The high street brand moves beyond fast fashion with a brutalist collection, while Paltrow loses the gimmicks
The headline act on day four of New York fashion week had all the hallmarks of a typical designer catwalk, including a pulsating soundtrack and a front row peppered with Hollywood stars. However, there was a twist. Instead of a luxury brand staging the show on Sunday, it was the high street label Cos.
The Swedish label, founded in 2007 by the H&M group, welcomed guests including the British actors Jodie Turner-Smith and Naomi Watts as well as the singer Lauryn Hill to a former 1890s rope factory in Brooklyn.
Newcastle’s new striker makes his mark, Emiliano Martínez is in Villa’s good books again and Noni Madueke’s dream week
Is Gianluigi Donnarumma a Pep Guardiola goalkeeper? He may or may not be, but he is an exceptional goalkeeper. Manchester United didn’t offer enough of a test even to begin to assess whether Donnarumma is good enough with the ball at his feet to allow City to play as Guardiola would like them to. Nor did they test whether his starting position is advanced enough to sweep up behind a high defensive line and prevent the sort of chances City yielded up to Tottenham and Brighton. But his save to keep out a Bryan Mbeumo volley, hurling himself to his right to push the ball wide, was spectacular, and drew congratulations from pretty much all his teammates. Even if he is not the perfect stylistic fit, Donnarumma’s presence, his commanding stature, the aura he projects, makes him the right goalkeeper for now as City begin the process of rebuilding with a notably young squad. Jonathan Wilson
Russell Wilson’s team looked as disappointing as always in their season opener. But in their loss to the Cowboys, they produced sloppy mistakes and offensive fireworks in equal measure
When Fox analyst Greg Olsen noted that this week’s version of Russell Wilson was “unrecognizable from Week 1,” he could have referred to the entire New York Giants team.
Limping into Dallas after their dismal opening loss to the Commanders, the Giants picked up where they left off – with a lot of stupid mistakes. Offensive tackle James Hudson III stole the limelight as he somehow amassed four consecutive penalties on New York’s first possession. Hudson was duly benched but the Giants’ penalties kept coming – they gave away 160 yards’ worth on Sunday.
Homes without heating, bedrooms with beds. If we are to offer any hope to the children of austerity, the next few weeks will be decisive
Run-down housing estates in Britain’s former industrial heartlands remind us of the poverty described by George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 – but these days there is no Orwell to chronicle what the arithmetic of deprivation means for families condemned to lives of poverty.
Millions of children, as the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, told us this summer, are faring very badly, living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”. And what she calls the striking awareness children have of being poor requires us to find a modern-day Dickens to hear their voices.
Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
From bureaucratic burdens to extreme detours, travelling across Africa can be a nightmare – especially for Africans
For the Kenyan DJ Coco Em, planning how to get around Africa for gigs can take as much time as crafting her setlists.
Last November she was due to perform in Cape Verde, the archipelago state off the coast of west Africa, travelling from Nairobi via Europe – the only available route – on a one-year Schengen visa. But at the airport, the airline refused to let her board.
Sacking of Peter Mandelson over Epstein ties threatens to overshadow fanfare of US president’s two-day trip
For Donald Trump, the priority was to avoid any distractions. But as he arrives for his second state visit to the UK – an unprecedented honour for a US president – the crisis engulfing Keir Starmer’s government threatens to overshadow the proceedings.
The circumstances of that crisis are especially awkward. Peter Mandelson was unceremoniously sacked as the UK’s ambassador to Washington on Thursday after emails were published in which he had urged his friend Jeffrey Epstein to fight for early release from prison in 2008.
The annual festival, now the largest and longest-running of its kind, first took place in 2001 and has since grown to a 10-day programme drawing thousands of visitors from around the world
“One cannot have too large a party,” writes Jane Austen in Emma. But could she ever have predicted that more than 200 years later, balls held in her honour would be selling out in 15 minutes?
