It’s Harry and Meghan in Finding Freedom 2: Back in Blighty | Marina Hyde

Hard to fathom exactly why Megxit is over and the self-exiled wonder generators are leaving California. Luckily, the internet sleuths are on the case

Wednesday night brought an absolute cloudburst of psychic rain for our parched land, as it emerged that Prince Harry and Meghan were reversing their self-styled “freedom flight” to California and returning to live in the UK. Nature is healing! Is that … is that how the expression goes? Either way, all humans in Britain have taken the announcement brilliantly, while fatted calf prices climbed steeply at the news that the reverse Megxit is imminent, with only an adequate headline soubriquet yet to be found. Megain? Megraine?

Inevitably, thoughts turned swiftly to what it all meant. One of the funniest aspects of Meghan and Harry coverage is how their decisions are always analysed as though we were parsing the 4D chess moves of 19th-century master strategists. We are forever imagining we are dealing with a couple of Bismarcks or Clausewitzes, as opposed to a resting actor and the “chief impact officer” of a firm designed to offer tech-based solutions to men crying in their cars or something.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

What a Time to be Alive! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20) is released in September. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Published: August 21, 2026, 4:42 am

He has a work permit, a coffee shop – and an ICE ankle monitor: ‘Is this America?’

Business owner Assim Alkhawaja was arrested by ICE as he dropped off Lyft passengers at a military base. Now he’s stuck in a terrifying fight to stay in the US

Deep within the bowels of San Diego’s federal courthouse, Assim Alkhawaja sat on the floor outside a nondescript office, waiting to be called for his ICE-mandated immigration appointment. He stared straight ahead, his posture tense, his face a mask.

The hallway was brown, as was the carpet. Above Alkhawaja’s head hung a framed stock photo of a waterfall. A few paces away, official government signs encouraged people without legal status to self-deport. “Leave on your own terms,” they read, in several languages. “Claim a free flight and an exit bonus for each member of your family.”

Published: August 21, 2026, 4:00 am

A party, 101 princesses and an eccentric millionaire: Jon Ronson on a mysterious castle – and what it taught him about masculinity in crisis

When my son texted me from a Connecticut fortress in the middle of the night with an alarming message, it set me on a quest to understand the bizarre lifestyle of its owner

I awoke one morning in the summer of 2023 to discover that, while I’d slept, my son Joel had been texting my wife and me a series of unnerving messages about a perilous situation he had found himself in, in Connecticut.

From what I could tell, as I frantically tried to piece together the night’s events, one of Joel’s friends had been invited to a party being held by a stranger she’d met that week on Tinder. So Joel and two others went along for the ride. But when they arrived, they found the man’s home so bizarre that Joel did something he’d never done before – he sent me the coordinates of his location and a photograph, just in case.

Published: August 21, 2026, 7:00 am

Ditch the giant handbag, don’t overdo the botox and 16 other ways to extend your ‘hotspan’

If ‘lifespan’ is the time you’re alive and ‘healthspan’ the years you’re disease-free, then ‘hotspan’ is the period you’re attractive and vibrant. Want to increase yours? Experts share their tips

Forget 12-step skincare routines, red light therapy and injectables – the single most important thing you can do for your skin is wear UV protection. “Not just sun protection, but UV protection, every single day, regardless of weather or season,” says Dr Jennifer Owens, resident aesthetic expert at the Reborne Longevity clinic in London. “Up to 90% of visible skin ageing is caused by UV exposure – nothing else comes close in terms of impact.”

Published: August 21, 2026, 7:00 am

We’ll never be royals: the California town where Prince Harry and Meghan lived says goodbye

As the couple plans their return to the UK, Montecito’s whirlwind stint on the global stage may be coming to an end

The bucolic coastal California town of Montecito was thrust into the limelight six years ago as the backdrop for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s second act following an acrimonious split from Buckingham Palace.

But as the couple plans their return to the United Kingdom, Montecito’s whirlwind stint on the global stage may be coming to an end.

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:00 am

‘Such adept cover stars’: why dogs are taking over fashion in the ‘AI face’ era

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

Published: August 21, 2026, 7:00 am

Trump faces backlash over reports US navy carrier could be named after him instead of Black war hero

Sources say US navy is working to rename carrier originally planned to honor second world war sailor Doris Miller

The Trump administration has been accused of delivering a “slap in the face” to US military veterans after reports that a navy aircraft carrier set to honor a Black war hero may, instead, be named after Donald Trump.

The US navy had previously announced that the carrier under construction would be called the USS Doris Miller, in tribute to a sailor celebrated for his heroism during the attack on Pearl Harbor in the second world war.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:14 am

US supreme court lets Trump continue work on White House ballroom for now

Chief justice signs temporary order to permit work while court considers emergency appeal from administration

The US supreme court has allowed Donald Trump to continue construction of his controversial White House ballroom for now, temporarily pausing a lower court order that would halt much of the project.

Supreme court chief justice John Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday, permitting work to continue on the planned White House addition – a top priority of the president – while the court considers an emergency appeal from Trump’s administration.

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:48 pm

DHS confirms just 185 non-citizens on Nevada voter rolls after claiming there were thousands more

The department told Nevada officials that the 15,903 figure registered was ‘preliminary’ and more than 14,000 names still needed review

About a month after alleging Nevada had as many as 16,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials admitted they had confirmed that only 185 were actually non-citizens, according to records obtained by the Guardian.

In a primetime TV address on 16 July, Donald Trump claimed that a DHS review had found about 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four states.

Published: August 21, 2026, 11:22 am

The US has a plan to save the Colorado River. Experts say it won’t be enough to stop the crisis

The 10-year blueprint mandates water cuts of up to 40% for California, Arizona and Nevada

It’s official: after years of tense negotiations and missed deadlines, there is finally a plan to govern the future of the imperiled Colorado River - or at least the makings of one.

With the previous framework set to expire in October, the US Bureau of Reclamation publicly released its proposal for a new plan on Friday.

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:41 pm

Texas slashes $50m judgment against Alex Jones over false claim Sandy Hook shooting was hoax

Appeals court slashes judgment to $1.5m in a significant legal victory for the rightwing Infowars founder

A Texas appeals court has slashed the $50m judgment to $1.5m against Alex Jones, founder of the rightwing platform Infowars, over falsely calling the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a hoax.

The ruling does not affect a $1.4bn judgment against Jones in Connecticut, but is a significant legal victory for Jones after he and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages for claiming the mass shooting didn’t happen.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:27 am

First deportation flight lands in Haiti after TPS suspension

ICE charter carrying more than 160 Haitian nationals landed in Cap-Haïtien, after temporary protection status was revoked

The first deportation flight to Haiti since the US supreme court upheld Donald Trump’s power to strip 350,000 Haitians – and others – of a key type of legal status in the US landed in the troubled nation on Thursday.

The flight was carrying more that 160 Haitian nationals and landed in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city, aboard an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:53 am

Lindsay Clancy murder trial: rebuttal witnesses called after defense rests

Closing arguments could come on Monday as prosecutors seek murder conviction over deaths of three young children

Lindsay Clancy’s defense in her murder trial rested on Friday after calling witnesses to testify about the ailing mother’s mental state and attempts to seek help before she killed her young children.

The defense wrapped more quickly than some expected given that the prosecution rested their case on Monday.

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:50 pm

Meghan reportedly in talks to join Guy Ritchie’s TV series The Gentlemen

The Duchess of Sussex is said to be discussing a return to acting in the third season of Netflix’s hit crime series

The Duchess of Sussex is in talks to make her acting return in Netflix’s hit series The Gentlemen.

According to Variety, Meghan is in discussions to join the third season, which has yet to receive an official greenlight. The Gentlemen is a spin-off from the 2019 crime comedy of the same name with Guy Ritchie acting as creator of both.

