Why you should quit and not look back: ‘Saying yes to everything is saying no to what matters’

In her new book, The Case For Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting Out, Lindsay Crouse discusses the costs and traps of never giving up – and how she set herself free

Lindsay Crouse used to define herself as not a quitter.

She went to Harvard University, where she learned to become even more high-achieving and ambitious, then landed an assistant job at the New York Times and worked her way up to become an opinion writer and producer. On the weekends, Crouse ran marathons and did endurance sports, clocking new personal bests throughout her thirties.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:00 am

‘Literally state-run TV’: Trump launches YouTube channel amid boycott by US networks

White House press coverage row continues while anchor-less channel of the administration’s ‘latest and greatest’ streams propaganda for the Maga faithful

Donald Trump’s previous television career centred on his role on The Apprentice, but the US president’s latest media venture is a rather lower-budget affair: the launch of Trump TV in the wake of his ban on several outlets from covering the White House.

With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place”.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:25 am

‘I’m afraid they’ll bomb the cafe where I work, or bomb me’: a day in the life of a 12-year-old boy in Gaza

This week, as the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Ramadan lives in a tent on the beach and works to support his family

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

The tent is pitched on a platform set in the sloping sand dunes, above a long expanse of golden coastline. Rats have chewed holes in its canvas sides, and tendrils of pale sand blow in through the gaps. Inside, on the torn mattress he shares with his siblings, 12-year-old Ramadan Ghaban blinks the sleep from his eyes. The sun has just risen but it is already hot.

I wake up every morning at 6.30am. Sometimes, the heat wakes me up, and sometimes it is the sound of the birds, which are everywhere because we live near the sea.

Published: September 22, 2026, 4:00 am

Using AI to ‘talk to animals’ might make us feel clever – but what, if anything, does it do for them?

As animal behaviorists increasingly use AI in their research, they grapple with how to wield the technology responsibly

I’m sitting in a small boat in Shark Bay, Australia, eavesdropping on a conversation between some of Earth’s most intelligent beings. The motor is off, the turquoise sea is glassy, and Stephanie King and I are motionless, transfixed by the whistles, clicks and squeezy, whirring noises made by the dolphins swimming below us.

If anyone could tell me what these big-brained social mammals are saying, it would be her. Based at the University of Bristol, she co-leads Shark Bay Dolphin Research, one of the longest-running wild dolphin research projects in the world. She has spent thousands of hours watching and listening to this population.

Published: September 22, 2026, 5:00 am

AI is generating a new wave of US populism. It could be a tipping point | Robert Reich

It’s becoming obvious to many Americans that corporations have been raking it in while workers take it on the chin

Last week, the unlikely duo of Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon spoke before a Washington group demanding a stop to AI and its datacenters.

Notably, both lambasted the corporate oligarchs behind AI.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

The viral Hyrox horror: is the ‘go hard or go home’ attitude to exercise finally over?

When an athlete soiled herself at a hybrid fitness event, it sparked a debate about a culture that pushes people to ignore their body’s signals at real cost

How far would you go to secure an impressive marathon time, or a Hyrox personal best? Maybe you’d turn down a boozy night out in favour of eight hours’ kip the night before? Or perhaps you’d swap sugary treats for protein shakes, and commit to a gruelling training plan in the run-up? It’s not uncommon for athletes to want to give it their all come race day – but few of us would go as far as the Australian Hyrox competitor Joanna Wietrzyk, who continued to take part in the hybrid fitness event a little over a week ago, despite having noticeably soiled herself.

Wietrzyk’s immediate response appeared to be one of defiance. “Go hard or go home … a win is a win,” she said in a now-deleted Instagram post, having been allowed to finish and win the event in Beijing. Hyrox organisers initially seemed to back her position, posting a statement (also now deleted) which said: “We ask our athletes to push themselves to the highest levels. At times, they will go beyond what even we thought was possible.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 5:38 am

Trump calls on allies to enforce ‘complete economic isolation of Iran’ in UN speech

US president threatens to ‘annihilate’ Tehran and dismisses threat from AI as a ‘hoax’ in bellicose address

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.

“I call on all nations to help to enforce the complete economic isolation of Iran,” Trump said in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday. “If we stand united, we will soon see a world free of the last 51-year menace of Iranian terror … and oil prices will come plummeting down even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 10:05 am

Hurricane Polo, rapidly intensifying from strong El Niño patterns, rages off coast of Mexico

Polo, with sustained winds of 165mph, is churning 215 miles south of Zihuatanejo but is unlikely to directly hit Mexico

A tropical storm off the south-west coast of Mexico has intensified into a category 5 monster in fewer than 24 hours, fueled by stronger than usual El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.

Hurricane Polo was sending out maximum sustained winds of 165mph (266km/h) on Tuesday as its center churned about 215 miles (346km) south of the coastal city of Zihuatanejo, in Guerrero state.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:09 pm

Another Florida Republican distances himself from Donald Trump before midterms

GOP nominee for governor Byron Donalds removes multiple mentions of president from his campaign website

• US politics live – latest updates

Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Donald Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the US president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s US midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump and removed a photograph of the congressman and his wife, Erika, posing with the president, the Miami Herald reported.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:29 pm

Up to 169 killed in Yemen as Houthis battle for Red Sea coastal heights

Thousands flee fighting as Iran-aligned group seeks to consolidate territorial gains against Saudi-backed government forces

• Middle East live – latest updates

As many as 169 people have been reportedly killed in Yemen in the last three days as Iran-aligned Houthis battle Saudi-backed government forces for control of strategic heights on the Red Sea coast, while thousands flee the violence.

Houthi military officials said at least 118 people had been killed in clashes as well as Saudi air and artillery strikes on Taiz, al-Jawf, Marib and Saada provinces since Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Yemeni government sources have said at least 36 people have been killed on their side of the conflict.

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:57 am

Mississippi grand jury decides not to charge anyone in death of Nolan Wells

Jury report says ‘no credible evidence’ points to criminal conduct related to death of Mississippi teen after boat outing with friends on 4 July

A grand jury made a unanimous decision on late Monday night to not bring criminal charges against anyone in the mysterious death of Nolan Wells, a Mississippi teen who died after a boat outing with friends on 4 July.

The Jackson county, Mississippi grand jury, which met from 14 September to 18 September, issued 132 subpoenas during its investigation, considered evidence from 43 witnesses and investigators, and reviewed an independent investigation by Wells’s family. They also considered physical and digital evidence, including mobile phone data and forensic reports, photographs, videos and GPS data.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:55 am

Trump made over 1,000 July stock trades worth up to $270m, filings reveal

President made more than 440 purchases and 700 sales despite voter anger over elected officials trading stocks

Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July, according to a Guardian analysis of his latest financial disclosure released Tuesday.

His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.

Published: September 22, 2026, 1:13 pm

US fighter jet crashes at air base in western Germany

Officials say one pilot safely ejected as F-16 believed to have crashed on approach to Spangdahlem after training drill

⁠An F-16 fighter jet assigned to the US air ⁠base Spangdahlem ⁠in ​western Germany crashed on Tuesday, the US military said, ⁠adding that one pilot had ejected safely and was receiving ⁠medical treatment.

The cause of the incident ​is under ‌investigation, the military ‌said in a statement, with ‌emergency response personnel at the scene of the crash.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:49 am

DoorDash to pay $131.5m after underpaying New York workers

Company to award backpay to 264,000 workers as mayor Zohran Mamdani condemns use of ‘greedy algorithms’

DoorDash said it would pay $131.5m ⁠to settle a ​New York City government investigation that found the food delivery company underpaid or waited too long to pay workers.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the settlement the city’s largest ⁠labor enforcement action. It advances the city’s longstanding effort to hold food delivery companies to a 2023 law intended to improve pay for delivery workers.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:18 pm

Choosin’ Texas unseats All I Want for Christmas as longest-running No 1 song on Billboard Hot 100

Ella Langley’s record-breaking song has spent 23 weeks at the top, surpassing Mariah Carey’s holiday anthem

Ella Langley’s hit song Choosin’ Texas has made Billboard Hot 100 history, spending 23 weeks on the chart and breaking the record for the longest-running No 1 song in the chart’s 68-year old history.

The track, which was released last October as the lead single on the 27-year-old singer and songwriter’s album Dandelion, has surpassed Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, which topped the charts for 22 weeks.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:45 pm

Trump says he backs diesel export ban to curb soaring energy costs

But industry trade group says plan would backfire and lead to even higher prices for gasoline

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump on Tuesday said he backed ⁠the idea of a ban on diesel exports, which some US politicians are calling for ⁠as a way ⁠to curb ​the soaring cost of energy.

Diesel prices have rallied in Europe and the US to ⁠record highs as wars in Iran and Ukraine sharply cut exports from some of the biggest producers ⁠such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A gallon of diesel fuel in the US was $6.53 on Tuesday, the highest average on record and over 75% higher than a year ago.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:48 pm

Donald Trump scolds CNN anchor for covering him at the UN

President chided Kaitlan Collins for asking him question at UN after White House ban on CNN, MS Now and Politico

Donald Trump has scolded a CNN anchor for covering him at the UN in New York after banning the network and two other media outlets from the White House.

