A ninefold increase is the result of huge advances in our understanding – and brings the hope of fulfilling lives to many more people
Gina Rippon is an emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging and author of The Lost Girls of Autism
Soaring rates of diagnoses in various illnesses such as cancer and diabetes have stimulated a debate about whether medicine has an “overdiagnosis” problem. The claim is that individuals may be prematurely diagnosed with conditions that, although meeting criteria for a disease, will never cause symptoms or death during a patient’s lifetime.
Discussions of this problem in the world of physical medicine have mainly been described as compassionate, arising from concerns that many so-called diagnoses might be unnecessary (does being pre-diabetic really mean you are ill?) or even harmful (the worried well being driven to seek needless and possibly damaging surgical interventions). Now that there are ever-more sensitive screening tests, and access to predictive genetic information, are doctors handing out too many unnecessary sicknotes?
Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment, Aston University, and the author of The Lost Girls of Autism and The Gendered Brain
Transformed from a second world war bunker into Germany’s buzziest dance venue, the acoustics at Open Ground in Wuppertal are raved about by DJs such as Floating Points – and may even be good for your health
It’s 8pm when DJ Lag steps up to the booth for his sound check at Open Ground, a dance venue in western Germany. It has been described as the “best-sounding new club in the world”, and when the first track plays you can hear why.
Rotund bass lines roll across the acoustically treated room, propelled by an extraordinarily powerful, horn-loaded bass enclosure named the Funktion-One F132. High-pitched melodies and intricate textures develop with startling clarity. And as for the call-and-response ad-libs – they sound as if the vocalists are standing only metres away.
Driving through Manchester one Sunday, at the wheel of a Nissan Micra, Foot suddenly woke from decades of anxiety, anger and misery. He talks about the friends who tried to help him, and the forgiveness he struggled to find
For three years and four months, Paul Foot has been living in a state of joy. He is in it now, he says, sitting across a table, overlooking London’s Regent’s canal. He’s wearing one of his trademark blue LF Markey boilersuits, and seems serene rather than ecstatic, half smiling. But that’s because the joy doesn’t spike or yo-yo. It’s a “constant”, so reliable that even when someone he knows dies, “there’s still a peace beneath it and a joy in it as well”.
Life was not always like this, and the story of how Foot, 51, overturned 28 years of “crushing, all-encompassing depression and anxiety” is told in his critically acclaimed 2023 show Dissolve, the filmed special of which is released this week.
Corporation aims to build ‘lifestyle brand’ for all ages around smash-hit cartoon character
Each episode may only last seven minutes, but the bite-size length of Bluey’s adventures has not held back the world’s most popular blue dog from creating endless money-spinning opportunities for the BBC.
Grateful executives are open about Bluey’s status as the golden goose driving a record £2.16bn in sales from commercial operations last year, spawning branding deals for everything from headphones to baked beans.
Jude Dibia’s Walking With Shadows has a gay character at its heart – a radical act that continues to influence the region’s literary scene
When Jude Dibia first tried to sell the manuscript of his groundbreaking novel Walking With Shadows20 years ago,he was aware of the silence around queerness in West African literature. While there had been books with gay themes, his is widely recognised as the first novel in the region to put a gay character at the heart of the story.
“The absence wasn’t just literary; it was societal,” Dibia says. “Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but largely rendered invisible or spoken of in hushed tones, if at all. That silence felt violent. It felt like erasure.
This small cutback is hardly a draconian austerity purge for a country that is broke. But the howls of outrage show a rational debate is unlikely
France is skint, but the French are in denial. To judge by the howls of outrage from the left and the hard right of the French political spectrum, you would think the prime minister, François Bayrou, had just taken a Javier Milei-style chainsaw to public services, announced Doge-style mass layoffs or imposed swingeing pay cuts.
But it was Bayrou’s suggestion that the French should give up two of their 11 cherished public holidays – Easter Monday and 8 May, the anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe – and work instead to increase economic output and hence government revenue that provoked the anger.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
It started in a strip joint and ended up bringing alternative comedy to our TV screens. Ahead of a new Edinburgh show, Peter Richardson tells us why his riotous creation still makes audiences laugh 40 years on
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise.
At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television.
US comedian and Portia de Rossi have stayed in the UK since Trump’s re-election, and are considering getting married again in case the US overturns same-sex marriage
Ellen DeGeneres has confirmed that she moved to the UK because of Donald Trump, saying, “Everything here is just better”.
At a conversation event on Sunday at Cheltenham’s Everyman theatre – the comedian’s first public appearance since leaving the US – broadcaster Richard Bacon asked DeGeneres if it was true Trump had spurred her decision to relocate.