Published: August 21, 2026, 11:17 am

Tornadoes pummel New York’s Long Island and Delaware capital

First responders also rescued flood-stranded people after storms unleashed heavy rains in the US north-east

Residents in Delaware’s capital and on Long Island, New York, were picking up the pieces on Friday after tornadoes touched down during sudden storms that battered the north-eastern US with heavy rains and left dozens of people stranded in their cars during flash flooding.

In Atlantic Beach on Long Island, which stretches out into the ocean to the east of New York City, images posted on social media showed a large funnel cloud over the water and small buildings torn apart at a beach club.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:15 am

Trump threatens $5bn lawsuit over liberal National Guard policy report

A report released by thinktank Cap argues the deployment of the National Guard failed to have a measurable impact on crime, despite costing billions

The Center for American Progress (Cap) received a letter from Donald Trump’s lawyer threatening a $5bn lawsuit unless the liberal research organization retracts a report criticizing the effectiveness of the president’s National Guard rollout.

The report released 13 July argues that the National Guard deployment in Washington DC, Memphis and Los Angeles failed to have a measurable impact on crime in these cities despite an estimated cost of $1.7bn. The report looks at the falling rate of crime in cities without a National Guard intervention and concludes that they are not statistically different from the rate of decrease in those that had the intervention, noting that violent crime began falling well before Trump took office in 2025.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:17 pm

Experts raise alarm over Trump’s public consultation on vaccines policy

Asking people to weigh in on adoption of different categories in move that will sow confusion and create access challenges, say experts

The Trump administration is asking for public feedback on changes to the ways it recommends vaccines – likely opening the door to greater access challenges and confusion, experts say.

In a notice published by the health and human services (HHS) to the Federal Register on Friday, officials say they are now seeking comments from the public about the current categories for vaccine recommendations, which so far fall into routine, risk-based and shared clinical decision-making.

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:34 pm

Trump administration begins transfer of $725m to UN, amid billions owed

UN secretary general has said UN faces ‘imminent financial collapse’ due to unpaid contributions from member states

The Trump administration has started the process to transfer $725m to the United Nations, a congressional notification seen by Reuters ⁠showed – a move aid experts said ⁠was a welcome step towards paying ​billions in dues owed.

There was no immediate response from Washington DC to questions about the reasons for the payment from an administration that has slashed funding to many UN agencies and blasted the global body for not living up to ⁠its potential.

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:14 pm

Voting rights experts skeptical over Trump pledge of 1,000 election monitors

Department of Justice plan raises questions over its ability to recruit so many people – and what they would do

• US politics live – latest updates

Former officials and voting rights experts have expressed skepticism over a pledge by the Trump administration to dispatch 1,000 monitors across the country to scrutinize November’s US midterm elections.

While the Department of Justice (DoJ) has expressed hope that the operation will be the largest in its history, its plan raised questions over its ability to recruit so many people – and what they would do.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:00 am

Lindsay Clancy killed her children. Why do many women support her? – Stateside with Kai and Carter

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse accused of murdering her three children, is wrapping up its fifth week. On Friday morning, the defense rested, and the public attention to the case is at a fever-pitch — especially on social media. Clancy, 36, does not deny that she strangled her children, but has pleaded not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, also known as an insanity defense. She argues that she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis, a rare and devastating condition that can go unrecognized and untreated. Host Carter Sherman speaks with Jenna Amatulli, deputy head of news for Guardian US, about how the case has renewed attention on the fundamental shortcomings in the US's maternal healthcare system, and about why Clancy's story has captivated – and polarized – so many people

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:45 pm

Why is Trump’s ‘human printer’ aide Natalie Harp suddenly in the spotlight? - The Latest

One of Donald Trump’s closest and most devoted aides, Natalie Harp, has faced intense media scrutiny this week, after a Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, name-checked her in a speech that went viral. So what do we know about Harp, who is often referred to as the ‘human printer’? And why is everybody talking about her relationship with Trump? Helen Pidd speaks to international news editor Paul Owen

Published: August 21, 2026, 10:07 am

This California town booted out its leaders. Now they’re refusing to leave

Avenal has been rocked by the council’s refusal to accept the results of a recall election – and the repercussions extend far beyond the Central valley

From the outside, the city of Avenal appears to embody every bit of its motto – an “oasis in the sun”. Approaching the community, passing through the dusty yellow hillsides of the Central valley, Avenal emerges with a sudden burst of green on the horizon.

Its small-town feel and quiet tree-lined streets offer respite from the bustling Interstate 5 about five miles away. But trouble is brewing here that has brought this lonesome city national attention.

Published: August 20, 2026, 6:00 am

Controversial California oil pipeline can continue to operate, judge rules

State sought to stop system off coast of Santa Barbara from resuming operations after Trump ordered its reopening

An oil pipeline can continue to operate off the California coast after a judge gave it the green light this week, despite the opposition of state regulators and environmental groups.

The system off the coast of Santa Barbara resumed operations earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade after Donald Trump ordered Sable Offshore Corporation to reopen it, citing US energy needs during the war in Iran.

Published: August 20, 2026, 5:13 pm

FBI raids Eric Swalwell’s home amid sexual assault claims inquiry – report

Federal agents also ‘seized electronic devices’ from former Democratic representative at San Francisco airport

Authorities are said to have searched the Washington DC home of disgraced former California Democratic representative Eric Swalwell on Sunday amid an ongoing law enforcement investigation into sexual assault allegations.

CNN reported that federal agents on Saturday also “seized electronic devices” from Swalwell at the San Francisco airport, citing unnamed sources familiar with the investigation. Multiple other outlets have confirmed the federal search; the Daily Mail was the first to report this law enforcement activity.

Published: August 20, 2026, 11:10 am

I asked 13 college grads for dorm essentials that stood the test of time

I asked 13 people about the things they have carried from college into adulthood –and found their modern day equivalents

• 21 things tweens want for back-to-school season, according to tweens

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

One of the highlights of the summer before college was trotting off to my local Linens N Things to outfit my new home, a triple dorm room in the Little Building at Emerson College in Boston. Armed with a list of must-haves and strongly suggested essentials, I filled a shopping cart with a lot of stuff I’d use immediately (jersey twin XL sheets) and stuff that I’d eventually throw away after four years (the very same sheets, useless after college when you will never see a twin XL bed again.)

Most, if not all, of the stuff I bought didn’t make it out of Boston, save for a pop-up laundry hamper that did a tour of duty in San Francisco, surviving three moves in four years, before being relegated to its final resting place, the garbage can.

Published: August 21, 2026, 6:15 am

When TV turns sour: the shows we simply can’t stomach any more

They were once the hottest shows on television – gripping, sexy, hilarious, zeitgeisty. But for our writers, the likes of America’s Next Top Model, House of Cards and The Office are now part of their viewing history they feel tainted by

When I think of the summer holidays when I was a teenager, I think of watching America’s Next Top Model for hours on end, critiquing each contestant with my sister. The makeover episode was always my favourite: girls sobbing as their hair was cropped short, or even shaved off. At the time, Tyra Banks seemed like a big sister, giving the contestants the tough love they’d need to succeed in a ferociously competitive industry. Now I feel differently. I hadn’t watched America’s Next Top Model since I was young, but like many, I recently watched Netflix’s excellent series, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. It was the strangest sensation, rewatching episodes I hadn’t seen in more than two decades. At times I felt almost teleported back. How could I not find these scenes of models collapsing with hunger utterly abhorrent? I wondered what influence watching a show that celebrated eating disorders had on my own brain. I think it had an impact. I think the residual taint of it is still there. I can’t watch America’s Next Top Model any more, nor do I want to. Ironically, it’s all too ugly. Sirin Kale

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:00 am

David Harbour has blown Tony Stark’s cover in Avengers: Doomsday. It might just be what Marvel needs

The actor, who plays Red Guardian in the film, made a cryptic comment to Variety that raised more Robert Downey Jr-shaped questions than answers. But was it a clanger, or expert trolling?