Kaitlan Collins asked the US president on Tuesday when the Iran war would end, citing a poll that claims two-thirds of Americans don’t think the US is winning.

Published: September 22, 2026, 10:09 am

AOC refuses to rule out run against Senate leader Chuck Schumer

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,’ the progressive US representative says

• US politics live – latest updates

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic congresswoman, has refused to rule out a potential run against the party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer amid mounting speculation around her political ambitions.

When asked by the New York Times whether she would challenge Schumer in 2028, when his current term is up, Ocasio-Cortez declined to exclude the possibility – even if Democrats win back the Senate majority.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:23 am

Trump praises relations with Burnham despite tensions over AI and Iran

US president calls UK prime minister ‘a natural businessperson’ as leaders meet at UN assembly in New York

Donald Trump has asserted his relationship with the UK is “more up” with Andy Burnham than under Keir Starmer despite tensions between the two countries on a range of thorny issues including regulation of artificial intelligence, the Chagos islands and the war in Iran.

At their first face-to-face meeting, the US president praised Burnham, who sat nervously alongside him, as a “natural businessperson”, saying he thought he had “lots of assets on his side” and would be a “great” prime minister.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:50 pm

‘The choice was prison or exile’: journalists who fled Russia publish grim portrait of Putin

Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, who were forced to move abroad in 2021, tell of president capable of ‘limitless cruelty’

At 6am on 29 June 2021, the Russian journalist Roman Badanin was woken by a knock on the door of his family’s Moscow apartment. “Come quickly, someone has scratched your car in the courtyard,” a voice shouted from outside. As he opened the door, masked men pushed their way in.

Across the city, a similar raid was happening at the home of Badanin’s colleague Mikhail Rubin. The masked men were officers of the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, instruments of the “climate of fear and violence” that the journalists say Vladimir Putin has imposed on Russia in their forensically detailed biography of the Russian president.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:58 am

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed’s candidacy has split the Jewish community

The Democratic Senate nominee’s views on Israel and comments after a synagogue attack prompted a public debate among Jewish voters

When Jess Newman heard that Temple Israel in Detroit was attacked last March, her first thoughts went to her extended family.

“I grew up going to services there,” she said. “The attack was awful. My Jewish identity is very important to me.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

Two helicopter pilots killed while battling Yosemite fires

A helicopter assisting in fighting the Dome fire in Yosemite national park crashed on Sunday afternoon

Two helicopter pilots died while fighting a fire in Yosemite national park on Sunday afternoon.

The pilots were conducting water drops over the Dome fire, which had burned more than 3,000 acres since it ignited last week, when their helicopter crashed around 3pm, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Published: September 21, 2026, 1:50 pm

Moviegoer using phone during film pepper-sprayed in LA, police say

California man charged with misdemeanor battery in Burbank over incident sending three patrons to hospital

A 34-year-old man from California has been arrested after allegedly pepper-spraying a person at a movie theater who was using his cellphone during the film, according to authorities.

Police arrested Matthew Ware on 15 September after purportedly pepper spraying a patron at the AMC Burbank 16 who was using his cellphone, while two other moviegoers nearby also experienced irritation from the pepper spray, according to the Burbank police department. All three people were treated at a local hospital.

Published: September 21, 2026, 1:11 pm

California braces for record El Niño storms as governor declares emergency

Super El-Niño has already broken temperature records and is predicted to bring an extremely wet winter to the state

• ‘Jaw-dropping’ El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak

California is bracing for a record breaking El Niño that is expected to bring severe winter storms and flooding across the state, with the state’s governor declaring a state of emergency in anticipation of extreme weather in the months ahead.

The global climate phenomenon known as a “super El Niño” is already breaking temperature records and drawing predictions of an extremely wet winter in places such as California, where El Niño typically brings more severe winter storms and flooding risks. Several coastal California cities have recently faced high surf, flooding and coastal erosion linked to Hurricane Marie as well as El Niño. Experts have said the effects offered a glimpse at what the coming winter could look like.

Published: September 21, 2026, 12:31 pm

Charges dropped against Stanford students over pro-Palestine protest

Students faced prison terms and thousands of dollars in restitution over campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza

Five Stanford University students who faced prison sentences and thousands of dollars in restitution in connection to a campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza had all charges dropped on Monday.

The students also had their restitution severely reduced, ending a two-year legal saga that also saw the lead prosecutor in the case removed by the court.

Published: September 21, 2026, 10:22 am

The Patagonia town where Nepal’s deadly glacier flood could be repeated – and what they’ve learned

The risk to El Chaltén in Argentina has been known for years but recent findings and the Nepal disaster have brought planning for the worst-case scenario into sharp focus

The images from Nepal stopped Daniela Schmidt in her tracks. A geologist at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, she watched the deadly flash floods on 26 August tear through everything in their path, people running for their lives as the water and debris swept over the landscape.

“I had never seen anything like it,” she says. “This was one of the most catastrophic events on a global scale related to these glacial floods.”

The aftermath of the Nepal floods in Nuwakot district, 26 August. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:00 am

Heart of the Beast review – Brad Pitt survivalist dogmance serves up wilderness with side of cheese

Pitt and loyal hound Odin get stuck in remote Alaska in this serviceable adventure with hints of Jack London and Marley & Me

One man and his dog have an amazing adventure in this survivalist drama starring Brad Pitt, from screenwriter Cameron Alexander and director David Ayer, for which the first and last words of the title have been carefully chosen to signal a mix of sentimentality and thrills. It’s an entertaining anthro-canine-mance, with man and dog relating to each other on a deep level … kind of like Owen Wilson in Marley & Me, only without Jennifer Aniston, or Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz, only without the devastating melancholy.

Pitt, who last worked with Ayer on the second world war action thriller Fury, plays a US military special forces veteran called Belmont, tough, self-reliant and laconically good-humoured in the classic Pitt manner, now spending his retirement roaming the breathtaking remote landscape of Alaska in his seaplane. He is accompanied by his beloved service dog Odin, or Odey (played by four different German shepherds), who saw action with Belmont in various fuzzily imagined flashback combat sequences. Odin took retirement with Belmont and is now his best and only pal. Whether or not Belmont ever had a human partner is never revealed.

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:00 am

These journalists share vital reporting with thousands of US immigrants – all by text and WhatsApp

Independent outlets are leaning on social media, chat and other nontraditional methods to fight disinformation

When Allan Marrero, an asylum seeker from the Cayman Islands, was released after five months in immigration detention, his family made sure to invite one journalist to his celebration: Eileen Grench, a reporter with the independent, non-profit news outlet Documented.

Grench had previously reported on Marrero, who was detained after interviewing with federal officials for a marriage-based green card. But beyond covering his detention struggles, she humanized him, emphasizing his and his husband’s love story.

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:00 am

Jon Stewart on Trump’s White House media ban: ‘authoritarian crackdown’

Late-night hosts respond to Trump’s removal of outlets such as CNN and Politico from the White House press pool over ‘negative stories’

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s dramatic White House media ban and casual disregard of the first amendment.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:49 am

‘We didn’t set out to make a show for animals!’ The Netflix seal cartoon that’s a huge hit … with pets

Videos of cats and dogs transfixed by Netflix kids’ show Sealook – or pawing at its characters – are everywhere. We tried to find out why … and asked a goldendoodle for its verdict

Ozzy the four-month-old goldendoodle isn’t normally allowed on the sofa. But today he has been granted special privileges because I’ve come round specifically to watch TV with him. We’re not watching Paw Patrol, Scooby-Doo, or even Crufts. We’re watching Sealook, the Netflix kids’ cartoon about a colony of seals that dogs and cats online are supposedly obsessed with. But is this really a thing? And will Ozzy care?

I hit play. A gang of wide-eyed pastel-coloured seals are in a slapstick scrape. There’s no dialogue: they mostly lie around on the ice, and try to annoy each other by doing silly things like making funny noises, throwing snowballs or keeping each other awake. Ozzy seems more interested in chewing his pizzle stick – which I discover, slightly too late, is the dried penis of a bull. Then again, perhaps this is just canine second-screening: Sealook on the telly, bull penis in the mouth.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:41 am

John Green wanted to be famous. Now what? – Stateside with Kai and Carter

John Green is probably as famous as an author can get. His 2012 young adult novel The Fault In Our Stars sold more than 20m copies, got adapted into a Hollywood hit film, and catapulted to a level of success that he’d always longed for. And yet, all that left him feeling empty. Now, after nearly a decade away from fiction, Green is back with his first novel for adults, Hollywood, Ending. In a very meta conversation with Carter Sherman, Green explains how interviews can be maddening, explores his own insecurities around fame, and argues that social media has trained all of us to sell our private lives as products. Carter and John also talk about his success as a pioneering YouTube creator alongside his brother Hank Green and Hank's recent dustup over his use of AI.

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:45 am

A tale of two trap houses: being cuckooed ruined my friend’s life – but did it then help save him?