Larson, who survived Normandy landings, gained 1.2 million followers on social media platform by sharing second world war stories
D-day veteran ″Papa Jake″ Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy’s beaches in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate the second world war and his fallen comrades, has died aged 102.
An animated speaker who charmed strangers young and old with his quick smile and generous hugs, the self-described country boy from Minnesota was “cracking jokes til the end,’’ his granddaughter wrote in announcing his death.
A woman with a spear embedded in her head has been airlifted to hospital from a remote Northern Territory community, with police searching for her alleged attacker.
On Sunday police received a report alleging that an 18-year-old woman had been stabbed in the head by a male known to her at Angurugu on the west coast of Groote Eylandt, an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
This adaptation of the Booker prize-winning novel spanning three timelines is a visceral, passionate drama starring Ciarán Hinds and Jacob Elordi. What bracingly confident television
There is an overwhelming darkness to The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker prize-winning novel. Thematically, this is to be expected: it is about a group of Australian prisoners of war constructing the Burma railway in the mid-1940s, at the tail end of the second world war. It is about the lasting trauma of conflict and imprisonment. It spans half a century, and though it tempers its darkness with a rich love story, it is largely violent, fatalistic and sorrowful. But visually, too, you may find yourself fiddling with the contrast and brightness settings. This very much matches its mood to its palette.
Jacob Elordi is perfectly handsome and haunted as the younger Dorrigo, a poetry-loving doctor who is about to be married to the well-to-do and socially connected Ella (Olivia DeJonge). The show covers three timelines, two of which follow closely on from one another. Elordi takes the main shift, Dorrigo as a young man. It opens in the thick heat of battle, going straight into the action. Young soldiers trade barbs with gallows humour, as they joke and tease, and place bets on how long they think they are going to live. Their banter is interrupted by exploding mines, the casualties already considerable, just a few moments in. The survivors are captured and put to work on the railway. It is hellish from the off, a vivid nightmare of torture and a tale of impossible endurance.
Summer holidays are a joy for us, but not always such a thrill for our houseplants. Few things are worse than returning home to discover a horticultural graveyard. Plants can survive unsupervised during the winter, but heatwaves, a lack of ventilation, and no one around to water mean summer holidays are a recipe for disaster.
But fear not. A bit of planning and the right kit can make all the difference between a happy homecoming and a shrivelled mess. Whether you go full-tech or just trust in a good soak and a friend, there’s a holiday plant-care method for every budget and plant. Regardless of how long you’re going away for, here are some of the best tips and tricks to keep your houseplants alive, hydrated and happy in your absence.
James Patterson and Vicky Ward offer a definitive, and sadly true, account of Kohberger and the Idaho student murders
In the early hours of 13 November 2022 in an off-campus apartment in Moscow, Idaho, a masked assailant murdered four students. The dead, who would come to be known as the Idaho Four, were Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. Each was stabbed multiple times. The killer left a gruesome scene and the motive was not readily apparent.
Videos, cellphone records and solid detective work led law enforcement to Bryan Kohberger, a doctoral candidate at Washington State University. Arrested at his parents’ home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, in late December, he was extradited back west.
Tharp picked up a Golden Lion award for her experimental and accessible choreography, while Carolina Bianchi won a Silver Lion for her fearless exploration of sexual assault
‘Do you know how much I could deadlift in my 50s? Guess!” Twyla Tharp implored Wayne McGregor, in a post-show interview at the Venice Dance Biennale. McGregor, the festival’s artistic director, didn’t dare venture a figure. “Two-hundred and twenty-seven pounds!” she told us all, delightedly.
Never underestimate Twyla. The slight, white-haired 84-year-old is as sharp as ever, and a force in the dance world. She’s been choreographing for 60 years, for ballet companies and Broadway, dance both experimental and accessible, art and pop. And she is honoured this year with the biennale’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
People are shutting their wallets to firms such as Target and Amazon, who followed in Trump’s footsteps to undo DEI
Rebecca Renard-Wilson has stopped shopping at Target and all things Amazon including Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. These days, the mother of two shops for the things she needs at farmer’s markets, small mom-and-pop stores or she goes directly to the websites of products she wants to purchase.
“I have options of where I put my money,” Renard-Wilson, 49, said. “Yes, Target’s convenient. Yes, Amazon Fresh is on my drive to my kids’ school. The options that I have discovered have opened up new relationships. I feel more connected to my community because I’m not shopping at those big-box places. I’m able to now use my money not only to resist places that don’t align with my values, but I’m able to now support places that do align with my values. To me, that’s a win-win.”
Donald Trump calls on Commanders and Guardians to revert to names that were abandoned due to being racially insensitive – key US politics stories from Sunday 20 July at a glance
Donald Trump has weighed into a new fight – this time with two sports teams. The president wants Washington’s football franchise the Commanders and Cleveland baseball team the Guardians to revert to their former names, which were abandoned in recent years due to being racially insensitive to Native Americans.