Nobody knows exactly what solemn blood oaths Marvel uses to prevent spoilers. But we do know that Andrew Garfield spent most of the run-up to 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home – in which he would eventually turn up as one of two secret Spideys – behaving as if Kevin Feige was standing behind him, holding up a giant card saying: YOU HAVE NEVER MET TOBEY MAGUIRE. So we can imagine it’s pretty full on. Why, then, has Avengers: Doomsday star David Harbour this week apparently blurted out the biggest Marvel secret since Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3?

Invited by Variety magazine to offer up a line from Doomsday “completely out of context”, Harbour thought for a moment, adopted the Russian accent of his Red Guardian character and came out with: “You … are Tony Stark.” Which is quite a thing to say about a film whose entire marketing campaign so far has depended on us accepting that Iron Man remains dead, and that the actor who used to play him, Robert Downey Jr, is playing Victor von Doom instead.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:37 am

‘We’re barely above porn’: why would a film-maker choose to make a deliberately bad ‘mockbuster’?

With a tiny budget and six days, Anthony Frith directed a film for the studio behind Sharknado – and then made Mockbuster, a documentary about the experience

Directors don’t tend to appreciate having their films eviscerated by critics. And us critics, well practised in lobbing proverbial grenades from the safety of our pretentiously book-lined, Cahiers du Cinéma-strewn offices, don’t tend to look an artist in the eyes and tell them that their work sucks.

This is, however, exactly what I do to the Australian film-maker Anthony Frith. I’ve even prepared a zinger for the occasion. “Your film is a lemon that’s been eaten by a turkey then dumped into a vat of curdled mayonnaise,” I say.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:00 am

Experience: I fell 12 metres and smashed my pelvis into pieces

It was clear it was broken. I could feel the bones grinding together as the paramedics strapped me to a gurney

Growing up in Utah, I was so active that my parents nicknamed me “The Blur”. My older siblings introduced me to rock climbing while I was still at primary school. By the time I was 15, I was hauling myself up cliff faces.

One summer’s day in 2014, when I was 17, my friends and I went paddleboarding on a lake. My friend Trevor and I decided to climb one of the rocky boulders overlooking the water, and jump in.

Published: August 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

Are baby products the secret to better skin? 15 toiletries worth trying

With gentler formulas and lower prices, children’s toiletries can work just as well for adults. From nappy rash cream to nourishing bath milk, these are the products that have earned a place in my routine

There may be plenty of worrying headlines about children using adult beauty products from younger and younger ages, but what about the reverse?

I’ve been a beauty editor for more than a decade, but when I had my first child in 2020, I was immediately impressed with the body washes, bath products and moisturisers designed for babies, particularly as someone with eczema and sensitive skin. The products’ gentler, often fragrance-free formulas are easier on my skin, tend to cost less, and result in a less cluttered bathroom, since we can all use the same things. These are the ones I’m still using – on the entire family – five years on.

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:00 am

Week in wildlife: Bat in a toilet, a speeding gull and a bird with shoes

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:00 am

With ICC sanctions, Trump wants to make the world safe for war criminals | Kenneth Roth

The US is engaged in a lawless quest to protect American and Israeli officials

The Trump administration has taken another step in its crusade against the international criminal court by imposing sanctions on two more senior ICC officials. The growing number of sanctioned jurists – now 13 – does not change the lawless nature of this quest.

Donald Trump and his henchman, Marco Rubio, want to make the world safe for US and Israeli war criminals. No one should let them.

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:00 am

The Taliban have built a system for enslaving women in Afghanistan | Tala Elissa

Five years on, the regime’s chokehold has left Afghan women with almost nothing, but many are still bravely fighting for their freedom

The Taliban did not just ban women from schools, impose the burqa and outlaw smartphones. The Taliban built a system that enslaves nearly half the country’s population, or according to outdated statistics: 21,701,532 women and girls.

In general, the Taliban’s system runs on laws that get changed, forgotten or scrapped as needed to oppress women, such as the abolition of the minimum marriage-age law, which made the only “legitimate” criterion for a girl’s marriage that she has reached puberty or in other words, that she is “fit for consummation”.

Published: August 20, 2026, 10:00 pm

I worked at OpenAI. Here are the guardrails we need now | Miles Brundage

I understand the pressure on AI companies to rush forward. But employees are right to be concerned

Last month, more than a thousand employees at frontier AI companies signed a letter asking the US government to find a way to “pace” AI development, citing the risk of the technology spiraling out of human control as it begins to build itself.

They were right to be concerned: just days earlier, two AI models that OpenAI was testing internally escaped the test environment, then autonomously hacked the company Hugging Face and at least three other online services. A few days after that, Anthropic announced that some of their models had also broken out and hacked other companies during testing.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:00 am

I am often asked how young boys could be rapists. For many adolescent men, the answer is entitlement | Chanel Contos

Violent pornography and algorithmic feeds are teaching young people to prioritise their own sexual gratification. As the problem evolves, so too must our solutions

This week, the Australian public has borne witness to another devastating string of sexual assault allegations. While the alleged perpetrators vary in age – some are as young as 13 – they have something in common.

They are immersed in elite institutions like private all-boys’ secondary schools – places that can socialise entitlement, exceptionalism and impunity in those within them. Of course, to the extent charges have been or are laid in these cases, those accused must be entitled to the presumption of innocence.

Chanel Contos is the founder of Teach Us Consent and the author of Consent Laid Bare

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:00 am

Women’s football shouldn’t have to copy a men’s game that isn’t working – just look at Ted Lasso | Karen Dobres

The rapid professionalisation of woman’s football has brought money and status. But copying the structures and culture of the male game risks undermining what made it distinct

• Karen Dobres is the author of Pitch Invasion: My Story as a Woman on a Football Club Board

The fourth season of the critically acclaimed football drama Ted Lasso has taken a surprising twist. The show’s writers have decided to have their hero coach AFC Richmond’s women’s team, testing whether Ted’s “Lasso way” can work in a very different footballing environment. We’re only three episodes in, but I’ve already found myself wondering if the series will showcase what makes the women’s game distinct, or just treat it as the same sport with different characters.

The early signs are promising: we’ve already seen the issue of substandard facilities, initial disinterest from the club’s fanbase and the flak that Coach Chilton gets for exhibiting the same qualities lauded in the men’s coach, Roy Kent.

Karen Dobres is the author of Pitch Invasion: My Story as a Woman on a Football Club Board

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

The Guardian view on the export of fossils: they deserve national treasure status | Editorial

Scientific specimens are being sold to foreign museums or snapped up by the super-rich. They should have the same legal protections as works of art

As Sir David Attenborough has observed, “there’s nothing more magical than finding a shiny shell and knowing you’re the first person to have seen it for 150 million years”. Senior museum figures are campaigning for fossils to be classed as national treasures, according to the Waverley criteria, which control the export of objects considered culturally important to the nation. But the rules only cover natural treasures that are “made”, excluding fossils.

These calls come after a private collection from the Jurassic Coast was sold to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi for a reported eight-figure sum. Both the Natural History Museum in London and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales) were offered the 318 fossils, but they didn’t have the funds. Unlike countries such as Brazil and Mongolia, where fossils belong to the state, Britain relies largely on a voluntary code of conduct.

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 21, 2026, 9:22 am

Arsenal sweep Coventry aside to start Premier League title defence in style

What a difference a title makes. The last time Arsenal played in front of their own supporters, you could cut the nervous tension with a knife as Mikel Arteta’s side scraped to a 1-0 victory over already-relegated Burnley. Ninety five days on and having ended their long wait to be crowned champions the following night when Manchester City slipped up against Bournemouth, Coventry were given a rude awakening in their first Premier League game for 25 years.

