With a ‘one-sided’ deal handing vast profits to the world’s top oil firms, many Guyanese ask when the energy bonanza will benefit them

On 18 July, the International Chamber of Commerce approved the attempt by the US energy multinational Chevron to replace Hess Oil as a stakeholder in one of the world’s largest offshore oilfields, Guyana’s Stabroek, as part of its $55bn (£41bn) acquisition of the smaller company.

Yet, as Chevron executives celebrated joining Exxon and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as in producing Guyana’s daily oil output of 650,000 barrels, the response from the Guyanese government, opposition leaders and environmentalists was muted.

The latest craze for the kidult market is small stuffed toys you attach to your clothes. But can you look cool – or even just socially acceptable – while wearing them?

There was a time when adults who owned collections of stuffed toys were relatively uncommon, weird even. All that has changed recently: the rise in popularity of toys such as Squishmallows and Jellycat Amuseables has been linked to the growing “kidult” market (adults buying toys for themselves) which accounted for almost 30% of toy sales last year. On the whole, cuddly toys are something people keep at home, on their beds or on display shelves. But that’s changing too – plush toy keyrings such as Labubus are now everywhere. And some “Disney adults” (self-professed grown up Disney fans who might, for example, go to the theme parks without taking children with them) have gone one step further: attaching toys not just to their bags, but to themselves.

“Shoulder pals” (variously known as “shoulder plushies”, “shoulder toys” and “shoulder sitters”) are small toys made in the likeness of Disney characters. They have magnetic bases and come with a flat metal plate designed to be placed under your shirt, so the toy perches on your shoulder. Since the first one, baby Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, was brought out in 2018, these toys have become a common accessory at the Disney theme parks. There are multiple Reddit threads and TikTok videos about how to track down the latest ones (some are sold at the Disney store, but others are only available at specific locations within the parks). There will apparently be 45 official Disney shoulder pals on offer by the end of next year, with characters ranging from Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell to Anxiety from Inside Out 2. That’s not to mention the many, many knockoffs available online, as well as those sold by Primark, or the DIY pals that some creative TikTok users have been making.

Yulia Navalnaya says that two separate tests show that Russian opposition figure was poisoned in jail as she blames Putin for his death

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has just claimed that two laboratory tests, conducted independently of each other, show her husband was poisoned before death.

In a YouTube video, she recalled in detail the last letter from her husband, a day before his death in a penal colony in Russia, and his last days in custody, detailing the authorities’ lack of reaction to his first reports of being unwell.

The Israeli military said the route via Salah al-Din street ‘will be open for 48 hours only’

The UK government has announced that a group of ill and injured children have been evacuated to Gaza and brought to the UK for NHS medical treatment.

According to the PA news agency, the UK health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, said:

No one can fail to be distressed by the devastating impact the war has had on the children of Gaza, and I cannot imagine the fear and anguish their families have endured. It is a soul-destroying situation that compels us to act.

Every child deserves the chance to heal, to play, to simply be able to dream again. These young patients have witnessed horrors no child should ever see, but this marks the start of their journey towards recovery.

In Gaza, where the healthcare system has been decimated and hospitals are no longer functioning, there are severely ill children unable to get the medical care they need to survive.

As we welcome the first group of children to the UK for urgent treatment, their arrival reflects our determined commitment to humanitarian action and the power of international cooperation.

A pop icon and a musical legend meet on the Mull of Kintyre in 1981 and dress up as sheep in Jim Hosking’s daft, deadpan offering

Jim Hosking is the wacky deadpan surrealist of indie cinema who has now created another bizarre stoner comedy, a two-hander and a bit lower budget than his earlier works such as The Greasy Strangler and An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. It is like an epic-length Mitchell and Webb sketch in fact, the kind of film you find yourself laughing along to, just a bit, in a spirit of throwing in the towel – a spirit of not quite being able to believe that two actors, mugging and gurning at each other, really are saying these same lines to one other, over and over again.

The setting is Mull of Kintyre in 1981, and a pop star called Paul, with a strangely familiar but also entirely ersatz Liverpool accent, is welcoming a visitor, who arrives implausibly by rowing boat through the choppy grey sea. This is a blind Black pop legend called Stevie, who appears nonetheless to be able to see (and derisively imitate) Paul’s quirkiest mannerism whenever he gives it: a perky thumbs-up. (They are played, respectively, by Hosking’s regulars Sky Elobar and Gil Gex.)

