Bill Belichick’s humiliating college football debut brings only schadenfreude or sadness

The greatest head coach in modern NFL history has started anew at UNC. His first game exposed flaws that will be very difficult to fix

Half a century of unprecedented success, six Super Bowl rings as a head coach, the NFL’s greatest defensive mind; all undone by 19-year-olds sprinting past missed tackles. Bill Belichick arrived at North Carolina promising to bend college football to his will, to build the “33rd NFL Program” in Chapel Hill, and prove he still had his fastball. College football laughed.

As debut flops go, North Carolina’s 48-14 beatdown at the hands of TCU is as bad as it gets. Belichick’s side didn’t just lose; they were humiliated. UNC looked unprepared, undisciplined and were overmatched against a veteran team.

Published: September 2, 2025, 11:47 am

Why Trump’s undermining of US statistics is so dangerous | Daniel Malinsky

From the firing of the labor statistics chief to plans for a new census, the president’s moves serve to entrench authoritarianism

In 1937, Joseph Stalin commissioned a sweeping census of the Soviet Union. The data reflected some uncomfortable facts – in particular, the dampening of population growth in areas devastated by the 1933 famine – and so Stalin’s government suppressed the release of the survey results. Several high-level government statistical workers responsible for the census were subsequently imprisoned and apparently executed. Though the Soviet authorities would proudly trumpet national statistics that glorified the USSR’s achievements, any numbers that did not fit the preferred narrative were buried.

A few weeks ago, following the release of “disappointing” jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Donald Trump fired the commissioner of labor statistics, Dr Erika McEntarfer, and claimed the numbers were “rigged”. He also announced his intention to commission an unprecedented off-schedule census of the US population (these happen every 10 years and the next one should be in 2030) with an emphasis that this census “will not count illegal immigrants”. The real goal is presumably to deliver a set of population estimates that could be used to reapportion congressional seats and districts ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections and ensure conditions favorable to Republican control of Congress – though it is not clear there is sufficient time or support from Congress to make this happen. The administration is also reportedly “updating” the National Climate Assessments and various important sources of data on topics related to climate and public health have disappeared. In addition to all this, Trump’s justice department launched an investigation into the crime statistics of the DC Metropolitan police, alleging that the widely reported decline in 2024 DC violent crime rates – the lowest total number of recorded violent crimes city-wide in 30 years – are a distortion, fueled by falsified or manipulated statistics. One might say that the charge of “fake data” is just a close cousin of the “fake news” and all of this is par for the course for an administration that insists an alternate reality is the truth. But this pattern may also beget a specifically troubling (and quintessentially Soviet) state of affairs: the public belief that all “political” data are fake, that one generally cannot trust statistics. We must resist this paradigm shift, because it mainly serves to entrench authoritarianism.

Daniel Malinsky is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Why trans art matters more than ever: ‘It reflects how people live and love’

After the controversy over Amy Sherald’s portrait of a trans Statue of Liberty, trans artists speak about why their work speaks to an important moment

Part of the magic of portraiture is how it renders so much of the human experience accessible to us, things we might never see otherwise. This has been very much on Black artist Amy Sherald’s mind. When I spoke to her in advance of the debut of her exhibition American Sublime, she told me that Black representation was foundational to her practice: “I developed this idea that, when I look at art history, for the most part I don’t see portraits of people that look like me. So it started there.”

That exhibition’s curator, Sarah Roberts, also spoke about Sherald’s passion for representing the LGBTQ+ community: “Amy has thought a lot about her role as an artist and the need for representation, and she has long been a champion of LGBTQ+ rights. This work is thinking about who gets depicted as being American.”

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:12 pm

The best and worst of times: American advertisements of the 1930s – in pictures

It was a decade that saw the end of prohibition but also the start of the Great Depression and the looming threat of war, an unusual period for commerce, summed up in Taschen’s latest look at American ads from a certain era. In All-American Ads of the 30s, colorful advertisements for everything from alcohol to cereal showcase new developments in design and a persistent optimism despite economic concerns. The book will be released in September

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:00 am

The plant-based problem: why vegan restaurants are closing – or adding meat to the menu

Veganism is still on the rise, but many popular venues and chains are shutting down. Are they victims of a terrible era for hospitality or part of a growing shift in cultural values?

When London’s Unity Diner wrapped up 2024 with the announcement that it would soon be shutting its doors for good, it expected some sadness from its customers. After all, the not-for-profit restaurant had been an innovator in the city’s vegan scene, serving up 3D-printed “vegan steak” (made of plant protein with the fibrous feel of the real thing) and disarmingly realistic “tofish” (tofu fish) alongside the classic burgers and chips. Throw in its animal sanctuary fundraising, and the restaurant had been faithfully embraced by vegans.

But, from the reaction it received, you would think its supporters were genuinely grieving. “We had people coming in and crying and hugging the staff,” says its co-founder, Andy Crumpton, his surprise audible. There was another element to the devastation, he says. For its plant-based punters, Unity Diner was yet another meat-free establishment that had outwardly appeared to be prospering, only to suddenly shut down.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:00 am

‘Clearly the worst film ever made by anyone ever’: inside John Boorman’s horrific Exorcist sequel

After landmark flop The Heretic, the director was considering ‘immolating myself on Hollywood Boulevard’ in 1977. But a new documentary premiering at Venice calls for its redemption

‘Evokes not terror but laughter.” “A movie for morons, a total cheesy rip-off that makes not one minute of coherent sense.” “The stupidest major movie ever made.” These were some of the milder responses from reviewers to Exorcist II: The Heretic, one of the most notorious disasters in Hollywood history, on its release in 1977. Its director, John Boorman, says he felt utterly humiliated and close to despair. “I considered my choices. The first was to commit suicide. The second was to defect to Russia,” the chastened director told one interviewer. He asked another if he could atone for his film by “immolating myself on Hollywood Boulevard”.

What was the problem? Audiences had, most likely, been looking for shock and horror, revolving heads and vomit, but Boorman gave them metaphysics and surrealism instead – and they weren’t standing for it. That’s why many jeered, laughed, hurled popcorn at the screen, and even – according to William Friedkin, director of the original Exorcist, who called the sequel a “horrible picture” – chased studio executives down the street. Viewers were nonplussed by a plot that had Linda Blair’s Regan, the traumatised girl from the first movie, now turned into an all-American tap dancing teenager. For some reason, she is undergoing a course of hypnotic therapy on a Bakelite “synchroniser” machine operated by a brusque, no-nonsense psychiatrist played by Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

Published: September 2, 2025, 9:26 am

Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

Trump administration contract with Paragon Solutions gives immigration agency access to one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons

US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.

The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:02 pm

Trump faces new Epstein headache as Congress returns from recess

Lawmakers plan pressure campaign for release of Epstein files as victims meet with speaker and oversight committee

• US politics live – latest updates

Congress returns to session on Tuesday, and with it will come a political headache for Donald Trump in the form of renewed attention on the investigation into the disgraced financier Jeff Epstein and his death, a subject that the president has sought to avoid in recent weeks.

While the president got a month-long break from the Epstein issue when lawmakers left town for the annual August recess – with the House of Representatives wrapping up a day early because of the controversy over Epstein – the calm is likely to end quickly. On Tuesday afternoon, representatives from both parties have planned press conferences and legislative maneuvers intended to put pressure on the Trump administration for more transparency over Epstein, whose suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019 has been the subject of conspiracy theories the president amplified while on the campaign trail.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:16 pm

Amy Coney Barrett defends US abortion ruling in memoir: ‘respected choice’

Supreme court justice says overturning Roe v Wade respected voters’ will, though polls show majority back abortion rights

Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative supreme court justice whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Donald Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.

Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:42 pm

Five children in Gaza among those killed by Israeli strike while fetching water

Latest attack comes as Israel’s military urges people to leave Gaza City with 60,000 more reservists to be called up

At least nine people, including five children, have been killed in an Israeli strike while fetching water in al-Mawasi, an area of southern Gaza which Israel has designated as a safe zone, health officials said.

