBeat jazz festival in Chicago. Taking to the stage with a new member of his band, young experimentalist Archie Shepp on tenor, Coltrane’s quartet blew through a series of jagged and free improvisations, straying from structured compositions and, instead, hurling down sheets of sound so loud and aggressive that they reportedly caused widespread walk-outs. DownBeat’s own reviewer later wrote: “They gave as tasteless a display of musicianship as I’ve ever heard … Shepp and Coltrane seemed to be more interested in trying to out-honk, out-squeal and out-bleat each other than in playing music.”

That 1965 performance should have been a triumphant moment, after five years of Coltrane’s star ascending. Since leaving Miles Davis’s “first great quintet”, with whom he had recorded what would become the bestselling jazz album of all time – 1959’s Kind of Blue – Coltrane founded an entirely new harmonic language in jazz with the 1960 release of his solo LP Giant Steps, had a radio hit with his 1961 version of The Sound of Music’s My Favourite Things and, in January 1965, formulated his own spiritual imagining of jazz music with the Grammy-nominated album A Love Supreme. He was already a giant of the genre, contributing dozens of compositions to the standard repertoire, but two years later, in 1967, aged just 40, he would be dead of liver cancer.

Published: September 11, 2026, 12:00 am

‘A fierce need to be independent’: Gerda Taro biopic pulls photographer out of lover Robert Capa’s shadow

Film premieres at Venice as researchers question who took famous Spanish civil war shot of ‘falling soldier’, credited to the pair’s Robert Capa alias

She was one of the most fearless female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known to have been killed while covering a war. But in life and in death, the work of Gerda Taro has often been overshadowed by the collaborator and lover whose alias she invented and sometimes shared: Robert Capa.

That may be about to change with a new biopic that seeks to pull the pioneering photographer from out of Capa’s shadow, which is premiering at the Venice film festival just as researchers claim to have proof that his most famous and controversial picture was actually taken by her.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 pm

A Killer Story review – this tale of two relentless armchair detectives is prestige true crime

Eileen and Keen Umbehr were convinced the wrong person was convicted for double-homicide. After sending Pulitzer-winning journalist Joe Sexton 2,714 emails about it, he agreed to investigate – and it led to a messy entanglement

HBO is no stranger to true crime, though its offerings tend to be more prestige than your average, with documentaries such as the unrelenting sex cult nightmare The Vow and The Yogurt Shop Murders, a measured reinvestigation into the deaths of four teenage girls in Texas in the 90s. They have form, too, in drily funny sagas, such as McMillions, about a high-stakes conspiracy to fix the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. Rarely are their documentaries both solemn and bizarro, with the exception perhaps of The Jinx. An unnerving tale of millionaire real estate heir turned convicted murderer Robert Durst, it occasionally lingered on the stranger points of his story, like the time he shoplifted a $6 sandwich for kicks.

All this makes sense, really: it’s not like most homicides lend themselves to a deadpan retelling. A Killer Story is not laugh-out-loud funny, either. But this very meta three-parter manages to tell not one but two killer stories, one disturbing and the other absurd. The first concerns a woman, Dana Chandler, who is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. The second is about a true crime-obsessed stranger, Eileen Umbehr, who becomes fixated on the case, spamming a journalist with tips. The emails from Umbehr were, says Joe Sexton – previously of the New York Times and investigative newsroom ProPublica – “a crazy assortment of shit … I [didn’t] know whether to call the cops on her or fucking hire her!”

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 pm

A Thought Without Collision by Adrian Duncan review – a brilliant interrogation of philosophy and wonder

With a character inspired by Wittgenstein, this exploration of the mysteries of the universe draws on multiple philosophical traditions

For several years I ran community groups that involved reading books aloud with other adults. Sharing the experience of reading in that way made me notice how, when one or more of us was baffled by a story, this bafflement was rarely experienced without an accompanying sense of mild anger. It was so easy to make us, the readers, angry – at the characters; at the author; perhaps even at the nature of this reality on which we’d lost our grip. We were confronted with the fact that our capacity to understand the world was limited. We didn’t like that.

Irish author Adrian Duncan’s fifth novel, A Thought Without Collision, takes risks with this bafflement: it relates and conveys an experience of being mystified by the universe. As it opens, in Ireland in 1923, it is becoming apparent that six-year-old Catherine has exceptional academic gifts, and that her father’s farm is failing. In the next chapter, set in 1951, Dr Josef Alois, a Tyrolean émigré academic in his mid-50s, is living in his self-built house on the east coast of Scotland. He is alone until Catherine reappears, “a handsome woman in her mid-thirties”, and now an Oxford professor. The second chapter ends starkly: Alois “is more unwell than he believes and will perish in one month and eleven days”.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

The Paper season two review – one of the best comedies on TV right now

This spin-off from the US Office is so brilliant that it might even eclipse its mother show. And as for the hilarious Sabrina Impacciatore – just hand her all the awards!

Pity the poor TV writer foolish enough to make a show about journalism. The world is full of inaccurate and illogical medical dramas, but they survive because real life doctors and nurses only tend to grumble about them to themselves. But when you make an inaccurate and illogical show about journalists, real life journalists get to yell about it from the streets. This is probably why Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom ended so early, because we all got to bleat about it through our little megaphones.

The makers of The Paper must have been anticipating a similarly rough ride. It is, after all, explicitly a sitcom about the death of print media, and, Lord knows, nothing wounds us like staring the truth in the face. And yet last year’s first season emerged as one of the best new comedies on television.

The Paper was on Sky One and is on Now. In the US, it airs on Peacock. In Australia it airs on Binge and Foxtel.

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:00 pm

Experience: I’ve visited every motorway service station in Britain

Some people don’t understand my lifelong enthusiasm for roadside stop-offs – now visiting and cataloguing them is what I do for a living

When I was 10 years old, the highlight of my summer holidays was going to work with my dad, who is a lorry driver. For a couple of years in the mid-2000s, I’d excitedly climb into the cab next to him and we’d set off on a 10-hour trip. My job was to follow the AA Road Atlas, and I’d joyfully track the services marked on the map as we thundered along.