This deeply comforting tale of record collecting, magical creatures and a lovingly knitted cardigan rambles across England

Ursula K Le Guin had her Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction; I have my comfy cardigan theory. What Le Guin proposed is that human culture, novels included, didn’t begin with technologies of harm, such as flints and spears, but with items of collection and care, such as the wicker basket or, nowadays, the carrier bag. And so, if we make them that way, novels can be gatherings rather than battles.

Tom Cox’s third novel fashions an escape from the dangerous outside world into something soft, comforting and unfashionable. It might once have been a Neanderthal’s armpit, but now it’s more likely to be a cosy cardigan. Or a deeply comforting story.

Tom Athron says stricter rules on country of origin and end of ‘de minimis’ exemptions are up and sales down

The boss of upmarket retailer Fortnum & Mason has said Donald Trump’s trade war has hit sales of its luxury tea exports to the US and forced up prices.

Tom Athron, the London-based retailer’s chief executive, said Trump’s stricter country of origin rules and the end of the “de minimis” cost exemption for parcels worth less than $800 (£587) had hit customers across the Atlantic.

Enzo Maresca’s side return to the site of the club’s first Champions League win but the team face a battle against their former striker

A trip to the Allianz Arena offers Chelsea fond memories of the greatest night in their history, a meeting with two what‑might‑have-beens and a swift reunion with a player desperate to prove they were wrong to let him go.

Perhaps Enzo Maresca will be feeling nervous if his team have to face Nicolas Jackson when they open their Champions League campaign against Bayern Munich on Wednesday night. There are plenty of examples of loanees coming back to haunt their parent club in the tournament and Jackson will not be short of motivation if he features against Chelsea less than a month since he left on loan.

Plus: national teams with top-10 scorers in the 21st century, different kits in the same match (2) and a referee’s coin toss

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“Who is the most prolific player with the initials XG?” asks Oliver Forrest. “And who has the highest goals and assists of players with the initials GA?”

There are only a handful of male* footballers with the initials XG – here is an exhaustive list. The diminutive journeyman Greek midfielder Xenofon Gittas scored 17 goals across his club career (plus three for Greece Under-21s) but cannot match the scoring exploits of Xhevdet Gela, who is our winner with 44 goals across all competitions including the Europa League with the Finnish sides MyPa and Lahti. Unusually, during a spell between 2019-2022 in which Gela was playing for Ekenäs in Finland, he was also the full-time manager of a fourth-tier side, Esbo, a club around 80km away. Gela returned to the manager’s role at Esbo in January this year, although not in a playing capacity.

20 authors, including Viet Thanh Nguyen and Abdulrazak Gurnah, call on the French president to restart scheme to help creatives evacuate

Sally Rooney, Deborah Levy, Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen are among 20 authors urging French president Emmanuel Macron to resume a “lifeline” programme for evacuating Palestinian writers, scholars and artists from Gaza.

The Pause programme for writers and artists in emergency situations, as well as a student evacuation programme, were abruptly suspended by the French government at the beginning of August over a Palestinian student’s allegedly antisemitic online remarks, a decision that the letter-writing authors said amounted to a “collective punishment”.

Tyler Robinson is quoted talking to his partner about having enough of the far-right activist’s ‘hatred’ in texts

Evidence put forth by Utah prosecutors Tuesday offered the clearest indication yet of what they suspect motivated Tyler Robinson to kill far-right provocateur Charlie Kirk.

In seized texts reproduced by prosecutors as they charged the 22-year-old with capital murder and other crimes after his arrest, Robinson is quoted talking to his partner – whom they described as “transitioning genders” – about having enough of Kirk’s “hatred”.

The FBI director’s seeming fandom of the Premier League club also represents an unexpected clash of politics

FBI director Kash Patel appeared for a hearing in front of the US Senate judiciary committee wearing a tie featuring the logo of English Premier League side Liverpool on Tuesday.

