Syria struggling to contain sectarian clashes between Bedouin and Druze fighters

Some news from Gaza now. The Israeli military has issued evacuation orders in central areas of the territory which are packed with displaced Palestinian people with nowhere safe to flee bombardments.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets from the sky ordering people in several districts in southwest Deir al-Balah to leave their homes and head further south.

Mwangi accused of ‘facilitation of terrorist acts’ during last month’s protests against government of William Ruto

Renowned Kenyan rights activist Boniface Mwangi is accused of “facilitation of terrorist acts” during protests that rocked the country last month, investigators said on Sunday, a day after he was arrested.

At least 19 people were killed during the June 25 demonstration against President William Ruto’s government, which was itself called to pay tribute to victims of police violence at another major protest on the same date last year.

As Lena Dunham’s new show reminds us, whether they’re at work or on a date, women are expected to tone it down if they want to get on. What if they refuse to play ball?

‘I can be a bit much,” a friend said to me. A group of us were in a cafe discussing the first date she had scheduled for later that day, and she was worried about how she might come across. It wasn’t the first time I had heard a woman label herself as “too much”, “intense” or “a lot”. I expect even the most feminist of women have found themselves wondering, like the newly single Jessica (Megan Stalter) in Lena Dunham’s new Netflix show, Too Much, whether they would be better off if they just toned it down.

Thanks to the lingering presence of “weirdly archaic feminine ideals”, says the author Amy Key, many women still believe that being “a contained, neat person” will make them more desirable on a date, or at work, or in social situations. “That is linked to the idea of the space that you occupy too,” she adds, whether that’s the metaphorical “space” that you command in conversations or the physical size of your body. The unspoken rule, in both cases, is that less is better.

After splitting, Fred and Hester decided to sleep with other people – and still be intimate with each other once in a while. Now back together, they’ve never been happier

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

Having a break has been great for our sex life

She made her name in Mean Girls and Sex Lives of College Girls, but it’s her lack of a filter off screen that sent her viral. Ahead of her new album, she talks fame, gossip and Trump’s America – and doesn’t hold back

“I looove to lie,” sighs Reneé Rapp happily, sounding like a kid who has just discovered a new favourite toy. She’s talking about using creative licence in her songs, and how she realised, while working on her second album, that she didn’t have to stick to the truth of her own experience 100% of the time. But for a journalist, the admission – and her apparent glee about it – demands a follow-up: has she lied at all in the last 40 minutes?

I expect Rapp, 25, to wave away the question. Instead she pauses, seeming to give it real thought. “Have I lied? You know, I don’t think so,” she eventually concludes.

Coastguard log raises new concerns over safety and viability of flagship policy to intercept dinghies crossing Channel

New concerns about the safety and viability of the flagship UK-French policy to intercept migrant dinghies at sea have emerged after a coastguard log leaked to the Guardian revealed a recent boat-slashing incident that failed to stop people reaching the UK.

Despite the government’s pledge to stop overcrowded dinghies crossing the Channel, the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats this year has increased by about 50% compared with the same period last year, with more than 21,000 crossing so far in 2025.

The Simply Red singer gets emotional over Aretha and wakes up to Ravi Shankar. But which record healed his broken teenage heart?

The first single I bought
One of the first albums I bought was Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones; the first single was The Last Time. I was about 11 when my dad bought me my first record player, and I wore it out by listening to it so much.

The first song I fell in love with
My first love was an unrequited crush. I heard Let’s Stay Together by Al Green on the radio, went out and bought it, and played it over and over to heal the pain of teenage rejection.

Instead of spending millions and taking years to complete, creative directors are producing high-grade work using the latest software, but critics voice copyright concerns

A US stealth bomber flies across a darkening sky towards Iran. Meanwhile, in Tehran a solitary woman feeds stray cats amid rubble from recent Israeli airstrikes.

To the uninitiated viewer, this could be a cinematic retelling of a geopolitical crisis that unfolded barely weeks ago – hastily shot on location, somewhere in the Middle East.

Authorities axe flights and school classes as typhoon closes in, with China’s Hainan and Guangdong provinces also on high alert

Hong Kong issued its highest tropical cyclone warning as Typhoon Wipha battered the city, with authorities cancelling school classes and grounding hundreds of flights.

Wipha was located around 60km south-east of Hong Kong as of 10am on Sunday, according to the city’s weather observatory. Huge waves were spotted off the eastern coast of Hong Kong Island.

This year’s theme for the Prix Pictet, the photography award that focuses on sustainability, is ‘storm’. The shortlisted images were announced at the international photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles. The winner will be selected at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.

