Emmys 2024: the winners, the losers, the speeches – live!

The second Emmys ceremony of 2024 sees Shōgun, The Bear and Baby Reindeer lead the pack as hot favourites

• Emmy nominations 2024: the full list and the biggest surprises and snubs
  

More arrivals on the red carpet, with just less than an hour before showtime:

Producers are promising more of the “energy of nostalgia” that we saw in January’s ceremony tonight with some big reunions and a host of cameos. Tonight we’ll see surviving cast members from Happy Days, The West Wing and Saturday Night Live, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary tonight.

Secret service will have ‘every resource’ to protect Trump says Biden, after apparent assassination attempt - live

A suspect is in custody after the incident, which occurred at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida

• Armed suspect arrested in Florida after ‘attempted assassination’ of Trump

Palm Beach county sheriff’s office is hosting its press conference.

According to authorities, a witness said: “I saw the guy running out in the bushes.”

Ukraine war briefing: people trapped after Russian strike on Kharkiv apartment block, Zelenskiy says

One dead and dozens injured in guided bomb attack, says city’s mayor, as Ukraine president says at least 100 such airstrikes are happening every day. What we know on day 936

• See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage

One person has died and at least 41 people were wounded on Sunday afternoon when a Russian guided bomb struck a multi-storey residential building in Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov said, adding that the bomb hit the 10th floor of the building, with the fire spreading across four storeys. Prosecutors in Kharkiv said on Telegram the body of a 94-year-old woman had been recovered from the ninth floor of the building. Twelve other buildings were also damaged, Terekhov said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday night that rescue operations were under way at the 12-storey building, with people trapped under the rubble. He said three children were among 35 people injured. “In this single strike on Kharkiv, four air bombs were dropped. One hit the building in the city, and the other three struck villages in the region,” he said. Russia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the attack but has previously denied intentionally targeting civilians despite having killed thousands of them since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Zelenskiy on Sunday again appealed for a shift in the west’s policy on the use of long-range weapons, saying Russia was carrying out at least 100 airstrikes comparable to the one that hit Kharkiv every day. “The only way to counter this terror is through a systemic solution – long-range capabilities to destroy Russian military aviation at its bases. This is an obvious, logical solution. We have already explained to all our partners why Ukraine truly needs sufficient long-range capabilities,” he said on X.

Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks over the weekend. The Ukrainian air force said on Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it downed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday over western and south-western regions, with no damage caused by the falling debris. It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down on Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region.

Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday. Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack. Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.
“So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles … they don’t have artillery, they don’t have artillery rounds,” said Zelenskiy, speaking in English. CNN said the interview had been conducted on Friday. Zelenskiy said weapons aid packages promised by the United States and European nations were arriving very slowly. “We need 14 brigades to be ready. Until now … from these packages we didn’t equip even four,” he said. The only thing Russian president Vladimir Putin fears is the reaction of his people if the cost of the war makes them suffer, Zelenskiy said. “Make Ukraine strong, and you will see that he will sit and negotiate”.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said Washington was working on a “substantial” new aid package for Ukraine.
Zelenskiy is due to meet President Joe Biden this month and will present a plan to seek an end to the war. The main elements are security and diplomatic support, as well as military and economic aid, he said.

Rare smelly penguin wins New Zealand bird of the year contest

The hoiho, which means ‘noise shouter’, triumphed in a year free from the usual scandals surrounding the competition

One of the world’s rarest penguins has been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, in an unusually sedate year for the competition, free from the foreign interference and voting scandals of previous events.

The endangered yellow-eyed penguin, or hoiho, is the largest of New Zealand’s mainland penguin species and is distinctive for the pale yellow band of feathers linking the eyes.

Typhoon Yagi: scores dead from flooding in Myanmar

At least 320,000 people have been displaced and 64 were still missing after the strongest storm to hit Asia this year

Myanmar’s death toll from floods rose to at least 113, the country’s military government said, following heavy rains brought on by Typhoon Yagi that has caused havoc across parts of Southeast Asia.

At least 320,000 people have been displaced and 64 were still missing, government spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said, according to a late-night bulletin on state-run MRTV.

Trump golf club shooting: what we know so far about apparent assassination attempt

Donald Trump said he was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt at the former US president’s West Palm Beach golf club

• Follow live for latest updates
• Full report: armed suspect arrested in Florida after ‘attempted assassination’ of Trump

The Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump is “safe and unharmed” after US Secret Service agents opened fire when they spotted a person with a firearm at the Trump international golf course west of Palm Beach, where the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort home is located. Law enforcement officials said the gunman was in some bushes near the property line of the golf course when Secret Service agents, who were clearing holes ahead of where Trump was playing, spotted a rifle barrel in the bushes.

Agents engaged the gunman and fired at least four rounds of ammunition about 1.30pm local time. The gunman then dropped his rifle, two backpacks and other items and fled in a black Nissan car. A witness, the sheriff said, saw the gunman and managed to take photos of his car and license plate. In a press conference, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said a male suspect had been detained by authorities. According to Bradshaw, the suspect was relatively calm. The gunman was spotted about 300 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing, Secret Service officials said.

The FBI called the incident “what appears to be an attempted assassination of the former president”. The FBI and other law enforcement officials said the suspect had a scope on an AK47 rifle, and a GoPro camera with which he apparently intended to record footage and two backpacks with ceramic tiles in it.

The suspect who was arrested was named as Ryan Wesley Routh, three law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. Fox news and CNN also reported the same name, citing law enforcement sources. Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect. The Guardian has not confirmed this independently.

In an email to supporters, Trump said: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!”. He added, “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!”. Trump was injured in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on 13 July.

The White House said in a statement that President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris had been briefed about the incident and were relieved to know that Trump is safe. “Violence has no place in America,” Harris said in a social media post. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz issued a statement, posting on X: “Gwen and I are glad to hear that Donald Trump is safe. Violence has no place in our country. It’s not who we are as a nation.”

Trump’s running mate in the presidential election, US senator JD Vance, said he spoke to Trump after the shooting and that the former president was in good spirits. The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top congressional allies, said he had spoken with the former president after the incident and that Trump was in “good spirits” and was “one of the strongest people I’ve ever known”.

Second Trump assassination attempt highlights ‘dangerous times’ for US

Questions will be raised about Trump’s exposure to attack, but Secret Service is also being commended for stopping it

A US Secret Service spokesperson summed up an extraordinary afternoon at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in five chilling words: “We live in dangerous times.”

The spokesperson made his assessment at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, just hours after an individual had been spotted with an AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle just a few hundred yards from where Donald Trump was playing golf.

Lleyton Hewitt proud of ‘banged-up’ Australia in Davis Cup loss to Spain

• Team coach again criticises ‘ridiculous’ tournament format
• Australia lose final rubber to Spain but still qualify for finals

Lleyton Hewitt says he is proud of his “banged-up” but brave Australia team for battling through a “ridiculous” schedule to reach another Davis Cup finals week. Captain Hewitt, long an outspoken critic of the revamped tournament, launched another attack on the format in Valencia on Sunday after his side ended their otherwise successful qualifying campaign with a 2-1 defeat to hosts Spain.