The tie drew questions across social media. For one thing, it’s extremely unusual for a government official to wear a tie featuring the logo of any business, let alone a sports team. For another, Patel has not publicly expressed fandom for Liverpool in the past – at least not in words. He has previously been photographed wearing Liverpool ties on at least two separate occasions, though. The first, on 12 December 2024, came when Patel was visiting various lawmakers on Capitol Hill after Donald Trump’s victory in that year’s election, with Patel at the time being rumored to be a part of the administration. The second came about five months later, on 9 April 2025, at a press event touting the US authorities’ capture of narcotics. By that time, Patel had been confirmed as director of the FBI.

Food prices rise at fastest rate since January 2024 with vegetables, milk, cheese and fish going up; Bank of England expected to keep interest rates on hold on Thursday

The pound is little changed versus the dollar following the inflation data, at $1.3636, but hovering at a two-month high.

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at the investing platform interactive investor, said:

In light of today’s data, it still looks like the Bank of England is on track to keep interest rates unchanged at tomorrow’s decision meeting. While inflation is clearly stuck significantly higher than target, there was nothing too surprising in this inflation report – CPI came in line with forecasts, and consequently there wasn’t much of a reaction from sterling.

Elevated inflation, notably higher than the 2% target makes it harder for the central bank to continue on its monetary loosening path, raising the likelihood of a higher-for-longer interest rate environment which could have negative effects on borrowing and the housing market.

Jerry Greenfield says he cannot ‘in good conscience’ continue and says company has lost its independence

The Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has stepped away from the ice-cream brand after nearly 50 years, claiming it has lost its independence and accusing its parent company, Unilever, of having “silenced” its social mission.

Greenfield said in a letter posted by his co-founder, Ben Cohen, that he could no longer “in good conscience” remain an employee of a business that he argued had been muzzled by the UK-listed Unilever, despite an agreement protecting its social mission when it was taken over in 2000.

Sam Altman said if there is doubt the system will default to the under-18 experience putting ‘safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens’

OpenAI will restrict how ChatGPT responds to a user it suspects is under 18, unless that user passes the company’s age estimation technology or provides ID, after legal action from the family of a 16-year-old who killed himself in April after months of conversations with the chatbot.

OpenAI was prioritising “safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens”, chief executive Sam Altman said in a blog post on Tuesday, stating “minors need significant protection”.

Cosying up to Trump is an all-in gamble. Britain should be building better relations with more reliable allies closer to home

Interpreters are not required for visiting US heads of state, but that doesn’t mean Donald Trump and Keir Starmer will speak the same language this week. The UK prime minister will practise the art of tactful diplomacy emphasising mutual advantage and historical alliance. Most of the words in that sentence mean nothing to a president who is fluent only in self-interest.

Given the likelihood of miscommunication between two men from such different political cultures – the showbiz demagogue and the lawyer technocrat – relations have been remarkably friendly and, in Downing Street’s estimation, fruitful.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

What if Descartes had melted his brain on acid? Find out in this mind-expanding exploration of drugs and formal philosophy

This book is a trip. Among other things, it copiously details all the drugs that the US-born professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité has ingested. They include psilocybin, LSD, cannabis; quetiapine and Xanax (for anxiety); venlafaxine, Prozac, Lexapro and tricyclics (antidepressants); caffeine (“I have drunk coffee every single day without fail since September 13, 1990”); and, at least for him, the always disappointing alcohol.

The really trippy thing, though, is not so much Justin Smith-Ruiu’s descriptions of his drug experiences, but the fact that they’re written by a tough-minded analytic philosopher, one as familiar with AJ Ayer’s Foundations of Empirical Knowledge as Aldous Huxley’s mescaline-inspired The Doors of Perception. Moreover, they’re presented with the aim of melting the minds of his philosophical peers and the rest of us by suggesting that psychedelics dissolve our selves and make us part of cosmic consciousness, thereby rendering us free in the way the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza defined it (paraphrased by Smith-Ruiu as “an agreeable acquiescence in the way one’s own body is moving in the necessary order of things”).

From telling the insurers to accepting you may need to get the experts in, tips on dealing with the deceased’s property

When someone close to you dies, be it a relative or a friend, practical considerations may be far from your mind. But you could quickly find that you have the responsibility of looking after, then clearing out, their home.