“In many ways our planet is a more dangerous place to live than ever before. The impacts of the climate catastrophe abound. Fires, floods, heat and drought are killing and injuring people and destroying both infrastructure and precious ecosystems. Already, parts of our planet are unliveable, and all the indications are that more will follow. The economic, social and political impacts of these changes are immense. There could not have been a more timely moment for the Prix Pictet to invite nominations on the theme of ‘storm’.” Sir David King, Prix Pictet jury chair

Michael McGrath awaits results of secret shopper investigation amid crackdown on Chinese retail platforms

The EU justice commissioner has expressed shock at the toxicity and dangers of some goods being sold by Shein and Temu, amid a crackdown on the popular Chinese retail platforms.

With 12m low-value parcels each day coming into the EU from online retailers outside the bloc, Michael McGrath has vowed to crack down on the sale of goods that blatantly break the law.

Fun and educational outdoor activities in the wild that will coax kids off their screens this summer

There’s no escaping sea and sky on Tiree, as the Inner Hebridean island is only 12 miles long and 3 miles wide. Shallow seas provide rich feeding grounds for marine life, and it is one of the UK’s best spots for whale watching. Tiree Sea Tours – a member of the WiSe national training scheme for minimising disturbance to marine wildlife – offers half-day and full-day sea-faris (from £75). Visitors can also try to spot basking sharks circling the island in the plankton-rich waters at viewing spots in Hynish Bay or Caoles, or from the deck of the CalMac ferry over to nearby Coll. Sunset Pods’ two cabins (from £700 a week, one week minimum stay in July-August) sleep four and offer views over Balevullin beach, a Dark Sky discovery site and home to Blackhouse Watersports.

Some in an east London park say they like the incessant beeping, but others that it’s an indication of low-level crime

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Was that exhausting to read? Well, imagine if that noise was the soundtrack to your summer.

To the ire of many city dwellers this year, it is. The piercing and persistent sound, something akin to a half-bothered fire alarm you accidentally set off, has been everywhere. Its origin? Lime e-bikes, specifically the stolen variety.

Student midwives working thousands of hours unpaid in NHS fear lack of vacancies despite staff shortages

A student midwife who fears she will be unable to get a job after completing 2,300 hours of unpaid placement work in the NHS is calling for guaranteed posts for newly qualified midwives who otherwise will be forced to abandon the profession before their careers begin.

Aimee Peach, 43, is due to complete her training next summer, but says the promise of a job at the end of her three-year degree course has “collapsed”, despite severe shortages of midwives across the country.

No boxer has ever represented his country to this degree: Usyk is a living embodiment of his nation’s defiance of the Russian invasion

Perhaps the most striking part of the surge of controlled fury that ended this heavyweight title fight wasn’t the short right or the clubbing left that took Daniel Dubois down midway through the fifth round.

It was Oleksandr Usyk’s smile before the second of those shots. More of a snarl perhaps, or a baring of the gumshield, as Dubois let his arms drop, giving Usyk time to freeze the moment, load up, take aim and unleash a fully extended left hand to the side of the jaw that made Dubois crumple, legs folding under him as his father, Stan, threw in the towel.

The astonishing save to prevent an own goal against France is the prelude to the match-winning shootout show from a two-time cancer survivor

Ann-Katrin Berger is flying. The ball is flying. A few yards away, near the penalty spot, Clara Mateo of France already has her arms raised in celebration. A heroic German defensive rearguard is about to end in a misdirected defensive header, a looping own goal and a heartbreaking defeat. But a 34-year-old double cancer survivor, largely written off by her own country’s media before this quarter-final, has other ideas.

The mechanics of the save itself are easy enough to explain. Berger is about five yards out of her goal, and so has to back-pedal furiously while also keeping her eye on the flight. At the last moment, it looks like the ball is about to beat her. Which is the point at which Berger flings herself backwards and upwards, finding every last gram of strength, straining every last muscle, the sort of moment you spend a lifetime training for. She claws it away with her fingers. Falls heavily on her shoulders. Accepts the congratulations of her teammates, who look like they have just seen a biblical miracle.

Home favourite in disbelief after shot on the 11th sends an old ball flying but eagle a hole later sends fans into ecstasy

Deep into day three of the Open and Rory McIlroy is still surfing gigantic waves of momentum and goodwill. He has jumped to six under, at this point only four shots off the lead, with each birdie sounding like a sonic boom over Portrush. It is manic, messianic and a lot of fun. And then it gets weird. Twilight Zone weird.