Drug gangs have moved off Britain’s streets and into vulnerable people’s homes. Addicts like my friend are easy targets, but the reality can be more complicated than it seems

Duncan is a good friend of mine. He looks like a Dickensian rock’n’roller: tall and skinny, long hair, retro clothes. He’s read the Flashman novels three times. We met in secondary school in west London in the early 1980s. We got drunk, smoked Rothmans and banana skin spliffs and played Dungeons & Dragons. At 14, we got into punk together and spent our teens playing music and seeing live bands. As we moved into our 20s, I trained as a journalist and Duncan, a talented songwriter and guitarist, carried on with music.

At the age of 23 he got involved in heroin. He found the lifestyle immediately seductive, his partner at the time, Lucy, told me. He would often befriend his dealers. “I remember more than once waiting in his car as he’d gone up some tower block to score, thinking where on earth is he?” Lucy said. “He’d be hanging out chatting. There were some genuinely fascinating characters with incredible stories to tell.”

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 pm

Never mind Trump – if Europe wants to save Nato, it must win over the American people | Leslie Vinjamuri

Mark Rutte has the right idea – go beyond Washington and make the case for the transatlantic alliance to the public. They may well have a willing ear

At a moment when Europe is focused on persuading Donald Trump to remain committed to Nato, it needs to convince Americans, too. So the presence this evening of the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, in front of a public audience in Des Moines, Iowa, is significant. This is the home town of Trump’s ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, and the visit brings the debate over Nato’s future directly to a midwestern audience in a red state that operates far from elite foreign-policy circles in Washington. Rutte’s appearance is long overdue.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and uncertainty over the US commitment to European security have forced European leaders to confront their dependence on Washington. While some are pressing for building European capabilities as a means to separate from the US, others see greater European defence spending as essential to keeping the US engaged. Either way, European governments can’t rely solely on meetings with Trump to secure the alliance’s future.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:30 am

Many Americans live in the UK – but few vote back home. This year, that must change | Kathryn Sikkink

The rights of overseas voters are protected by US federal law. It’s not hard – but Americans should start planning now

The UK hosts the second largest population of voting-age US citizens outside the United States, but Americans living in the UK vote at very low levels in US elections.

The US government’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) estimated that there were 298,268 voting-age US citizens in the UK in 2022, second only to Canada. But FVAP also estimated that only 3.8% of these US citizens in Britain voted in that year’s midterm elections. Why do hundreds of thousands of eligible US voters in the UK not exercise their right to vote, even though US rules for voting abroad are relatively welcoming compared to many other countries?

Published: September 22, 2026, 1:00 am

The Pentagon has unveiled its secret weapon: two idiotic influencers | Arwa Mahdawi

Jake and Logan Paul were invited to give a motivational speech. Just don’t let them get involved with military policy

We’re now approaching month seven of a war against Iran that Donald Trump repeatedly assured us would be over in a matter of weeks. Prices are rising, troop morale is plummeting, and there is little evidence things will improve.

The situation is so desperate that the decision makers at the Pentagon have decided to bring out the big guns. I’m not talking about nuclear weapons, although Trump recently threatened to “blow the entire nation [of Iran] up”. No, I’m talking about influencers Jake and Logan Paul, who are famous for doing idiotic stunts on YouTube and getting hit in the face during boxing matches. Last Thursday, Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense or whatever they’re calling it these days (the Department of War Crimes?) welcomed the Paul brothers to Washington DC “to meet with our warriors” and deliver a motivational speech. In response, former Republican congressman and air force officer Adam Kinzinger wrote, “We aren’t a serious country at the moment.” That about sums it up.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:28 am

Trump still thinks Iranians will ‘rise up’ against the regime. In Tehran I see a different story | Hossein Hamdieh

If anything, the ongoing war is uniting a divided country against the foreign invaders. Washington seems a long way from grasping this point

The US president, Donald Trump, asked recently on one of his Truth Social rants: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” So frenetic and all-over-the-place are Trump’s statements that one does not know which are actual policies and which are simply noise. But if counting on the “Iranian people” to rise up and fight is indeed US policy then, as far as I can tell from within Iran, it is a failed one. And miserably so. At least for now.

There is no reliable nationwide polling that can tell us what Iranians think about the war in real time. So this is an observation, not a poll. It comes from conversations I have had with many people.

Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:00 am

Great to see what Tom Cruise’s belly button looks like, but it’s the stuff he is never asked about that interests me | Marina Hyde

Most stars, and especially women, are endlessly expected to explain the past: the lessons learned and all the regrets. But not Tom – it’s Hollywood’s free pass

There really is no press tour like a Tom Cruise press tour – which is why there have not really been any Tom Cruise press tours for a very long time indeed. We’re now at the stage of this one where even the interviewers have been forced on to the interview circuit to defend their interviews.

Anyway: Cruise. The guy has one child with ex-wife Katie Holmes who dropped his surname as soon as she was legally allowed, and two Scientologist children widely reported to be effectively estranged from their mother, Nicole Kidman. The divorces from Kidman and Holmes were clearly deeply strange and traumatic events for both women, and have remained shrouded in unusually watertight and presumably contractual secrecy. Yet you can currently find Tom Cruise promoting his latest movie not being asked about any of this stuff, or indeed any of his other extensive “stuff” – as always – but instead doing things like giving Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast a lecture on the benefits of VistaVision. Hate to say it, but a woman could never.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist. Her new book is What a Time to Be Alive! To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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: September 22, 2026, 6:16 am

As president of Botswana, I know how we can make malaria a memory in Africa | Duma Gideon Boko

The disease is soaring as funding is cut. African nations are plugging the gap but they need help with the transition

Botswana nearly defeated malaria. In 2024, we recorded just 290 cases and one death. Through our elimination efforts, many of our districts had seen no local malaria cases since 2010. Then, as is unfortunately the nature of malaria, it came back.

In the first 23 weeks of 2025 we recorded 2,223 cases and 11 deaths. The disease reached places where previously there was no malaria. We were not alone. Namibia recorded more than 95,000 cases in 2025, and Zimbabwe more than 156,000, according to government figures.

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:29 am

My son has left home – and I feel full of complicated joy | Zoe Williams

I took him to university this weekend, and it reminded me of the exhilaration of suddenly having your own space, absolutely separate from your mother

When kids are small, and their expectations of an event diverge from yours in some important way, you feel terrible about it. You might be taking them to a play, and they thought that meant they’d be allowed to play, but actually it meant they had to sit still while strangers shouted things. You experience their disappointment as much as your own physical pain.

Then when they’re “adults”, your expectations diverge again. They thought you’d drop them at university and immediately leave, while you thought you’d unpack, and meet their flatmates, explore the city, and spin round a supermarket, then have a Nando’s, and maybe read a bedtime story, get chatting to the other parents and maybe all do karaoke? Well, then it’s time to manage your own disappointment, and the only thing to be said for that is that it’s way less bad than managing theirs.

Published: September 21, 2026, 11:00 pm

Giants’ Jaxson Dart could reportedly miss rest of season with knee injury

• Testing said to reveal injury is worse than anticipated

• Quarterback was hurt against Rams on Monday

New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart will be out for an extended period of time and could miss the rest of the NFL season after suffering a knee injury in Monday night’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams, according to reports Tuesday.

ESPN reported that the injury to Dart’s left knee was more severe than initially anticipated. Adam Schefter said further testing has left the Giants and Dart facing the possibility of season-ending surgery.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:23 pm

Will anyone topple Infantino? How Fifa president is trying to cling on after World Cup sell-off debacle

Fifa president continues to lobby for re-election despite no other candidates coming forward to challenge him

For Gianni Infantino there is no international break. The Fifa president is widely expected to make an appearance at the United Nations general assembly this week in New York, where he will lobby heads of state for their federations’ support as he continues his campaign to be re-elected next year.

Infantino has not been idle during the lull since Fifa abandoned its World Cup sell-off plan last month, instead crisscrossing the globe on a private jet provided by Qatar Airways as part of its sponsorship deal with world football’s governing body.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘Hardships never last’: Jenn Lichter’s path from Colombian orphanage to ultrarunning records

Jenn Lichter’s childhood followed a difficult path. The resilience she gained helped her achieve an unbreakable ultrarunning feat this summer

On 27 June, Jenn Lichter lined up for her first 100-mile race, the Western States 100. The oldest and most prestigious 100-miler in the world, Western States attracts a highly competitive field from around the globe – the athletes run across the Sierra Nevada from Olympic Valley to Auburn, California. Despite 18,000ft of climbing and daytime temperatures often flirting with triple digits, Lichter went in confident. “I wanted to win, there was no secret to that,” she says. “That’s just who I am.”

The race remained close for the first half, until the 30-year-old made a move on the climb to Devil’s Thumb. The gap grew and at the final aid station, Lichter had a sizable lead over the athlete in second place. A mile from the finish, Nick Cornell, Lichter’s fiance, told her she was just ahead of the course record. “That was the first I had heard about it,” Lichter says. “He knew my competitive side would jump at the challenge.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:00 am

UFC champion Sean Strickland in ‘real bad place’ after ATV crash while not wearing helmet

• Middleweight shows injuries to head and shoulder

• Fight says friend was in hospital after crash

UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland is recovering after ⁠being involved in an all-terrain vehicle accident while not wearing ⁠a helmet.

Strickland ⁠said ​in an Instagram video that the accident happened on Monday night in Las ⁠Vegas.