My dad thought stopping was a waste of time, but his designated rest stops were my favourite part of the trip. Depending on the journey, we might stop for two or three meals. I always hoped at least one would be at a Little Chef. I loved their Olympic Breakfast, a massive full English, and every meal was rounded off with a lollipop – what more could a 10-year-old want?

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 pm

Week in wildlife: a sea turtle hatchling, baby orangutans and flying ibises

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: September 11, 2026, 12:00 am

How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden | Martin Gelin

In 2022, my country entered a new era of cruelty. It will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back

Last year, a baby named Emanuel was born in Sweden. Before his first birthday, his parents were told that Emanuel could no longer stay in the country. The department of migration ordered his removal, alone, to Iran – despite the ongoing war.

Emanuel’s parents were legally in the country. They had Swedish residency permits, but the laws that allowed them to stay were tightened after the baby’s birth, and the family got sucked into a Kafkaesque maze of official hurdles, designed to limit migration to Sweden.

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 pm

American democracy depends on the census. Trump is undermining it | danah boyd

The very mechanisms that allow the census bureau to resist partisan interference are coming undone. And Congress is silent

When the constitutional architects of the United States got together, they came up with a crazy plan: “What if we count everyone in the country and allocate political representation that way?”

It was a radical act. Until then, censuses had been used by kings to levy taxes and conscript men into war. With the penning of article 1, section 2 of the US constitution, being counted ensured that states would get financial resources and political representatives. Congress was tasked with building the processes to anchor representation to the population. People wanted to be counted. And politicians wanted their people to be counted more.

danah boyd is the Geri Gay professor of communication at Cornell University and the author of Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:00 am

We have started losing control of AI. It’s time to shut it down | Garrison Lovely

What sounds like the overwrought penultimate episode in a sci-fi series about AI doom is now our reality

On Tuesday, a former OpenAI researcher quit his job at Anthropic, warning that “neither company is acting responsibly” and that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”

As someone who’s reported on AI risk for years, this wasn’t news to me. But the outpouring of alarm suggests a much wider public is properly confronting this ludicrous situation for the first time.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:00 am

Trump’s repeated threats to ‘wipe out’ Iran are normalizing mass violence | Mohamad Bazzi

The president’s latest warning barely registered, written off as typical behavior. But the threats have real-world consequences

As the US and Iran fought around the strait of Hormuz last week, Donald Trump issued one of his typical threats. In an interview with a Fox News correspondent, Trump said Iran would be “totally wiped out as a country” if it retaliated for the latest wave of US airstrikes.

That threat by the US president to wipe out another country generated few headlines, even during a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards.

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:00 am

Ben Jennings on the Bayeux tapestry – cartoon

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Published: September 10, 2026, 10:17 am

Five-set tennis is under attack. Killing it would be a colossal unforced error | Andrew Lawrence

Five-set matches are physically punishing, occasionally absurd and increasingly under threat. They also produce much of what makes grand slam tennis great

Tuesday night’s quarter-final match between Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz had everything a US Open spectacle could ask for: huge stakes, knife-edge drama, top-shelf competition and an American hero who comes through in the end. The only fault to find was really the matter of time. The first ball wasn’t struck until 11.05 in the evening, and Shelton’s clinching ace didn’t come until 3.33 in the morning – marking, after a total of 4hr 28min on court, the latest-ending US Open match by a whopping 43 minutes.

Somewhat predictably, the discourse among media and fans following the late-night match has swiftly moved on from the USTA’s misadventures in scheduling to a referendum on the five-set match and whether it should be put out to pasture. For the record: that would be a colossal unforced error.

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:00 am

Elena Rybakina rallies to beat Coco Gauff and book US Open final with Aryna Sabalenka

• Second seeded Kazakh comes from set down to win 3-6, 6-4, 6-4

• Sabalenka awaits in title decider after blitzing Jessica Pegula

One set may have already passed in her first US Open semi-final, but Elena Rybakina still had not arrived inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. While an inspired Coco Gauff blew through the first stanza covering every inch of the acrylic surface as their 22,000-strong audience screamed for the Kazakhstani’s blood, Rybakina was wild and erratic from the baseline and her peerless serve was nowhere to be seen.

Nobody reaches the summit of professional without being able to problem-solve through difficult days on courtthough, and Rybakina gave a brilliant showcase of the underrated toughness at the heart of her success as she coolly recovered from a set down to overpower Gauff and seal her spot in her first US Open final with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 win.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:28 pm

Solheim Cup golf 2026: Europe v USA, day one – live

⛳️ Solheim Cup updates from 6.40am BST at Bernardus Golf
⛳️ Live scores | And send any thoughts to Scott via via email

Europe do indeed escape from their travails on 1 with a half. Alison Lee leaves her birdie putt short, and Nanna Koertz Madsen tidies up. But the USA strike back on 2, Nelly Korda wedging close with her approach on the par five, and Lottie Woad can’t save the day with her 15-foot right-to-left putt. All square in the opening two matches.

Corpuz/Korda A/S Hull/Woad (2)
Koerstz Madsen/Boutier A/S Coughlin/Al. Lee (1)

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:40 am

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Nicolas Jackson is ready to impress, Spurs are scrambled and the 199th Manchester derby takes place at Old Trafford

• Premier League top scorers 2026-27: who is leading race for the golden boot?