The result was largely academic with both teams having already booked their date for the eight-team finals in Malaga in November but Hewitt took time to laud his ailing players for racing from the US Open 6000km away to compete for their country so soon afterwards.

Gutsy play: Packers QB Malik Willis declines to pass after teammate vomits on ball

• Center Josh Myers leaves ball slick on third down
• Packer go on to beat Colts for first win of season

Malik Willis decided to decline a passing play after he found the ball slick with an unexpected substance during the Green Bay Packers’ win over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.

The quarterback was snapped the ball on third and 10 on what appeared to be a passing play. But he instead elected to take the ball and run.

Starmer under pressure to distance UK from Italy’s hard-right immigration plans

Backbenchers and NGOs criticise decision to explore how country has cut migrant numbers at Rome talks

Keir Starmer is under pressure from Labour backbenchers and NGOs to distance his government from Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right immigration policies on the eve of bilateral talks in Rome.

After the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the UK would consider copying Italy’s plans to process asylum applicants in a third country such as Albania, one backbencher questioned why a Labour administration was “seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government”.

Lamine Yamal maintains Barça’s 100% record as Gallagher scores for Atlético

• Teenager sets side on way to 4-1 victory at Girona
• Gallagher and Álvarez score in Atlético’s 3-0 Valencia win

Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal struck twice to help deliver a commanding 4-1 win at Girona on Sunday that extended their perfect start to La Liga with a fifth consecutive win while Conor Gallagher scored his first goal in Atlético Madrid colours.

The Spain winger gave Barça a two-goal lead with strikes in the 30th and 37th minutes while Dani Olmo extended their advantage right after the break with a first-time effort from close range.

Lilia Vu sinks winning putt as USA hold off Europe fightback to lift Solheim Cup

• USA win for first time since 2017 after 15½ to 12½ victory
• Charley Hull beat Nelly Korda 6&4 to give Europe hope

They say Virginia is for lovers. The US ensured the overdue resumption of its relationship with the Solheim Cup on an afternoon when the heroics of Charley Hull almost inspired her European teammates towards the making of history. Watching golf fans were given cause to remember why the Solheim Cup is held in such deep affection. The event will return in the Netherlands in 2026; a wait that for now is unsatisfactory.

It feels like an understatement to point out Suzann Pettersen’s European contingent battled hard to keep their hands on the trophy for what would have been a record-breaking fourth time. The US held their nerve. The scoreline of 15½ to 12½ did justice to that and a European team who lacked nothing in heart. Far from bursting through the tape, the hosts at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club stumbled over the line like an exhausted marathon runner.

Netanyahu tells Houthis they will pay ‘heavy price’ as missile hits Israel

Rebel group claims what would be first missile to have landed in Israel from Yemen, but no reports of casualties

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels will pay a “heavy price” after the group claimed its first ballistic missile strike on Israel and its leader warned of bigger attacks to come.

The missile – claimed by the Houthis as an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile – triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, and local media aired footage of people racing to shelters at Ben Gurion international airport south-east of Tel Aviv. According to reports, it hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

Trump says he hates Taylor Swift after she endorses Kamala Harris

Before announcing his feelings, ex-president had posted AI images suggesting Swift had endorsed him for president

Donald Trump has addressed Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in November’s presidential race by announcing his hatred of the pop star.

The former president and Republican nominee wrote on Sunday on his Truth Social platform: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”

Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president

More than a dozen who served under Republican president quote his call for a ‘Time for Choosing’

More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.

In a letter obtained by CBS News, former Reagan aides and appointees – including Ken Adelman, a US ambassador to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, as well as a deputy press secretary, B Jay Cooper – said they believed that, if alive today, Reagan would have supported Harris.

Wolves 1-2 Newcastle: Premier League – as it happened

Newcastle came from a goal behind to defeat Wolves and maintain their unbeaten start to the campaign

Here come the teams …

Eddie Howe: “I think there is a lot to come from the team but I think we are in a good place. There is a really good spirit about the group but we know it will be a difficult away day and we need to be at our best.

Newcastle super sub Harvey Barnes’ blistering strike sinks stumbling Wolves

If there is a civil war raging in the background, it seems to be suiting Newcastle very well. For all the tension between the manager, Eddie Howe, and the sporting director, Paul Mitchell, they have won three and drawn one of their opening four games of the season, leaving them third on goal difference behind Arsenal in second.

It was not a perfect display from Newcastle, far from it. A lot of the limitations of their squad were clear, but Howe took decisive action with a triple substitution at half-time and had his reward as one of the players he brought on, Harvey Barnes, scored a brilliant winner with 10 minutes remaining, cutting in from the left past Nélson Semedo and smashing a 25-yard drive inside the far post.

The Guardian view on tackling FGM: as progress slows, efforts must be redoubled | Editorial

Survivors and other campaigners have done admirable work, but efforts to eradicate the practice by the end of the decade are way off target

Each day, 12,000 girls are at risk of female genital mutilation, the UN says – subjecting them not only to immediate pain and violation of their rights, but to lifelong health complications and trauma. UN experts led by the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, described it this spring as “one of the most pernicious forms of violence” committed against them.

The UN set a target of eradicating FGM by the end of this decade, and impressive advances have been made in some countries. But overall, progress has stalled or reversed. In 2016, 200 million girls and women worldwide had undergone FGM. Since then, 30 million more women have endured it. Most FGM cases – 144 million – have happened in Africa, with a reported 80 million in Asia and 6 million in the Middle East. The rate of decrease has been slower than population growth in communities where the practice persists, and Unicef says that girls are also being cut at a younger age, reducing the opportunities to intervene.

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.

Progressive reform or slippery slope? Isle of Man leans to legalising assisted dying

While most health workers oppose move, Manx parliament heeds voices of those scarred by slow deaths of loved ones

• Assisted dying vote may come soon as No 10 says it will not stop bill

For the last week of Simon Biggerstaff’s life, “pretty much all he said was ‘make it stop, I can’t stand it’,” according to his widow, Sue.

Her husband had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of motor neurone disease and was in “horrible pain”, she said. Previously a fit, active man, he was paralysed from the neck down, with a twisted bowel and barely able to speak.

Piastri wins superb Azerbaijan F1 GP as Norris eats into Verstappen’s title lead

• McLaren driver victorious after duel with Charles Leclerc
• Pérez and Sainz crash; Norris beats Verstappen to fourth

Engrossing and impossibly tense, Formula One might consider itself flattered if the final third of this season delivers with the same compelling drama as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. An old-school race of nose‑to‑tail duelling at the front, won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri from ­Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, the streets of Baku hosted an immense struggle.

Moreover it was a race that might be considered by McLaren as a ­pivotal moment when, against the odds and beyond all expectations, Piastri’s teammate Lando Norris also managed to keep his title hopes alive with an exceptional comeback drive from 15th to fourth.

Trailblazing female artists inspire bold styles at Roksanda and Emilia Wickstead

Designers deliver dramatic and very different aesthetics that pay tribute to pioneers who inspired them

On the 16th floor of a Brutalist office block, actor Joely Richardson chatted in the front row at the Roksanda London fashion week show, her salmon-pink two-piece accessorised with kingfisher tights and dramatic hand gestures.