Published: September 22, 2026, 11:37 am

David Squires on … Jim Ratcliffe lamenting the decline of once-mighty empires

Our cartoonist on Manchester United’s billionaire joint-owner showing a startling lack of self-awareness

• Buy a cartoon | Some of David’s favourite works

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:08 am

Afghan cyclist who disguised herself as a man to evade Taliban wins Asian Games silver

• Fariba Hashimi fled after Taliban returned to power

• ‘This medal can show resilience from Afghan women’

An Afghan cyclist who disguised herself as a man to pursue her sporting dreams won an Asian Games silver medal on Tuesday, hoping it inspires other women in a country where Taliban authorities have sharply curtailed their freedoms.

Fariba Hashimi, who is based in Italy, powered home second behind China’s Guo Li in the women’s road race near Nagoya in Japan, calling the triumph “something special”.

Published: September 22, 2026, 1:10 am

Mikel Arteta agrees contract extension expected to keep him at Arsenal until 2030

• Manager’s current deal to expire at end of the season

• Spaniard can expect big increase on £10m-a-year salary

Mikel Arteta has agreed a long-term contract extension with Arsenal that includes a hefty pay rise in recognition of his success last season and could take his reign as the manager beyond a decade.

The three-year deal he signed in September 2024 expires at the end of this season and talks have been ongoing since May when Arsenal ended their long wait to be champions. Negotiations were put on hold during the summer transfer window but the Spaniard has reached a ­verbal agreement to extend his stay for a second time.

Published: September 22, 2026, 10:36 am

Football Daily | Klopp, Xavi, Zidane, Mancini: big nations ready to unleash bigger dogs

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While Thomas Tuchel continues to gaslight his employers at the FA into believing he was in no way responsible for England’s comically shambolic semi-final exit at the hands of Argentina, not every head coach who underperformed at the Geopolitics World Cup is still in their job. A total of 17 different managers who took teams to North America have since left their roles, with safety-first’s Steve Clarke, failing-up’s Roberto Martínez and tyranny’s Marcelo Bielsa among them. In Europe, teams such as Portugal (Jorge Jesus), Croatia (Slaven Bilic), Scotland (Sébastien Pocognoli), Czechia (Santi Denia) and Belgium (Mark van Bommel) will go into the Nations League under new management, but it is towards the bigger dogs of the football pack where Football Daily wishes to turn today’s beady gaze.

Prize o’ the day to Barry Glendenning, surely, for mentioning Johnny Crumplin (football genius) in Monday’s Football Daily. As an Ipswich fan marooned in Sussex, I spent much of my teenage years at the Goldstone which, despite being a dump (I stood on the crumbling South Stand), held a certain magic for me. It still does, actually. Haven’t been to the Amex yet – hopeless nostalgia is undoubtedly a factor. The team weren’t much better than the ground for most of that time, but the 1987-88 promotion season was memorable. Garry Nelson was a bit special, Doug Rougvie had played under Fergie at Aberdeen and Gerry Armstrong had legendary status after *that* goal, but the rest of the team probably (and unfairly ) fall into the journeyman category. I loved them all. Keith Dublin dribbling his way into and then out of trouble, sleeves-up Kevin Bremner who grafted and worked the Albion into the promotion places, Deano (one of the Wilkins brothers) classy and, of course, Barry Lloyd, who never brought a sub on until the last four or five minutes, frustrating us beyond belief. And into this pantheon came teenage Johnny C who, to start with, was utterly hapless, hence the nickname football genius. Somehow, despite this, we took to him from the off and it was lovely to see how he grew into becoming an Albion legend in what were fallow years. Blimey, not sure where that all came from – you can probably tell I’m stuck out in the middle of the Fens on a slow-moving train. But thank you for bringing it all back to me!” – Jonathan Foulkes.

I know the powers that be have listened to Football Daily’s ‘Stop Football’ pleas and given us very little to do for the next three weeks but, as we are just five games in to the Premier League season, can everyone stop going on about the race for the Golden Boot and which team are going to bloody champions” – Nigel Sanders.

Judging by the photo of him sitting behind their ‘Life’s Good’ logo in yesterday’s Quote of the Day, LG could do a lot worse than appoint José Mourinho as a brand ambassador for their campaign. As football watchers have long known, he exudes the spirit of that exclamation from every single pore” – Andrew Parker.

So, Jonathan Wilson has a new book, about football in Eastern Europe, Behind the Curtain, while his take on Zidane as the new France manager will reveal the ‘wizard behind the curtain’. Brilliant effort from the subeditor and marketing team working in harmony” – Paul Vickers.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:12 am

‘It’s bordering on exploitation’: how pseudoscience is duping football

Cryotherapy chambers and other practices have little evidence behind them, says top performance director

Dr Claire-Marie Roberts was working at Coventry City when she received a call from someone asking whether she knew how much oxygen was in the atmosphere. As the performance director, responsible for optimising players’ potential, she was accustomed to being pitched the latest gimmick promising miraculous gains. At times, she could receive up to 50 LinkedIn messages a week offering a device, supplement or technology that claimed to produce magical results.

“It is only 21%,” the caller told her. That’s GCSE chemistry, she thought. Then came the sales pitch: “So what we’ve done is put oxygen in a can and we think you might want to use it.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:00 am

Brendan Carr was a member of a rogue Alcoholics Anonymous group some labeled a ‘cult’

Carr was a member of the group in his teens and 20s. There is no evidence Trump’s powerful FCC chair participated in any inappropriate conduct

Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was for about a decade a member of a rogue Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group when he was in his late teens and 20s that some former members compared to a “cult”, according to a Guardian investigation.

The Midtown group, which was based in the Washington DC area, attracted young people who were seeking help with addiction, sometimes at the urging of their parents.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

Activists and leaders reflect on Standing Rock a decade on: ‘I would do it again’

Tribal leaders and organizers return to reservation 10 years after demonstrations against Dakota Access pipeline

Ten years after major demonstrations against the Dakota Access pipeline, tribal leaders and Native American organizers returned to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation this week to honor the movement and its lasting impacts.

In the rural reservation area of Fort Yates, a four-day encampment that centered on the phrase “mní wičóni” – “water is life” – brought together about 150 tribal members and allies for meals, drum circles, sacred ceremonies and memorials.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:17 am

‘Looksmaxxing’ influencer Clavicular charged with rape and drug offenses

The Massachusetts case is the latest in a series of legal woes for the influencer whose real name is Braden Eric Peters

The online influencer known as Clavicular – who has helped to fuel the rise of the extreme male appearance-improvement trend of “looksmaxxing” – has been charged with rape and drug offenses in Massachusetts.

The 20-year-old, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, has been scheduled for a 14 October arraignment on Cape Cod, according to legal documents seen by the Guardian.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:15 am

Hayden Panettiere’s cause of death confirmed as fentanyl overdose

South Carolina medical examiner says ‘no signs of trauma’ and ‘the manner of death has been ruled accident’

Hayden Panettiere died from a fentanyl overdose, according to the Greenville county coroner’s office.

Medical examiners in South Carolina confirmed the 36-year old actor’s cause of death on Tuesday, saying: “The cause of death has been ruled as toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, Alprazolam, Methocarbamol and Quetiapine.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:43 am

Charlotte Church accuses Ed Sheeran of ‘choosing capitalism over doing the right thing’

Church, a prominent supporter of Palestinian causes, criticises Sheeran over removal of Macklemore from US tour

Charlotte Church has accused Ed Sheeran of choosing “consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing” over the removal of his friend and support act Macklemore from his US tour.

Sheeran’s tour was thrown into crisis after Macklemore made “free Palestine” declarations on stage. After a significant backlash, including pressure from the owners of stadiums hosting scheduled shows, the rapper was removed from the tour. Shortly afterwards, Sheeran’s other support acts quit in solidarity.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:20 am

EU removes two oligarchs from Russia sanctions list as deadline looms

Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman delisted in what Ireland’s EU presidency calls ‘a difficult compromise’ for the bloc

The EU has agreed to remove two Russian billionaires, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, from its sanctions list, while extending restrictions on nearly 3,000 individuals and companies accused of supporting the war on Ukraine for the next three years.

With an end-of-Tuesday deadline looming to preserve the Russia blacklist, the EU’s 27 member states found a compromise that meant delisting the two oligarchs in spite of very few countries wanting this outcome. EU sanctions have to be approved unanimously.

Published: September 22, 2026, 11:07 am

Six-year-old Chinese girl ‘sets new women’s Rubik’s Cube world record’

Lian Yunzhi solves 3x3 puzzle on several occasions in average time of under 4.5 seconds, according to state media

A six-year-old Chinese girl has set a new women’s world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube in just over four seconds, state media reported.

“Speedcuber” Lian Yunzhi broke the women’s 3x3 average world record twice this month at two World Cube Association certified competitions in Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to state broadcaster CCTV on Monday.

Published: September 22, 2026, 11:10 am

‘It’s my duty to tell the truth’: UN chief on the climate crisis, capitalism and reasons to be hopeful

Before his final general assembly, António Guterres speaks about why he put climate at the centre of his UN tenure

António Guterres, who will finish his second term as UN secretary general on 31 December, has spoken out more strongly on the climate crisis than any of his predecessors. He has criticised “immoral” fossil fuel companies for their “grotesque greed”, warned that we have “opened the gates of hell” and hailed the new “clean energy age”.