With 10 top-flight goal contributions between them across three games already this season, the Chelsea trio of Morgan Rogers, João Pedro and Cole Palmer are the early pace-setters for the Premier League’s most prolific, fluid and high-octane attacking unit. But on the occasion of his 100th Premier League appearance, a scruffier and more ungainly unit will be hoping to steal their thunder, as high-flying Hull try to register a top-flight win against Chelsea for the very first time. Yet to score this season but with a couple of near misses to his name, what Oli McBurnie has thus far lacked in goal contributions he has more than made up for with selfless graft and off-the-ball grunt work, making a total mockery of Steve Clarke’s decision not to include him in Scotland’s World Cup squad. The Hull striker ought to prove a real handful for a decidedly porous home defence, and a goal would be a fitting way to mark a century of Premier League appearances. Chelsea have not won any of their past four league matches against promoted opposition and, given Hull’s blistering start to the season, victory on Saturday seems anything but a foregone conclusion. Barry Glendenning

Chelsea v Hull, Saturday 3pm (all times BST)

Liverpool v Fulham, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Ipswich, Saturday 3pm

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:01 pm

Sports quiz of the week: Monza drama, US Open heroics and unusual side hustles

Test your knowledge of the big stories in football, tennis, cricket, rugby union, F1 and more

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 pm

Sesko soars as Manchester United surge past Sabah on Champions League return

It was a night for romance given the astonishing story that Sabah brought with them to Old Trafford for their Champions League debut. This is a club that did not even exist a decade ago and nobody saw their bolt to the title in Azerbaijan coming last season; in 2024-25, they had finished 41 points off the top. The job that their manager, Valdas Dambrauskas, has done since taking over in the summer of last year is extraordinary.

It was also a night for cold, hard reality. Manchester United were back in Europe’s elite competition after a two-year hiatus and in need of something to soothe them after the trauma of their last-gasp coughing up of two points in last Sunday’s Premier League draw at Everton. And before the extremely serious business of the derby here against Manchester City on Sunday. They got it on the back of a first-half performance that burned slowly before catching fire.

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:05 pm

Brave new world: Ultimate Championship brings glowing javelins and $10m prize fund to track and field

New event aims to revolutionise the sport with promises of bigger prize money and a greater role for athletes

Track and field’s brave new world begins in Budapest on Friday night. The action will be fast-paced and slick, with augmented reality showing athletes’ win percentages and javelins and hammers that glow, making them easier to see on a black infield. In the space of 48 hours, a top sprinter could earn $337,500 (£250,000) for just over a minute’s work.

It is all part of the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship, a three-day event with a prize fund of $10m which is designed to pit the best against the best, and kick off a minor revolution in the sport.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:30 am

Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark celebrate their ‘chemistry’ as USA advance to Fiba World Cup semis

• Fiba World Cup: USA 108-56 Hungary

• Reese and Clark have been portrayed as fierce rivals

Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark’ s interactions are a subplot of the women’s Fiba World Cup, the WNBA season and if you spend enough time on social media, a divided United States. Clark and Reese have shown their relationship on the court is thriving, and they both excelled in USA’s 108-56 quarter-final win over Hungary on Thursday.

In Thursday’s game, the growing chemistry showed. The pair had a nifty pick-and-roll to end the first quarter that ended with a layup by Reese. The Atlanta Dream forward returned the favor hitting Clark on a fastbreak for an easy lay-up later in the game.

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:25 am

Russia accused of ‘rapidly growing’ attacks on civilian infrastructure after five killed in Ukraine – Europe live

Ukraine’s foreign minister says Russia is deliberately targeting civilians

One person has died and six were injured in this morning’s Russian attack on a petrol station in Kyiv, city mayor Wladimir Klitschko said in the latest update.

In other news, five people died, and 40 were injured after a Dutch tour bus crashed into a roadside barrier and overturned in eastern Switzerland.

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:43 am

Global bond sell-off resumes as surging oil prices stoke fears about inflation

Crude jumps above $107 a barrel amid concerns over Middle East conflict and out-of-control government borrowing

Nervous investors across big economies have been dumping government bonds, driving up the cost of borrowing, as surging oil prices amplified fears about rising inflation.

The cost of a barrel of oil jumped 6% to above $107 on Thursday amid concerns that advances by Houthi rebels along the Red Sea coast in Yemen could choke off Saudi crude exports.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:05 am

James Talarico accuses Ken Paxton of ‘ignoring’ Epstein survivors

Democrats are targeting Trump’s relationship with Epstein as part of strategy ahead of midterm elections

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, accused his rival Ken Paxton of “ignoring” survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, as Democrats seek to increase pressure on Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Speaking in Dallas, where Republicans are holding a midterm convention this week, Talarico appeared alongside one of Epstein’s victims at an exhibit that featured about 3.5m pages of Department of Justice’s files related to Epstein.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:49 am

Elon Musk attacks film-maker behind documentary about him

Tech mogul calls director Alex Gibney a ‘bitter old man’ who has ‘zero integrity’ in series of posts on X

Elon Musk has issued an angry tirade at the film-maker behind a four-hour documentary about his life and influence, labelling the director, Alex Gibney, a “bitter old man” who has “zero integrity”.

Gibney, who has previously made films about the collapse of Enron, WikiLeaks and Vladimir Putin, premiered his Musk documentary at the Venice film festival this week. He said he believed the world’s richest man was “extremely dangerous”.

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:29 am

Tiananmen Square vigil organisers jailed for seven years in Hong Kong

Pro-democracy activists Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan were found guilty of ‘incitement to subversion’ in controversial national security case

Two pro-democracy activists who were put on trial for organising an annual Tiananmen Square massacre vigil in Hong Kong have been sentenced to seven years in jail, in one of the city’s most significant national security cases.

Chow Hang-tung, 41 and Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, were found guilty in August of incitement to subversion. The court found they had “incited other persons to organise, plan, commit or participate in acts by unlawful means with a view to subverting the state power”.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:43 pm

Hawaii has often dodged the path of hurricanes. Why did it see so many storms this summer?

The island chain has tended to avoid the worst effects, but Hurricanes Lowell and Lala left a trail of damage this year

Hurricane Lowell surged near the Hawaiian Islands this week, leaving a trail of downed trees and power lines, crumbled roads, sunken boats and destroyed piers on the island of Kauai.

Residents were left to grapple not only with the damage, but the rising risks to the tropical archipelago as sea surface temperatures climb.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Former University of Michigan hockey players say they were sexually hazed decades ago

More than a dozen ex-players are suing the University of Michigan, alleging coach and staff were aware of abuse

More than a dozen former hockey players are suing the University of Michigan, alleging their coach and other staff were aware of sexual hazing that included the forced shaving of their genitals and other abuse by teammates decades ago.