The poetic extravagance of the clothes she was there to see – glowing clouds of sunflower organza, lavishly draped tangerine silks – was matched by the skyline which peacocked its beauty through the glass walls.

RFK Jr says he faces federal investigation for beheading whale

Former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr decries ‘weaponization of our government’ over 1994 incident

Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he is being investigated by federal authorities for collecting the head from a decapitated whale carcass.

During a campaign event on Saturday for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in Glendale, Arizona, the former independent presidential candidate said: “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.”

Eight people dead in attempt to cross Channel, say French authorities

Investigation opens in France into deaths as David Lammy says UK could process asylum claimants in third country

Eight people died overnight trying to cross the Channel from France to England, French regional authorities have said, as the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the government could follow Italy’s lead and process asylum claimants in a third country.

The French maritime prefecture said 59 people were onboard the boat, which got into difficulty off the coast of France, and 51 of them were rescued. An investigation has been opened by the Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor’s office.

JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention

Republican vice-presidential candidate defends spreading false, racist claims demonizing Haitian immigrants

In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck wins Toronto film festival award

Audience award, typically handed to film that goes on to enjoy Oscar success, was won by Tom Hiddleston-led drama

The Tom Hiddleston-led drama The Life of Chuck is the surprise winner of this year’s Toronto film festival audience award.

The under-the-radar adaptation of Stephen King’s novella beat out competition from higher-profile titles to gain the majority of attendees’ votes. The film entered the festival without distribution.

‘Catastrophe of epic proportions’: eight drown in Europe amid heavy floods

Storm Boris has caused rivers to burst banks and trapped people in their homes across Austria, Poland and Slovakia

Eight people have drowned in Austria, Poland and Romania and four others are missing in the Czech Republic as Storm Boris continues to lash central and eastern Europe, bringing torrential rain and floods that have forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.

Swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been battered by high winds and unusually fierce rains since Thursday.

Women ‘disheartened’ by UK decision to halt Harvey Weinstein charges

Film producer’s former assistant says decision calls into question CPS’s ability to deal with rape and sexual assault cases

Women who were key to exposing the disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein have told of their frustration at the decision by UK prosecutors to discontinue two indecent assault charges against him.

Zelda Perkins, a former personal assistant to Weinstein who broke a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to help expose him as a rapist, said the decision called into question the justice system’s attitude towards sexual assault and rape.

My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir by Sarah Moss review – an interrogation of an eating disorder

Two internal monologues vie for attention in The Fell author’s revelatory account of her struggles with anorexia and its roots in her childhood

Sarah Moss’s memoir, the story of how her upbringing developed in her a lifelong, destructive relationship to food, is full of daring. It is a complicated tale and her telling is many-sided, as full of devastation as it is wisdom.

The author, an academic, is best known for her novels (most recently The Fell), in which she variously dissects the climate emergency and Britishness after Brexit. Here she continues to write with wit about humans’ relationship to the natural world. Unlike Moss, who was raised to climb mountains, her husband “had never experienced the need to scramble at the top of a stony or muddy summit for ideologically questionable reasons regrettably related to colonialism, imperialism and the need to look down on everything”, she teases.

Gabriel’s towering header secures derby win for depleted Arsenal at Tottenham

Injustice. A costly suspension. Injuries. Erling Haaland. The schedule. Arsenal had watched the obstacles line up in front of them and they knew what everybody was thinking: champion teams in the making find a way to cope. To Mikel Arteta’s delight, Arsenal coped.

After the dropped points against Brighton, the draw shaped and scarred by Declan Rice’s controversial red card, and the loss of Martin Ødegaard to injury on Norway duty, it was a day for a makeshift lineup to dig deep, for the collective resolve to shine through.

Nicola Jennings on a decisive few months for Zelenskiy and Putin – cartoon

Overcoming porn addiction requires time and effort, but the reward is a better sex life | Ahona Guha

Rewiring your sexual patterns can help you ‘surf the urge’ and reconnect with your partner

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

While there’s often a general conception that the world is hypersexual and everyone is having lots of sex, the reality is quite different. Some international studies have found that rates of sexual activity are dropping overall. One of the reasons suggested to explain this decrease has been reliance on pornography and internet-based unpartnered sexual exploration instead of partnered activity.

Ben* came to therapy because of difficulties in his relationship with his girlfriend. He was 25 and his girlfriend was his first partner. They’d been together for a year and had just moved in together into a sharehouse. Ben said they were struggling to communicate about sex and had found it difficult to agree on sexual frequency. He admitted with some sheepishness that his girlfriend wanted sex more often than he did; he said he would be happy with sex once every two weeks.

Data center emissions likely 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tally

Big tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it’s getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution.

According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the “in-house” or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% – or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported.

Columnists quit Jewish Chronicle over Gaza stories based on ‘fabrications’

David Baddiel and Jonathan Freedland among those to resign over articles by former IDF soldier Elon Perry

A number of prominent columnists have resigned in protest from the Jewish Chronicle after allegations it printed articles about the Gaza conflict that were based on “wild fabrications”.

The weekly title, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, is facing calls for an investigation after it deleted nine articles by Elon Perry because of doubts over their accuracy and concerns he had misrepresented his CV.

Saudi Arabia calls for more pressure on Iran as Houthi threat grows

Diplomat says ‘pinprick bombings’ by west insufficient to constrain supply of weapons to group in Yemen

The claimed acquisition by Yemen’s Houthi rebels of hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating Israeli air defences threatens to further heighten Middle East tensions, as Saudi Arabia calls for more than “pinprick bombings” to constrain the supply of weapons to the group.

Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemen government opposing the Houthis, believes Iran has been arming the group, including with the weapons used in the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Those attacks have led to a halving of the traffic on the Red Sea route, pushing up the costs of maritime transport and damaging the Egyptian economy through disruption to the Suez canal.

Parents are anxious, lonely, overwhelmingly stressed – and their crisis affects everyone | Emma Beddington

People keep coping until they absolutely can’t, and parents are at breaking point. Why aren’t politicians treating this as an emergency?

It is the kind of statistic that makes you do a double-take, because it can’t be right. It is, though: 41% of US parents are so stressed that they can’t function. That was the number that snagged my attention, but reading further into the newly released advisory by the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, 48% of parents surveyed also said their stress is “completely overwhelming”.

Things are not much better in the UK. In a survey last year for the United Nations Children’s Fund, 49% of parents of under-fours said they had felt overwhelmed all or a lot of the time in the past 12 months (43% felt anxious, 36% unsupported and 26% lonely).

Mexican cowgirls and desert yoga: the weekend in pictures

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

Ham hock, Guinness bread, grilled mackerel: recipes from the Cafe Cecilia cookbook

Dishes from the acclaimed London restaurant including its famous deep fried bread and butter pudding. Plus chef Max Rocha on the pressures of sudden success

The great fear of the first-time restaurateur is that your big opening will be a bust. A lesser concern is how you’ll react if it’s an instant, massive hit. That’s the situation Irish chef Max Rocha found himself in after opening Cafe Cecilia in August 2021, in a white-walled space next to the Regent’s Canal in east London.

“It was all too much,” he recalls of that heady first year of glowing reviews and packed tables dotted with famous faces (Nigella Lawson raved about the deep-fried bread and butter pudding). “It felt like the place everyone wanted to be, but I was putting myself through hell.”

