Some people spend their lives feeling out of place in groups – but it comes with unique opportunities

‘I can’t explain it. He is a sweetheart. A beautiful boy inside and out, and so brilliant.” This was how a session with N, a longtime patient of mine, began some years ago. Her son, A, was a young teenager, and in spite of coming from a warm, loving family with attentive parents, he had started having social  difficulties.

He wasn’t being bullied or left out at school. He wasn’t depressed, moody or anxious. In fact, he was popular, well liked and constantly being invited to parties, to basketball games, and to hang out with groups of young people. The problem was, he turned all these invitations down, and N couldn’t understand why.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Elia Barbieri

© Illustration: Elia Barbieri

© Illustration: Elia Barbieri

Illegal immigration and the climate crisis were hotly debated by the novelist and the former tram driver. But did they end up on the same track?

Sunyi, 38, Wakefield

Occupation Novelist

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

The president’s fossil-fuel obsession can’t stop global progress, writes the former Environmental Protection Agency head

Over the past decade, the United States has turned technologies into tools that strengthened our economy, delivered good-paying union jobs, cleaned up our air and water, conserved our precious natural resources, and saved families money all across our country. Yet now the country is choosing to cede that leadership, letting China dominate and control the clean-energy market across the world. It’s no surprise that people are scratching their heads, wondering what happened.

Our president is obsessed with fossil fuels. He wants to resuscitate what everyone knows is a dying coal sector while turning a blind eye to the health, environmental, and economic downsides of the climate crisis. Coupled with inconsistent threats of increased tariffs against virtually all our allies, he has isolated the US and amplified threats to global security.

Gina McCarthy is the managing co-chair of America Is All In, former White House national climate adviser and 13th US EPA administrator

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Oliver Twist is one of the author’s best known creations. But for Nicholas Blincoe, the story is much closer to home. He reveals an astonishing family history

For almost my entire life, I’ve known there’s a connection between my family and Oliver Twist. There’s little chance I could forget it. Charles Dickens’s story has exploded into an Oliver multimedia universe, with as many as a hundred screen adaptations, the brilliant Lionel Bart musical, two current TV shows based on the frenmity of Fagin and the Artful Dodger, and an Audible dramatisation starring Brian Cox and Daniel Kaluuya.

I remember one Easter Sunday we were watching Oliver! on TV when my father snapped out of his post-lunch stupor to announce: “Oliver Twist was a Blincoe. He’s my great-great-grandfather.” The original Robert Blincoe was a foundling, abandoned in London’s St Pancras district in around 1792. He spent his early years in the care of the parish, entering the workhouse at four years old. By seven, he was one of 30 “parish apprentices” contracted to work in a Nottinghamshire cotton mill without pay until the age of 21. London’s parish councils shipped thousands of pauper children north between the 1790s and 1830s, but little was known of their lives until Robert’s memoir. His account of brutality, sadism, sexual abuse and starvation became a national sensation, running to five editions between 1828 and 1833.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar Collection/Romulus/Allstar

© Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar Collection/Romulus/Allstar

© Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar Collection/Romulus/Allstar

When war broke out between India and China, the author and her brother were taken by their mother on a chaotic journey from hill station squat to an eccentric household in Kerala. Would they ever find a safe space?

A teacher was what my mother had always wanted to be, what she was qualified to be. During the years she was married and living with our father, who had a job as an assistant manager on a remote tea estate in Assam, the dream of pursuing a career of any kind atrophied and fell away. It was rekindled (as nightmare more than dream) when she realised that her husband, like many young men who worked on lonely tea estates, was hopelessly addicted to alcohol.

When war broke out between India and China in October 1962, women and children were evacuated from border districts. We moved to Calcutta. Once we got there, my mother decided that she would not return to Assam. From Calcutta we travelled across the country, all the way south to Ootacamund – Ooty – a small hill station in the state of Tamil Nadu. My brother, LKC – Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy – was four and a half years old, and I was a month away from my third birthday. We did not see or hear from our father again until we were in our 20s.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: ✎Sreejith Sreekumar/The Guardian

© Photograph: ✎Sreejith Sreekumar/The Guardian

© Photograph: ✎Sreejith Sreekumar/The Guardian

The baseball season is very long, and no player is immune to suffering hardship — whether it is going cold at the plate or getting hurt. 