A doctor from al-Nasser hospital shared a picture of the children’s bodies in the hospital, as well as a picture of water jugs left in a pool of blood at the site of the attack on Tuesday.

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:32 pm

Margaret Atwood releases short story critiquing book bans in Canada

Author quipped she wrote ‘suitable’ piece after Alberta school ban included her novel The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood has released a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the Canadian province of Alberta. The controversial decision to remove books purportedly containing “explicit sexual content” has seen numerous works of literature swept up in the dragnet, including Atwood’s, dystopian work The Handmaid‘s Tale.

In a social media post, Atwood wrote that since her famed work was no longer permissible in Alberta schools, she had written a “suitable” short work for teens, adding the work was necessary because the province’s minister of education thought students were “stupid babies”.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:44 pm

Eight-year-old loses ‘significant amount of blood’ after shark attack in Florida

Authorities said the boy, who survived and was hospitalized, was bitten while snorkelling near Key Largo

An eight-year-old child suffered “a significant amount of blood loss” after he was bitten by a shark as he was snorkelling near Key Largo on Monday, authorities in Florida said.

The boy survived and was taken by helicopter to hospital in Miami for treatment to a leg wound above the knee. His condition was unknown on Tuesday morning, but local media reports described his wounds as “severe”.

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:46 pm

Outcry as Swedish ‘cultural canon’ snubs Abba and anything since 1975

Critics argue ‘shared map’ of Swedish culture is ‘very exclusionary’ and a ‘nationalist education project’

The Gustav Vasa 1541 bible, Pippi Longstocking, Ikea, the right to roam, paternity leave, Sámi joiks, the Nobel prize and works by Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg all made it into Sweden’s long-awaited, much-criticised proposal for a “cultural canon”.

However, notable omissions from the list of 100 works and references that have formed Sweden’s culture and history – intended, its creators said in Uppsala on Tuesday, to establish a “shared map and compass” for Swedish citizens and new arrivals to Sweden – included Abba and anything from after 1975, a period that has seen Sweden transform into an international, multicultural society.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:45 pm

Argentina couple under house arrest amid search for painting stolen by Nazis

Daughter of former Nazi official and her husband to be questioned after raid on home failed to find masterpiece

A federal court in Argentina has ordered house arrest for the daughter of a former Nazi official and her husband after a raid failed to locate a painting stolen from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam.

Authorities raided a home in the coastal city of Mar del Plata last week after a Dutch newspaper identified a painting seen in a real estate photo as an Italian masterpiece registered on a database of lost wartime art.

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:20 pm

World’s biggest iceberg breaks up after 40 years: ‘Most don’t make it this far’

‘Megaberg’ known as A23a has rapidly disintegrated in warmer warmers and could disappear within weeks

Nearly 40 years after breaking off Antarctica, a colossal iceberg ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded is finally crumbling apart in warmer waters, and could disappear within weeks.

Earlier this year, the “megaberg” known as A23a weighed a little under a trillion tonnes and was more than twice the size of Greater London, a behemoth unrivalled at the time.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:37 pm

Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler will not seek re-election in midterms

New York representative will retire next year in move to galvanize generational change among Democratic party

Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, will retire next year after 34 years in Congress in a self-proclaimed move aimed at galvanizing a generational changing of the guard in the party.

Nadler, 78, who represents one of New York’s wealthiest districts covering midtown Manhattan, said he had been persuaded not to run for re-election in 2026 after witnessing the implosion of Joe Biden’s presidential bid last year. The former president was pressured into abandoning his candidacy amid widespread doubts about his age and mental acuity. He was replaced by the former vice-president, Kamala Harris, who subsequently lost the election to Donald Trump.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:44 pm

Trump team’s contentious climate report ‘makes a mockery of science’, experts say

Over 85 top climate specialists lambasted administration’s review, calling it a ‘shoddy mess’ that downplays risks

A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility.

More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences have been overstated.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

Rising inequality is turning US into an autocratic state, billionaire warns

Ray Dalio says business leaders scared to criticise Donald Trump as he warns of debt-induced crisis for the economy

One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Donald Trump’s policies.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, said “gaps in wealth” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US.

Published: September 2, 2025, 9:52 am

Woody Allen says Donald Trump was ‘a very good actor’

Allen, who directed Trump in 1998 film Celebrity, adds that he disagrees with his politics but ‘if he would let me direct him now that he’s president, I could do wonders’

Woody Allen has said he was impressed by the acting abilities of Donald Trump when he directed the now-president in the 1998 film Celebrity.

Speaking on Bill Maher’s Club Random, Allen said Trump was “a pleasure to work with and a very good actor”.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:10 am

Modi’s warm meeting with Xi shows impact of Trump’s ‘tariff tantrum’

China seizes on opportunity for geopolitical realignment after India was hit with one of US’s harshest trade penalties

They stood together like old friends, heads thrown back in jovial laughter, clutching one another’s hands affectionately. Except this was no ordinary gathering of three men, but a meeting of three of the most powerful non-western leaders: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi.

The overt displays of intimacy were widely regarded by observers as a telling message of defiance aimed at their western counterparts, in particular Donald Trump, who just a few days earlier had slapped India with 50% import tariffs, among the harshest of the US president’s trade penalties.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:00 pm

‘We are dying for no reason’: Israeli reservists face fresh call-up for a war dividing their nation

Soldiers express doubts about serving in Gaza but few will refuse to fight

Tens of thousands of reservists in Israel will return to active service in the coming weeks amid an intense debate in their ranks over the war in Gaza, which reflects wider divisions in the country.

Some will be forced to make their decision within days. The Israel Defense Forces began mobilising tens of thousands of reservists on Tuesday after calling up 60,000 for an expanded offensive in Gaza City, one of the few places in the devastated territory outside its control. More will be ordered to report to military bases if the fighting continues for many months, as analysts expect.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:13 pm

AI industry pours millions into politics as lawsuits and feuds mount

From Super Pacs fighting regulation to OpenAI’s first wrongful death lawsuit, the AI tech giants are spending big and facing growing scrutiny

Hello, and welcome to TechScape.

A little over two years ago, OpenAI’s founder Sam Altman stood in front of lawmakers at a congressional hearing and asked them for stronger regulations on artificial intelligence. The technology was “risky” and “could cause significant harm to the world”, Altman said, calling for the creation of a new regulatory agency to address AI safety.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:02 pm

My husband has erectile dysfunction. Is it because of his porn addiction?

He struggles to maintain an erection and I feel worthless as his partner. I wonder whether there’s a way back for us

When we first met, 12 years ago, my husband and I didn’t waste any time in starting the sexual part of our relationship. He warned me he was a sex addict, and I am enthusiastic about sex. On our first night together I was aware of some erectile dysfunction – he wasn’t entirely hard and benefited from holding himself when penetrating me – though this didn’t stop us reaching climax. We joked about how many times I would orgasm and neither of us seemed inhibited.

Over time, my husband needed more and more help with ejaculating and would often lose his erection during sex. He has shown less interest in any form of intimacy with me, while I have been trying to show my attraction to him in other ways, like hugging and holding hands.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Published: September 2, 2025, 7:00 am

A House of Dynamite review – Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear endgame thriller is a terrifying, white-knuckle comeback

Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Tracy Letts star in this immaculately constructed nightmare procedural that ticks down the minutes from an atomic bomb’s launch to its detonation

Kathryn Bigelow has reopened the subject that we all tacitly agree not to discuss or imagine, in the movies or anywhere else: the subject of an actual nuclear strike. It’s the subject which tests narrative forms and thinkability levels.

Maybe this is why we prefer to see it as something for absurdism and satire – a way of not staring into the sun – to remember Kubrick’s (brilliant) black comedy Dr Strangelove, with no fighting in the war room etc, rather than Lumet’s deadly serious Fail Safe.

Bigelow, with screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, broaches one of the most frightening thoughts of all: that a nuclear war could or rather will start with no one knowing who started it or who ended it. I watched this film with translucently white knuckles but also that strange climbing nausea that only this topic can create.