First feature from director Donncha Gilmore is propelled by charismatic and natural performances by leads Adam Lunnon-Collery and Liath Hannon

This Irish gen Z romance begins so naturally, on Halloween in Dublin where Trinity College students are partying in an abandoned building. Rugby player Jason (Adam Lunnon-Collery) is chatting up aspiring indie film-maker Charlie (Liath Hannon); their conversation is laidback and intense, light-hearted and meaningful, like life. “I’m in character as an arrogant jock,” jokes Jason. We’ve just watched him taking stick in the locker room for having his ears pierced. Now you can practically see his heart thumping in his chest talking to Charlie, who is trans.

The pair spend the night drifting through the city; they message a drug dealer (to score fireworks not drugs) and film each other with a Super 8 camera. Nobody hassles them. The movie is gentle and sweet until a sudden reveal – a twist that will require a stiff test of your ability to suspend disbelief, that almost verges on clumsy. But the charisma and lovely naturalism of performances from newcomers Lunnon-Collery and Hannon carries it off. Lunnon-Collery is particularly excellent as Jason, all warmth and charm on the surface.

Field-to-fork farmers on the Scottish island are restoring abandoned crofts and serving home-grown produce and freshly caught seafood in their homesteads

‘Edible means it won’t kill you – it doesn’t mean it tastes good. This, however, does taste good,” says chef Carla Lamont as she snips off a piece of orpine, a native sedum, in her herb garden. It’s crisp and juicy like a granny smith but tastes more like cucumber. “It’s said to ward off strange people and lightning strikes; but I like strange people.”

We’re on a three-hectare (seven-acre) coastal croft on the Hebridean island of Mull. Armed with scissors, Carla is giving me a kitchen garden tour and culinary masterclass – she was a quarter-finalist in Masterchef: The Professionals a few years back. Sweet cicely can be swapped for star anise, she tells me. Lemon verbena she uses in scallop ceviche.

A new exhibition showcasing African American photography in rural and urban areas of Texas underscores the role of the community photographer in documenting local life and culture

Kaitlin Olson’s turn as an extremely intelligent, glamorous crime-solver isn’t always the most believable. But it’s crowd-pleasing TV that’s slick, easy on the eye and highly watchable

Will we ever grow bored of the savant sleuth? I suspect not – the satisfaction of witnessing a fantastically gifted person crack absurdly complex cases is one of fiction’s most reliable draws. As ever, our screens are swarming with them: in the past year alone we’ve been introduced to Ludwig, David Mitchell’s puzzle-setter turned incredibly astute (if reluctant) detective; been reunited with Natasha Lyonne’s human lie-detector Charlie Cale in Poker Face; and crossed paths once again with brainiac attorney Elsbeth, whose forays into policing are chronicled in the Good Wife spin-off of the same name.

Also back for more mental gymnastics is Morgan Gillory, the protagonist of breezy procedural High Potential, which returns for a second season. With an IQ of 160 – giving her “high intellectual potential” (Mensa typically requires a score of about 130) – Morgan’s ability to unravel mind-bendingly complicated sequences of events is downright astonishing. Yet there’s something a little different about this particular clever-clogs crimestopper. Ever since an antisocial drug addict by the name of Sherlock Holmes set the genius detective tone, such characters have usually had a few issues. Ludwig is reclusive, his talents tempered by intense awkwardness. Cale is a chaotic, commitment-phobic outsider partial to a drink or two, while Elsbeth is a no-filter weirdo who gives people the creeps.

I should have been devastated when I came third in a public speaking competition. But the joy that came out of nowhere has shaped the rest of my life

“I am a teenager, living in an age with war, corruption, discrimination, racism, sexism. But no one seems angry about it. People see the slight advances towards equal society as having solved our issues entirely and it just isn’t enough.”

It’s March 2015, and I’ve done it: I’ve solved inequality. Standing in the basement room of Modern Art Oxford for my regional heat of the Articulation prize public speaking competition, I truly believe that I may have just introduced this room full of parents and teachers to the concept of feminism. I’m very pleased with myself.

Retailer hopes to bounce back from summer cyber-attack with fashion picks aimed at wider age range

After a cyber-attack rained on its summer, Marks & Spencer is banking on fashion to brighten its autumn.

A Prada-esque, crystal-embellished, charcoal V-neck cardigan (£46), a faux leather trenchcoat with a price tag of £90 – £6,810 less than the Burberry version – and a £36 short pleated skirt that offers a wearable take on Charli xcx’s “brat” styling will hit shop floors shortly.