It’s now 46 matches since Arsenal lost at home to a newly-promoted side and there was never any doubt about this result as soon as Kai Havertz – who scored the only goal against Burnley that turned out to be priceless – picked up where he left off by giving Arsenal the lead in the 15th minute. A tap in from Bukayo Saka and captain Martin Ødegaard matching his Premier League tally from last season just after half-time made it almost the perfect start for the reigning champions.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:07 pm

From Showtime to Insurance Time: how the LA Lakers became a $12.5bn hedge fund play

Bob Iger and Josh Kushner’s $12.5bn bid to buy the Lakers shows that NBA teams are no longer family dynasties, but quick flips for private equity sharks

For years, the NBA was built on the alliance of patient money and marketing pizzazz, and no team captured that curious mixture better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Through Showtime in the 1980s and the dominance of the Shaq-Kobe years, the Lakers became the benchmark for a league and a sport intent on global conquest: charismatic, ambitious, and flashy, a sporting-cultural amalgam in which athleticism and celebrity held equal rank. Through careful front office recruitment, savvy coaching, and the harnessing of Hollywood’s star power, the Lakers evolved from a team into a “brand,” establishing a template that virtually every other outfit in the NBA has felt compelled to mimic in the years since. But the razzle-dazzle on the court – the Laker Girls, Magic flinging no-look passes, Shaq smashing the glass, Jack Nicholson smiling his Joker smile in the front row, all eyebrows and mischief – depended on a far more staid and stable arrangement off it. Real estate investor Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $16m in 1979, and remained the majority owner until his death in 2013, when his children assumed control of the franchise.

When Jerry Buss died, the Lakers were valued at $1bn. Now, the team looks set to be sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, for $12.5bn. The sale is still under negotiation and will need to be approved by the NBA’s board of governors; the Buss siblings are also now bickering over whether to join the stampede and sell their minority 17.8% stake in the franchise to Iger and Kushner, which has added a subplot of Shakespearean family intrigue to proceedings. But in the likely event it goes through, the sale would make the Lakers the most valuable franchise in basketball. It would also signal an acceleration in private equity’s scramble to get its claws into the world of sport.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

Former 1500m world champion Jenny Simpson steps away from running after cardiac arrest

• 39-year-old collapsed during event in June

• American won world title in 2011

Former 1500m world champion Jenny Simpson says she will not return to running after she collapsed during a track event in June.

Simpson, a three-time Olympian and one of the most accomplished American female runners in history, was pacing a mile group at an event in North Carolina when she went into cardiac arrest. She was given CPR before she was rushed to hospital, where she was placed on life support due to issues with her heart and lungs.

Published: August 21, 2026, 10:10 am

Leandro Paredes receives 10-match ban as Argentina punished for World Cup final brawl

• Nahuel Molina, Thiago Almada and Gavi also suspended

• Fifa issue $321,000 fine for Falkland Islands banner

Three Argentina players have been banned for their part in a brawl at the end of last month’s World Cup final against Spain, but they have only been fined for displaying a Falkland Islands banner after the semi-final win over England.

Leandro Paredes has been given a 10-match ban and a $90,000 (£66,000) fine by Fifa’s disciplinary committee, while Nahuel Molina was given a seven-match suspension and fined the same amount.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:14 am

Former Alabama basketball player wins $9.25m in defamation case against New York Times

• Kai Spears incorrectly linked to death of young mother

• Times says it had not lost libel case in more than 50 years

An Alabama jury has awarded $9.25m in damages after finding that the New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting.

Kai Spears, who played for the University of Alabama men’s team, sued the Times in 2023 after it published a report, citing a person familiar with the investigation, that said he was a passenger in a car involved in the shooting. The Times reported that the person had spoken “on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:32 am

Pull. Breathe. Kick. Glide … the cautionary tale of the first cross-Channel swimmer | Emma John

In this content-driven age, we consume sport as fleeting entertainment – but the fate of Captain Matthew Webb suggests we always have

Pull. Breathe. Kick. Glide. Three decades since my last swimming lesson, I found myself sitting in a lecture theatre chanting these words with a few dozen strangers, all of us trying not to take anyone’s eye out as we matched them to the actions.

Pull. Breathe. Kick. Glide. I’ve been to enough Edinburgh fringe shows to inure myself to the embarrassment of audience participation. And, to be honest, this one was a pretty euphoric communal experience. It turns out you don’t need to be near water to marvel at a swimming feat, especially one that’s more than 150 years old.

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:06 pm

Jannik Sinner and Jack Draper out of US Open as injuries take their toll

• World No 1 makes ‘difficult decision’ to miss slam

• Draper still recovering from bone bruise in left arm

Jannik Sinner will miss the US Open with a right knee injury. The world No 1 has not played a match since beating Alexander Zverev last month to successfully defend his Wimbledon title, missing the Masters 1000 events in Canada and Cincinnati. Great Britain’s Jack Draper is also out of the event.

The news comes a day after his great rival Carlos Alcaraz, whom the Italian lost to in the final in New York 12 months ago, revealed he will make his comeback at Flushing Meadows after four months out with a wrist injury.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:27 am

Contenders primed to chase down Antonelli as F1 season resumes

The young Italian has a substantial lead but his rivals will not see him as being out of reach going into the Dutch GP

The Dutch Grand Prix may be hosting its final meeting on the Formula One calendar this weekend but its farewell heralds the opening of a championship run-in that is far from over. Rested, reset and ready to rumble, the title contenders in Zandvoort have an anticipatory air as they enter the sharp end of a fight which, as last season demonstrated, could yet be taken to the finale.

Resuming after F1’s summer break there is, as always, a sprightly atmosphere to the sport. Team members have had time with their families and drivers have had a chance to decompress, assess, heck, even have a bit of fun, with Mercedes’s George Russell becoming engaged to his partner, Carmen Montero Mundt, and Lando Norris out and about in Ibiza with pals. Lewis Hamilton got his head down and trained hard, proclaiming himself fitter then ever, energised and refreshed, while Max Verstappen emerged at his home race to announce a new contract with his Red Bull team.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:04 am

‘The friendship disappeared’: López faces Romero after years of sparring and support

Boxing’s most mercurial star is putting an old friendship aside as he moves up to 147lb to challenge Rolly Romero for the welterweight title he won against Ryan Garcia

For more than a decade, Teófimo López’s friendship with Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero endured through amateur tournaments, Las Vegas sparring sessions and the mismatched peaks and troughs of two volatile careers. That friendship ended, López says, the moment they signed to fight one another.

On Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena along the Vegas Strip, the 29-year-old López will challenge for Romero’s World Boxing Association welterweight title. The former lightweight and junior-welterweight champion is moving up to 147lb in pursuit of a belt in a third division. For Romero, himself a three-weight belt-holder after stacking titles at 135lb and 140lb, a victory would add another marquee name to a résumé transformed by last year’s upset of Ryan Garcia. The fight will be broadcast globally on Dazn pay-per-view and will see the champion go off as a roughly 2-1 underdog.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

‘Shameful’: UK, Australia and Canada criticise Israel over Gaza aid convoy killings decision

Joint statement issued after IDF said it will not pursue criminal investigations into April 2024 strike that killed seven humanitarian workers

Britain, Australia and Canada have called the decision of the Israeli military authorities not to open a criminal investigation into the April 2024 airstrikes that hit a convoy of aid vehicles in Gaza “shameful”. The strikes killed seven humanitarian workers from the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) organisation.

WCK staff from the three countries were among the casualties of the attack, which prompted global outrage.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:03 am

Firebombs thrown at supercars outside Birmingham wedding venue

Police investigating after two cars set alight in attack caught on CCTV

Firebombs were thrown at supercars outside a wedding venue in Birmingham, setting two alight and prompting guests to sprint out of the building.

West Midlands police said they were investigating the incident, which happened in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham at around 8.30pm on Wednesday.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:13 am

New Mexico man killed in rare fatal bear attack, only second in state in a century

Police department for Navajo Nation neither identified the victim nor said what type of bear had killed him

In a rare kind of attack, a bear killed a man in Crystal, New Mexico, on Thursday, local police said.