The drama is recounted in one 18-minute segment, repeated from various standpoints and various locations: 18 minutes being the time estimated to elapse between military observers reporting the out-of-the-blue launch of a nuke from the Pacific and its projected arrival in Chicago.

The action plays out in a series of situation rooms and command-and-control suites with acronyms like PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) featuring military and civilian personnel in banks of desks, generally in a shallow horseshoe shape facing a very big screen flashing up the threat level from Defcon 2 to Defcon 1 and also showing a large map displaying the missile’s current position, which is occasionally replaced with what amounts to a Zoom mosaic of tense faces belonging to high-ranking officials with no idea what to do, dialling in chaotically from their smartphones.

Rebecca Ferguson plays intelligence analyst Capt Olivia Walker, Tracy Letts is the gung ho military chief Gen Anthony Brady – this drama’s equivalent of the cold war’s Gen Curtis LeMay – who advocates an immediate pre-emptive counterstrike before the incoming missile arrives, Jared Harris is the defense secretary Reid Baker who realises that his estranged daughter is in Chicago, Gabriel Basso plays the brilliant and flustered young NSA adviser Jake Baerington who, if this was an Aaron Sorkin script, could be relied on to save the day.

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:07 pm

Long Covid has more than 200 potential symptoms. Selective gullibility is one of mine

When things are grim, the promises made by the wellness industry sound very appealing. I worry about how vulnerable this has made me

Ordinarily, I’m a sensible person – at least part-time. A journalist, an asker of questions, a checker of sources. Historically, a big fan of research.

But three years into a debilitating chronic illness, I am willing to try anything to get well. Even things that would have once made me roll my eyes. Chromotherapy, sound baths, mushroom extract. Reiki, leg compression boots, strategic humming.

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:00 pm

A meaty topic: what is the carnivore diet and why do so many influencers seem to swear by it? | Antiviral

Some claim eating steak and whole sticks of butter has improved their skin, cleared brain fog and even eliminated farting. Experts say an all-animal diet carries risks

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Ex-vegan turned carnivore Isabella Ma, better known to her nearly half a million followers on Instagram as @steakandbuttergal, has glowing skin and a flat stomach. She looks directly at the camera as she chomps down on an entire stick of butter. It’s part of her “high fat carnivore diet” to which she attributes a whole host of health benefits, not least of which is the claim she “literally never fart[s] any more” and has a single “scentless” bowel movement a week.

A lot of gym bros also back the diet touted for helping people lose weight and build muscle, such as Antonio Angotti, who says the fat in red meat “includes almost every nutrient humans need to thrive” and invokes religion as part of his dietary choices, saying he eats “just foods God will actually bless”. It’s also been platformed by Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.

Natasha May is Guardian Australia’s health reporter

Antiviral is a fortnightly column that interrogates the evidence behind the health headlines and factchecks popular wellness claims

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:01 pm

Columbia punished our kids for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. We condemn the university’s cowardice

We are the parents of students who faced disciplinary actions for pro-Palestine activism. The struggle for liberation will not end with suspensions and expulsions

By now, 23 million American college and university students will mostly be back on campus. Undergraduates have stuffed suitcases and crammed one more thing into already bursting backpacks, and moved into dorm rooms and apartments. Graduate students have scrambled to prepare for seminars and their work in classrooms and laboratories and started the new academic year.

But not our children.

Published: September 2, 2025, 11:00 am

Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine. Your voice can still make a difference | Arwa Mahdawi

As the war gets livestreamed to our phones, it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel helpless. But even small acts of activism add up

I don’t know if Frankenstein star Christoph Waltz is normally a man of few words but he didn’t have much to say at a recent Venice film festival press conference. Waltz uttered only six words, with “CGI is for losers” constituting four of them. The remaining two were “I don’t”, in response to a question about how he stays hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”.

Waltz is certainly not alone in despairing of a world which seems to elevate liars, cheats, and adjudicated sexual predators. It’s hard to feel hope when a genocide has been livestreamed to our phones for almost two years and there is no justice in sight; just a systematic slaughter of the journalists who serve as messengers. No peace prospects on the horizon; just well-paid consultants putting together ethnic cleansing prospectuses so a “Gaza Riviera” can be built. (Oh, sorry, we’re supposed to say “voluntary relocation”, aren’t we?)

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:20 pm

France has a massive debt crisis. So why is it spending billions a year subsidising business? | Alexander Hurst

The government is on the brink of collapse over planned austerity. Instead it must face up to the costs of its unnecessarily rigid labour market

As someone who has always been against austerity, I find France, with a national debt at 114% of GDP and a budget deficit of 5.8% of GDP, a conundrum. Despite years of denunciation from his left and far-right opponents that Macron has engaged in “ultraneoliberalism”, there hasn’t been any. Not on a macro level, anyway, where both French government spending (57.3% of GDP) and tax receipts (51.4% of GDP) are among the highest in the world, including social spending, which outpaces any of its European neighbours.

At the same time, it’s impossible to have spent the past decade in France without encountering the widely shared perception and accusation that public services are in decline. Doctors and nurses denounce a labour shortage in public hospitals; people who live in rural areas denounce the closing of rural train lines; students and academics denounce a lack of resources for public universities, many of which are dealing with outdated infrastructure, and for research.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Blame migrants, or blame the rich? That’s the populist divide in Britain’s politics now | Gaby Hinsliff

Taxing the ultra-rich may be a vote winner, but it’s just as important to shift the conversation away from Reform’s immigration doom loop

The long, hot summer of discontent is finally over. Parliament returned this week if not exactly with a rush of back to school energy, then at least with the sense that the government is now back to fill what was becoming an increasingly dangerous August vacuum.

When exhausted ministers retreated to lick their wounds over the summer, Nigel Farage saw his chance and took it, filling the slow news days with encouragement of protesters over asylum seeker accommodation. He was rewarded by polling showing voters now see immigration – the terrain on which Reform UK is palpably desperate to fight an election, because it’s terrain on which Labour can never go far enough to please some supporters without horrifying half the rest – and not a broken economy as Britain’s biggest problem, an impression arguably only reinforced when the government’s first announcement on returning from recess was a crackdown on refugees bringing their families to Britain.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:00 am

Soldiers are doing landscaping in DC parks. I’m thrilled for them | Dave Schilling

They were deployed to fight crime. Instead, some are spreading mulch. It’s almost sweet – if you remove the context

If soldiers are going to be deployed to your city, what would you prefer they do: point a rifle in your face or mow your grass? This is not a question I ever expected to have to consider in my days on this planet, but life is full of surprises. As part of Donald Trump’s military deployment to address Washington DC’s so-called “crime emergency”, national guard troops are being tasked with various groundskeeping duties around the United States capital. These duties include spreading mulch around cherry trees, picking up trash and general maintenance of public spaces. The president must have been too embarrassed to get Four Seasons Total Landscaping involved again, so he got the military to do it instead.

It’s a real “swords into ploughshares” moment, or in this case, “M4 rifles into those grabber sticks you use to pick up plastic bottles full of piss.” It’s almost sweet, if you separate the move from literally all outside context and just think about a part-time soldier pruning your bush. The national guard is actually trained for sanitation and groundskeeping, but they are usually deployed for such purposes in a crisis like a natural disaster or even during the height of the Covid pandemic. Except: there’s no natural disaster, no stay-at-home orders due to a deadly virus, no wildfires, no floods. The only crisis here is man-made.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Published: September 1, 2025, 12:00 pm

US Open quarter-finals: Alcaraz faces Lehecka after Pegula powers past Krejcikova – live

• Pegula takes on Krejcikova, Alcaraz faces Lehecka

• Sinner routs Bublik to reach quarters | Email Katy

Pegula 3-1 Krejcikova* A little better from Krejcikova, who makes 30-15 when Pegula slices into the net and, in comms, Martina bemoans the lack of classic matches so far this tournament. I really enjoyed Muchova v Kostyuk yesterday, for what that’s worth; meantime, Pegula opens the court with another forehand, then hits a backhand into the space she created for 40-30, quickly making deuce thereafter. She’s started like she means it, but when she fails to convert on advantage, Krejcikova closes out, a backhand winner – her first of the match – sealing the deal.