Before his last UN general assembly, we asked him about making the climate crisis one of the top priorities of his tenure.

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:00 am

High-mileage electric cars are more reliable than petrol ones, study finds

EVs with 90,000 to 120,000 miles on the clock are more likely to pass MOTs than petrol models of the same age

Motorists buying a secondhand car with a lot of miles on the clock are likely to find an electric vehicle (EV) ultimately more reliable than a petrol vehicle, according to a study.

An analysis of 47.4m MOT tests found that after cars were driven 90,000 to 120,000 miles, EVs were about 25% less likely to fail than petrol models of the same age (based on a failure rate of 16.5% versus 22.1%).

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:37 am

Poorer nations will be among the last to benefit if global emissions cut to net zero

Scientists found unequal impact of the climate crisis would not be reversed even if implicit goal of the 2015 Paris agreement is achieved

The unequal impact of the climate crisis on the world’s poorest people, including those in tropical areas, has been highlighted by new research that finds they will be among the last to feel the benefits if global greenhouse gas emissions are cut to net zero.

Temperatures have risen more significantly in tropical areas relative to their historic range than at higher latitudes, including in wealthier countries in Europe and North America.

Published: September 22, 2026, 4:13 am

Meet Barbie Pig: new documentary reveals the wonders of life on the Pacific seabed

A magical new film captures the secret life of the deep sea in a stretch of the ocean at risk from industrial mining

A magical film that explores the wonders of the deep sea through the eyes of a team of scientists and an underwater robot called Isis will be shown in selected cinemas across the UK next month.

The documentary, How Deep Is Your Love, offers a playful, irreverent and bittersweet look at our anthropocentric view of Earth, as it switches perspective from humans to deep sea animals and back again. It follows a research team from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, who sail for 12 days to reach a remote region called the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a biodiversity-rich area of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico. It takes Isis five hours to make the 3-mile (5km) descent to the bottom of this harsh world, where sunlight cannot penetrate, and where nodules rich in minerals mark it out as a hotspot for industrial mining.

Published: September 22, 2026, 12:00 am

Death of 27-year-old Presley Gerber being investigated as suspected overdose

Son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Rande Gerber died at a rehabilitation facility

The death on Sunday of Presley Gerber, the 27-year-old son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Rande Gerber, is being investigated as a suspected overdose, according to police.

Gerber died at a rehabilitation facility, Los Angeles county medical examiner records show. An autopsy was performed, but more testing was required before investigators could give a cause of death for Gerber, which the medical examiner did not immediately do.

Published: September 22, 2026, 5:44 am

Democrat says ICE restricted her oversight visit to country’s largest detention camp

Veronica Escobar tells Guardian she was prevented from speaking to detainees at much-criticized Texas facility

Federal immigration officials in Texas prevented US representative Veronica Escobar from fully conducting her congressional oversight duties at a controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, the lawmaker said in an interview with the Guardian.

Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso and surrounding areas on the US-Mexico border in west Texas, conducted an oversight visit last month at the Camp East Montana ICE tent facility housed in the Fort Bliss military base, after two separate “disturbances” had been reported there in recent weeks.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

Why the CDC is excluding measles deaths in Pennsylvania even as outbreak appears to be ‘accelerating’

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refuses to count four measles deaths in the state though doctors are ‘seeing new forms’ of disease

The US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its measles dashboard on Friday – but it’s still not counting four measles deaths in Pennsylvania, where the outbreak appears to be accelerating and cases are appearing in ways providers have never seen before.

Members of Congress on Monday requested an “immediate briefing” on the decision to change how measles deaths are reported as cases continue to rise throughout the United States, reaching levels not seen in decades. A possible measles exposure was reported in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia last week.

Published: September 22, 2026, 4:00 am

Kansas judge convicts driver in death of teacher whose husband was killed months later

Ashleigh Boyd died in a car crash in 2024. Her husband, Adan Manzano, a TV reporter, was killed in Louisiana while preparing to cover the Super Bowl in 2025

A Kansas school teacher’s fatal car wreck on in 2024 led to a vehicular homicide conviction for the motorist who crashed into her – a verdict delivered just four days after a Louisiana jury found a woman guilty of the drugging death of the educator’s widower while he prepared to cover the 2025 Super Bowl for Telemundo.

Todd W Armstrong’s one-day bench trial in an 11 April 2024 traffic collision that killed Ashleigh Boyd in Topeka, Kansas, resulted in the judge, Andrew Holmes, finding him guilty of vehicular homicide, driving on the wrong side of the road and speeding, according to the victim’s father, Brian Hinck.

Published: September 22, 2026, 5:17 am

US warns Australia that imposing digital duty of care on big tech would be seen as censorship

Trump administration expresses ‘serious concerns’ that forcing firms to allow algorithm optout would infringe Americans’ free speech

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The Trump administration has warned the Australian government that its plans to boost online safety through digital duty of care laws risks becoming a mechanism for “viewpoint-based censorship” and called for American platforms to be exempted.

Restating strong opposition to measures the White House considers “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online”, the US has used a submission to the Albanese government’s public consultation process to express serious concerns about Australia’s communications minister having legal powers to declare “foreseeable harm”.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:00 am

Earl Spencer apologises to Piers Morgan over ‘incorrect assumption’

Brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, says ‘accuracy is important’ as he responds to broadcaster’s threat to sue over claims made in memoir

Earl Spencer has apologised to Piers Morgan for incorrectly claiming in his new book about Diana, Princess of Wales, that the former tabloid editor was behind the publication of intrusive photos of the late royal in the mid-1990s.

Morgan had earlier threatened to sue Spencer over “fabricated inaccuracies” and “examples of brazen falsity” in the book, which was published on Tuesday.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:03 am

European drugmakers say they are ‘losing ground’ to US and Chinese rivals

Some of continent’s biggest pharma firms write to national leaders calling for action to safeguard their futures

Some of Europe’s biggest pharmaceutical companies have said the continent is “losing ground” to rivals including the US and China in developing new drugs and attracting investment.

The chairs of nine companies, including Britain’s AstraZeneca, GSK and Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, wrote to Andy Burnham and the national leaders of other European countries on Tuesday to call for action to “safeguard our companies’ future”.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:04 am

The world freaked out about AI doomsday. Now what?

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will meet each other next week, but it’s unlikely they’ll agree to AI regulation

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while reading and disagreeing with Jenny Odell’s 2019 book How to Do Nothing. I’m pro-screen time. Today in tech, we’re discussing the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, in which AI will likely feature prominently.

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:00 am

‘Our job was not to attack’: how do you make a documentary about America’s culture wars?

Oscar-winning film-maker Barry Levinson’s docuseries Bucks County, USA examines the political divide in one town in a revealing and infuriating manner

Like many teenage best friends, Evi and Vanessa have a penchant for finishing each other’s sentences. Whether enmeshed on a couch or telling a story, one, a red-headed musical theater nerd with a personality nearly as boisterous as her signature puffy skirts, collides with the other, darker in hair and disposition, their speech bubbling with indecipherable affirmations and giggles. In a heady chorus of “duuude” and “no, you!”, it can be difficult to tell where one girl ends and the other begins.

Except, that is, at their respective homes. Evi’s mother, Lela, who like her daughter, espouses views considered left of liberal in the US context, speaks in support of LGBTQ students at local school board meetings and advocates for fact-based history lessons. Vanessa’s father, Paul Martino, is a right-leaning venture capitalist who likes to brag about installing school board members by spending $500,000 on local campaigns, an effort triggered by what he saw as unjustified school closures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

The truth about Sean Combs: ‘No is not a stopping point for him’

Cheyenne Roundtree, an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone, was as shocked as anyone when allegations of rape and sexual abuse were made against the music mogul. Then she began digging into his past life. In her first interview, she paints a horrifying picture of lost police reports, repeat behaviours, rumours and run-ins

For Cheyenne Roundtree, an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone, the civil lawsuit that dropped on Sean “Diddy” Combs in November 2023 seemed to come from nowhere. Filed by his ex-partner, the singer Cassie Ventura, it alleged that Combs had beaten and raped her, plied her with drugs and forced her into sexual encounters with male sex workers throughout their decade-long relationship.

Roundtree, along with much of the world’s media, was shocked. “I’d grown up in the era of Diddy and Cassie and viewed them as this power couple,” she says. “Her hit Me & U was my song. Diddy was this mogul – I knew him for the music – and she was this style inspiration, this beautiful, talented woman living an amazing life.”

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 pm

Youth review – Sharon Horgan is back … and she’s better than ever

This brutal, hilarious new show about life as a fiftysomething is full of all the heart and humour of human life. At points it’s mesmerisingly perfect

There’s a moment in Sharon Horgan’s new show, Youth, when – as protagonist Alex (Horgan) is seeing her son off to university – she inadvertently begins to run after the car that’s taking him away. And then she catches herself, and slows. And then she starts up again. It was such a tender, vicious glimpse into the future that I found myself sobbing into the sofa and cursing her name.