The police department for the Navajo Nation said officers within its Window Rock district received a call at about 1pm that a bear had attacked a man.

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:28 pm

Dutch regulator fines Uber $966m for automating driver suspensions

European regulators have imposed billions in penalties on US technology companies due to privacy, competition and digital market rules

The Dutch data protection authority has fined ⁠Uber €825m ($966m) for deactivating driver ⁠accounts through automated systems without ​adequately informing them, according to a 17 August decision.

The penalty would be the second-largest issued yet under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:12 pm

Gun stash in German forest believed to be linked to Russia, say reports

Germany seeking to extradite suspect from Romania over guns it is feared could have been used ⁠in assassinations

Germany is seeking to extradite a suspect from Romania over the discovery of an underground stash of weapons in a forest near Berlin that German media reports have linked to Russian intelligence.

Two weeks after German authorities found a drone carrying explosives at Leipzig airport, the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, confirmed federal prosecutors had opened an investigation related to the secret cache of guns “on suspicion of preparing a serious act of violence that threatens national security”.

Published: August 21, 2026, 7:51 am

JD Vance reportedly mocks Carney for trying to ‘out-tough’ Trump on trade

Audio recording of US vice-president apparently made at New York fundraiser and shared with Canadian Press

Leaked audio from a private event has reportedly captured the US vice-president, JD Vance, mocking Canada for apparently capitulating in a trade deal and taunting the prime minister, Mark Carney, for trying to “out-tough” Donald Trump.

The recording, which was reportedly made at a fundraiser and shared with the Canadian Press, comes in the last stretch of a difficult negotiation in which the US president has threatened to impose 50% tariffs on Canada.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:22 am

Neutrogena responds to criticism over how brand deal with Hayden Panettiere ended

Late actor in May said beauty brand cut off its relationship with her after she spoke out about postpartum depression

The beauty brand Neutrogena has acknowledged making its former ambassador Hayden Panettiere “feel unsupported during a very difficult time” – alluding to when the late Hollywood actor said the company severed ties with her after she spoke about enduring postpartum depression (PPD).

Neutrogena issued a statement addressing the situation four days after Panettiere, 36, was found dead on Sunday at an apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina.

Published: August 21, 2026, 8:09 am

First ever Fat Marmot Week to kick off in effort to raise money for research

Researchers hope contest – similar to Fat Bear Week – starting Monday will be latest wildlife watching craze

Monday sees the start of what researchers hope will be the latest wildlife watching craze – Fat Marmot Week.

Last winter was tough for marmots living high in the Colorado mountains, where researchers say two-thirds of one population died while hibernating because of insufficient snow cover.

Published: August 21, 2026, 7:17 am

Brazil’s vast iron mine that supplies the world and fractures the Amazon – in pictures

The Grand Carajás project has made the country a mining superpower, but communities living in its shadow face pollution, displacement and silenced histories

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:00 am

Python named Jodie Foster first snake to receive pioneering cancer treatment

Chester zoo resident, 23, ‘back to her usual feisty self’ after electrochemotherapy for tumour in her jaw

A 15ft (4.5-metre) python is believed to be the first snake in the world to be given a pioneering, life-saving cancer treatment normally used on humans.

The 50kg reticulated python, named Jodie Foster after the Hollywood star, has just turned 23 and lives at Chester zoo. Keepers first became concerned that she may be unwell when she began eating less and spending more time inactive in her habitat.

Published: August 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

Trump plan to allow drilling near US world heritage site sparks alarm

Administration’s plan to scrap drilling-free buffer zone around New Mexico site prompts scrutiny from Unesco

The Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas extraction across the US is set to bring drilling near cherished natural and cultural sites, raising alarm among conservationists and prompting questions from the UN’s heritage body.

Unesco said it had received information on the administration’s plan to scrap a drilling-free buffer zone around the Chaco Culture national historical park in New Mexico, a world heritage site and one of the most important cultural areas in the US. A Unesco spokesperson said it had procedures regarding “potential threats” to a world heritage property and was awaiting a response from the federal government as to its impact.

Published: August 20, 2026, 7:00 am

Charter plane crash in Alaska kills all eight onboard near US military airstrip

‘Civilian-contracted aircraft’ crashes in western Alaska killing two pilots and six passengers, officials say

A charter aircraft carrying eight people crashed at a remote radar site in western Alaska on Thursday, killing all on board, the US military said.

The crash happened near Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site airport, approximately 450 miles (725km) west of Anchorage, Alaska.

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:32 am

What does Tyson’s shutdown of two US beef plants mean for grocery costs?

Meat producer closes facilities in Utah and Illinois as beef prices rise for consumers amid historic cattle shortage

• People in the US: how much do you spend on food per month?

Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in the US, announced last week that it is closing two of its facilities in Illinois and Utah and selling a beef facility in Washington state, and will lay off hundreds of workers as the supply of cattle hits a 75-year low.

The historic cattle shortage has been driven by a multi-year drought, rising costs and severe economic pressures, including consolidation among cattle ranchers. Beef prices have soared over the last year due to the shortage, though economists said the Tyson plant closures likely won’t hit consumer prices so hard.

This article’s headline and text were amended on 21 August 2026. An earlier version said Tyson recently announced the closure of two facilities in Iowa and Utah, rather than Illinois and Utah. There was a closure in 2024 in Iowa.

Published: August 21, 2026, 9:01 am

Sycophancy in stereo as former Trump hater Michael Cohen loses his nerve

Fawning, deferential, oleaginous – this was the Untruth and Reconciliation Commission as Trump called in to 77 WABC

“Our next guest is a ‘racist’, a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ – someone who behaves more like a ‘mobster’ than a president. Please welcome Donald J Trump!”

That is how Michael Cohen could have introduced Trump on his New York radio show on Thursday. After all, Cohen used such terms to describe the US president in his testimony to Congress in 2019. But now Trump’s former personal lawyer and self-described fixer had different words: “boss” and “sir”. Just like old times.

Published: August 20, 2026, 6:11 pm

Progressive Aisha Wahab wins California special election to fill Eric Swalwell seat

State senator beats rival Melissa Hernandez and will replace US congressman who quit amid sexual misconduct claims

Progressive Aisha Wahab has been elected to Congress in a special election following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell has denied the allegations.

Wahab, a state senator, was widely considered the frontrunner in the district in California’s East Bay and had the backing of the state Democratic party as well as Our Revolution, labor unions, local officials and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.

Published: August 20, 2026, 5:24 pm

Prince Harry and others ordered to pay interim £9.5m to Daily Mail publisher

Judge orders payment within seven days towards legal costs in failed case over alleged unlawful information gathering

The Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile claimants must make a £9.54m interim payment within seven days towards the Daily Mail publisher’s legal costs after losing their high court case over allegations of unlawful information gathering, a judge has ruled.

Associated Newspapers Ltd strongly denied the claims made by Prince Harry and co-claimants including Doreen Lawrence and Elton John.

Published: August 21, 2026, 6:06 am

Ebola outbreak: five big questions

On 23 August, it will be 100 days since the Bundibugyo strain was first reported. How did it became the DRC’s most deadly outbreak and what must be done to stop it becoming the world’s largest?

Almost 100 days ago, Africa’s public health watchdog reported an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There have now been almost 5,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths since 15 May, making this Ebola outbreak the biggest and most deadly in the DRC’s history.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:02 am

The Odyssey becomes highest grossing R-rated film of all time

Christopher Nolan’s epic has achieved $1.35bn at the global box office, overtaking 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine

The Odyssey has overtaken Deadpool & Wolverine to become the highest grossing R-rated film of all time.

According to figures compiled by the Numbers, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem has achieved $1.35bn (£990m) at the worldwide box office, compared with the Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman superhero movie, which stands at $1.34bn (£980m) since its release in 2024.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:49 am

Russia’s missile tests around disputed islands anger Japan

Pacific fleet launched missile drills near what Moscow calls the Kuril Islands but Japan regards as its Northern Territories

Japan has criticised missile tests carried out by Russia’s navy around the disputed islands visited by Vladimir Putin last week amid continuing tensions between the two countries.