*Pegula 3-0 Krejcikova Krejcikova had to save eight match points to beat Townsend in round four and perhaps that’s still in her legs, or her mind; she’s not got going here at all. But she does get to 40-30 only to allow a weak second serve to escape unpunished; another forehand winner secures the consolidation.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:47 pm

Marc Guéhi angry with Crystal Palace’s decision to block move to Liverpool

• Oliver Glasner intervened over centre-back’s £35m switch

• Guéhi considering giving up Palace captaincy in protest

Marc Guéhi is extremely unhappy with Crystal Palace’s decision to pull the plug on his £35m transfer to Liverpool, which came after Oliver Glasner stepped in to prevent the move by threatening to resign if he was sold, the Guardian understands.

The Palace chairman, Steve Parish, reluctantly accepted Liverpool’s offer for the England defender a few hours before Monday’s deadline despite Glasner having insisted the 25-year-old must not be sold because there was no time to find an adequate replacement.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:33 pm

Chris Froome suffered life-threatening injury to his heart in training crash

• Tour de France winner sustained a pericardial rupture

• Kooij wins opening stage of 2025 men’s Tour of Britain

Chris Froome suffered a life-threatening injury to his heart in the training crash in France last week that left him hospitalised with a broken back and broken ribs. The four-time Tour de France winner also sustained a pericardial rupture, a tear to the sac that surrounds the heart, in the crash.

“It was obviously a lot more serious than some broken bones,” his wife, Michelle Froome, told the Times. “He’s fine, but it’s going to be a long recovery process. He won’t be riding a bike for a while.”

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:54 pm

Olympic champion Gabby Thomas will miss World Athletics Championships with injury

• American won three golds at Paris 2024

• 28-year-old has been dealing with achilles injury

Olympic champion Gabby Thomas will miss this month’s World Athletics Championships with an achilles tendon injury she’s been dealing with since May.

Thomas, who won the 200m in Paris and was on the 4x100m and 4x400m gold-medal relay teams, said she exacerbated the injury in July.

“I understand that it will be disappointing for some track fans to hear this news, but I’ve finally come to the realization that it’s OK to be human and take care of myself,” Thomas said in a press release on Tuesday. “As an athlete you always want to keep grinding, but sometimes you simply can’t outwork an injury. Sometimes it’s about patience and making the right decision for the long term. All the best to my Team USA teammates fighting for medals in Tokyo.”

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:25 pm

Why Netflix’s new documentary on the Dallas Cowboys is better than The Last Dance | Sean Ingle

The Gambler and his Cowboys is a gritty portrayal of the rise and fall of a sports dynasty that leaves the viewer wanting more of its glory and grubbiness

Of all the unflinching moments in the new Netflix blockbuster, America’s Team: the Gambler and his Cowboys, one stands out more than most. It comes after the Dallas Cowboys’ former star receiver Michael Irvin is asked about the White House, the secret mansion where some players would unwind while winning three Super Bowls during the 1990s. “I was the president of the White House,” Irvin says with a cackle, his eyes lighting up. “It was a safe place for camaraderie.”

But this, it turns out, was a very different style of team building than going down the pub.

Published: September 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Jay Vine takes Vuelta stage nine as Juan Ayuso attacks UAE team ‘dictatorship’

• Vine climbs to win as departing teammate speaks out

• Vingegaard regains red jersey at top of Larra-Belagua

Jonas Vingegaard looked casual while he slipped back into the red jersey at the top of the Larra-Belagua but it was a dramatic day at the Vuelta a España for UAE Team Emirates as Jay Vine, the mountains classification leader, took the stage win after his teammate, Juan Ayuso, has earlier accused management of acting “like a dictatorship”.

Vine took his second stage win, the fourth of the race for UAE, with a well-timed attack on the final climb to distance his final challenger left in the breakaway, Pablo Castrillo. The Australian had originally called off plans to go for a stage win earlier in the day as the peloton attacked the hilly route at pace – with average speeds regularly topping 49km per hour – but as the race unfolded an opportunity arose for Vine to bridge over to the day’s breakaway group and he took it.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:01 pm

Transfer window and deadline day: Premier League club-by-club analysis

We assess how each top-flight side fared in the search for quality and value during the summer window

• Transfer interactive: all the deals from across Europe

Andrea Berta’s first transfer window since taking over as sporting director has been busy. Headline moves for Viktor Gyökeres and Eberechi Eze have given Mikel Arteta the firepower and creativity he asked for, while Martín Zubimendi has added class to midfield. The arrival of Cristhian Mosquera, Christian Nørgaard, Noni Madueke and Kepa Arrizabalaga has also added depth to Arsenal’s squad that is already being called on after a series of early season injuries, while the late signing of the exciting Ecuador defender, Piero Hincapié, should prove to be a shrewd addition. Ed Aarons

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:01 am

How will Arne Slot change his Liverpool tactics to get best out of Alexander Isak? | Jonathan Wilson

Swede is not a classic central striker, but could his signing herald tactical tweaks and what does it mean for Salah?

On the face of it, it’s not hard to see why Liverpool would want Alexander Isak. He will not turn 26 until later this month and has scored more than 20 Premier League goals in each of the past two seasons, something matched only by Erling Haaland. But he offers more than just goals; he’s a very modern centre-forward.

Thirty or 40 years ago, when 4-4-2 was still the dominant formation, strike pairings tended to come in two forms: either target-man and finisher, or creator and finisher. These days, the very best centre-forwards combine traits of all three. This is not entirely new: the days of Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush or Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips are long gone and football has been familiar for some time with players of the ilk of Didier Drogba, Andriy Shevchenko and Radamel Falcao, forwards with pace and some blend of physicality and technical ability.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

Afghanistan death toll passes 1,400 as second earthquake strikes

Taliban appeal for aid, with casualties expected to increase as rescue teams struggle to reach isolated areas

The Taliban have called for international aid as Afghanistan reels from an earthquake that killed more than 1,400 people and left thousands more injured.

Rescuers searched into the night for survivors after the 6.0-magnitude quake struck on Sunday destroying entire villages across the country’s eastern Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:55 pm

Vogue names Chloe Malle as new head of US edition

Vogue staffer Malle succeeds Anna Wintour with the title ‘head of editorial content’

The biggest job in fashion has finally been filled.

Following news that Anna Wintour was stepping back as editor of American Vogue in July, Condé Nast have appointed 39-year-old journalist and Vogue staffer Chloe Malle as head of editorial content at the American fashion magazine. Her role is effective immediately.

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:27 pm

Jair Bolsonaro faces justice over alleged attempt to usurp Brazilian democracy

Former president in court along with seven others accused of failed power grab after losing 2022 election

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and seven of his allies, including four senior members of the military, have gone on trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup – the first time in Brazilian history such powerful figures have faced justice for seeking to topple the country’s democracy.

Bolsonaro, a paratrooper turned far-right populist who governed from 2019 until 2023, stands accused of masterminding a failed power grab after losing the 2022 election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:12 pm

Identical twin convicted based on DNA differences in first US case of its kind

In the Virginia case, rare genetic mutations distinguished identical twins in DNA analysis

For the first time in the US, an identical twin has been convicted of a crime based on DNA analysis.

On 21 August, a jury found Russell Marubbio, 54, guilty of a sexual assault that occurred in Woodbridge, Virginia, in 1987.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:02 pm

University of Kentucky athlete charged after dead infant found hidden in closet

Laken Ashlee Snelling, a 21-year-old cheer team member, faces charges of corpse abuse and evidence tampering

A University of Kentucky athlete allegedly placed her dead infant inside a trash bag later found in a closet while trying to hide the baby’s birth, leading to her being jailed, according to local authorities and media reporting.

Laken Ashlee Snelling, 21, faces charges of corpse abuse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant after her arrest on Sunday, police in Lexington, Kentucky, said in a statement.