McIlroy has just twirled a drive into the rough at the 11th. For a moment he fears that his ball is lost, only to get the all clear from the marshal. Better still, he will be playing from trampled-down ground. He pauses. Takes aim. And then as his ball flops wearily into air, a member’s Titleist ball, which has been deeply buried under ground, suddenly jumps up beside him.

• Pacquiao, 46, fights to majority draw in comeback bout

• Barrios keeps WBC title after strong final three rounds

• As it happened: Manny Pacquiao MD 12 Mario Barrios

By the time the final bell rang, Manny Pacquiao had done everything but win the fight. He out-threw, out-landed and out-hustled a champion 16 years his junior on Saturday night in Las Vegas, but the scorecards told a different story.

Pacquiao’s spirited return to the ring after a four-year layoff ended in a majority draw against WBC welterweight titleholder Mario Barrios. One judge scored it 115–113 for Barrios, while the other two had it 114–114, allowing the 30-year-old Texan to retain his belt by the narrowest of margins. (The Guardian scored it 115-113 for Pacquiao.)

Officially, the party says there is no mission to court Conservative defectors, but insiders suggest otherwise, and warn against the dangers of doing so

At last year’s GB News Christmas party, Suella Braverman was the centre of attention. The former home secretary is popular in rightwing media circles, but it wasn’t her straight-talking brand of conservatism that was topic of the evening, rather it was the growing whispers about what some thought was her imminent defection to Reform UK.

“It was like a panto – everyone saying: ‘Oh yes you will’, and her saying: ‘Oh no, I won’t’,” says one Reform party guest. “We all thought she was just biding her time until the right moment.”

Pen names have a long history. Now Liadan Ní Chuinn is shunning publicity in an industry that demands ever more exposure

What’s in a pen name? Irish writer Liadan Ní Chuinn’s debut short story collection, Every One Still Here, is receiving rave reviews and rapturous praise, but hardly anyone seems to know who they are. A cursory Google turns up no photos or biographical information. All we know is that the writer is Northern Irish and was born in 1998, the year of the Good Friday agreement.

A statement from Irish publisher The Stinging Fly reads: “The Stinging Fly has been working with Liadan on these stories for the past four years. From early on in the process, they expressed a desire to publish their work under a pseudonym and to protect their privacy throughout the publication process. No photographs of the author are available and Liadan will not be participating in any in-person interviews or public events.”

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

Do you feel ready to merge your past and your present? By considering a friendship with this man, you can see if this will work for you

Until four years ago, I was a sex worker – specifically, a high-end escort. In my experience, when clients treat you with respect and understand the boundaries, it’s possible to form a relationship not unlike that between a therapist and a client.

One client I was particularly fond of was a man a few years older than me. He is on the autism spectrum, which makes him somewhat socially awkward, but he is intelligent, creative and empathetic – and passably handsome. I always felt he would make a wonderful partner for a woman who could see past his quirks.

The Palestinian Authority’s ability to use the Gaza Marine field could leave them less dependent on aid

Recognition of Palestine as a state would put beyond doubt that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is entitled to develop the natural gas resources of the Gaza Marine field, according to one of the experts that worked on the stalled project.

Michael Barron, the author of a new book on Palestine’s untapped gas reserves, has suggested the field could generate $4bn (£3bn) in revenue at current prices and it is reasonable that the PA could receive $100m a year over 15 years.

£6 a pint, £199 a month for gym membership, £1,200 to rent a studio flat? The Guardian’s former North of England editor asks if the city she’s worked in for 12 years is changing for the better – or worse

Arriving in Manchester after moving up from London in 2013, I spotted something I took as a sign of how different my new life would be – how much cheaper, how much less pretentious. I told everyone back in London about the £1 Brew Stall at Piccadilly station. “Can you imagine being able to get a cup of tea at Euston for only a pound?” I would ask.

For a while, I was always seeking to prove I had not made a mistake leaving behind the bright lights of the capital city. I was the last staff reporter the Guardian had left in the whole of the north of England, and I felt isolated in a place no one in London really seemed to care about. It made me extremely chippy. This was a year before George Osborne anointed Manchester the centre of his fictional “northern powerhouse”; four before Andy Burnham abandoned Westminster to become the region’s mayor.

Christina Block is standing trial in Hamburg accused of kidnapping two of her own children from her ex-husband

For over half a century Block House has ranked as one of the most recognised restaurant chains on the German high street – a collection of family-friendly steakhouses whose staples include the “classic Block burger” and filet mignon.

But for months the Hamburg-based chain has been making headlines for an altogether different reason: a bitter and extraordinary custody battle between the heiress to the family business, Christina Block, and her ex-husband over the youngest two of their four children.