Russia’s Pacific fleet said on Thursday that it had fired Bastion surface-to-ship missiles from Etorofu, the largest island in the disputed archipelago, simulating an attack on enemy vessels, hitting all of its targets approximately 300km away.

Published: August 20, 2026, 9:54 pm

‘She had this divine calling’: the incredible and transporting art of Minnie Evans

Just over 50 years after she was one of the first Black artists to have a solo show at the Whitney, the museum gathers some of her most remarkable paintings for a new exhibition

Surprisingly, the term “outsider art” was coined fairly recently – in 1972, when the art historian Roger Cardinal made it the title of the book with which he introduced the idea to the English-speaking world. Since then, debates have raged as to whether it’s really justified to use such a term to describe art made beyond the confines of the art world, and if any of the other competing terms – among them naive art, folk art and raw art – are really any better.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s new show, The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans, offers audiences an opportunity to contemplate just how its subject may – or may not – have been an outsider to the art world, and to also revel in Evans’s increasing insiderness in the decades since her death in 1987. A comprehensive retrospective with nearly 100 pieces covering the entirety of Evans’s artistic output, the show occurs almost exactly 50 years after the Whitney first introduced the artist’s genius to New York’s art elite.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

The week around the world in 20 pictures

Wildfires in Europe, Russian strikes in Kyiv, the Meta trial and swimming in Gaza – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Published: August 21, 2026, 10:25 am

You’re Killing Me review – did an AI monkey write this terrible Brooke Shields crime caper?

I desperately wanted this show to be Gilmore Girls meets Murder, She Wrote – but the story of a novelist turned amateur sleuth is just so lazy. And yet, I still have high hopes for the confirmed second season

Look, we all want Brooke Shields to be in gainful employment. We all want her to have a fabulous third act to her career. God knows, the child model turned star of prurient fever dreams Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon (and the “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” jeans ad campaign when she was 15) has earned it. Plus, she did a fine turn in Friends and a number of us remember Suddenly Susan very fondly.

But she’s terrible in the terrible new thing she’s in, which is a six-part comedy drama called You’re Killing Me. Shields plays successful cosy mystery novelist Allison Chandler, who lives in the picturesque town of Founder’s Cove, Maine. It’s Murder, She Wrote vibes all right, but please lower your expectations.

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:00 pm

Spa Weekend review – female answer to The Hangover spreads the slush with the massage oil

Despite stars Leslie Mann, Anna Faris and Isla Fisher and the writers behind The Hangover, this tale of friends at a luxury hotel is a dud

Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are the screenwriters who struck gold nearly 20 years ago with The Hangover, a brilliant stag-weekend nightmare comedy about what happens in Vegas, which sadly spawned a terrible (though lucrative) franchise. Now, as writers and directors, they have tried turning it around and making a movie about how middle-aged women behave on a longed-for spa weekend at a luxury-porn hotel. The result is a comedy without gags, a comedy which, for all the strenuous high-jinks, is afraid to be flippant or mean or, indeed, funny in any way.

Leslie Mann plays a hotshot lawyer called Jane who can’t make room in her life for romance; Anna Faris is goofy Sophie, PA to a rich asshole; Michelle Buteau is outspoken badass Coco, angry at her ex-husband dating again; and Isla Fisher is landed with the stridently unfunny role of Mel, a wild child who makes the other three nervous, but whose life-affirming no-filter honesty is going to break everyone’s emotional logjam and sort out their lives. As for Jane, it looks as if the hotel’s super-hot super-sensitive yoga teacher, Kai (Adam Demos), is going to hook up with her.

Published: August 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

It Ends review – gripping micro-budget horror ranks among the year’s best

Led by a stellar cast of gen-Z newcomers, Alex Ullom’s directorial debut is an expertly crafted nightmare about a road trip gone wrong

Time loops often feel like the movies’ favorite zany stylistic trick: Bill Murray plotting to win Andie MacDowell’s heart, a college student solving the mystery of her own grizzly murder, or as a ruse for Anne Hathaway to face off with a T rex. The excellent new indie horror film It Ends takes a different approach with its nightmarish depiction of a carful of friends stuck in an endlessly repeating day. It’s less of the moony japes of Groundhog Day or Palm Springs than an arthouse spin on the Prometheus myth, with the unfortunate souls of the film cursed not with death but with the torture of eternal life.

After helping their friend move into a new apartment, a crew of aimless twentysomethings take a late-night drive to get food, but after GPS leads them deeper and deeper into a desolate forest, it’s clear that they have lost their way. When they pull over, they are set upon by a group of people that look eerily similar to them – young people who are dressed like they stepped out to the corner store and couldn’t find their way back. “They look scared,” one character says with a pained expression. “Why are they scared?”

Published: August 20, 2026, 3:00 am

Mike D: ‘After Yauch died I couldn’t make music. I’d open a computer file and just feel sadness’

As part of the Beastie Boys, the rapper shot to fame and notoriety in the 80s, before bandmate Adam Yauch’s death saw him withdraw from the spotlight. He returns with a solo album that sees him reckon with greed, mortality – and his past

‘It’s funny how far a joke will get you,” Michael Diamond grins. This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with schoolfriends Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz on Licensed to Ill, their 1986 debut album as the Beastie Boys.

The “joke” in question is that record’s cartoonish send-up of frat-bro culture, set to fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop beats. As for how far it got them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with rap’s first US chart-topping album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they roused a generation to “fight for your right to party”.

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:00 am

Add to playlist: the righteous jangle and snaking melodies of Jawdropped and the week’s best new tracks

The LA-based powerpop project’s triumphant debut is a celebration of low-stakes creativity in the slacker-skater tradition

From Los Angeles
Recommended if you like the Lemonheads, Sugar, the Muffs
Up next Secret to Spare released 18 September

Maybe it’s to do with getting older, maybe it’s to do with the broad-spectrum grimness of it all, but the thrill of low-stakes creativity, of making something for the joy of making it rather than in the hope of making it, feels particularly vital at the moment. And, if the sun-bleached cool of Jawdropped’s music is anything to go by, starting a powerpop project in your 30s will light up this pleasure centre like a dive bar pinball machine.

Published: August 21, 2026, 4:00 am

Gaia Wilmer Large Ensemble: Parabólico review – gorgeous reinvention of Gilberto Gil’s grooves

(Sunnyside)
Saxophonist and composer Wilmer brilliantly transforms Gil tunes, changing tempos and adding breathy melodies, flourishes of horns or undulating rhythms to luscious effect

Over the past three years, Brazilian saxophonist and composer Gaia Wilmer has reimagined the catalogues of her country’s virtuosos so radically that it’s become a signature art. Folia: The Music of Egberto Gismonti transformed his finger-picked melodics into an almost prog-influenced cacophony; Trem das Cores, celebrating tropicália pioneer Caetano Veloso, found the eerie tenderness in his lilting melodies. Now returning with the first part of a three-volume homage to singer Gilberto Gil, Wilmer and her 20-piece ensemble produce luscious new works from their deconstructions.

For listeners familiar with Gil’s music, hardly any of Wilmer’s arrangements are recognisable from the originals. Her Overture transforms the 25 seconds of strummed guitars and group vocals that open Gil’s 1985 album Dia Dorim Noite Neon into a slowly unfurling four minutes of breathy trumpet melody and twinkling piano accents. Oriente replaces Gil’s wavering, emotive vocal harmony from the 1972 original with flourishes of horn fanfares and jazz swing that bolsters singer Mônica Salmaso’s lightly tripping bossa nova vocalisations. Eu Vim da Bahia even slows one of Gil’s best-known tunes to experimental flute-heavy ambience, transmuting his sprightly melody through the brassy weight of a big-band horn section.