Published: September 2, 2025, 5:25 pm

Italy considers hiding state flight paths after jamming of von der Leyen plane

EU member states debate how to make leaders’ flights more secure as Russia blamed for GPS loss

Italy is considering keeping state flights secret after the satellite signal of the aircraft carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, was allegedly jammed by Russia, Italian defence ministry sources said.

Von der Leyen, a fierce critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Moscow’s war in Ukraine, was flying to Bulgaria on Sunday when her charter plane lost satellite navigation aids, delaying its arrival in Plovdiv, and reportedly forcing it to circle an airport for an hour.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:02 pm

Archaeologists in Peru discover 3D mural that could date back 4,000 years

The unprecedented find has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a multicoloured three-dimensional wall that could date back 4,000 years, in an unprecedented find that has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas.

The centrepiece of the three-by-six metre wall carving is a stylistic depiction of a large bird of prey with outstretched wings, its head adorned with three-dimensional diamond motifs that visually align the south and north faces of the mural. It is covered with high-relief friezes and features designs painted in blue, yellow, red and black.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:30 am

Global temperatures to remain above average despite return of La Niña, says UN

Climate phenomenon cools surface of Pacific but won’t stop human-induced climate change increasing temperatures and exacerbating extreme weather

The cooling La Niña weather phenomenon may return between September and November, but even if it does, global temperatures are expected to be above average, the United Nations has said.

La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that cools surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It brings changes in winds, pressure and rainfall patterns.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:08 am

‘Fear haunts us’: Pakistan’s floods leave mental scars long after waters recede

Shock, panic, guilt and grief grip survivors as mental health experts warn of chronic trauma from repeated exposure to natural disasters

For a 10-year-old, the loss is proving hard to grasp. “It has been four days since I last saw my home,” says Ahsan. He has not yet understood that the floods completely swept away his house in Dogoro Basha village in Shigar, Pakistan.

His confusion is part of the devastating aftermath of long months of rain and floods that have devastated thousands of families in the country’s northern provinces and left more than 860 people dead so far.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:00 am

Saving the world’s fattest parrot: can we vaccinate our rarest species before bird flu gets to them?

Trial in only continent untouched by avian flu suggests jabs will be key to survival as migration season approaches

It is easy to imagine how it could happen. A petrel, flying east from the Indian Ocean at the end of the Austral winter, makes landfall at New Zealand’s southern Codfish Island/Whenua Hou. Tired from its long journey, the petrel seeks refuge in the burrow of a green kākāpō: a critically endangered flightless species that is the world’s fattest parrot.

If the seabird intrudes when the kākāpō is primed to breed, the male parrot may attempt to mate with the smaller petrel, accidentally smothering it in the process.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:00 am

‘Every company wants to produce the last barrel sold’: the treaty to stop fossil fuel production

Tzeporah Berman’s campaign group believes Cop30 will help its initiative to phase out oil, coal and gas take shape

The fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative aims to sidestep slow-moving UN climate talks by gathering together nations, cities and companies that want to rapidly phase out oil, coal and gas. At the coming Cop30 summit in Belém, it hopes to gather support so it can launch negotiations for a new treaty next year. The group’s founder, Tzeporah Berman, explains why the Amazon rainforest and the global south are an ideal springboard for the movement.

Why will you be campaigning for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty?

Published: September 2, 2025, 11:09 am

Texas man charged after 11-year-old boy shot dead while playing doorbell prank

Leon Gonzalo Jr, 42, was arrested and charged with murder in connection with the Houston shooting

A 42-year-old man in Texas has been charged with murder after the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy who was playing a doorbell prank in Houston on Saturday night, authorities said.

The shooting occurred at around 11pm on Saturday, according to Houston authorities, when the boy and his friends were in their neighborhood reportedly playing a game of “ding dong ditch” – an old childhood prank involving ringing a doorbell and running away.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:19 pm

Kraft Heinz to split a decade after merger in bid to revive growth

Chicago-based food group says it will split into two publicly traded companies through tax-free spin-off

Kraft Heinz, the US company behind kitchen staples such as Philadelphia cheese and Heinz tomato ketchup, has announced plans to split into two independent businesses a decade after it was created in a mega merger.

The Chicago-based packaged food group said it would separate into two publicly traded companies through a tax-free spin-off to try to reduce complexity and improve financial performance after years of falling sales.

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:20 pm

Gold price hits record high as investors seek safe haven

Bullion has nearly doubled in value since 2023 amid global uncertainty and alarm over Donald Trump’s policies

The price of gold has hit a fresh record high, as investors seek out safe-haven assets to protect against inflationary and geopolitical risks.

Gold rose above $3,500 (£2,614) an ounce, surpassing its April peak. It has nearly doubled in value since early 2023. The rally comes as the US dollar has weakened and some central banks add to their gold holdings, ditching US government bonds, known as US treasuries.

Published: September 2, 2025, 9:35 am

Hundreds of ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ Labor Day rallies take place across US

Protests denounce Trump administration’s policies and call for the protection of social safety nets

As Labor Day rallies took place across the US, the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, sharply denounced the Trump administration’s threat to deploy federal troops to the city as part of an immigration crackdown.

“No federal troops in the city of Chicago,” said Johnson on Monday to a gathered crowd at the “Workers over Billionaires” demonstration in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood.

Published: September 1, 2025, 10:54 pm

Sudan landslide kills at least 1,000 people, rebel group says

Landslide destroyed a village in the Marra mountains area of western Sudan and left only one survivor

More than 1,000 people were killed in a landslide in western Sudan on Sunday, according to a rebel group that controls the area.

The landslide, which followed heavy rain, destroyed the village of Tarasin in the Marra mountains area of western Sudan and left only one survivor, said the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM).

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:28 pm

Parents could get alerts if children show acute distress while using ChatGPT

OpenAI to roll out new protection measures after facing a law suit on behalf of teenager who took his own life

Parents could be alerted if their teenagers show acute distress while talking with ChatGPT, amid child safety concerns as more young people turn to AI chatbots for support and advice.

The alerts are part of new protections for children using ChatGPT to be rolled out in the next month by OpenAI, which was last week sued by the family of a boy who took his own life after allegedly receiving “months of encouragement” from the system.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:17 pm

China drilling for oil and gas inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone

Exclusive: Experts say the move could be part of Beijing’s ‘greyzone’ grab for disputed territory

China is drilling for oil and gas inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a move that analysts believe is likely part of Beijing’s unilateral grab for disputed territory that could also aid a future invasion of Taiwan.

During July and August at least 12 oil and gas vessels and permanent structures were detected inside Taiwan’s EEZ – including one within 50km of the restricted-waters border of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands – as well as several steel supports for fixed offshore drilling platforms, called jackets. Their presence inside Taiwan’s EEZ have not been previously reported.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘A paradigm change’: black hole spotted that may have been created moments after big bang

Sighting by James Webb space telescope of black hole with sparse halo of material could upend theories of the universe

An ancient and “nearly naked” black hole that astronomers believe may have been created in the first fraction of a second after the big bang has been spotted by the James Webb space telescope.

If confirmed as a so-called primordial black hole, a theoretical class of object predicted to exist by Stephen Hawking but never before seen, the discovery would upend prevailing theories of the universe.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:05 am

Straight Circle review – boisterous border guard satire from a director to watch

Venice film festival
Oscar Hudson’s feature debut, starring twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor as ritual-performing representatives of fictional warring nations, is an absurdist nightmare

British documentary and ad director Oscar Hudson makes his feature debut in the Venice critics week sidebar with this high-concept anti-war satire, a through-the-looking-glass absurdist nightmare about realising that the otherness of your enemy is an illusion. There are some bold and ambitious images here, and some interesting split-screen work. Maybe there’s an issue about the style and substance ratio and perhaps the running time is indulgent, but this is a strong piece of work.

Twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor play two soldiers of equal rank in opposing armies, called Pte Warne and Pte Arthur. They represent two nations of fictional Ruritanian weirdness, formerly at war but who have evidently concluded a tensely unstable peace treaty. Warne has a resplendent white uniform and, like the rest of his country, shaves his head, while Arthur has shaggy hair and a looser uniform. These two men have been chosen by their respective countries to be the sole guards at the border in the middle of a vast and featureless desert. They face off every day, notionally co-operating and sharing a station straddling the border, but suspicious, carrying out their various patriotic rituals to reassert their identity.

Published: September 2, 2025, 11:30 am

Portobello review – Marco Bellocchio’s glorious saga of TV stars, mafia prisoners and lace doilies

In the first two episodes of a six-part series, the stardom of 80s primetime host Enzo Tortora is cleverly crosscut with the scramble of a mob secretary who implicates him – and his parrot – in drug trafficking

Marco Bellocchio, the tireless warhorse of Italian cinema, kicks up a swirling dust cloud of corruption with this fabulous, stranger-than-fiction account of an 80s TV star convicted of conspiring with the Camorra. Shot for the streaming service HBO Max, it is the director’s second historical miniseries after 2022’s Exterior Night, about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, and features the same lead player in Fabrizio Gifuni, an actor who has surely cornered the market in playing glossy public figures whose lives are about to take a hellish turn. Bellocchio’s dramas typically inhabit this kind of shonky, venal moral universe. The ground is liable to drop away pretty much at any moment.

Gifuni stars as Enzo Tortora, a primetime TV presenter in the twinkling Terry Wogan mould who hosts a Friday night entertainment show on a soundstage made up to resemble an old-style small-town market. Portobello features dances and phone-ins and stars a parrot called Ramon, who point-blank refuses to speak. The show pulls in a peak audience of about 28 million, which means it’s watched by everyone, in all social classes, from the sisters at the convent to the cons inside Naples’ Poggioreale prison. One of these prisoners is such a fan of Portobello, in fact, that he posts Tortora a set of knitted lace doilies to be auctioned at his market. Naturally the inmate wants a namecheck on the show – or failing that, a letter of thanks. So he writes to Tortora again, and this time he’s more peeved.

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:33 pm

Above the Knee review – man struggles with body integrity dysmorphia in gory amputation horror

A man grapples with an overwhelming desire to remove his leg in a lingering psychological interrogation from Norwegian film-maker Viljar Bøe

Norwegian director Viljar Bøe has been hacking out an interesting niche for himself in the horror genre, specialising in a variety grounded more in psychology than supernatural jiggery pokery. For example, Good Boy from 2022 revolved around a man and his “dog” (who is obviously a guy in a dog costume) acting like a mutt at all times. Similarly, his new feature features a character called Amir (Freddy Singh) with a psychological fixation that’s so unusual he feels he must keep it a secret from his girlfriend and all acquaintances: he has body integrity dysphoria (BID), which in his case means he has an overwhelming desire to amputate his left leg even though there’s nothing physically wrong with it.

Amir lives with his super-nice, cheerful girlfriend Kim (Julie Abrahamsen) in hyper-tolerant, Scandi-socialist quasi-utopia Norway, so when he drunkenly tries to self-amputate, everyone just assumes it was a suicide attempt and showers him with understanding and support. His old friend Jonas (Viggo Solomon) even offers him an office job, but Amir is so obsessed with his leg he constantly haunts the chainsaw aisle at his local DIY shop. After seeing an interview on TV with Rikke (Louise Waage Anda), a young woman who is open about her own BID (she wants to be blind), Amir seeks her out for advice. Soon, the two of them are having a sort of platonic affair, with Amir storing his cache of paintings depicting himself as an amputee that he doesn’t dare let Kim see.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Borderline review – Raymond Nicholson shines as a deranged fan in comedy thriller

It’s the 1990s and a famous pop star is taken hostage by a fan in Jimmy Warden’s stylish but confused film, loosely inspired by a real-life stalker case involving Madonna

Paul Duerson (Raymond Nicholson) has got it bad for world famous pop star and actor Sofia (Samara Weaving). It being the 1990s, he doesn’t have the option of simply being creepy on social media; instead, he takes her hostage and attempts to marry her, as you do, in a period-comedy-horror-thriller that is entertaining enough moment-to-moment, but doesn’t add up anything very substantial overall. Standing in the way of Paul’s deranged scheme is bodyguard Bell (a grounded and nicely judged performance by Eric Dane), and rounding out the men in Sofia’s life is her NBA player boyfriend Rhodes (Jimmie Fails).

Screenwriter Jimmy Warden knows a grabby real-life premise when he sees one. In 1985, a bear ate a massive amount of cocaine and fatally overdosed, leading, in 2023, to the release of the Warden-scripted movie Cocaine Bear. In 1996, Robert Dewey Hoskins was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stalking Madonna, providing the loose inspiration for this latest Warden script, which this time out he has also directed (casting his wife Weaving in the lead role). Warden is not a bad director of individual scenes, with several sequences playing out like miniature music videos, complete with big bold needle-drop choices on the soundtrack. The problem is the overall cohesion, or rather, lack of it – there are plenty of cool ideas, and a narrative that strings them together effectively enough, but it’s unclear what we’re meant to feel about any of it.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:00 am

The Smashing Machine review – Dwayne Johnson only possible casting as crisis-riddled UFC champ Mark Kerr

Former pro wrestler Johnson takes on the role of man-mountain Kerr who goes into meltdown when the unthinkable happens – he loses

Benny Safdie has written and directed a solid bro drama for the UFC fanbase and maybe a little way beyond. It is about the central crisis in the life of man-mountain Mark Kerr, America’s pioneering MMA and ultimate fighting champ, who in 1997 found himself in the ring, or maybe the cage, with his demons after the unthinkable humiliation of losing for the first time.

This feature is in fact developed from a 2002 documentary about Kerr with the same title. He confronted his substance abuse, relationship anxieties and the question of what the heck life is for if you can’t simply win all the time. Kerr is played by Dwayne Johnson, a colossus of muscle topped off with a head the size of Indiana Jones’s boulder, a body on which the only visible fat is rippling at the nape of his neck. Johnson’s appearance is modified by close-cut frizzy hair and facial prosthetics that make him look like Jon Favreau playing the Hulk. No other casting was remotely possible – not unless Timothée Chalamet fancied bulking up. (Sacha Baron Cohen could do it these days, and would probably want to play it every bit as seriously and non-satirically as Johnson.)

Published: September 1, 2025, 6:45 pm

Gorillaz review – after 25 years, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s cartoon band are still riveting and relevant

Copper Box Arena, London
Dressed like a vicar, Albarn leads his band – joined by a choir, a string quartet, De La Soul and more – in renewing Demon Days’ downbeat drama

Gorillaz are 25. In 2000, this cartoon-fronted project seemed like something fun for Damon Albarn to do between Blur albums, hiding behind Jamie Hewlett’s comic-book animations, but they’ve overtaken Blur almost everywhere but Britain. The number of children in the audience testifies to Gorillaz’s powers of self-rejuvenation – an ever-changing vehicle for Albarn’s ceaseless curiosity.

Gorillaz are marking the occasion with an immersive exhibition, House of Kong, and four era-specific shows. This second night revives 2005’s Demon Days. Co-produced by Danger Mouse, it remains the most satisfying expression of the Gorillaz concept: focused in both its themes (innocence and violence) and personnel (rappers and the rap-adjacent). Dressed like a hip vicar, Albarn serves double duty as a frontman and a conscientious host, although the original cast of vocalists is inevitably depleted. The late MF DOOM and awol Shaun Ryder appear only on screen, while Skye Edwards replaces Martina Topley-Bird on All Alone. Thank goodness for the old-school stalwarts. Bootie Brown enters Dirty Harry like a red-and-white firework before De La Soul boom and cackle through Feel Good Inc.

Published: September 1, 2025, 10:17 am

The host of one of TV’s finest foodie shows does a podcast: best listens of the week

Samin Nosrat from Netflix’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat creates an essential resource for food heads. Plus, a Grey’s Anatomy character goes under the microscope in a super-fun show about dubious people called Elizabeth

Published: September 1, 2025, 6:00 am

A Short History of Stupidity by Stuart Jeffries review – comfortably dumb?