This year, the largest and longest-running Jane Austen festival, held in Bath, brings together more than 3,000 fans, or Janeites as they prefer to be called, to celebrate the life and legacy of the beloved author. From balls and cream teas to festival fayres and dance lessons, for 10 days the city transforms into a living homage to Austen’s world. But what keeps modern audiences so captivated by this imagined past?
A group of re-enactors enjoy afternoon tea at the Bath Bun
The bestselling author returns with an account of how her homeland has changed – and the personal costs of fame
Remarkable success notoriously brings its own problems. Wild Swans, first published in 1991 and written by Jung Chang with the help of her husband, Irish-born historian and writer Jon Halliday, had a global impact few authors dare to dream of. It told the story of three generations of women in 20th-century China – Chang’s grandmother, her mother and herself – and became one of the most popular nonfiction books in history, selling more than 13m copies in 37 languages and collecting a fistful of awards and commendations. For any author, following that would be a challenge. Now, Fly, Wild Swans returns to the story, picking it up after Chang’s own departure from China in 1978, and revisiting episodes from the earlier work with added detail.
Wild Swans was Chang’s second book: her first was a biography of Soong Ching-ling, the wife of the early 20th-century revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, which, she volunteers, had deservedly little impact. Wild Swans was different: animated by a powerful family story, set against the dramatic political background of war and revolution and enlivened by Halliday’s formidable narrative talent, it was an instant hit.
Viral videos have shifted public opinion about water monitors, long held in contempt in Thai culture, even as rising numbers of the reptiles pose problems for residents
Shortly after dawn, Lumphini Park comes alive. Bangkok residents descend on the sprawling green oasis in the middle of the city, eager to squeeze in a workout before the heat of the day takes hold. Joggers trot along curving paths. Old men struggle under barbells at the outdoor gym. Spandex-clad women stretch into yoga poses on the grass.
Just metres away, one of the park’s more infamous occupants strikes its own lizard pose. About 400 Asian water monitor lizards call Lumphini Park home, and this morning they are out in full force – scrambling up palm trees, swimming through the waterways and wrestling on the road.
Seaming together many different records of the civil war in the early 1990s we see a country’s fracture unfold through a crowd of partisan views
For those unfamiliar with the dark days of the Tbilisi war in the early 1990s, watching this documentary could feel like diving into the deep end of history. Composed from a wealth of archive audiovisual material available on the internet, Elene Asatiani and Soso Dumbadze’s film is at once passionate and clear-eyed. Apart from reconstructing the chain of events through editing, the directors keep the found footage as it is, with no voiceover added, interviews, or digital manipulation. Their only visible intervention is to categorise the source of each video with small white text that reads “Pro-Government Camera”, “KGB Camera”, “Pro-Opposition Camera” and so on.
These labels emphasise how records of history are rarely without bias. Presented with this plurality of viewpoints, we as viewers are granted the power to create our own interpretation out of these puzzle pieces. The jubilation surrounding Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s swearing-in as president of Georgia quickly morphs into a spiral of violence and unrest. Taking to the streets, paramilitary forces led by opposition figures laid siege to the parliament building for 16 days, culminating in a blood-soaked coup d’etat. In footage captured by both sides of the conflict, the sounds ring out of indiscriminate gunshots and tanks rolling through civilian areas. One particularly harrowing closeup shows a woman cowering by her window, her face distorted by fear.
Most of the footage contains pixelated sequences, some are even watermarked with TV channel logos – yet the horror is palpable. The lo-fi aesthetics of Limitation bristle with radical agitation, dismantling ideals about the pure, objective image and stressing the idea that, regardless of visual quality, all recorded footage is infected with hidden agendas and motives. Amid a sea of contradicting political arguments, what remains terrifyingly present in this film is the collective trauma thrust upon ordinary people, forever scarred by bloodshed.
Top-spec cameras, cutting edge AI, great software and stunning screen squeezed into a more manageable frame
The Pixel 10 Pro is Google’s best phone that is still a pocketable, easy-to-handle size, taking the excellent Pixel 10 and beefing it up in the camera department.