Published: August 21, 2026, 1:00 am

Stella Lefty: Long Way Home review – Boston singer’s debut is bland, boilerplate and beyond banal

(Atlantic Outpost)
The breakout 24-year-old country star’s debut is stunningly unremarkable, offering little in the way of artistic identity or her peers’ originality

Anyone railing against nepo babies taking over culture has already lost: the rage they engender is as key to the publicity plan as their ready-made profile. But once in a while, you meet one so egregious that it’s hard not to want to flip a table. The breakout 24-year-old country star Stella Lefty is the daughter of a multibillionaire Groupon co-founder. Given her stunningly unremarkable songwriting, you wonder whether that might explain a few things.

After gaining notice for posting clips of her music, Lefty wanted to work as a songwriter-for-hire until music execs insisted she was an artist. It’s hard to tell what her USP is: her huge hit Boston sounded so much like Noah Kahan’s Stick Season that she had to add a retrospective credit. Her writing has none of his introspection or regional specifics, nor the wry country literacy of close competitor Ella Langley. In Lefty’s songs, she’s often catching some guy’s eye at the bar. Maybe they get together but then she runs, because she always does – but maybe this time, she doesn’t? She knows it’s good when he’s nice to her, or they look good in photos. Props: whiskey, neon lights, bar stools. It’s relatable, right? Right??

Published: August 21, 2026, 12:30 am

Alice Roberts: ‘By the time I’d finished Richard Dawkins I’d left faith behind’

The TV presenter and author on the evolutionary biologists who inspired her, the genius of George Eliot – and fun with Frog and Toad

My earliest reading memory
The first books I remember were from The Village with Three Corners series Sheila K McCullagh. I loved the – literally – colourful characters, like Johnny Yellow Hat. I was reading with my Grandma, in her garden perhaps, sitting on a small patio, surrounded by bright begonias and busy lizzies.

My favourite book growing up
Arnold Lobel’s wonderful Frog and Toad stories. Toad would get himself tied up in knots, trying to find a button or fly a kite, but Frog was always there – a constant, caring and funny friend. I enjoyed reading these stories to my own children when they were young, and we still sometimes go back and revisit them. They’re so full of humour, heart and simple humanism.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

Life of M by Rachel Cusk review – is this story of a film star based on Natalie Portman?

A teasing tale of the friendship between a writer and an actor explores the fallout from fame, and the blurring between pretence and reality

M is a celebrated film actor. A star since childhood, now the face of a major fashion brand, she has been famous all her life. That her career closely resembles Natalie Portman’s has been gleefully seized upon by the press, something Rachel Cusk must surely have anticipated: in the novel, M’s first film has its sex scenes cut at her mother’s insistence, as happened with Portman’s 1994 debut Leon, while her ballerina movie is recognisably Black Swan. M is also, in the words of the nameless and genderless narrator of Life of M, “a good sport”. When the narrator suggests writing M’s autobiography, M likes the idea. “Would you just make it up?” she asks.

A celebrity autobiography is seldom the work of the celebrity herself. And yet any suggestion that the narrator will serve as a kind of ghostwriter to M is dispensed with in a few pages. The pair meet for coffee at a luxury hotel and, after the narrator’s partner falls suddenly and seriously ill, for lunch in a restaurant. The lunch is unsatisfactory, an attempt at intimacy that the narrator acknowledges afterwards to have been a mistake. Though M is determined to live as normal a life as possible (“her personal task is to become real, or rather to acquire some reality”), the narrator is uncomfortably aware of their own falseness with M: “It was as if I was acting, while M came across as authentic and real. It was as if she was the only one good enough at acting to attain reality.” After that the two of them do not see one another again “for a long time”.

Published: August 20, 2026, 11:00 pm

All of Us Atoms by Holly Dawson audiobook review – an extraordinary self-portrait

Helena Bonham Carter narrates the playwright’s impressionistic memoir, written as she was experiencing the loss of her memory

Playwright Holly Dawson’s memoir tells of memory lapses and a series of seizures that signal something isn’t right. Before visiting a doctor, she had been muddling up words, forgetting people’s names and flooding the bathroom.

The book finds Dawson in conversation with her brain, which is both part of her and a separate entity. “Don’t be cross with me, my love. I am tired,” it tells her. “Between your ears hearing a word and your mouth repeating it, I am doing all this work you don’t see.” Dawson, who is approaching 40 and a single mum of two children, later learns she has epilepsy and a brain tumour, which may or may not be benign. A consultant explains she must wait several months to find out, and so she sets about preserving memories and words while she still has them. “Come. Sit. Take your notebook … write it down,” says her brain.

Published: August 20, 2026, 7:00 am

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 2 review – once more unto the mercenary breach

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S; Konami
This second collection remasters another three titles from the illustrious stealth espionage series, but their world has changed little since the original releases

‘War has changed,” claims Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Back in 2008, the team at Kojima Productions waxed poetic about people recruited to fight in proxy wars they have no political or ideological stake in. As these mercenaries follow their orders, traders get rich out of the so-called war economy. The more disastrous the conflict in a specific area, the higher the bidding price.

I expected my time with Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 2 to be nostalgic and, in good old MGS fashion, abundant with fictional events that sound eerily familiar to our current reality. Twenty minutes in, I was having an existential crisis.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:45 am

The Duskbloods: the best of FromSoftware fights in a frantic multiplayer battleground

The Elden Ring creator is known for epic single-player RPGs, but its new action game is all about multiplayer interactions: fighting, chasing, befriending, even … proposing?

Lowanro City’s skyline is dominated by an oppressive clock tower, silhouetted against a moody red sky and an impossibly large, ominous moon. A retractable bridge splits the map in two, and a network of slimy sewers runs beneath the city streets, offering flanking routes for crafty players. This layered and multi-tiered map bears all the hallmarks of the team behind some of the most memorable stomping grounds in video games.

But The Duskbloods, which I recently spent two days playing in Tokyo, is a strange departure from developer FromSoftware’s usual offerings. These have included massive single-player RPGs with light, experimental multiplayer components such as Elden Ring and Bloodborne. Those games have always attracted duellists – players who love to invade other people’s games to fight them to the death – but this Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive is a different proposition entirely.

Published: August 20, 2026, 7:00 am

‘It is the riskiest film I’ve ever made’: Pedro Almodóvar on being the villain in his own movie

As his new film Bitter Christmas is released, the legendary Spanish director turns his fire on Donald Trump, Will Smith, Netflix – and himself

Black sunglasses indoors and a tufty cloud of cotton-wool hair: it can only be Pedro Almodóvar, bourgeois arthouse darling nonpareil and master of everything from screwball romps (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) to clammy thrillers (Live Flesh, The Skin I Live In) – and sumptuous melodramas such as his 24th film, Bitter Christmas, a cautionary tale about the perils of autofiction.

We are sitting in the library of a London hotel and Almodóvar is dressed in a thin black windcheater, grey trousers and white trainers; add a whistle on a string and he could pass for a PE teacher. The 76-year-old director may have won more than 60 awards including two Oscars, five Baftas and six Goyas but when the shades come off today, he looks momentarily sorry for himself. He has been deaf in one ear since childhood, he tells me, and now the other one is giving up the ghost. In addition, a nasty stye has turned his left eye a gluey purple. Might he have picked it up while swimming? “I do swim almost every day because I have a pool,” he sighs. Never can those words have sounded so sorrowful.

Published: August 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

Amy Lee of Evanescence: ‘I could happily do an entire album of nothing but Portishead covers’

As her band hits the road, the metal trailblazer answers your questions on sexualisation in show business, finding inspiration in dreams and Spinal Tap moments on tour

You wrote Bring Me to Life when you were 19. When you perform it now, how do you relate to the younger you? becgoldsmith
I was in an abusive relationship, so Bring Me to Life was partly about processing the reality of that abuse and asking myself, what are you gonna do about it? Like, pick yourself up. I wrote it when I was crushing on my [now] husband, but the theme is about a quest for something bigger: opening your heart, finding more depth. It’s very empowering to perform it now in huge places; I’m very proud of the 19-year-old me that wrote it.