From Shakespeare’s fools to Donald Trump, this exhilarating read considers stupidity in its many forms

Stupidity, no question, can be just as rich and subtle as its opposite. Three and a half decades on, I still sometimes meditate on what a school friend of mine said in a here’s-a-profound-thought tone of voice: “I’d rather be stupid than happy”.

In this clever book, Stuart Jeffries starts out at a double disadvantage, though. First: he has an excellently snappy title but it’s open to question whether stupidity can be said to have a history in any meaningful sense. The quality of stupidity is just, sort of, there; and there’s lots of it. Could you write a history of happiness, or bad luck, or knees? You’d be on firmer ground, as he recognises, historicising the concept of stupidity: a short history, in other words, of “stupidity” – how successive societies and thinkers have defined and responded to reason’s derr-brained secret sharer. As an intellectual historian who has written smart and chewy popular books about the Frankfurt School (Grand Hotel Abyss) and postmodernism (Everything, All the Time, Everywhere), he certainly has the chops for it.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:00 am

The Two Roberts by Damian Barr review – lost story of a gay art duo

The lives of Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, who found love and fame and lost it all, are vividly reimagined

What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he’s found a historic couple who make the ideal source material. Working-class Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun were rarely apart after they met in 1933. They lived and worked together, became famous together and then declined into desperate squalor together – even poorer than when they began.

Barr knows what it’s like to conquer Glasgow from a small, working-class town on its outskirts; he knows what it’s like to find yourself feted for your portraits of the place you’ve left irrevocably behind. His memoir, Maggie and Me, was a hard-hitting yet rambunctious tale of growing up gay near Motherwell under Thatcher, uneasily aware that the woman who pushed his parents deeper into poverty also taught him that the ruthless exercise of his talents offered his escape. He expanded his exploration of how brutality can take hold in his novel You Will Be Safe Here, set in South Africa. Now he returns to Scotland in this moving meditation on art, love and home.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:00 am

The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith review – a terrific, tightly plotted romp

With four murder inquiries in play, JK Rowling’s eighth Cormoran Strike novel avoids the page-padding longueurs of previous volumes – but will he finally tell Robin how he feels about her?

In his popular BBC series Just One Thing, the late Michael Mosley made the case for resistance training. Lifting weights, he explained, not only builds stronger muscles, it also boosts the immune system, maintains a healthy heart and improves brain function. Best of all, it can be done in your kitchen, using ordinary domestic items: pints of milk in place of dumbbells, say, or squats wearing a backpack full of books.

Anyone intending to use Robert Galbraith’s Strike novels for this purpose would be advised to seek the advice of a GP. The Hallmarked Man may not be the heftiest of the eight so far – it does not even make it into the top three – but it still clocks in at a cool 912 pages. Galbraith’s tendency to whopperdom has in the past elicited a fair amount of griping from critics, me among them, who argued that judicious pruning would better serve her plots and her charismatic private detective duo, the sweary one-legged army veteran Cormoran Strike and his brave, decent business partner Robin Ellacott. Not that it changed anything. The books remained resolutely huge (as did sales – by 2024, a staggering 20 million books had been sold in over 50 countries). Galbraith, otherwise known as JK Rowling, has never been one to bow to her detractors.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:00 am

Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy review – brave and absorbing

In this remarkable memoir, the Booker-winning novelist looks back on her bittersweet relationship with her mercurial mother

Twelve minutes into an interview with Allen Ginsberg for the BBC’s Face to Face, Jeremy Isaacs asks him about the extraordinary long poem he wrote about his mother: “In Kaddish, you mourn your mother. What was the effect on you of living with a mother who was mad?” Ginsberg’s answer, mildly inflected by a laugh, is: “It gave me a great sort of … tolerance for eccentric behaviour.”

Arundhati Roy, whose memoir is partly an account of her life with her mother Mary Roy, might recognise this insight. Arguably, all mothers appear to their children as mad: madness here meaning an unbounded force, at odds with what society imagines normal parenting to consist of. The manifestations of this madness are as disparate as those of love, and these two aspects – the abnormal, the overbearing, and the protective, the nurturing – can be, in our mothers, intimately intertwined (“She was my shelter and my storm,” writes Roy). It is through loving and depending on the mysterious and incomprehensible that we come to “tolerate”, even embrace, the strangest thing of all: life itself.

Published: September 1, 2025, 6:00 am

Little Problems – a cute detective game with no violence or victims

Shanghai-based developer Posh Cat Studio focused on the satisfying thrill of solving life’s small mysteries in this cosy crime caper

As the latest generation of 18-year-olds is about to find out, starting university is an experience fraught with minor as well as major problems. Oversleeping and missing lectures, forgetting where your study group is meeting, mislaying your books – a lot of your time is spent looking for things.

It is these small mysteries that concern Little Problems, a cute detective game, in which the protagonist, Mary, must use her sleuthing abilities to make it through each day as a new student . Created by Indonesian designer Melisa, who has chosen to go by her first name only, the idea comes from her love of detective stories, but also her wish to take violence out of the genre.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:45 am

Mythmatch – taking on ancient Greek tech bros to rebuild a broken world

Low-budget puzzle game is also about building communities and challenging capitalism – while still looking cute and approachable

One of the most interesting trends in game design is the use of familiar mechanics and genres to explore real-world power systems and how to challenge them. Forthcoming deck-building game, All Will Rise, seeks to interest players in political activism, Compensation Not Guaranteed aims to educate players about south-east Asian politics, while MythMatch is ostensibly a puzzle game set in ancient Greece, but is also about building communities and challenging capitalism – while still looking cute and approachable.

You play as Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who is having to navigate the institutionalised sexism of Mount Olympus, here represented as a corporation infested with tech bros. In defiance, she decides to help the mortals of Ithaca build a new, more progressive world – and you do this by running around the little environments, merging items and animals to create helpful new beasts and objects. For example, when you’re cast down to Earth you accidentally smash a chariot belonging to Selene, the goddess of the Moon, so you have to match moon shards together to recreate the celestial vehicle. However, one of the shards has fallen into a greenhouse, so you need to solve a puzzle to gain access.

Published: September 1, 2025, 9:00 am

Celebrated, imprisoned, reviled, rebuilt: Fernand Pouillon, the lost architect of France

From designing enormous postwar housing projects to escaping from prison using a rope, Pouillon’s life had high drama. A new documentary charts the extraordinary rise, fall – and rise again – of France’s ‘most wanted’ creative

Variously described as an “architect, painter, novelist, communist and convicted fraudster”, Fernand Pouillon’s life was punctuated by abrupt reversals of fortune that might have sprung from the pages of Dickens or Dumas. Throughout an eventful career, he ricocheted from intoxicating success, to financial scandal, prison, exile and eventual rehabilitation.

In 1985, when Pouillon was in his early 70s, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by President François Mitterrand. Yet just over 20 years earlier, Pouillon found himself in custody awaiting trial on charges of corruption. As a prolific architect-developer who had designed gargantuan housing schemes in France and Algeria, he was accused of funding irregularities and violating laws contrived to keep the processes of design and construction separate.

Published: September 2, 2025, 2:33 pm

Billy Bragg releases song in support of Palestine and Greta Thunberg aid flotilla

Hundred Year Hunger – which has a chorus in Arabic – has been released by the British protest singer to coincide with a humanitarian aid flotilla heading for Gaza

Billy Bragg has released a new original song to show his support for the people of Palestine. The title of Hundred Year Hunger was inspired by a new book of the same name by E Mark Windle about the history of chronic malnutrition and deprivation in Gaza and will raise money for the Amos Trust’s Gaza Appeal.

Writing on Instagram, the British protest singer said that the song “looks at the current famine that Israel has created in Gaza through the lens of a century of enforced food insecurity and malnutrition imposed on the Palestinian people, firstly by British imperialism, then as a weapon of mass displacement by the state of Israel”.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:40 am

I’m a single mum of one-year-old twins. Could I do a summer of music festivals with them?