“The abuse was ritualized, meticulously planned and sadistic … Enduring sexual abuse was required to be a member of the Michigan men’s ice hockey team,” attorney Michael Pitt said in a sex discrimination lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit.

Published: September 10, 2026, 1:46 pm

Florida executes man in connection to Hog Trail Murders

The execution of Daniel Owen Conahan Jr makes him the state’s 15th person executed this year

A Florida man was executed by lethal injection on Thursday after being convicted of one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the Hog Trail Murders in the 1990s.

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr, 72, was sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery. Authorities found Montgomery’s mutilated body in a wooded south-west Florida area where the remains of at least six people have been found over a three-year span.

Published: September 10, 2026, 3:40 pm

Weather tracker: Hurricane Lowell pounds Hawaii’s western islands

Widespread damage across Ni‘ihau, Kauaʻi and O‘ahu, while in Japan further heavy rainfall causes widespread flooding

Hurricane Lowell caused significant damage to Hawaii’s western islands this week. On Tuesday night the centre of Lowell tracked 50 miles (80km) from the island of Ni‘ihau in Kauai county as a category 2 storm with winds of up to 110mph. The strong winds resulted in widespread power outages across Ni’ihau, and the islands of Kauaʻi and O‘ahu.

The event was particularly notable because a tornado watch had been issued for Kauaʻi on Monday night and into Tuesday morning. According to research maps from Iowa State University, it was likely to be the first tornado watch in Hawaii’s history. In the event, a tornado was not documented, however hurricanes can produce tornadoes and most often occur in thunderstorms within rain bands away from the centre of the hurricane. Currently, five named stormed have occurred in the central Pacific with the strong El Niño this year being a key driver in the above normal hurricane season, as noted by the National Weather Service.

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:05 am

Climate ‘feedback loops’ could worsen global warming by 30%, study finds

Emissions of planet-heating methane and CO2 from natural sources are worsening the climate crisis, paper says

Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are transforming the world’s forests, wetlands and tundra to the point they are releasing emissions that could further worsen global heating by as much as 30%, a new study has found.

As the world heats up, permafrost in the high latitudes is thawing, fiercer wildfires are burning in drying forests and wetlands and lakes are warming. All of these changes are themselves causing the release of planet-heating methane and carbon dioxide locked in trees and soils, therefore worsening the climate crisis, the paper states.

Published: September 10, 2026, 1:00 am

World must reject climate culture wars or face economic ruin, says UN’s Stiell

Warning by United Nations climate chief comes as EU data shows August 2026 was joint hottest month ever

Attempts to stoke a climate crisis culture war must be rejected or the world will face economic disaster, the UN’s climate chief has warned.

Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that this year’s “hot as hell” summer had killed tens of thousands of people in Europe alone and “hammered” infrastructure, businesses and economics, costing a likely €180bn (£155bn), as well as leading to forced migration around the world.

Published: September 10, 2026, 3:42 am

Chemical industry backed laws in three US states to restrict use of air pollution data

As public air monitors disappear, federal rollbacks and state laws are making it harder than ever to know what’s in the air

As the US’s network for monitoring air pollution deteriorates, a Floodlight investigation has found that the chemical industry is going state-to-state to restrict one of the few options citizens have left for holding polluters accountable: low-cost air sensors.

Over the past two years, the non-profit investigative newsroom determined, lawmakers in Louisiana, Kentucky and Ohio have passed strikingly similar laws barring regulators from acting on air-quality data that communities collect themselves – unless it comes from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved equipment that typically costs tens of thousands of dollars. Similar legislation has repeatedly been introduced in West Virginia.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:00 am

Trump faces growing scrutiny over ‘profoundly concerning’ cash gifts for aides including Natalie Harp

The payments amounted to 30% of each aide’s $150,000 annual salary

Donald Trump may have committed “serious” ethical violations by giving three officials including his close personal aide Natalie Harp cash gifts of $45,000 each, according to a former White House “ethics czar”, as a watchdog group called for an investigation.

The non-partisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics over the US president’s handouts to a handful of staff, arguing that an investigation was “clearly warranted”.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:52 am

Florida sues Netflix over misleading parents over minors’ data collection

Lawsuit brought by James Uthmeier, the attorney general, marks latest action by the state against big tech companies

Florida officials filed a lawsuit against Netflix, accusing the streaming giant of misleading parents about its collection of minors’ data and using features that encourage children to “binge watch” content.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday and led by James Uthmeier, the Republican Florida attorney general, marks the latest action by Florida against major technology companies. The red-leaning state has taken an increasingly aggressive approach toward big tech, particularly during the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

Published: September 10, 2026, 1:11 pm

Remains found in North Carolina in 1970s identified as 15-year-old girl

Advanced DNA testing reveals skeletal remains belong to Cindy Marcell Blizzard, who had run away from home

Skeletal remains discovered nearly 50 years ago in North Carolina have been identified as those of a 15-year-old girl who had run away from home.

On 29 December 1977, skeletal remains and clothing were discovered in a wooded area near a tire manufacturing plant in Wilson, a city approximately 40 miles (80km) east of Raleigh. After decades of DNA testing, and with advances in technology, investigators identified the remains as belonging to Cindy Marcell Blizzard, a 15-year-old girl who had run away from her home in Monkton, Maryland, in the spring of 1977, the North Carolina state bureau of investigation (NCSBI) said.

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:42 am

How Charlie Kirk's martyrdom fed the right. And then tore it apart – Stateside with Kai and Carter

Charlie Kirk's death created a vacuum of power that still consumes the Maga right a year later. Immediately after Kirk was shot and killed, his ultraconservative activist organization Turning Point USA announced that his widow, Erika Kirk, would replace her late husband as CEO. But as Guardian reporter J Oliver Conroy tells Kai Wright, conspiracy theories pushed by Kirk's former allies and proteges have dogged both the organization and Erika Kirk herself. Real questions remain about whether Erika Kirk can maintain the enormous power and influence Turning Point holds on the right and what she is planning to do with the organization. Conroy spent months reporting on Charlie Kirk’s legacy talking to dozens of people within Turning Point USA and the larger Maga movement who view Charlie Kirk as a martyr. Conroy says martyrdom is a powerful force that can’t be controlled

• J Oliver Conroy's Guardian story on Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA:  Grief, fury, conspiracy: inside Turning Point USA after Charlie Kirk’s killing

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:45 am

Houthis seize key Yemeni port of Mocha in drive to take control of Red Sea coast

Iran and its proxies move closer to full control of two shipping chokepoints as regional conflict widens

• Explained: why the fighting in Yemen matters globally

Houthi forces in Yemen are making a concerted drive to take over the country’s Red Sea coast fully, claiming control of the key port of Mocha in the most serious wave of fighting with the Saudi-backed government in years, bringing the Iran-aligned group closer to full control of a key shipping route.