‘Mission complete’: billionaire returns to Earth after spacewalk

Jared Isaacman and crew splash down in SpaceX capsule in the Gulf of Mexico after first ever private spacewalk

The civilian crew on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission returned to Earth on Sunday after a historic five days in orbit that took them higher than anyone since Nasa’s moon trips more than half a century ago.

The Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas shortly after 3.37am local time (8.37am BST), carrying onboard the billionaire tech entrepreneur and mission funder Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former air force Thunderbird pilot.

‘The war has stolen our future’: Gaza children begin second school year without education

Small initiatives are trying to maintain some learning, but resources are scant and many children are put to work

Every evening, for two hours, Asma Mustafa sits down with the small children of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza for what now passes as school in the beleaguered strip. She makes do with what is available: sometimes there are pens and paper for basic maths and literacy, but most of the time class time is taken up with storytelling, singing and play.

“I have been doing this since November,” said Mustafa, 38, who taught at a girls’ high school in Gaza City before the war. “Many children are now working or helping their families find basic things like food during the day, but I try to give them a little bit of structure and normality in the evenings.”

South Africa school language law stirs Afrikaans learning debate

The DA party argues Afrikaans education will be harmed, while the ANC says law is necessary to redress inequality

A contentious South African education law has drawn furious condemnation from politicians and campaigners who claim it is putting Afrikaans education under threat while evoking for others an enduring association of the language with white minority rule.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act was signed into law on Friday by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he would give dissenting parties in his coalition government three months to suggest alternatives to two sections that give provincial officials the powers to override admission decisions and force schools to teach in more than one of South Africa’s 12 official languages.

Hell on Middle-earth? The Rings of Power fails to spin streaming gold

Most expensive TV show ever is in its second season, but reviews are disappointing and audiences are staying away

The Amazon Studios chief, Jennifer Salke, seemed aware of the stakes when the Rings of Power television adaptation premiered in September 2022. Not only was the show taking on one of the most fiercely loved pieces of fantasy literature but Amazon had invested $1bn – a staggering amount of money that made it the most expensive TV series ever.

“This was not for the faint-hearted,” Salke told the Los Angeles Times at the time.

‘Ozempic changed my life’: do diabetes jabs boost the chances of conception?

As surprise pregnancies multiply, some scientists are investigating whether weight loss drugs can improve fertility in women with polycystic ovary syndrome

Kathryn started taking Ozempic “off label” in April 2023 on her doctor’s advice. The Illinois resident had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes while pregnant and was struggling with her weight after the birth of her daughter. Following a short break from the drug in July because of side-effects, she started taking it again in August. In September, she found out she was pregnant.

Although Kathryn wasn’t using contraception, the pregnancy still came as a surprise. She had been told by doctors that she was unlikely to conceive naturally, and had been through several unsuccessful rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) before giving birth to her first child via IVF. “It was completely unexpected,” Kathryn tells me. “We hadn’t really planned to grow our family quite so soon – my first daughter was only 13 months old.”

Scissor-cut, stir-fry and ‘a hug in a bowl’: six great noodle recipes

Versatile dishes with prawns, shrimp and pork, all packed with punchy Malaysian flavours

Scissor-cut noodles became a viral sensation a while ago. They’re simple and fun to make, great for vegans and an excellent dish for introducing kids to cooking. This recipe is incredibly affordable and versatile, and perfect for a variety of dietary preferences and ingredient adaptations. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to get creative with leftovers.

Real Madrid pauses concerts after ‘torture-drome’ noise complaints

Football club announces cancellation or rescheduling of gigs at refurbished Santiago Bernabéu stadium

Real Madrid has cancelled or rescheduled all concerts at its Santiago Bernabéu stadium and is working to comply with council noise regulations after local people complained that a series of loud, late gigs had turned the arena into a “torture-drome”.

Although best known as the home of one of Spain’s greatest football teams, the Bernabéu – which has just undergone a five-year, €900m (£760m) refurbishment – has hosted a string of high-profile concerts over the spring and summer. Recent headliners have included Taylor Swift, Luis Miguel and the Colombian star Karol G.

I’m a devout agnostic. But, like Nick Cave, I hunger for meaning in our chaotic world | John Harris

The spiritual aridity of modern life can be tough to handle. Maybe that’s why the singer, and his new album Wild God, have struck a chord

There is a tension in 21st-century life that may come close to defining how millions of us now live. Whenever we want to commune with other people, we need only reach for an object the size of a Twix and there they all are: scores of acquaintances and a veritable galaxy of complete strangers, offering insights and opinions on a huge range of subjects. But our online lives too often revolve around a mixture of anger, silliness and superficiality.

Where do we go and who can we find to meaningfully share our thoughts about life’s inescapable fundamentals: love, loss, death, fear, bereavement, regret? To properly do so might require real-world company, which can be an equally big ask. Think about all this, and you will sooner or later collide with something that predates the internet: the long and steady secularisation of life in the west and the vast social holes it has left. Once, for all their in-built hypocrisies – and worse – churches at least offered somewhere to ritualistically consider all of life’s most elemental aspects. Now, beyond communities with high levels of Christian observance, they are largely either empty or woefully underattended.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Louisiana town the canary in the coalmine as climate effects worsen

Lake Charles has been battered by storms over the past 20 years – and now its most famous landmark lies in ruins

Last week, one south-west Louisiana city in particular was girding itself for Hurricane Francine’s blow: Lake Charles, located about four hours west of New Orleans and two hours east of Houston.

In the lottery of hurricane paths over the past 20 years, Lake Charles has been very, very unlucky. But Francine’s impact on the city turned out to be relatively minor, a summer storm like locals are used to.

‘Entire ecosystem’ of fossils 8.7m years old found under Los Angeles high school

Researchers find two sites with fossils including saber-toothed salmon and megalodon, the huge prehistoric shark

Marine fossils dating back to as early as 8.7m years ago have been uncovered beneath a south Los Angeles high school.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.

By showing Musk’s unruly X the red card, Brazil has scored a goal for all democracies | John Naughton

A Brazilian justice ordering the platform to be blocked until it complies with state laws is a first among non-autocratic nations

At 10 minutes past midnight on 31 August, Elon Musk’s X (nee Twitter) went dark in Brazil, a country of more than 200 million souls, many of them enthusiastic users of online services. The day before, a supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, had done something hitherto unthinkable: ordered the country’s ISPs to block access to the platform, threatened a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian reis (just under £6,800) for users who bypassed the ban by using virtual private networks (VPNs) and froze the finances of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service provider in the country. The order would remain in force until the platform complied with the decisions of the supreme federal court, paid fines totalling 18.3m reis (nearly £2.5m) and appointed a representative in Brazil, a legal requirement for foreign companies operating there. Moraes had also instructed Apple and Google to remove the X app and VPN software from their stores, but later reversed that decision, citing concerns about potential “unnecessary” disruptions.