The final grand slam of the season gets started on a Sunday this year.

• 3rd ODI: Australia, 2-431, bt South Africa, 155, by 276 runs

• Travis Head hits 142, one of three home centurions

Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh and Cameron Green smashed blistering hundreds as Australia steamrollered South Africa by 276 runs in the third and final one-day international of the series in Mackay.

South Africa had already clinched the series, leaving the 50-over world champions to play for pride in the last match. Australia’s opening pair set the tone with a 250-run partnership between player-of-the-match Head (142) and Marsh (100), before an incendiary unbeaten 118 from Green powered Australia to a mammoth 2-431.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Albert Perez/Getty Images

© Photograph: Albert Perez/Getty Images

© Photograph: Albert Perez/Getty Images

Country’s weather agency says 10-day period from 8-17 August was hottest since at least 1950, as fires still rage

A 16-day heatwave Spain suffered this month was “the most intense on record”, the country’s state meteorological agency (AEMET) has said.

Provisional readings for the 3-18 August heatwave exceeded the last record, set in July 2022, and showed an average temperature 4.6C higher than for previous such phenomena, the agency said on X.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: César Manso/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: César Manso/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: César Manso/AFP/Getty Images

Before the Yankees’ latest no-show against the Red Sox, manager Aaron Boone said he has thought of giving Anthony Volpe a breather.

Mets infielder Brett Baty has the simplest of explanations for his success at the plate over the last several weeks.

Here are five college football predictions and round-by-round picks for the college football playoffs:

Russian officials said several power and energy facilities were targeted in the overnight strikes.

Jets coach Aaron Glenn sounded thrilled about adding defensive tackle Harrison Phillips in a trade with the Vikings this week.

Aaron Judge remains stuck at DH, with Giancarlo Stanton pressed into service in right field for the Yankees again Saturday.

National Retail Federation estimates families are budgeting an average of nearly $875 for the year for shopping

Summer is drawing to a close and as parents and children get ready for a new school year, their first lesson will be in economics.

Most of Donald Trump’s tariffs went into effect at the beginning of August. We are still waiting on a deal with China. But with school supplies so dependent on imports, consumers have been anxiously waiting to see how tariffs will affect the prices they see in stores.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian

© Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian

© Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian

Two Ivorian archivists are documenting bygone eras in music and pop culture for younger African generations

Shortly after it was launched in 2020, the Instagram-based project Archives Ivoire received a major boost when the French-Malian superstar Aya Nakamura reshared a meme it had made from the series Nafi, one of Francophone Africa’s most beloved TV shows, to her millions of followers.

In the years since, Archives Ivoire, which documents the female aesthetic in Ivorian pop culture, has amassed 85,000 followers, started hosting cinema club sessions in the Ivorian city of Abidjan and the neighbouring town of Grand-Bassam, and launched a successful sideline in merchandise.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Fall Aicha/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fall Aicha/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fall Aicha/The Guardian

After dating jealous and controlling men, Mabel loves that Finn respects her freedom and celebrates her sexuality

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

The safety I feel with Finn means the sex we have feels safe, too, and we can explore freely

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Ryan Gillett/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ryan Gillett/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ryan Gillett/The Guardian

Zohran Mamdani's comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America openly call to end what they call “the criminalization of working-class survival,” and want to wipe out all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned.

The ruling by the British Columbia Supreme Court in the Cowichan Tribes case earlier this month highlights just how many legal rules on constitutionally protected Aboriginal title remain unresolved and how much of a problem those legal gaps create. Read More

Read More

For too many around the world, Israel’s war with Hamas is viewed through a lens of moral simplicity: Enough. End the fighting. Bring relief to the people of Gaza. Accept a ceasefire — any ceasefire. Do the “right” thing. Read More

Five men to watch at this year’s U.S. Open at Flushing Meadows:

The 58-year-old owner has rigged a sprinkler system to automatically blast drivers with water when they park in his driveway.