All of which is to say: Sharon Horgan is back and she’s better than ever. Youth is the representation every woman who has ever slapped on an oestrogen patch after a divorce, looked around and thought “What the hell now?” has been waiting for. Horgan herself has described it in interviews as forming the third part of a loose trilogy that began with Pulling. Co-written with Dennis Kelly, Pulling was about three thirtysomething antitheses to Bridget Jones, whose dark chaos apparently scared the BBC so much they unexpectedly cancelled it just as it was truly getting into its stride. That was followed by Catastrophe, written by and starring Horgan, with Rob Delaney, as a couple who have a fling, find that she’s pregnant and end up making a brutal, hilarious go of things.

Youth is on HBO Max

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 pm

Heresy review – feminist folk horror summons something scary in the woods with supply of fresh blood

A childless woman flees into the forest and emerges with a swollen belly in director Didier Konings’ short, sharp fable

Before fertility tourism, the only option for your average medieval serf struggling to conceive was heading to the nearest foreboding woods and summoning weird, antlered dryads. Or so it seems from Didier Konings’ short but memorable folk-horror debut, in which wide-eyed villager Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) flees into the trees after escaping an attempted rape by local butcher Gelo (Léon van Waas). He has already told her, after scoffing a pig foetus, that he likes his meat weak and defenceless.

The dryads beat IVF hands down. Previously chided for her lack of childbearing by husband Hikko (Len Leo Vincent), Frieda emerges with a swollen abdomen. But the villagers fear it is the devil’s work, especially after finding Gelo in the woods, dismembered but freakishly still conscious. That’s about the extent of the story here, but Konings pares the focus effectively down to the essentials of this obscurantist hole: the crawling fear of evil among the villagers, and the necessary projection of it on to everything outside their control – female bodies and emotions, the natural world. Though her character verges on symbolic, Frieda – as well as the “wise women” of the forest, as per the original Dutch title – allow this fable’s feminist credentials to howl out unmistakably.

Published: September 22, 2026, 3:00 am

Sense and Sensibility review – Daisy Edgar-Jones leads sober-minded next-gen do-over of Austen romcom

With Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the Dashwood sisters, this fresh take on a beloved classic is not to be confused with Ang Lee’s

There’s no reason for anyone working on a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility to be intimidated by the celebrated 1995 movie by director Ang Lee and screenwriter Emma Thompson, any more than they should be or overawed by Austen’s original novel. Sacred cows are there to be … not slain, but re-invented. The decision to bring out a next-gen Sense and Sensibility, with a new young cast – as opposed to, say, a new Northanger Abbey or a new spin on the unfinished The Watsons – might bemuse some and at first it bemused me, like hearing about a Love Actually remake starring Millie Bobby Brown. But this turns out to be a more downbeat, ruminative version, happening in much cloudier weather than 30 years ago and without the sugar-rush final wedding scene. The mood is cooler, but interestingly austere, sober and thoughtful. There are also some strange casting decisions.

The sisters at the heart of the story, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, played in 1995 by Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, are now played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, and frankly don’t look and sound much like the sisters we thought we knew. They look like young women who knew each other reasonably well at uni and are now in a flatshare in London. It is a story of financial and romantic crisis. Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters, having happily occupied a handsome Sussex estate, are forced to move to humble Barton Cottage in Devon when Mrs Dashwood’s stepson John Dashwood inherits their property and effectively evicted them.

Published: September 21, 2026, 8:00 am

‘Still feel a jolt of joy’: why Dirty Dancing is my feelgood movie

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films remembers a 1987 teenage girl classic

There is probably a Swedish word for the emotional state engendered in me by Dirty Dancing. A kind of turbo-nostalgia which blends solace, joy and a sense of continuity with a yearning so acute I can feel it in my ribs.

I must have been around 12 years old when I first watched Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) fall in love while bumping pelvises as dance partners (before Strictly Come Dancing, this trajectory felt more surprising.)

Published: September 21, 2026, 2:00 am

‘Good music is good music, and most music is not!’ As he hits 90, master minimalist Steve Reich looks back

At 14, he heard Stravinsky and resolved to be a composer. As Reich approaches his 10th decade, the man revered by the likes of David Bowie reflects on a life that changed the soundtrack of modern living

Steve Reich is not yet 90 but the celebrations have already begun, with the world premiere of his new piece for large ensemble, In All Your Ways, at the Edinburgh festival last month and a late-night concert at the BBC Proms. But when I ask this most supremely influential of living composers how he feels about becoming a nonagenarian on 3 October, Reich is coy. “I haven’t quite got there yet,” he says. “I don’t want to dot the i before I even get there. I’ll let you know in due course …”

Born in New York in 1936, Reich has spent the last six decades producing music that has changed the soundtrack of modern life in Europe and North America, and inspired superlatives from a wide array of music critics. The New Yorker has called him “the most original musical thinker of our time”.

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 pm

‘Love and respect’ or ‘a cash grab’? The furious battle over the final album by the Fall

Creators of Post Script, made with vocals by the late Mark E Smith, defend it as ‘a great, positive record’, but fiancee describes it as ‘ethically wrong’

The fiancee and last manager of the late Mark E Smith, frontman of the Fall, has hit out against the release of an album being marketed as the band’s final official album, calling it “ethically wrong” and a “cash grab”.

When Post Script was first announced in June, several media reports assumed the nine-track album contained recordings that the final Fall lineup were working on before the singer’s death, in January 2018. However, it subsequently emerged that it contains unused studio vocals recorded between 2001 and 2014, to which longtime Fall associates Ed Blaney and Simon “Ding” Archer have posthumously added music.

Published: September 21, 2026, 5:30 am

Swan Song by Charles Spencer review – a furious exercise in score-settling by Diana’s brother

Amid genuinely touching passages about his sister, the earl can’t help but put himself and his grievances centre stage

Charles Spencer’s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great deal about Charles Spencer – perhaps more than we needed to know. If that sounds snarky, after 400 pages of score settling, chest thumping, wild indiscretion and some truly touching passages about his late sister, the reader is left with a head-spinning story of the world that created Diana and a certain sourness at the manner in which it is told.

Let’s start with the headlines in last week’s Daily Mail, the newspaper to whom Spencer sold serialisation of a book which includes a line describing tabloid journalists as “those who inhabit the murky swamps of malevolence, and who need to suck their victims dry of their souls”. Perhaps he meant a different set of hacks. Anyway the top line in the Mail was that, shortly after Diana’s death, King Charles insulted her in a phone call to Spencer: “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’” Your take on this quote will likely dictate how you receive the book, and here’s mine: I’m willing to believe the king behaved badly, but “hissed” is a red flag, one of those embellishments, like “snarled” or “flounced”, that writers tend to use to make those they’re writing about appear worse. Spencer, always the injured party, has so many axes grinding away in this book that at times it’s impossible to hear what he’s saying.

Published: September 22, 2026, 4:09 am

Autumn by Kate Mosse review – tender reflections on time and place

The author of Labyrinth on the turning of the seasons and the lore and landscape of her beloved Sussex

Kate Mosse’s new book is a love-song to West Sussex, part of a series designed to bring out its authors’ personal connections to a home landscape. It began last year, with Michael Morpurgo welcoming spring in Devon, where he has lived – at the farm that inspired War Horse – for over 50 years; and then Val McDermid celebrating winter in Scotland, where she grew up and still lives. Bernardine Evaristo will explore summer soon – but, meanwhile, we have Mosse, also deeply and endearingly rooted in her chosen patch.

Mosse grew up in the village of Fishbourne. She now lives in Chichester, where she got to know her husband when they revised for A-levels in the shadow of the Bishop’s Palace, and held hands when she turned 17 on the day of the city’s annual Sloe Fair. Twenty-three years later, they celebrated her 40th there, with their children. Today, they live with his 90-something mother Granny Rosie – also “Sussex to her bones” – who remembers watching cattle herded in fields where a supermarket now stands.

Published: September 22, 2026, 1:00 am

Doom Painting by AK Blakemore review – a dazzling epic of the Peasants’ Revolt

This recklessly ambitious doorstopper follows the 16 days of England’s medieval uprising from a vast array of viewpoints, and in startlingly rich prose

AK Blakemore’s third novel tells the story of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when commoners of all classes – not only peasants, but merchants, servants, smugglers, and some local lords and officials – rebelled at the imposition of a poll tax and rampaged through southern England, burning records of debts, killing their oppressors and laying waste to their homes. The book closely follows the events of the rebellion’s 16 days, employing a vast array of points of view, including the young king Richard II, several of his courtiers, dozens of elements of the rebellious Commons, a porpoise and a runaway horse. The title suggests the novel’s portrayal of these events as an inevitable reckoning; a “doom painting” was a picture of the Last Judgment on the wall of a medieval church.