Cue shock, horror, incredulity, outrage and all the reactions in between. Musk – who has been sparring with Moraes for quite a while – tweeted: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.” The animosity between the two goes back to 8 January 2023, after the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, when a mob of his supporters attacked federal government buildings in the capital, Brasília. The mob invaded and caused deliberate damage to the supreme federal court, the national congress and the Planalto presidential palace in an abortive attempt to overthrow the democratically elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Rahel Stephanie’s secret ingredient: pandan

From sweet to savoury dishes, the chef behind Indonesian supper club Spoons loves to use the leaf for its fresh green colour and flavour

Pandan, thought to originate from Indonesia’s Maluku Islands, is used across south-east Asia. It has a vanilla-esque aroma, notes of rose or coconut, and fresh leaves have that grassiness you get with matcha. You can get it fresh from south-east Asian grocers, and it freezes well.

It’s a trending ingredient in desserts and drinks. But in Indonesian cuisine, and others, it’s used a lot in savouries. I make coconut rice and throw in lemongrass and pandan for the aromas. I’ll knot a leaf and add it to a stir-fry, curry or soup for depth and the vanilla, creamy tone.

Kyiv’s botanical garden staring at disaster as Russia targets Ukraine’s energy sector

Destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure puts botanical garden’s rare and exotic species in danger

Zhanna Yaroslavska showed off a barrel-shaped stove in the middle of a tropical greenhouse. Nearby was a large pile of logs. “It’s a pretty neanderthal arrangement,” she explained. “When the power shuts off we feed the stove with wood. In winter we do this round the clock. Our plants require constant temperatures. They don’t like cold and hot.”

Inside the glass nursery were dozens of rare specimens. All were bromeliads native to the Americas. Silvery wisps of beard-like Tillandsia descended from a pipe. A pineapple poked out of a stem. A screen next to the stove protected a group of starfish-like earth stars, native to Brazil. The collection needed a minimum temperature of 10C, Yaroslavska – a senior researcher – said. Below that everything would die off.

The Federal Reserve is about to cut rates … but by how much?

The move is widely expected – but will still be studied closely as dark clouds loom on the US horizon

Economic moments are often forecast with great certainty, but few will have been as widely expected as an interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve this week.

Analysts have included a reduction in the cost of borrowing by the US central bank in their forecasts for more than a month and investors have placed their bets accordingly.

Musk says humans can be on Mars in four years. Many laugh, but some see purpose

The SpaceX boss has envisioned people staying on the red planet in a self-sustaining city in 20 years

Almost buried beneath a recent avalanche of rightwing invective posted by Elon Musk on the platform he owns, X, was one eye-popping statement that made space watchers sit up and take notice: an assertion that humans could land on Mars within four years and be living there in a self-sustaining city in 20.

It seemed a fanciful boast, even by the standards of the SpaceX founder and world’s richest man, who transformed the logistics and cost of shorter-duration, near-to-Earth orbit space travel with his fleet of reusable Falcon rockets. The US government space agency, Nasa, which is collaborating with SpaceX over knowledge and technology to get astronauts to the red planet, believes a first crewed landing by 2040 would be “audacious”.

Who Could Ever Love You by Mary Trump review – family burn book dishes on Donald

Ex-president’s niece’s latest memoir recounts her brutal home life yet she won’t abandon the Trump legacy

Once again, Mary Trump strafes her family, with her third book in four years. Who Could Ever Love You presents the Trump name as both cocoon and nightmare. Dysfunction reigns. Think of it as a burn book. All get singed.

“I exhaled as the needle slid into my arm,” Trump writes in her prologue, looking back to a stay at a medical facility in 2021.

Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir is published in the US by Macmillan

‘The most horrific, sobering thing I’ve ever seen’: BBC nuclear apocalypse film Threads 40 years on

Ahead of a timely re-airing of Mick Jackson’s famously bleak, rarely seen docudrama, its director recalls why he unleashed a mushroom cloud on Sheffield in 1984, while our writer explores the film’s lasting legacy

One Sunday night in September 1984, between championship darts and the news with Jan Leeming, the BBC broadcast one of its bravest, most devastating commissions. This was Threads, a two-hour documentary-style drama exploring a hypothetical event deeply feared at the time and also somehow unthinkable: what would happen if a nuclear bomb dropped on a British city.

Made by British director Mick Jackson with Kes author Barry Hines, and set in Sheffield, it begins with a young couple, working-class Jimmy and middle-class Ruth, dealing with her unexpected pregnancy in familiar kitchen-sink drama surroundings. International tensions build slowly in the background as the minutes tick by, bursting in through newspaper headlines, radio and TV news, and the ominous words of narrator Paul Vaughan, known then as a presenter of BBC science series Horizon.

Sole traders: how foot fetishism went mainstream

Elizabeth McCafferty was offered £6,000 for images of her bare feet after they appeared on a fetish website without her consent. Here, she dips a toe into this little-known world

Toe spreading is a big thing,” beams Lily Allen before continuing to explain how she keeps her “toe daddies” happy. She is sitting on a sofa for her BBC Sounds podcast Miss Me? while casually chatting about delving into the world of selling foot content. After all, it’s only feet… right? And It’s not just Lily Allen’s toes that have been spreading all over the internet. In 2023, Margot Robbie told Cinemablend that she discovered people had become obsessed with her feet after the iconic trailer shot in Barbie. Fans were making compilation videos of her toes and one Reddit thread has counted the amount of times they spotted her feet within the movie (20).

Even my own feet have made it to the kink website WikiFeet, a platform where anybody even remotely in the public eye has pictures of their feet ranked. The platform gets close to 20m views per month and is run by volunteers in the foot-fetish community. In 2017, I was flooded with panic after finding that, for years, images of my feet had been taken off my social media and put on to a rating scale within the WikiFeet website.

‘My whole life’s interconnected’: Neneh Cherry on the relationships that inspire her, leaving home at 15, and the joy of a trashy box set

As her highly anticipated memoir is published, the celebrated musician and all-round creative powerhouse answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Michael Stipe, Bernardine Evaristo, Questlove and Sadiq Khan

Neneh Cherry, singer, writer, is sipping tea and talking about a party back in the day. “I keep thinking about it,” she says. “It was the first party I brought Naima to. I was 18, Naima was a baby, so it was in the early 80s. The party was at Jeannette Lee’s house. We had a white sling for Naima, and we were at the party, and Gareth Sager was going out with Jeannette. Anyway, Jeannette said: ‘Oh, can I take Naima in the sling?’ I was like: ‘God, yes, great. I can let my hair down for a minute.’ And there was a piano there, and Mark Springer was playing the piano, and Naima was fine, she was sleeping. We were all there. Together. I’ve been thinking about it maybe because Tyson, my daughter, has had a child, and she just took her to a festival, We Out Here… Anyway, that party, I feel like things came from there. That centre. When other things happened, different successes, that was always there first.”

What Cherry is talking about is family. Family through blood, family through friendship, family through music. A quick recap of the characters mentioned reveals the connections: Lee was in Public Image Ltd and now co-owns Rough Trade Records; Sager was in Rip Rig + Panic with Cherry, as was Springer. Naima and Tyson (and Cherry’s other daughter, Mabel) are musicians and singers. And Cherry’s wonderful new memoir, A Thousand Threads, is a personal history that has such connections woven all the way through. If you were to draw Cherry’s family tree, it would be a complicated picture, and, for her, would include long-term friends so close that they are a part of her clan.