That makes it a contender for the top smaller phone with Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro, offering the best of Google’s hardware without an enormous screen. It is also the cheapest of three Pixel 10 Pro phones starting at £999 (€1,099/$999/A$1,699) sitting below the bigger 10 Pro XL and the tablet-phone hybrid the 10 Pro Fold.
The long-awaited return of the series about finding closure is a warm look at parental clutter. Plus, the incredible tale of Taj, who traces his roots from being kidnapped in India to being adopted in Utah
Jonathan Goldstein’s narrative pod about regrets, mistakes and the pursuit of closure – cancelled by Spotify in 2023 – makes its return this week under the Pushkin banner, and it’s been worth the wait. Heavyweight does up-close-and-personal like few other shows, and this first episode – about a son’s fears around his parents’ cluttered house, and a plot to relocate their trinkets to a barn – is both warm and spiked with melancholy. Hannah J Davies Widely available, episodes weekly from Thu
Perfect for a weekend getaway, the Petworth Way takes in historic estates, welcoming inns and spectacular views
There are many ways to make an entrance, but lurching into a pub full of smartly dressed diners while windswept, muddy and more than a little frayed wouldn’t be my first choice. At 7.30pm on a sunny Sunday evening, the Welldiggers Arms – a country pub just outside Petworth in West Sussex – is full of people tucking into hearty roasts, the glass-walled restaurant overlooking glorious downland scenery, the sun all but disappeared behind the hills. For my husband, Mark, and I, it’s more than a stop for supper; the pub marks the halfway point on our two-day walking adventure along a brand new trail, the 25-mile Petworth Way.
Twenty-five miles may not sound like much (I have keen walker friends who would do it in a day) but, for us, it’s the perfect length, with plenty of pubs along the way. The first leg, from Haslemere to Petworth, covers countryside we’re both entirely unfamiliar with; the second, Petworth to Arundel runs through landscapes I’ve known since childhood. Happily, the start and finish points can be reached by rail – meaning we can leave the car at home and set off with nothing but small rucksacks, water bottles and detailed printed instructions.
Grady Harris spent his young life hitchhiking, working various jobs and playing in a band. When he met his future wife, he found his ‘bulwark’ and has never looked back
On Grady Harris’s wedding day, his father, a Presbyterian preacher, presided over the vows. “And when my father told us to kiss, and we did, I felt a sense of joy that I’d never felt before,” Harris says. “I’ve had a life full of happiness … But that was a new joy.”
Harris was 60, and marrying for the first time. Now 69, he lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Marcia Wood, 66, who has an art gallery in the city. At times, their relationship must have seemed unlikely – 12 years separated their first and second dates, and they met by chance through a long chain of friends of friends.
Ruben Amorim is not the biggest problem at Old Trafford, but it is becoming harder to deny he is one of the issues
Perhaps the best that can be said of Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United is that you know exactly where you stand with them. It’s 10 months since he was appointed but he is yet to win back-to-back league games. Having beaten Burnley last time out, amid scenes of revealing euphoria, they were never going to win at Manchester City.
Which must have been a relief for City, who had lost two of their first three games this season for the first time in 21 years. There was, for them, particularly after half-time, a pleasing sense of normality returning. Rodri, shaky early on, began to dominate as he used to before his knee injury, while there were fine performances from Erling Haaland, Jérémy Doku and Phil Foden.
Ex-paratrooper accused of killing James Wray and William McKinney, and attempting to murder five others
An army veteran will stand trial on Monday charged with murder in relation to Bloody Sunday, when the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civil rights protesters in Derry in 1972.
The former paratrooper, known as Soldier F, is charged with two murders and five attempted murders during a military operation that became a defining event of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
Scotland Yard made formal request to interview Christian Brueckner, due for release from seven-year rape sentence
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan police before his pending release from prison in Germany, the force has said.
The Met confirmed it had submitted a formal international request to question Christian Brueckner, the 49-year-old German national who has long been under investigation in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance, but the suspect declined.