Seizure of the coast and some of the islands in the sea would be a strategic disaster for Saudi Arabia and the US, taking Iran and its proxies closer to full control of two choke points for western shipping on opposite sides of the Arabian peninsula: the Bab al-Mandab at the southern end of the Red Sea and the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:39 am

Ryanair will dispute passenger’s claim he was sucked out of window

CEO Michael O’Leary tells reporters the businessman was sucked ‘towards’ but not out of the opening

Ryanair has said it will be “disputing” that any part of a passenger’s body was sucked outside when a window on one of its aircraft broke while in flight.

US investigators are examining the incident which left Ljubisa Karović, 61, severely injured when the window beside him shattered on a Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany in July.

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:10 am

China’s Huawei branded a criminal enterprise as tech firm’s US trial opens

The defense says: ‘It’s about competition, not conspiracy’

A US prosecutor described China’s Huawei as a criminal enterprise that stole from US companies to build its telecommunications empire, as ⁠the trial against the tech company kicked off in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.

“Theft, lies, cover-up,” Taylor Stout, a trial attorney from the US Department of Justice, said in the government’s opening statement. “For 20 years, that’s how Huawei, a massive Chinese telecommunications company, victimized American companies ⁠and abused the American financial system, all ⁠in an effort to dominate the telecommunications ​industry around the world.”

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:41 am

Secret son revelation ignites bitter succession dispute in Ugandan kingdom

Family of late King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV reject committee’s choice of cousin and TV presenter as new monarch

A traditional Ugandan kingdom has become engulfed in a bitter succession dispute after the family of a king who recently died rejected the selection of a television news anchor as his successor.

King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV, who became the world’s youngest reigning monarch when he took the throne in the kingdom of Tooro in 1995 at the age of three, died on 27 August in the US, where he was receiving cancer treatment.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:29 am

BredaPhoto Festival – in pictures

The 12th edition of the BredaPhoto Festival opens on 11 September 2026. Under the title Our Songs Came Through, the festival in the Dutch city of Breda brings together stories of comfort and resilience

• BredaPhoto Festival 2026: Our Songs Came Through 11 September – 25 October 2026

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

NAZA review – Israeli intelligence officers cast chilling light on civilian deaths

Venice film festival: Under the cover of night, anonymous personnel discuss AI, error rates and problematic intelligence units in a documentary produced by the Guardian

Here is a disquieting documentary about what Israel’s military chiefs in Gaza reputedly call “Naza”, meaning civilian collateral damage – itself a queasy euphemism. The calculated “Naza” number is the amount of projected civilian deaths from each military strike, and perhaps it will come to have the same connotations as the US military term “body count” during Vietnam. The directors are Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the film-makers behind No Other Land, which was about attacks by the Israel Defense Forces on Palestinian West Bank villages. NAZA is executive produced by Jonathan Glazer and James Wilson and appears under the production auspices of the Guardian, in which some of the stories have already appeared.

There are flaws: interviews were conducted on the condition of anonymity, but if no-one can be persuaded to put their name and face to their words (and of course it is terribly dangerous) then the impact of this as testimony is lessened. But even so, the film is casting a chilling light on what is happening now in Gaza.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:15 am

Slow Horses to Neagley: the seven best shows to stream this week

Gary Oldman’s hit spy show is as pungently scripted and beautifully performed as ever. Plus: Jack Reacher’s formidable protege gets her own show

There are various blasts from the past as this sour and salty espionage drama returns for season six – although some have more staying power than others. In a development that might hint at a show approaching the end of its natural lifespan (although it’s been renewed for a seventh season), someone is killing former occupants of Slough House. Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is typically unsentimental about this but other Horses are more concerned – particularly given the return of an old antagonist who proved to be a ruthless and relentless foe with a connection to the team. Slow Horses feels unlikely to surprise us at this point but it’s still pungently scripted and beautifully performed.
Apple TV, from Wednesday 16 September

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

Scherzetto review – Toni Servillo brings gravitas to a dithering Neapolitan ghost story

Venice film festival
The Venice fixture plays an illustrator haunted by his boyhood in Mario Martone’s part spooky, part sentimental oddity

It’s always good to see the veteran Italian star Toni Servillo at Venice; in fact, the festival is pretty much unthinkable without him. But this initially promising prospect – adapted from a novel by Domenico Starnone – is a minor, quibbling tonal oddity, unsure if it wants to be scary or sentimental. Servillo lends it as much gravitas as he can: his mere presence is valuable ballast and the streetscape scenes of Naples are handled with a connoisseur’s touch by director Mario Martone, whose previous Naples-set movie Nostalgia was far superior.

Daniele (played by Servillo) is a septuagenarian book illustrator whose old-fashioned, hand-drawn artistry is something he testily treasures. He has come back to his family home in Naples, to the gloomy apartment where he was brought up, just behind the train station, and where his grownup daughter Betta (Serena Rossi) now lives with her husband and their five-year-old son Mario (newcomer Lorenzo Perrotta), who is adorable and as bright as a button, but also borderline insufferable.

Published: September 10, 2026, 12:45 pm

From Chris Rock to Helen Mirren: 10 films to look out for at the Toronto film festival 2026

This year’s festival offers an unusual Patricia Highsmith thriller, an adaptation of a hit stage show, a harrowing prison drama and a new way into the Rocky franchise

Defining Toronto’s place within the fall festival season has become a little harder in recent years. As fewer studios and film-makers want to brave the risks that come attached to premiering on such a stage (last year’s best picture winner One Battle After Another skipped festivals entirely and went straight to cinema), those that do tend to prefer Venice, Telluride and, especially this year, New York.