There are many advantages to having lots of cousins… | Seamas O'Reilly

Which is lucky, because my kids have 16 of them

My daughter bawled the entire way, digging her heels into the sort of good ol’ fashioned public tantrum that really gives a parent their sea legs on a series of public trains. My wife was at a hen do, so I was taking the trip with both kids solo, to my brother’s house in Surrey, to hang with five of my siblings and their assorted children.

My kids have 16 cousins and watching them interact is as close as I’ll get to replicating the pleasant volubility of my own upbringing, since I don’t intend on having nine more children of my own. One of the quirks of my family tree is that it’s weirdly bottom-heavy, and I have more siblings than I do cousins.

Moments, memories and meal to cherish: exclusive extract from Nigel Slater’s new book

A Thousand Feasts is a collection of stories and insights from the Observer’s food writer. Here, he reflects on simple joys that can arrive anywhere, from a beach half a world away to his own kitchen

There is so much to feast on. The sight of a wave of snowdrops under the gnarled branches of an oak tree; the crisp pages of a new diary; a battered wicker basket of dumplings fresh from the steamer. I feast on the pleasure of packing for a trip away from home; tucking into an impromptu picnic of bread and cheese; the scent of a bunch of home-grown sweet peas and the satisfaction of a neat pile of fresh ironing. Tiny feasts, but as enriching to me as a laden table with a gathering of boisterous and much-loved friends. These diminutive pleasures are there if we care to look for them, little joys illuminating an increasingly darkening world. They feed the soul and nourish the spirit. Or at least they do mine. As well as kitchen diaries – the written record of what I cook and eat – I keep notebooks. Details of a life lived mostly in the kitchen, but which also tell of time spent in the garden, on trains and planes, of life at home and away. Between their timeworn covers are recipes and shopping lists, receipts and plans, illegible words and, very occasionally, passages of flowing calligraphy. Many moments are preserved only in a single sentence. Each note is a memory, written down so I wouldn’t forget it. These are not detailed accounts of major events but recordings of something altogether more ephemeral. The sort of moments likely to become misty with time, a jumble of curiosities and wonderings penned at my kitchen table, whilst soaked to the skin in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavík, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in the warmth of a chocolate-box Konditorei in Vienna.

‘Not many people know what happened’: covered up London Blitz tragedy is inspiration for Steve McQueen’s new film

Production that echoes a wartime disaster in the East End that killed 173 people will open the London film festival next month

The Oscar-winning British film director, Sir Steve McQueen, who is most famous for bringing the horror of the slave trade to cinema screens, has turned his lens on the forgotten, and even officially censored, terrors that London underwent during the second world war.

His starry new film, Blitz, which opens the London film festival (LFF) next month, is a powerful ­evocation of the perils of life during the German Blitzkrieg – a bombing campaign that aimed to batter Britain into submission in the early 1940s. McQueen, whose most recent film, Occupied City, was a long study of the impact of the war and the Holocaust on Amsterdam, was partly inspired to make Blitz by learning of a catastrophe at an east London tube station. Details were suppressed by the wartime government to protect public morale.

Lee review – Kate Winslet is remarkable as model turned war photographer Lee Miller

Winslet powerfully conveys Miller’s tough-broad magnetism in this sobering, visually striking drama by cinematographer turned director Ellen Kuras

More than most people, the American photographer Lee Miller – played here by a fierce and committed Kate Winslet – understood the vulnerability of being a woman in front of a camera. A model since childhood (first for her father, a keen amateur snapper, then as a fashion model, then as a muse and artistic collaborator with the surrealist artist Man Ray), Miller learned about photography from both sides of the lens. She knew from experience that taking a picture can be a kind of theft, a one-way transaction in which the subject gives a part of themselves but receives very little in return.

This sobering, serious-minded partial biopic, which focuses on Miller’s stint as a war correspondent during the second world war, makes a case that her insight into the power dynamics of photography contributed to the extraordinary potency of her work. Her status as both a victim (her childhood rape is revealed in a jarringly clumsy exchange with her friend and employer, Vogue editor Audrey Withers, played by Andrea Riseborough) and a survivor brought her an unusual empathy with her subjects. She saw the micro-details of combat in a way that her male counterparts frequently overlooked – not just the role played by the unheralded everywoman on the street, but also the shame and humiliation felt by those whom the war had chewed up and spat out along the way. The directorial debut of American cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Lee is not the most formally daring or original biopic. It is, however, undeniably impactful: a woman’s-eye view of a photographer who cast a woman’s eye over the war and its aftermath.

We’re living in the age of rage. I’m a psychoanalyst – here’s what we need to do to calm down

Anger has come to define the public mood – felt in the posts of social media warriors and harnessed by populist agitators such as Trump and Farage. But why are we so mad, and how can we learn to redirect our feelings?

Every morning, my inbox heaves with a new tranche of email alerts from Nextdoor, the social networking service for neighbourhoods where people in the area post recommendations, inquiries, requests, offers, information. The tone can be chummy, jocular, kindly, anxious, but mostly the posts are angry. They include vituperative warnings about dodgy tradesmen; outraged reports of cruelty to animals witnessed by neighbours; snatches of grainy Ring camera footage purporting to show actual or attempted burglaries; complaints of junkies splayed on park benches and of predatory lone men approaching young girls; reports of vandalism, fly-tipping, charity muggers, phone scammers, poor restaurant service and late-night noise.

My heart sinks at each new set of notifications, festooned with rage emojis and opprobrium for lowlifes, SCUM, animals! Yet I’ve never been tempted to unsubscribe – and not only because the service is also a surprising showcase for human solidarity, reuniting desperate owners with their cats and wallets, offering help and advice to the hungry and infirm. Much as I appreciate these outbreaks of decency, it’s the rage that continues to draw me. A batch of Nextdoor updates is a live window on the vexations of modern urban living, an electric chorus of sighs, growls and screams from the frontline of everyday reality.

Race is on to produce a super-coral to survive world’s warming seas

Widespread bleaching of reefs is devastating delicate ecosystems

It is one of the least understood processes in nature. How do two very different species learn to live with each other and create a bond, known as symbiosis, which can give them a powerful evolutionary advantage?

Coral reefs are the most spectacular manifestations of symbiosis – and understanding the mechanics of this mutual endeavour has become an urgent task as global warming has triggered the widespread collapse of reefs across the planet.

‘I throw everything at it’: Davina McCall on harnessing her feelgood factor

Davina McCall has been lighting up our screens for 30 years, but lately she’s been using that same enthusiasm to tackle much more serious issues surrounding women’s health. She talks about her wild early life, dating in our 50s – and her new role as an ‘amplifier’

When Davina McCall was trying to get into telly, she auditioned for a presenting job on The Word, and they sent her into a studio to interview a then unknown boyband called Take That. It was the early 90s and we were going through “a phase of ‘mean telly’,” she says today. Presenters were expected to sneer at pop stars with an ironic detachment that didn’t come naturally to McCall. “The producers told me to take the piss out of them. They said, ‘I want you to go in there and be a bit edgy.’ But I couldn’t do it!” She returned to her day job as a booker for male models and her night job as a club hostess, bemoaning her “unfashionable” niceness. “But what’s quite funny is, whenever I bump into Robbie or Gary these days, they all remember. They’d been abused by hopefuls interviewing them all day, so they remembered me, the one who’d been kind. Which is, well, quite funny, isn’t it?”