Artists often reveal their influences through the songs they choose to cover. You’ve performed both It’s a Fire and Glory Box by Portishead. What drew you to those songs? VerulamiumParkRanger
Beth Gibbons was one of my greatest vocal and musical inspirations. In the 90s when I was a young teen really feeling music I loved Portishead, Massive Attack and the whole trip-hop vibe. It was dark and cool, really different. Beth’s vocals have a way of teetering on an emotional crack, on the edge of wild, barely restrained emotion but never belting, which I always thought was so cool and enticing. I could happily do an entire album of nothing but Portishead covers.

Published: August 20, 2026, 6:00 am

‘I need to think like a CEO’: Weezer on the shifting sands of success, ugly feelings and the joy of spreadsheets

As the self-professed geeky rockers release their conceptual 20th album, Rivers Cuomo and Patrick Wilson discuss dodging failure, being saved by fans and their obsessive creativity

The first song Rivers Cuomo wrote for Weezer’s new album, their 20th, blatantly mimics the US rockers’ 1994 debut single, Undone (The Sweater Song). On the track CEO, the singer-guitarist grumbles over a slow, Velvets-y backing about having to crank out “another 90s jam” and wishing he could do “something new – but nobody wants to hear that”. It’s a deliciously meta moment, but also one that allows Cuomo to gently vent “my frustrations over people wanting me to just write songs about our first two albums”.

Cuomo wrote the song straight after SZNZ, the four-album song-cycle Weezer released throughout 2022, each album named after a season. That project fed his notoriously intense, analytic and occasionally obsessive approach to songwriting. Thanks to the kind of data artists have at their fingertips in the streaming age, though, he realised that, with each subsequent SZNZ, “fewer and fewer people were listening to them”.

Published: August 20, 2026, 7:16 am

‘If you’re just interested in answers, you are missing out’: philosopher Lani Watson on the power of asking questions

The author and academic explains how an open, questioning mindset can bring people with opposing views closer together – and even change history

Asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life – or, as the philosopher Lani Watson, an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, is more likely to put it, “create change in your life”. When you live in an answer-oriented world, your phrasing tends towards the glib certainty, which is one of the things Watson – speaking to me from her home in Edinburgh – seems quite naturally to avoid.

Questioning fosters exploration and curiosity, she says. It changes your relationship to yourself and to others: it can make you fall in love; it can stop you going to war. Watson’s challenging book, Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World that Wants Answers, is written with a deceptive simplicity and an almost kindly encouragement, so you’re knee-deep into her proposition before you have even considered that it might turn out to be quite hard work.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:30 am

The Ninja Slushi Twist is like having a boozy 7-Eleven in your home

The Slushi Twist makes it easy to achieve fantastic, bar-quality drinks without much fuss

• The best nonalcoholic wines and nonalcoholic beers in the US

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Sipping a frozen drink feels like the very essence of a good time. Whether it’s a thick milkshake or a frozen margarita, few people turn down a cold, velvety beverage thick enough to support a straw upright. The appeal seems simple – toss ingredients into a blender, press a button, and enjoy.

But blending drinks in batches can keep a host stuck in the kitchen for hours; why can’t we have a perpetual corkscrew of frozen goodness like a 7-Eleven Slurpee machine? The original Ninja Slushi went viral for delivering precisely this when it arrived in 2024, but it had two key limitations: it could only spin 72oz at a time, and freeze drinks up to 16% alcohol. The new Slushi Twist promises to summon police to your summer barbecues with capacity up to 144oz, stiffer drinks up to 20% alcohol, and mixing them together in a soft-serve-inspired swirl.

Published: August 20, 2026, 12:15 pm

You be the judge: should my partner stop hogging my side of the bed?

Pádraig has a favourite side, whereas Dave likes to sleep farthest from the door. Help us put this argument to bed
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I sleep better on the left side of the bed. I shouldn’t have to swap just because we’ve moved to a new flat

Published: August 20, 2026, 12:00 am

Where did all the XXL clothes go? Fashion brands are scrapping plus sizes in the GLP-1 era

As weight-loss drugs gain popularity in the US, brands are scaling back their ranges – and frustrating customers

In March 2023, the model, activist and writer Tess Holliday announced that she had been working as a size and inclusivity consultant for H&M. The fruits of their partnership felt like “one of the most meaningful things that I’ve done in my career”, she told US Vogue at the time. The fashion juggernaut had committed to an expansion of its sizes, from XL to 4XL, and to increased body diversity of its models.

This bucked a trend, coming at an otherwise gloomy time for plus-sized fashion. By 2023, the fashion industry was in the grips of an Ozempic-fuelled celebration of skinny bodies, after its brief flirtation with curves during the body positivity movement of the late 2010s.

Published: August 20, 2026, 5:00 am

Can’t beat them? Eat them! Ten of the tastiest garden weeds

Edible weeds grow in abundance in our gardens, streets and parks. With a little know-how, you can harvest delicious, nutritious, free greens

Did you know that free food grows in our gardens, streets and parks without being planted by us? Not only does this food hide in plain sight, we’re encouraged to remove it from our gardens and throw it away. I’m talking about edible weeds, otherwise known as wildflowers. You may not be able to eat weeds into submission, but using them in the kitchen is a good excuse to welcome them into the garden.

We walk past edible weeds without a second thought, yet they’re nutritious and available for much of the year. They return of their own accord every year, either perennially or by seed, making it easy to familiarise yourself with them and learn how to cook.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:00 am

How one American couple ditched their lawn and created a wildlife haven – and you could too

Novice gardeners James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz wanted to try something new when they moved out to the suburbs. Little did they know they were joining a nationwide movement

When James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz first decided to replace their lawn with native plants, they did not really know what they were doing. As former city-dwellers who had moved from Chicago out to the suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, they had never done much gardening together beyond growing some planters of herbs and flowers on their balcony.

But for McGuire, an avid birder who did not want to live with a sea of turf that does “absolutely nothing for the environment”, figuring out an alternative to the suburban status quo was imperative.

Crystal Fritz and James Reed McGuire’s Highland Park front garden before they transformed it with native plants

Published: August 20, 2026, 4:00 am

Strangers in their own land: Mexicans deported from Trump’s America find refuge in ‘Little LA’

With plentiful jobs and community support, one Mexico City neighbourhood has become a haven for those who have lived much of their lives in the US

With its wide avenues lined with tall palm trees, its quaint cafes and old-school cantinas, as well as the mix of English and Spanish spoken on the street, the Tabacalera neighborhood in downtown Mexico City has a certain US feel – so much so that it is has become known as Little LA.

The nickname is about more than appearances, however. In recent years, this corner of the metropolis has become a haven for many Mexicans deported from the US, particularly those who spent years or decades living across the border and for whom Mexico feels like a foreign country. In Little LA, they have found a more familiar place to belong.

Published: August 21, 2026, 3:00 am

People in the US: how much do you spend on food per month?

We’d like to hear from people in America about how much they’re spending on groceries and going out to eat

Food is expensive and getting more so.

A July Harris poll found that more than half of Americans struggle to afford groceries. In the UK, food prices are on track to rise by 50% since the cost of living crisis began in 2021.

Published: August 21, 2026, 2:00 am

Tell us: have you slowed down your smart TV or bought an older model?

We’d like to hear from people who are disabling smart TV features, disconnecting from the internet or choosing older, simpler televisions

Smart TVs have become the go-to way to watch entertainment at home and have introduced apps, internet browsing, personalised advertising and even data tracking to our viewing habits.

These additional features reportedly slow down smart TVs, prompting guides on how to improve their performance and have led some to seek out simpler alternatives.

Published: August 20, 2026, 3:30 am

Snowboarding in the Andes and a twin panda birthday: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: August 21, 2026, 5:32 am