Last year’s biggest Toronto breakout was Obsession, a micro-budget, up-for-sale horror that played as part of the midnight madness strand, and while that film is now being pushed as an awards contender, it’s not what crowds and pundits typically expect from the starry, prestige-first festival. Is it best viewed now as a rough-and-ready genre hub or maybe a sales market, where perhaps we can still expect some Oscar contenders to be unveiled. It can make figuring out what to see and what to avoid a little harder – but here are some films to keep an eye on over the next week or so.

Published: September 10, 2026, 2:00 am

Jimmy Kimmel on RNC convention: ‘They’re very nervous about the midterms, and rightly so’

Late-night hosts recapped the Republican event in Dallas and calls to ban Zohran Mamdani from 9/11 ceremonies

Late-night hosts roasted the Republican National Committee’s underattended “midterm convention” and attempts to ban the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, from 9/11 remembrances.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:21 am

Haruomi Hosono: Yours Sincerely review

(Ghostly International)
Unpredictable and utterly beguiling, the septuagenarian beloved by Harry Styles brings a hint of mischief to his innocently charming songs

Haruomi Hosono is one of the most influential figures in Japanese music. In 1969, his psych-folk group Happy End were the first rock group to sing in Japanese; decades later, their song Kaze wo Atsumete was rediscovered for the Lost in Translation soundtrack. He was also an integral member of electronic pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, and scored movies and video games, while his solo albums swing from foundational city pop texts to experiments in ambient and arch exotica.

Now 79, with disciples including Van Dyke Parks and Harry Styles (who named 2022’s Harry’s House after 1973 solo album Hosono House), he still makes whatever music he wants. His 23rd solo album is wilful, playful, unpredictable and utterly beguiling. Rooted in the Japanese concept of omoiyari, roughly translated as compassion, these songs are big-hearted, focusing on warmth and positivity: opening reverie Note of Mothership features a chorus of overlapping voices murmur-singing “we are mothers”; the sweet Happy Holiday repeats its title over an enchantingly simple melody; Sincerely is a sleepy, Leon Redbone-esque strum.

Published: September 11, 2026, 12:30 am

Gretchen Parlato: The Wise Ones review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(Edition)
With guests including Robert Glasper, Parlato turns her immaculate phrasing to soft funk, dancefloor numbers and interpretations of Stevie Wonder and Tears for Fears

Hearing Gretchen Parlato’s spellbinding version of the Herbie Hancock song Butterfly was unforgettable when the eloquent LA-born singer’s star glimmered into view in the 2000s. The unique qualities she revealed soon brought her worldwide acclaim. Butterfly would open in an onstage silence only broken by Parlato’s soft handclap on a Brazilian groove, eventually turned into a wordless vocal hook, and then the awestruck natural-world homage of the lyrics written by Hancock’s sister Jean. She would time phrases between deliberately emphatic in-breaths like cymbal hits, and arrestingly morph words in and out of abstract sound.

The Wise Ones arrives as her third album since 2021, when she returned from six years of parenting. Here, she’s backed by longtime partners including guitarist Lionel Loueke, folk-rockish and jazz-influenced multi-instrumentalist Alan Hampton and Parlato’s percussionist husband Mark Guiliana, plus guests including Robert Glasper, Meshell Ndegeocello and Becca Stevens.

Published: September 11, 2026, 1:00 am

Lucas Debargue: Gershwin Variations album review – freshness and flair

(Sony)
Alongside supple and distinctive accounts of Rhapsody in Blue and the Piano Concerto and Preludes, the French pianist showcases his jazz chops in reinterpretations of Gershwin’s timeless songs

Ever since Lucas Debargue took fourth prize at the 2015 international Tchaikovsky competition, he’s refused to be pigeonholed. His distinctive journey brings him now to George Gershwin, complementing the piano concerto and preludes with beguiling original explorations of the composer’s songs in the form of a dozen études. His supple account of Rhapsody in Blue is based on Gershwin’s solo piano arrangement, to which he adds his own partly improvised cadenzas. Like everything here, it comes up fresh as a daisy.

The Piano Concerto in F brings Debargue’s jazz credentials to the fore (he cut his teeth on the club circuit). The Orchestre de Paris under Elim Chan provides an admirably clear and concise accompaniment. The edge-of-your-seat stakes are reminiscent of André Previn.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:30 pm

Angine de Poitrine review – mind-boggling math rock mastery from freaky Québécois duo

Le Poisson Rouge, New York

The brilliantly strange experimental band’s live show is a must-see spectacle powered by glorious noise and wild flair

Their masks light up now. To the extent there was a hard news event from Wednesday’s exhilarating sold-out New York debut of Angine de Poitrine, that was it. The Québécois duo went viral in corners of the internet earlier this year thanks in part to their microtonal, odd-metered take on hard-driving rock, but also because of those ostentatious costumes and masks – black and white polka dot tunics and jumpsuits with oversized papier-mache faces and exaggerated features, originally featuring golden glittery eyes and signature pyramid accoutrements. The new ones have all those same things but with the added ability to light up in a bright yellow at key moments.

A small detail, to be sure, but one got the sense that the weeknight crowd was reveling in it and many others at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) – an appropriately French-named venue given the band’s home province. Wednesday was the first of the band’s two shows at the 700-capacity basement venue renowned for its sound system and commitment to adventurous programming. Both Angine shows had been sold out for many months, ever since a video of them playing in a French studio was uploaded to KEXP’s YouTube channel and went viral. At time of writing, the video is closing in on 20m views – a remarkable tally given that the music, by mass-appeal standards, is so magnificently odd.