Walking through a member’s club inside the former BBC Television Centre with McCall feels like I’m accompanying the actual sun. Staff, strangers, other celebrities, it’s wild: everybody’s face lights up as we approach, everybody greets her with an outrageous smile, and a compliment, and continues somehow brighter. We find a sofa by a long window. She props a cushion on her lap “so that you don’t have to look at my pants,” and tells me, merrily, the story of her life, a life studded with abandonment, addiction and the relentless pursuit of joy.

I’ve graduated but I worry that only being average will blight my future | Ask Philippa

All over the place, average people are completely squeezing the pips out of life

The question I am a 22-year-old woman who has just graduated from university and am feeling extremely average. I grew up in an “education-heavy” household where success was measured in excellent marks and prestigious universities, and any good grades I received didn’t seem satisfactory. I used to think that excelling in school was not the only measure of intelligence, yet when I meet people who did excel, they are impressive and have careers to envy. I worry that not being as distinguished as them blights my future and that I can never measure up to them.

I am very lucky in many ways and recognise I am naturally gifted at some things, however in my mind it is not enough. I constantly feel I have impostor syndrome and need to prove myself. I am terrified I will feel like this for the rest of my life and that I can never feel satisfied with myself; that every success is not enough because I never got the same achievements as others. I’ll just be average forever.

Ten years after the no vote, can Scotland engineer a case for independence?

The SNP is keen to keep the issue alive, but others, including former PM Gordon Brown, say leaving the UK could see the economy founder

Rosyth dockyard lies just upstream of the three bridges – two road and one rail – that span the Firth of Forth. But on a September morning it is impossible to see the river through the thick early mist that blankets central Scotland.

Here, on the northern bank of the Forth, the 2,500 workers at defence and aerospace company Babcock International are hard at work building the first two of five Type 31 frigates for the Royal Navy.

US rejects claims of CIA involvement in alleged plot to kill Maduro after Venezuela arrests six

State department says allegations of American collusion are ‘categorically false’ as US navy member identified among foreign citizens detained

The US state department rejected allegations of CIA involvement in an alleged assassination plot against Nicolás Maduro after Venezuelan officials announced the arrest of three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech on Saturday.

The claims of a plot against Maduro – the Venezuelan president, whose recent re-election is contested – were made on state television by Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. Cabello said the foreign citizens including a US navy member were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership. In the television programme, Cabello showed images of rifles that he said were confiscated from some of the alleged plotters.

Big ideas: a celebration of French artist JR’s installations – in pictures

Since the mid-2000s, enigmatic French artist JR has been bringing large-scale photographic projects to cityscapes around the world. His public installations range from trompe l’œil optical illusions to series raising awareness about the plight of refugees, foregrounding the experience of marginalised or oppressed communities. His work has been collated in a far-reaching monograph, originally published in 2015, with a revised edition including 140 new images and a foreword by film-maker George Lucas. “I take photos of people, of places,” says JR in the book. “And I paste them on trains, on floors, on walls, on buildings, houses. Sometimes I even have people carry them. What really matters is to make the stories travel; I see my work as a message in a bottle thrown in the ocean. I never really know where it will go.”

• JR: Can Art Change the World? is published on 26 September (Phaidon, £34.95)

Hundreds of Jews were offered the chance to escape Nazi Austria. Civil servants in the UK turned them away

New book reveals civil servants in Northern Ireland ignored or rejected most applications to job creation scheme, with only about 100 admitted

On 26 August 1938, Zionistische Rundschau, a Jewish newspaper in Vienna, ran a two-paragraph article under a tantalising headline: “Jewish artisans for Northern Ireland”.

The authorities in Belfast were seeking immigrants from central Europe with skills to train local people and set up enterprises, said the article. “Applications for the registration of startups should be sent to the Northern Ireland Ministry of Commerce, which will examine them in a careful but supportive manner.”

Michaela Mabinty DePrince: a life in pictures

From war orphan in Sierra Leone to international ballet star – the trailblazing Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer has died aged 29

• Trailblazing ballerina Michaela Mabinty DePrince dies at 29

This is how we do it: ‘We were quite amazed to find out what we could do to have fun’

After a life-changing spinal trauma, Ethan’s sexual relationships stopped … until he met Helen

How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

All my muscles are spastic, so moving is difficult and takes a lot of energy – so we don’t do anything too active

You’ve got to have a good imagination to have a good, sexy relationship. Even talking about something we can’t do physically can be arousing

‘These boys all had a dream to sit in a plane themselves one day’: Rahul Machigar’s best phone photo

The Mumbai native was at a popular location for aircraft spotters when five youngsters reminded him of the gulf between the city’s rich and poor

About 20 million passengers travelled through Mumbai International airport in 2021. Some of those landing or taking off from runway 27 on 7 June of that year may well have been watched by the five boys playing in this picture; local kids who’d gathered at the viewing point Jari Mari Hill.

“I’d been to the hill once before, and was struck by just how close the plane landed, so I returned with my phone to try to shoot some pictures,” Rahul Machigar, a Mumbai native, says. “A little boy told me that an aircraft was coming, so I quickly set up the frame and took it without hesitation. I showed them and they liked it so much that they asked me to take more!

Israel’s prime target: the hunt for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

Motivated pursuers using advanced technology and brute force have yet to pin down their cautious quarry. Would his death or capture stop the war?

A group of Israeli hostages were huddled in a tunnel in Gaza a few days after they had been dragged from their homes on 7 October, when the man who had plotted their abduction appeared out of the subterranean gloom.

His hair and beard were grey and his dark-ringed eyes stared out from under thick black brows. It was a face familiar to them from a thousand broadcasts and newspaper stories: Yahya Sinwar. The Hamas leader in Gaza was the most feared man in Israel, even before he ordered the October raid in which 1,200 people – two-thirds of them civilians – were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Best of Weekend part 2: Louis Theroux, a late life gender transition, and is it murder if you’re asleep? – podcast

Weekend is taking a little break. So this week, we’re picking some of our favourite pieces from the last few months just in case you missed them…

Zoe Williams turns the tables on veteran interviewer Louis Theroux; how an app sparked a late-life gender transition for author Lucy Sante; and if you kill someone in your sleep, are you a murderer?

From spy cams to deepfake porn: fury in South Korea as women targeted again

National police agency says it is investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography as a new scandal grips the country

The anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country spearheaded Asia’s #MeToo movement, the culprit was molka – spy cams used to record women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography.

For Juhee Jin, 26, a Seoul resident who advocates for women’s rights, the emergence of this new menace, in which women and girls are again the targets, was depressingly predictable. “This should have been addressed a long time ago,” says Jin, a translator. “I hope that authorities take precautions and provide proper education so that people can prevent these crimes from happening.”