Festivals are increasingly seen as a family holiday and many have kids’ areas – even nannies. We brave the hot tents and random ravers to see what they’re like

As a DJ plays MJ Cole’s UK garage classic Crazy Love, adults across London’s Cross the Tracks festival lift up little children in brightly coloured ear-defenders to dance. A smile spreads across my baby son’s face as he bounces his body, finding something that looks like rhythm. Later that day, my daughter snuggles into my chest in her carrier as I dance to songs by Ezra Collective that she has heard in the car many times.

My mum took me to Reading festival when I was 16 and as I’ve grown up there have been new ones to match the seasons of my life. Then came motherhood: last year I became a single parent to a pair of delicious, curious, boisterous twin babies. But I don’t want to stop indulging my inner child alongside my actual children, and I’m determined to keep music festivals in my life.

Published: September 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Graham Greene, Dances with Wolves actor, dies aged 73

The trailblazing Canadian First Nations actor, who was nominated for an Academy Award, died in Toronto after a long illness

Graham Greene, the prolific Oscar-nominated Canadian First Nations actor and Hollywood trailblazer, has died aged 73 in a Toronto hospital after a long illness.

“He was a great man of morals, ethics and character and will be eternally missed,” Greene’s agent, Michael Greene (no relation), told Deadline. “You are finally free.”

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:27 am

The Spanish camping brand that’s big on nature immersion, cool design and creature comforts

A site in the pine-clad hills of Andalucía is part of a chain that seeks to connect with nature and outdoor adventure while offering a stylish glamping experience

A few years ago, camping with friends, I watched in awe as Becky set up her pitch. While the rest of us were stringing out guy ropes on tents as glamorous as giant cagoules, she arrived with a bell tent, duvets instead of sleeping bags, sheepskin rugs and vintage folding chairs. For all the talk of breathability, practicality and “high performance” gear, it was Becky’s tent we all wanted to sleep in. In the years since, I have never quite achieved her level of camping chic – until this summer, when I discovered the innovative Spanish camping brand Kampaoh.

It all began back in 2016, when Kampaoh CEO Salvador Lora and his partner were backpacking in the Dominican Republic. One night they came across a campsite with pre-erected tents within which were mattresses and blankets. “We were in the middle of nature, surrounded by peace, and lacked nothing,” he tells me.

Published: September 2, 2025, 6:00 am

The one change that worked: I got a period cup – and saved £120 a year

Ditching sanitary towels and tampons has made my period much less stressful. Crucially, it’s better for the environment too

I was 18 when I tried a menstrual cup for the first time. I was studying at the University of Edinburgh and Scotland had just become the first country in the world to make period products free to those who need them. The university health service was offering menstrual cups alongside the usual sanitary pads and tampons. I picked one up out of curiosity and because I just couldn’t resist a freebie.

I was used to spending £10 to £15 a month on period products, more if I was caught short and had to do a panicked dash to an overpriced off-licence. As an eco-conscious teenager I already bought non-applicator tampons but often wore a security sanitary liner underneath. It was an attempt to keep the endless worry of heavy periods at bay: will I leak, run out of supplies, or find a clean loo in time? Even so, I leaked more often than I cared to admit.

Published: September 1, 2025, 4:00 am

Meet Bus Aunty, the nurse turning London’s doubledeckers into a TikTok sensation

Bemi Orojuogun’s bite-size videos showing her love of red buses rack up as many as 48m views a time

To her nearly 300,000 TikTok followers, she is Bus Aunty, the unlikely star of short videos that celebrate London’s streets and, above all, its doubledeckers. Now Bemi Orojuogun, 56, has urged her army of fans to share her appreciation for the hard-working bus drivers who keep the capital running.

The mental health nurse has been overwhelmed by the response to the quirky, bite-size videos she began posting on social media last year. They feature clips of her standing at the roadside, sometimes at landmarks such as Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, as buses drive past.

Published: September 2, 2025, 3:00 pm

Ice cubes in beer: is this popular pub order atrocious – or ingenious?

A new survey has found that more than a quarter of adults under 35 commit the sin of dilution to keep their pint cool. Is this alarming new trend here to stay?

Name: Icy beer.

Age: Niche for a while, now horribly mainstream.

Published: September 2, 2025, 1:57 pm

My favourite childhood outfit: ‘We couldn’t afford new kits – but we always had something Chelsea to wear’

I was 12 in this picture, and closing in on the peak of my sporting career. I’ll always look back fondly on the fun and community of growing up in a football family

My dad made sure my two younger brothers and I were raised in a Chelsea household; the shed at the back of the garden was, we were told, where Arsenal supporters belonged. Growing up, we went to all the games at Stamford Bridge, competed in our local little league as though it were the Premier League, and followed Dad to the pub to watch Sunday matches (the cheeky chips and J2Os were at least half of the allure).

I’m pretty sure I’m 12 years old in this photo and closing in on the peak of my sporting career, as I got ready to play football at a nearby park with my siblings Jevan (then nine) and Kiran (just four). Although we didn’t always have the money for the expensive new kits every season (I’m sure you can spot my mismatched camo shorts), we always had something Chelsea to wear. My dad would often dodge the high ticket prices by taking us to watch the women’s team play, as well as the under-21s, where you would witness great talent at a fraction of the cost.

Published: September 1, 2025, 4:00 am

I had to stop raving after bunion surgery – so I became a DJ instead

Tina Woods, AKA Tina Technotic, now DJs around the world and has found a new sense of connection. She even believes it’s lowering her biological age

Tina Woods was sitting in a taxi when the dancing bug bit. It was after midnight and she and two friends were heading home from another friend’s 60th birthday party. South-west London rolled past the window. They had had a bit to drink. As they passed Le Fez nightclub, they realised they didn’t want to go home. “We were like: let’s go dancing before we go to bed,” she says.

Woods, then 56, had gone clubbing in her 20s, but on Le Fez’s dancefloor, as her body caught the beat, she had “an epiphany moment”, a shock of pure euphoria: “The joy I felt – the mind, body and soul connection – was like a lightning bolt.” She knew then that “dancing and music were going to be a bigger part of my life than I’d ever thought”.

Published: September 1, 2025, 11:29 am

Tainted love: how Ukrainians are ridding themselves of Russian-language books

Putin’s invasion has seen Ukrainian book lovers recoil from Russian literary dominance, by a range of means

One day this summer, the Ukrainian artist Stanislav Turina took two of his books to his garden near Kyiv. One was a volume of poems by Alexander Pushkin.

But Turina – a voracious reader, never without a couple of books in his backpack – had no plans to pick it up again.

Published: September 2, 2025, 8:54 am

‘What reconciliation? What forgiveness?’: Syria’s deadly reckoning

Over a few brutal days in March, as sectarian violence and revenge killings tore through parts of Syria, two friends from different communities tried to find a way to survive

On the night of 6 March, Munir, his wife and their two sons, both in their 20s, got no sleep. They huddled together in a small bedroom in their apartment as government troops and militiamen entered their neighbourhood of Qusour in the coastal city of Baniyas and went from house to house. The fighters seemed to be moving through the streets with little coordination. One house might get raided by five separate groups, while others were left untouched. “There was no plan,” Munir said, “just violence and looting.”

The first question the fighters were asking when they stormed into an apartment was: “Are you a Sunni or an Alawite?” The answer decided the fate of the residents. Sunnis were spared – although in some cases their apartments were looted. When the raiders found an Alawite home, some stole what they could carry and left; others had come for revenge and would steal first and then shoot. “If one didn’t kill you, the next one might,” Munir said.

Published: September 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Donald Trump says he is not a dictator. Isn’t he?

From deploying the national guard to targeting news channels and schools, the US president’s actions are anything from typical of a democratic leader

Speaking in the Oval Office this week, Donald Trump had something he wanted to clarify.

“I’m not a dictator. I don’t like a dictator,” the president said.

Published: September 1, 2025, 10:00 am

Floods, an immigration protest and returned colonial relics: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: September 2, 2025, 12:51 pm