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:21 am

Taipei Story by Rebecca F Kuang review – the torture and hilarity of learning Chinese

An American Chinese student studies Mandarin in Taiwan, in this heartfelt journey of self-discovery and family secrets

What is Taiwan? A former Japanese colony? A centre of the semiconductor industry? A democracy overseen by American imperialism? China’s next military target? An island of Austronesian Indigenous tribes? Is Taipei a cultural emblem of Taiwan, or just another booming global capital out of touch with the rest of the country? What stories will Lily Chen, an American Chinese student at Yale and Rebecca F Kuang’s funny and deadpan protagonist in Taipei Story, discover in this melting pot while spending 10 weeks learning Mandarin?

A prolific maverick with rare satirical wit, Kuang has built a career debunking authoritative institutions. Babel (2022) highlights the prejudices of the British empire through a fantastical Oxford translation institute; Yellowface (2023) transplants a heist thriller into the dark heart of American publishing; Katabasis (2025), a journey into the underworld, gives the academic inferno at Cambridge a new lease of death. Centring on a tough Mandarin language school, Taipei Story explores the torture, hilarity and pretension of learning a second language, but here Kuang also offers a heartfelt journey of self-discovery and family wounds.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:24 pm

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie audiobook review – stories with levity and laughter

The author explores themes of legacy, mortality and loneliness in the first work of fiction since his near-fatal attack

Five short stories and five readers make up Salman Rushdie’s collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction since the near-fatal attack in 2022 where he sustained life-changing injuries. These tales find the author exploring legacy, mortality, loneliness and the ageing process. In these potentially bleak themes, Rushdie finds levity and laughter, as well as profundity.

Late, read by the actor Naveen Andrews, is a ghost story set in King’s College, Cambridge, where an honorary fellow, SM Arthur, wakes up dead in his college room and wonders if he will be trapped there for eternity. He meets a lonely but very much alive Indian student, Rosa, who is stuck at college for the holidays. Sid Sagar reads The Old Man in the Piazza, an allegory about free speech and how “we have become bar room moralists. Does the thumb point upward. Does it turn down? … We are all now gladiators in the Colosseum of the Thumb.”

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Marvel’s Wolverine review – a gloriously conflicted lead is let down by crude, boring battling

PlayStation 5; Insomniac Games
Logan is well realised by Liam McIntyre and some exquisite character art, but there are lapses in narrative and emotional arcs and some of the combat feels like a chore

It was always going to be difficult to follow Spider-Man. Insomniac’s three games based around the web-slinger are masterpieces of superhero wish fulfilment, allowing you to swoop above a depiction of Manhattan alive with graffiti artists, roving journalists and gun-toting gangsters. If anyone should be up to the task, it’s Wolverine. A beloved Marvel stalwart, his life much darker and bloodier than Peter Parker’s, he seems the ideal protagonist for a moody action adventure. Yet somehow this well-made game falls short of its potential.

Set years before the founding of the X-Men, Marvel’s Wolverine sees a disenfranchised Logan falling back in with Sabretooth and Mystique when their mentor Nathaniel Essex is kidnapped by mutant-hating billionaire Bolivar Trask. This archetypal tech bro has a disturbing plan for world domination and the X Team are out to stop him – but there is a secret buried in Wolverine’s past that’s about to cause an eruption. It’s a decent setup, filled with the sort of intrigue, violence and Freudian tension we expect from the X-Men.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Alex Winter: ‘Michael Winner was the most erudite sociopath I’ve ever met’

The Bill & Ted actor answers your questions about working with Keanu Reeves, whether there will be a fourth instalment and nights out in Brixton with the Death Wish director

You were born in London but grew up in America. When do you feel most British? DonarudoToranpu
The UK is still my second home. I’ve worked there a lot as an adult. When I’m back in London, I like walking on Hampstead Heath, so I would say that’s where I feel most at home.

Having played Marko in The Lost Boys and then John Polidori in Haunted Summer, have you been tempted to take on another vampire-related role? And was getting staked to death while you were sleeping a bit of a disappointing end for Marko – what would have been your preferred way of going out in style? Death by stereo, perhaps? Finbarre and MoreorLesPaul
I’d love to do another vampire movie. I love those characters. They’re interesting and great fun to play. There are some really good vampire movies – I’m grateful I was in one that has, for some reason that none of us can figure out, really stood the test of time. And I love Marko’s death. As an actor, the first time you get staked is the most memorable.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:00 am

‘An embodiment of white fears’: how zombies went from Haitian spiritual tradition to Hollywood monsters

Maya Annik Bedward’s fascinating new documentary goes beyond reductive imagery to place the zombie and vodou in their true historical context

American film has a canon of racist disinformation that famously includes The Birth of a Nation, King Kong (1933) and Gone With the Wind.

A new documentary makes a compelling argument that zombies, as presented, commodified and popularized by Hollywood, are part of the same tradition. Black Zombie serves as work of restoration and correction, placing its faith in the quiet, persistent power of the truth as it stares down a tsunami of colonial erasure, denial, whitewashing, violence and theft.

Published: September 10, 2026, 4:00 am

‘Patients’ who pay $200,000 to be frozen after death are waiting to be reborn in an Australian shed

Exclusive: Southern Cryonics operates out of a shed in Holbrook in rural NSW. Experts say reanimation is ‘a dream’ but true believers are willing to pay for a second chance at life

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I’m standing atop a very tall ladder, peering down through a haze of liquid nitrogen vapour into a giant stainless steel flask containing three smaller containers.

Inside the smaller wedges – which are labelled 005, 006, 007 – are three of Peter Tsolakides’ “patients”. The frozen bodies belong to people who, before their death, paid handsomely to be cryogenically frozen in the hope of one day being brought back to life.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:00 am

‘I never imagined such pleasure could be had from the simple sardine’: readers’ favourite foodie experiences in Europe

Your top culinary discoveries, from Bled cake in Slovenia to sardines in Portugal and seafood soup in Spain

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Last August, the smoky aroma of grilled sardines drifting over the beach in Portimão woke me up from my sunbathing on the beach. Attracted by the aroma of barbecued fish, we found ourselves in the old port where, for €12, I was served two delicious sandwiches on rustic bread of sardines in garlic and olive oil, with a small cold beer. I sat down, ate and chatted with locals on benches at simple communal tables. The important thing seemed to be to enjoy food together. The next morning, a reenactment of the fishing boats arriving loaded with fish, as they once were, was a real spectacle – complete with guitar playing, drum-banging and excited seagulls whirling and wailing above in the hope of a feast. Later, concerts and dancing animated the town as the party for the sardine festival went on well into the night. Cooking demos and dishes including sardine-based soup and salads, added to the enjoyment. I never imagined such pleasure could be had from the simple sardine.
Joe

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

My mother-in-law buys overly girly clothes for my daughter. I try to be gracious but it kills me – do I tell her to stop?