As a book of this scope must be, it’s a doorstopper. As any novel by Blakemore will be, it’s dazzlingly rich in lexical glamour, and this is likely to be any reader’s lasting impression of the book. Sometimes it feels as if the author is out to use every word in the English language in a startling, aestheticised, puckish way that expands both the word and the world. The result can be joyously silly. Who else would give us slugs that “blurb their elementary forms from out of the undergrowth to begin a dank and toothless festa”, or “lunar-brilliantined mud”? But there is also gravity and passion here, especially when she intimately imagines the lives of the commoners: “they rise, to fry eggs in butter and pork fat; they rise, to whet knives on scarred stone; they rise, to braid the manes of their draught horses; they rise, to count arrows; they rise, setting aside their glitchy dreams of hairy stars and blue-skinned devils; they rise, fearful and powerful, into the bright day.” The cheekily anachronistic appearance of “glitchy” in this medieval scene is typical of Blakemore’s method. All forms of language, high and low, archaic and modern, are here. Her use of detail to convey a historical scene is also extraordinary: the barber’s chair where “a crowd has gathered beneath the ribboned pole to watch the draining of a cyst”; the brewer with “a grotty beard, chlorotic with hops, [that] hangs down almost to his belt”; or “the horseflies waltzing over the liquefying flesh of severed heads”.

Published: September 21, 2026, 11:00 pm

From the ridicule of Trump to the rise of Jack Welch: how the 1980s shaped and changed America

In When America Roared, Pulitzer-winning reporter Jonathan Kaufman looks back to a decade of greed and excess, and uses it to explore where we are today

Donald Trump is “so much a creature of the 80s but even in the 80s, everyone made fun of him,” Jonathan Kaufman said. General Electric CEO Jack Welch, “the most prominent business figure in the country, maybe in the world, mocked him. No one took him seriously.

“Even today, if you look at the [White House] ballroom, you look at all the things he’s doing, it’s this 1980s aesthetic, right? You can just see the way he looks at the world: the glitz, the cheapness, the gold brocade everywhere. That screams 1980s. All he needs is big hair and leg warmers and listening to, I don’t know, synthetic pop, and he’d be right back in 1985.”

Published: September 21, 2026, 3:00 am

Control Resonant review – save New York from paranormal phenomena

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC; Remedy
A surprisingly conventional game from a famously weird developer, this sequel to 2019’s Control is accomplished but safe

This is an arthouse action game from Finnish developer Remedy, masters of exactly this type of thing. It’s a sequel, however, so not only must it clear the high bar that its strikingly distinctive predecessor has set – it must also ideally arrive with a bushel of new ideas. There are clear and valuable strengths here in character progression and the lustrous presentation of its paranormal world, but Resonant doesn’t feel as enjoyably recondite or expansive in its influences as 2019’s Control did. As you wander New York brandishing supernatural abilities against glowing orange foes, the sad sense creeps in that you might be playing any number of games.

As paranormal event survivor Jesse Faden, your journey through the original Control was like a sequence of playable Twilight Zone episodes, battling prosaic household objects with supernatural properties that teased and twisted reality inside an endlessly fascinating supernatural government bureau called the Oldest House. You’d navigate architecturally impossible spaces bridging the subconscious and the bricks-and-mortar world, in order to defeat a malevolent fridge. That’s broadly true again in Resonant, albeit with diminishing returns. This time you’re playing as Jesse’s brother Dylan, waking up after years of containment in the Oldest House to find its contents have escaped into downtown Manhattan. So you head out of the interesting place, and into a setting you’ve explored before in Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Division, Max Payne, and others ad infinitum.

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:00 am

Roman Sands RE:Build review – marooned in a crumbling vaporwave dream

PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Arbitrary Metric
The latest work from the team behind Paratopic is part compulsive time-loop management sim, part eerie subterranean adventure

Fetch the chair from storage. Deliver a message that causes disgust. Clean vomit in the afternoon and pour another glass in the evening. In Roman Sands RE:Build, you provide concierge service to delirious, broken people who couldn’t care less about the sweat on your forehead and the bags under your eyes.

In this reimagining of the 2019 visual novel Roman Sands, crafted by the team behind the Americana horror road trip Paratopic, you’re trapped in a beach resort and tethered in a time loop. The task is deceivingly simple: fulfil menial directives from four gluttonous individuals, unlock tools and items to open more rooms and then do it all over again.

Published: September 21, 2026, 1:53 am

The amazing life of 101-year-old art warrior Ce Roser: ‘We made noise. We closed the streets’

Sick of her friends getting nowhere, she co-founded The Women in the Arts Foundation and they protested across New York. Ahead of a UK show, Roser talks about escaping wartime Shanghai – and still painting three a day

In January of 1971, the American art historian Linda Nochlin published a landmark essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? It was a provocation and a call to arms that was to send shockwaves through the arts establishment.

“It wasn’t just a problem for artists,” says Ce Roser, more than half a century on. “My older friends could not get shows, although they had had brilliant careers before, and that happened also to all of my friends who were poets or writers. Nobody seemed to be able to establish themselves as career artists. So we got together, we complained, and I decided we should have a meeting and really talk seriously about it.”

Published: September 22, 2026, 6:44 am

Land of the free? Suspects, souvenirs and sex scandals in New York – in pictures

William Meyers spent 25 years photographing New York – and noticed how small, everyday acts of civic engagement helped sustain the nation. He talks us through his favourite images

Published: September 21, 2026, 11:00 pm

Nimesh Patel on stand-up, Palestine and politics: ‘The way that religion’s been weaponized is ugly’

The comedian went from being discovered by Chris Rock to making Saturday Night Live history. Now his new Netflix special, Buy the Dip, tackles timely topics with optimism

There is a single minute in Buy the Dip, Nimesh Patel’s new Netflix comedy special, in which the comedian nimbly and hilariously goes from describing his wife in labour with their first child to complaining about a Rolex sporting doctor wearing “insurance payments on his wrist” to Luigi Mangione. “He killed one guy, allegedly,” Patel quips, arguing that the terrorism-related charge Mangione got stuck with (which a judge dismissed) was offensive to real terrorists.

The hilarious bit is impressive for how much Patel packs into a single minute and how much it all speaks to the comedian’s own experience, expertise and worldview.

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:00 am

‘Addiction is not only caused by weak will’: how a talking pigeon got Czechia to face up to its alcohol problem

Director Pepa Lubojacki’s heartbreaking film chronicles the lives of her brother as he struggles with drink and homelessness – and her own shame in the face of societal prejudice

Czech film-maker Pepa Lubojacki originally set out to make a film about pigeons. What fascinated the 39-year-old director was that the grey birds are clearly beautiful and highly intelligent creatures, yet human cruelty towards them is socially acceptable in the way it isn’t towards, say, crows or magpies. “You can spot kids kicking and chasing pigeons while their parents cheerfully look on,” she says.

The moral blind spot reminded her of the way that people looked at homeless people like her older brother and her cousins. “The public has learned to avert their eyes,” she says. “My cousin was declined care seven times with open wounds in the hospital, and finally, they had to amputate both of his legs.”

Published: September 21, 2026, 11:00 pm

The great iced coffee debate: is it wrong to take a beverage into a job interview?

It might seem a perfectly natural thing to do. But, on TikTok, a recruiter has expressed her dismay at gen Zs showing up with a takeout drink – and it’s caused a ruckus

Name: Iced coffee.

Age: Colonial troops in Algeria invented a sweetened cold coffee beverage known as Mazagran in around about 1840. However, in Japan, a cold brew was popular among sailors even earlier, in the 17th century.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:37 am

The pest I’ll never forget: I awoke to the sound of my bedroom bin rustling

At first the mice were just a distant pitter-patter. But soon they had an unblinking confidence that they owned the entire house and all the food in it

Living in a nine-person house in Vancouver, Canada, far from my UK home, came with plenty of benefits. Cleanliness was not one of them. A dish left behind quickly multiplied and bins overflowed in little more than a day. I’m not saying the endless strew of disposable coffee cups was the cause of our year-long mice infestation, but it no doubt helped.

In the winter of 2023, one of my housemates began to hear the sound of creatures rattling around in the ceiling of her basement room. The pitter-patters grew louder and louder; others began to report sightings from across the house. It wasn’t long before I was waking to the sound of my bedroom bin rustling. I had to accept it: we had mice.

Published: September 21, 2026, 11:00 pm

The best plastic-free cutting boards: I spent six weeks testing 10 boards, and these won

A good, sturdy chopping board will last you many years. I tested the best non-plastic, non-toxic ones, including some made out of wood and synthetic rubber

A cutting board is literally the foundation of most things you cook. It’s a must-have for any recipe that needs chopping, smashing, mincing, carving or sometimes even serving. And, let’s be honest, it’s also where we pile up other kitchen items while we make a mess.

Plastic cutting boards are affordable and convenient, but research shows they shed significant amounts of microplastics into food. And though the health damage caused by microplastics is still being studied, we don’t need microplastics in our minestrone.

All our cutting board picks, in detail

How we tested (and our mission at The Filter US)

How to clean and maintain a wooden cutting board

How to choose the right cutting board material

Published: September 21, 2026, 1:05 pm

The 10 best beauty deals at Nordstrom worth buying before its sale ends tomorrow

Whether you’re looking for a new skincare gem or in the market for new makeup – our editors have selected the deals worth your dollar

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

It’s finally autumn, the season when we can wear more than tinted sunscreen without sweating it off before 10am.

After recommending the best skincare for ageing skin, trying over a dozen lip balms and adding new beauty products to our own personal regimens, we’ve been eying Nordstrom’s fall beauty sale for discounts on some of our favorites.