What once seemed a pretty fringe subculture of hobbyists riffing on stories that got them privately hot is now bringing mainstream cinema to a rolling boil
There was a time when fan fiction meant furtive scribbles uploaded to shadowy corners of the internet, in which Mr Darcy was recast as a moody vampire flatmate, Captain Kirk discovered his inner romantic, or Gandalf finally got around to opening an artisanal shop in the Shire. It was an underground hobby that could never trouble Tinseltown’s accountants. And yet here we are in 2025, with the news in the Hollywood Reporter that Legendary Pictures has just paid at least $3m – (£2.2m) – an unprecedented amount – for the screen rights to a forthcoming novel called Alchemised that began life as an unauthorised and kinky Harry Potter spin-off.
The backstory behind Alchemised, by SenLinYu, sounds pretty freaky. SenLinYu’s original book, titled Manacled, inhabited a strange sub-niche of Potterverse named “Dramione” in which Hermione Granger finds herself regularly involved in unlikely and transgressive romantic encounters with Draco Malfoy. Now stripped of all reference to Hogwarts, butterbeer and Nimbus 2000s, and with renamed characters, Alchemised will hit shelves and online bookstores later this month as the dark fantasy tale of a young woman with memory problems who finds herself at the mercy of a powerful and cruel necromancer.
Agreements include plan to build 12 reactors in Hartlepool with Centrica, creating 2,500 jobs, and fast-tracking UK and US safety checks
Labour’s plans for a massive expansion of nuclear power have been given a boost with a string of transatlantic deals for new modular reactors announced before Donald Trump’s visit.
The UK and US governments have promised to fast track safety checks, and announced several new private sector investment deals, with Labour emphasising the potential benefits for jobs and growth.
Allies indulged the US president on the basis they wouldn’t be bombed or suffer economic damage. So much for that idea
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All over the world, political leaders are gathering in hastily convened summits and meetings. Last week, after Israel’s strike against Hamas leaders in Doha – a colossal violation of the sovereignty of a country that is not only a close ally of the US, but an anchor of Gaza peace talks – Gulf leaders sprang to show solidarity. The president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, arrived on an unscheduled visit to Doha and embraced the Qatari emir. It was a public show of fraternity that would have been unfathomable only a few years ago when the two countries were locked in a bitter feud. Qatar’s other adversary in that feud, Saudi Arabia, called after the Israeli strike for “an Arab, Islamic and international response to confront the aggression” and Israel’s “criminal practices”. On Sunday, heads of Arab and Muslim states were en route to Doha for an emergency summit.
A little more than a week before, another gathering pointed towards other new coalitions. The leaders of India, China and Russia met in Tianjin, producing an image of smiling warmth that is likely to be an artefact of this era. The summit was convened in the wake of Donald Trump’s alienation of another ally, Narendra Modi. After Trump’s second election, Modi was one of the first leaders to visit Washington DC, where he was called a “great friend”, and the two countries set the target of doubling their trade to half a trillion dollars by 2030. A few months after that, Trump slapped India with a 50% tariff on the country’s imported goods, a tariff doubled as punishment for India’s purchase of Russian oil. He then proceeded to call the Indian economy “dead”, and commented on the Tianjin summit by posting: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China.” He is now lobbying the EU to impose tariffs of up to 100% on India and China.
Enrich corn’s natural sweetness in a creamy and earthy curry, and in a fresh, herby chutney
Inspired by a corn curry from Maharashtra, today’s recipe has the perfect umami flavour: a bit of heat from the chillies, some gentle sweetness from the sugar and lots of sourness from the lime juice, along with the creamy coconut milk and juicy corn. The sharpness of a fresh, herby chutney with salty butter, meanwhile, makes the perfect topping for barbecued corn on the cob. I often cook the corn straight on the hob, which is a bit tricky, but it’s how we did it when I was growing up in India.
A key climate crisis funding treaty struck as Pacific leaders backed Australia’s bid for Cop31 despite some criticism of its environmental credentials
China, the climate crisis and security concerns dominatedthe agenda as Pacific leaders gathered for the region’s most important annual meeting last week.
The week-long Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, brought together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific countries and territories at a time of fraught geopolitical tensions, and with accusations of outside interference in the region never far from the headlines.
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