There’s a risk in trying to get our girls away from frilly skirts that we swing all the way to a different kind of enforcement, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes

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I am the mother of a six-year-old girl, and I have relatively progressive views about gender. Among other things, I try to give my daughter a choice of clothes that are practical – T-shirts, leggings – and that tend to be unisex in colour scheme. There are no overly fussy and frilly skirts and dresses in pink and sparkles in her wardrobe. As much as possible, I try to buy non-sweatshop brands. These choices are part of a world system of values I want to show my daughter – that being a “girl” is so much more than just wearing a frilly dress; that we can have well-made things without contributing to the suffering of others.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, loves buying these sorts of clothes for her granddaughter. She is a kind and caring woman, and this is one of her love languages. These clothes are often gauche, overly feminine, expensive and poorly made.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:00 am

A scientist said bananas ‘kill’ the benefit of blueberries. Is that true?

Can blending these popular fruits in a smoothie adversely affect the berries’ nutritional benefits? Experts weigh in

This year was shaping up to be a banner year for bananas: they were lauded as “2026’s big viral taste”, landed pride of place as Prada’s new lip balm flavor, and were even deemed “the next pumpkin spice”.

But this summer, the Mel Robbins Podcast featured Dr Rhonda Patrick, a biomedical scientist, who said that adding banana to a blueberry smoothie could adversely affect the nutritional benefits of the berries.

Published: September 10, 2026, 9:00 am

‘I’ve got more of a sense of humour than Ralph Lauren’ – nine things we learned from Paul Smith’s new memoir

He put personality into boxers, collaborated with the pope (sort of) and is to thank for novelty socks. The British designer’s new book reveals there’s more to Smith than his stripes

In July, the British designer Paul Smith celebrated his 80th birthday and he has now released a memoir to mark the occasion. Threads: My Life in Style tells Smith’s story, from growing up in Nottingham and leaving school with no qualifications to selling suits to celebs, including Gary Oldman and David Bowie.

Here are nine of our favourite lesser-known takeaways from the book.

Published: September 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Ralph Lauren proves the American dream still sells at New York fashion week

Designer mixes burnt-out velvet and shredded denim with a mythology that keeps getting more profitable

The opening show of fashion’s month of catwalks was not on the official schedule, but Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo were snuggled on to celebrity-packed benches in a cathedral-sized marble hall where tapestry-hung walls and a gilded coffered ceiling framed a view over lower Manhattan.

Ralph Lauren, 86, took his bow at the end of this women’s wear show casually dressed in a varsity jacket spelling out New York. In an industry obsessed with youth and novelty, Lauren is more relevant than ever in his ninth decade.

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:59 am

I turned off my algorithm for 24 hours. Is this how social media used to be?

Thanks to a little-known feature in Instagram, I try to travel back to 2012 – before everything on the internet was an ad

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I have a confession. I love my social media algorithm. It is a perfectly curated window into my insane and inquiring mind. It knows precisely which videos will tickle me and which memes will gently distract me from the slow collapse of humankind.

On Tuesday the Australian government announced “world-leading” reforms that would force social media platforms to allow users to opt-out of algorithms, dubbed “my feed, my way”. On the same day, I was delighted to be confronted with a video on Instagram of a woman accidentally spilling a bucket of eels on a Chinese train. Dozens of eels slithered among the passengers, who appeared not as surprised as I would have expected.

Published: September 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Homes for sale in a national park in England – in pictures

From an energy-efficient bungalow in the South Downs to an historic chapel in Northumberland

Published: September 10, 2026, 11:00 pm

You be the judge: should my son finish bottles and packets before opening new ones?

Jasper stands accused of being wasteful but feels aggrieved that Mindy says he’s being lazy. Is this a race to the bottom? You decide

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

Opening new products when old ones aren’t empty is wasteful – and he does it to avoid cleaning up

Published: September 10, 2026, 12:00 am

Canada helped save the bald eagle from near extinction in the US – does the White House know?

The White House posted a photo of bald eagle attacking a Canada goose to send a message – but it was Canada that played a critical role in the recovery of the bird in the US

In late August, the White House posted a real photograph on social media of a bald eagle standing atop the limp neck of a Canada goose.

The raptor presses the goose’s face into the grey winter slush. With its stark white head and brilliant yellow talons, the eagle looks victorious and defiant.

Published: September 10, 2026, 6:00 am

People in the US: how have you coped during this summer of record heat?

We’d like to hear from people about the impact of extreme heat this summer – and if you’ve had your power cut

It’s been a record summer of heat in the US with rolling heat domes and July being the hottest month ever recorded in the country, surpassing temperatures stretching back over 132 years of reliable measurements, to 1895. July’s temperatures surpassed previous high marks set in July 1936, in the teeth of dust bowl conditions, and in July 2012.

We want to hear from people across the US on how they have coped with the heat – and what it has meant for utility bills. Has the heat affected you or your family physically? Have you had to change your daily routines?

Have your bills soared with the cost of keeping your home cool?

And we especially want to hear from people who have had their electricity cut off during the extreme heat or have had trouble keeping up with utility payments.

Published: September 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Tell us: what’s the most surprising experience gift you’ve been given?

We’d like to hear from people on the most unusual experience gifts they’ve received

People are buying more experiences as gifts for friends and family.

Whether it’s afternoon tea, skydiving or pottery classes, people are coming up with more unusual ways to treat their loved ones.

Published: September 10, 2026, 5:19 am

Bayeux wonder, Bertie the bulldog and the Lady in Blue: photos of the day – Thursday

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

Published: September 10, 2026, 6:21 am