The week around the world in 20 pictures

The evacuation of Pokrovsk, wildfires in California, the presidential debate in Philadelphia and Typhoon Yagi: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

How scientists debunked one of conservation’s most influential statistics

The factoid about biodiversity and Indigenous peoples spread around the world, but scientists say bad data can undermine the very causes it claims to support

The statistic seemed to crop up everywhere. Versions were cited at UN negotiations, on protest banners, in 186 peer-reviewed scientific papers – even by the film-maker James Cameron, while promoting his Avatar films. Exact wording varied, but the claim was this: that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is protected by Indigenous peoples.

When scientists investigated its origins, however, they found nothing. In September, the scientific journal Nature reported that the much-cited claim was “a baseless statistic”, not supported by any real data, and could jeopardise the very Indigenous-led conservation efforts it was cited in support of. Indigenous communities play “essential roles” in conserving biodiversity, the comment says, but the 80% claim is simply “wrong” and risks undermining their credibility.

As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel – podcast

This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree. By Omer Bartov

Creating The Spark: the kids behind 2024’s surprise summer hit – podcast

Rory Carroll and Helen Pidd meet the Kabin Crew and the Lisdoonvarna Crew – creators of a song that has notched up over a billion plays on TikTok – as they perform at the Electric Picnic music festival

“Think you can stop what we do? I doubt it. We got the energy, we’ll tell you all about it. I searched for my spark and I found it. Everybody in the crowd, start bouncing.”

“Originally, I had it as: ‘Think you can move like us? I doubt it,’” Garry McCarthy, the founder and creative director of the Kabin Studio, tells Helen Pidd. “But later on, I was thinking like, ‘Let’s just talk about kids’ energy.’ ‘Think you can stop what we do?’ You can’t stop a kid from expressing themselves if they really, really want to … Why would you want to stop that, you know?”

Tottenham v Arsenal, plus Pochettino going stateside: Football Weekly Extra - podcast

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Jonathan Fadugba to preview the first round of Premier League fixtures after the international break, including the north London derby

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: the game of the weekend is the north London derby. How will Arsenal line up without Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard available to them? How disastrous is a loss for either side even this early into the season? Our panel answer these questions and more.

Winter fuel allowance cut: who voted for this? – Politics Weekly UK

The government saw off a rebellion over its plans to cut winter fuel allowance this week. John Harris speaks to Caroline Abrahams from Age UK about what this winter will look like for millions of pensioners losing out. Plus, he talks to columnist Rafael Behr about whether the technocrats (Starmer and Reeves) are taking the Labour party in the wrong direction

Transparent skin, bird flu, and why girls’ brains aged during Covid: the week in science – podcast

Ian Sample and science correspondent Hannah Devlin discuss some of the science stories that have made headlines this week, from a new technique that uses food colouring to make skin transparent, to the first case of bird flu in a person with no known contact with sick animals, and a study looking at premature brain ageing in young people during Covid

Clips: NBC News, KVUE

Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent

Why Brazil is taking on Elon Musk – podcast

What does the feud between Elon Musk and Brazil’s supreme court mean for X and Starlink users in the country? Tom Phillips reports

“One Saturday morning at the end of August, I wake up here in Rio, look at my phone, and for the first time since I lived in China, where I was correspondent before I came here, I look at my phone and Twitter doesn’t work.”

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, tells Michael Safi how Elon Musk ended up in a feud with Brazil’s government.

US swing state voters: share your reaction to the presidential debate

We would like to hear from US voters living in swing states and their thoughts on how the debate went

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump went head to head in a debate on Tuesday that involved false claims and heated rhetoric. With no other debates officially scheduled, it may be the only time the two will face-off in an attempt to persuade undecided voters and those living in swing states ahead of polls opening on 5 November.

If you live in a swing state such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, we would like to hear what you thought of the debate. How do you think it went and do you feel the candidates addressed the issues important to you? What was your favourite moment? Did anything from the debate change your mind in any way?

Share your tributes and memories of James Earl Jones

We would like to hear your memories of James Earl Jones – whether you met him, or appreciated his work as an actor

James Earl Jones, the film and stage actor who gave voice to Star Wars villain Darth Vader and The Lion King’s Mufasa, has died aged 93.

We would like to hear your memories of James Earl Jones – whether you met him, or appreciated his work as an actor.

Princess of Wales gives health update in video featuring William and their children – video

In a video released by Kensington Palace, the Princess of Wales gives an update on her cancer treatment, saying she has finished chemotherapy and will take on more royal duties in the months to come. The video features Prince William and their three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, with clips of the family together in the countryside. Catherine, 42, was diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer, and announced to the public in March that she was receiving treatment and would step away from her role in the public eye

• Princess of Wales ‘cancer free’ after completing chemotherapy

Why the far-right AfD has been so successful in Germany – video explainer

The far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is riding a populist wave across Europe’s largest economy.

According to polls conducted this month, the AfD has become the strongest party in Thuringia, a former state of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). In Saxony, another former GDR state, the party finished a very close second behind the CDU.

The Guardian's Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, explains how the AfD has risen from its eurosceptic origins to a party that is 'managing to set the agenda' in German politics

• Success of far-right AfD shows east and west Germany are drifting further apart

• Everyone is terrified of a far-right return in Germany. Here’s why it won’t happen

Scientists capture the moment an eel escapes after being eaten by a fish – video

Footage captured by scientists in Japan shows the moment an eel escapes tail-first from the digestive tract of a predatory fish

Typhoon Yagi: dozens dead after powerful storm hits Vietnam – video

At least 24 people have been killed and hundreds of others injured after the most powerful storm so far this year in Asia made landfall in north-east Vietnam. Typhoon Yagi triggered deadly landslides and floods, and on Monday the Vietnamese authorities warned of further possible flooding.

Before reaching Vietnam at the weekend, Yagi tore through southern China and the Philippines, killing at least two dozen people and injuring many more. Typhoons in the region are now forming closer to the coast, intensifying more rapidly and staying over land for longer because of the climate crisis, according to a study published in July

• Typhoon Yagi: dozens dead in Vietnam in region’s most powerful storm this year

Frustrated footballer sent off after 'piggy in the middle' altercation – video

A Folkestone player was sent off after an altercation with Billericay's keeper, during what became an impromptu moment of 'piggy in the middle'. In the 75th minute of their Isthmian League Premier Division fixture, Tom Derry was dismissed for kicking goalkeeper Sam Donkin, with Billericay 2-0 up at the time. They went on to win 3-0

Share your experience of how libraries shaped your life

We want to hear your views on which libraries are important to you and why – and any memories that have stayed with you

Council-run libraries have been under threat the last couple of years due to cuts in funding. Since 2016, more than 180 libraries run by councils in the UK have closed or have been given to voluntary groups, according to the BBC.

For Jack Reacher author, Lee Child, libraries should not be closed as they provide a place of reading and learning for many people. Child added that fictional character Jack Reacher would not exist without Birmingham’s libraries.

Saginaw voters: tell us which issues will decide the US election

The Guardian is coming to Saginaw, Michigan, before the presidential election to find out which issues people there most care about – and we want your help

In the run-up to the US presidential election, the Guardian will be spending at least a month in Saginaw, a pivotal county in the key swing state of Michigan where voters were almost evenly divided between Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents in the last two presidential elections.

We will be listening to how local people see a race that has already taken dramatic and unexpected turns. We are interested not only in how you might vote, if at all, but what you think the candidates should be talking about, whether or not they are doing so.