Published: September 22, 2026, 7:18 am

I tried so many THC drinks to find the best weed-infused seltzers and spirits

The market for THC-infused seltzers and spirits has never been more full. Here are seven standouts, including beginner-friendly Wynk and tequila-like MXXN

• 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

Instead of liquid weed that’s meant to get drinkers as high as possible, today’s THC-infused beverages are more about quality and taste. With varying flavor combinations and dosages, it’s never been a more interesting time to try the cannabis seltzers, spirits and mixed drinks on the market.

The category is projected to hit $370m in the next few years. In my reporting (and personal experience), I’ve found the rise of infused drinks is less about the cannabis itself and more about inclusivity. While some younger Americans are replacing alcohol with thoughtfully made nonalcoholic beers and nonalcoholic wine, others are treating THC and CBD as simply another way to feel included in social gatherings. Booze is no longer the default option at the housewarming or backyard barbecue.

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:08 am

Get tested and talk to your partner: how to have safer sex after age 50

At 51, I want many more years of a healthy, happy sex life. So I decided to compile my own guide

When I got divorced after 28 years of monogamy, I was excited to be having sex again, but had concerns. I was 48, and the last time I’d been single was in the 90s; terrified of pregnancy and hyperconscious of HIV/Aids, I hadn’t considered condomless intercourse an option back then.

Now, at 51, I’ve been wondering how important barrier protection is for me. Though I haven’t hit menopause, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that “by 45 getting pregnant naturally is unlikely”, and HIV/Aids prevention and treatment have improved significantly in the last three decades.

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 am

From paleo to intermittent fasting: are any diets actually good for us?

As diet trends proliferate on social media, it can be hard to work out which are backed by science and which should be ignored. From paleo to keto, raw food to intermittent fasting, each attracts a tribe of ardent followers. Now Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological sciences at Harvard University, has written a book to try to cut through the noise. In Fed Up, he uses his background as an evolutionary anthropologist to scrutinise the evidence, turning himself into a guinea pig in the process and trying various diets. In this podcast, he tells Ian Sample which one has remained part of his routine

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:29 am

The rise of Big Toothbrush: how did our mouths become such a lucrative market?

People in the UK are more interested in oral health than ever - and you can now buy prebiotic toothpastes and brushes that cost up to £600. Yet we remain in the midst of a serious dental crisis

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

Published: September 21, 2026, 9:00 pm

Is it true that … cycling affects fertility?

Saddling up is only likely to be an issue for elite athletes – and those with low sperm counts

“Cycling isn’t big on the radar of fertility doctors,” says Prof Colin Duncan, a fertility expert at the University of Edinburgh.

For women, he says, the only time cycling is likely to affect fertility is when it’s done at extreme levels, such as the kind of training undertaken by elite athletes.

Published: September 21, 2026, 12:00 pm

Harry Styles walked eight miles in loafers. Is he ruining his feet? There’s only one way to find out

For his trek across New York City, the singer wore a pair of Prada slip-ons. I tried to do the same in my penny loafers – and soon found out why experts advise against it

Last month, just before his 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden, Harry Styles was spotted walking the streets of New York. According to the paparazzi who trailed him throughout his journey, he walked eight miles – all the way from Brooklyn into Manhattan – in loafers.

If, like me, you own a pair of loafers, your first thought is probably: that doesn’t sound like a good idea. On Instagram, Grazia called Styles’ shoes “perhaps the least sensible footwear for such an undertaking”.

Published: September 21, 2026, 4:00 am

McQueen comes home to happy, dark place at London fashion week

Brand returns to its physical and unconventional roots as it battles undergoes stark restructuring

Back when a young Lee McQueen was showing at London fashion week, there was Dante, the show in a Hawksmoor church with a skeleton in the front row and a blaring soundtrack of organ music and gunfire. And there was Voss, where models were trapped inside a giant mirrored box set up as a psychiatric ward.

Twenty-five years later, the Alexander McQueen brand returned from the Paris schedule to a creepily beautiful subterranean 17th century London chapel, with steel harnesses, bulky ankle strapped heels that looked like electronic monitoring tags, and a chain mail dress of tiny silver skulls.

Published: September 21, 2026, 2:40 am

Skirts given star billing as Prada swerves trousers and dresses in Milan

Combination of Miuccia Prada with Belgian designer Raf Simons once again spins gold for fashion house

Miuccia Prada’s style formula is simple: begin with a great skirt. Her personal uniform is a knee-length skirt, A-line or pleated, most often with a plain sweater and kitten heels.

The Prada collection that opened Milan fashion week made a compelling case for her favourite outfit, with a skirt the star of every one of the 63 looks – no dresses, no trousers. It won the room over, so expect to see the personality skirt on a high street near you soon.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:26 am

Perfect peonies and a striking ship – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: September 22, 2026, 8:00 am

The secret to making jackfruit curry that actually tastes of something | Kitchen aide

Jackfruit is a blank canvas that absorbs flavour brilliantly – it’s all about seasoning it generously and giving it enough time for the aromatics and spices to do their work

I’ve just made yet another disappointing jackfruit curry. Any tips for making it more flavourful?
Sally, by email
“The trick with jackfruit is not to rush it,” says Eroshan Meewella, founder of Sri Lankan street-food joint Adoh! in central London. “It absorbs flavour brilliantly – spice, curry leaves, coconut milk, tamarind – so you just need to give it time.” Don’t be shy with those flavours, either, because, as Sally has discovered, jackfruit is something of a blank canvas. Sanjana Modha, author of Modern Masala, suggests treating it a bit as you would tofu: “You really have to build flavour around it. Think of jackfruit as a sponge that’s going to absorb your masala. And I cannot emphasise enough how you’ll need more onions than you think.” And she ain’t kidding: for a curry to feed four to six, Modha uses “at least” four large onions. “You must spend time caramelising them properly, so start by getting those onions really golden by frying them with a couple of cinnamon sticks, cloves and cardamom pods.” That will take a good 45 minutes. “Then add ginger, garlic and chillies – don’t be afraid to season generously with all your ground spices.” You’ll want some acidity, too: “Lemon, lime or tamarind towards the end to balance everything.”

On to the jackfruit itself, which Luke Larsson, head chef at Khao Bird in London, always uses fresh from an Asian supermarket: “It’s just a hundred times better [than tinned], and it’s such a delicious fruit when fresh.” Modha, meanwhile, tends to go for tinned young green jackfruit in brine: “Drain and rinse it really well, then pat it completely dry using kitchen towel.” She fries it first in neutral oil (rapeseed, sunflower), until golden and slightly caramelised: “This gives it much more flavour, then I marinate it in ground spices and a spoonful of mustard oil for a few hours, or even overnight, before adding it to my curry.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: September 22, 2026, 5:00 am

Houseplant Hacks: can mirrors and foil boost low sunlight?

The theory is your plants will perk up if you reflect some extra light their way over the long winter months

Most houseplants are hungry for sunlight, which is in short supply during a UK winter. Plants on a shelf or coffee table often get insufficient light, so they stretch, lean and thin out. Not everyone can move their plant to a south-facing sill, so the hunt is always on to make the most of what little light there is.

Published: September 22, 2026, 2:00 am

‘I lost my children, and I’m afraid of losing my baby again’: a day in the life of a pregnant woman in Gaza

Alaa lives in a tent pitched on the ruins of her house, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike that killed all three of her children. In one month, she will give birth again.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

Alaa Hessi takes each step deliberately: raises her foot to land heavily on the stair above, takes a breath, slides her hand up the railing. Resting atop an uneven mess of rubble, the wooden staircase judders with each motion. Her movements are slowed by the heavy melon of her pregnant belly.

The sound that wakes me in the morning is the buzzing of flies inside the tent, and the noise of our neighbours.

Published: September 21, 2026, 4:00 am

‘Don’t spend $20 on an acai bowl’: gen Z are shunning private equity’s restaurant takeover

As more PE firms invest in food establishments, people are bemoaning the ‘same-ification’ of NYC’s restaurant scene

Los Tacos No 1 is a classic New York success story. After the Mexican-style taco joint opened in 2013, it quickly became a critic’s pick in the city’s paper of record, drawing long lines and a devoted lunchtime crowd. As word spread about its juicy al pastor and handmade tortillas, it expanded to nine locations. Then, this September, bad news struck: Los Tacos No 1 had received an undisclosed amount of funding from private equity firm TSG Consumer.

According to a press release, this cash would help Los Tacos pursue “thoughtful, founder-led growth”. Customers were not so sure. Social media posts quickly declared “the beginning of the end” for the chain, half-jokingly anticipating tiny portions of bad food.

Published: September 21, 2026, 6:51 am

Are you embracing low-tech ways to enjoy music and movies?

Perhaps you’ve ditched algorithmically curated playlists for vinyl and enjoy DVDs rather than streaming

Are you turning your back on hi-tech forms of entertainment to escape algorithmically curated content?

Perhaps you are enjoying listening to vinyl rather than the constant flow of music playlists. Or maybe you have ditched streaming services to watch DVDs instead.

Published: September 22, 2026, 9:51 am

Robot fashion models and freediving with turtles: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: September 22, 2026, 4:47 am