Trump said on Sunday on Truth Social that: “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team …. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past.”
As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter shifts to cleaner energy, some families fear being left behind
Gazing over the remains of his home, Wang Bingbing surveys a decades-old jujube tree flowering through the rubble, and the yard where he and his wife once raised pigs, now a pile of crumbled brick.
In the valley below, a sprawling coalmine is the source of their dislocation: years of digging heightened the risk of landslides, forcing Wang and his family out. To prevent the family from returning, local authorities later demolished their home.
Kremlin says ‘our goals are clear’ over conditions Ukraine and its allies have rejected as Russian strikes on Kyiv leave one dead and set buildings alight. What we know on day 1,244
Russia has said it is open to peace with Ukraine but insists achieving its goals remains a priority, days after Donald Trump gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia’s demands on Sunday, including Ukraine withdrawing from Russia-annexed regions and abandoning its Nato aspirations – terms that Kyiv and its allies have rejected. “The main thing for us is to achieve our goals,” Peskov told state TV. “Our goals are clear.”
Ukrainian officials proposed a new round of peace talks this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday, while Russian state media said on Sunday that no date had yet been set for the negotiations but Istanbul would probably remain the host city. A week ago Trump, the US president, threatened Russia with “severe tariffs” unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days and announced a rejuvenated pipeline for US weapons to reach Ukraine amid his frustration at unsuccessful talks to end the war.
Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine in an overnight attack on Monday, killing at least one person and causing multiple fires in Kyiv, city officials said. Rescuers and medics were working on sites across four districts of the capital, said its mayor, Vitali Klitschko. A subway station in central Kyiv as well as commercial property, shops, houses and a kindergarten were damaged, officials said. Explosions were heard across the city as air defence units engaged in repelling the attack and many Kyiv residents took shelter in underground stations.
Russia’s biggest oil producer Rosneft has condemned European Union sanctions on India’s Nayara Energy refinery as unjustified and illegal, saying the restrictions directly threatened India’s energy security. The EU’s 18th package of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine was approved on Friday and is aimed at further hitting Russia’s oil and energy industry. Rosneft said on Sunday it held less than 50% in Nayara – one of the targeted companies – and called the EU’s justification for the sanctions “far-fetched and false in context”. The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said the sanctions package is one of the strongest yet against Russia and “we will keep raising the costs, so stopping the aggression becomes the only path forward for Moscow”.
Two women were injured in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region when a drone struck their house on Sunday, according to the regional military administration. Two more civilians were injured in the north-eastern Kharkiv province after a drone slammed into a residential building, local Ukrainian officials said.
Drones struck a leafy square in the centre of Sumy later on Sunday, wounding a woman and her seven-year-old son, officials said. The strike also damaged a power line, leaving about 100 households without electricity, according to Serhii Krivosheienko of the municipal military administration.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 18 of 57 Shahed-type and decoy drones launched by Russia overnight into Sunday, with seven more disappearing from radar. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces shot down 93 Ukrainian drones targeting Russian territory overnight, including at least 15 that appeared to head for Moscow.
Ten more Ukrainian drones were downed on the approach to the Russian capital on Sunday, according to mayor Sergei Sobyanin. He said one drone struck a residential building in Zelenograd, on Moscow’s outskirts, damaging an apartment but causing no casualties.
Merseyside police says material in support of Palestine Action was reportedly seen in possession of protesters
Four people were arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences during a pro-Palestine protest in Liverpool city centre on Sunday afternoon, police said.
Merseyside police said material in support of campaign group Palestine Action was reportedly seen in the possession of a small number of protesters at the regular march for Liverpool Friends of Palestine.
Barbie Reynolds, 76, and husband Peter, 80, have been held for five-and-a-half months without charge
The children of an elderly couple imprisoned by the Taliban in Afghanistan have urged the group to release the pair before they “die in custody”.
They said the UN would be making a statement on Monday calling for the immediate release of Barbie Reynolds, 76, and her husband Peter, 80, who were arrested as they travelled to their home in Bamyan province, central Afghanistan, in February.
As her million-selling 70s novel, Engagement, is translated into English for the first time, the Swedish author talks about life at 80, finding the ideal love, and why her generation were freer than today’s young people
At a glance, Engagement, Gun-Britt Sundström’s classic novel of the 1970s, looks like a conventional story of young student love floundering in the face of ambivalence. The 79-year-old author, who is speaking via video call while cat-sitting for her son at his house outside Stockholm, has been taken aback by the novel’s return to favour. For a long time, Sundström tried to distance herself from Engagement, as writers will of their most famous book. But readers wouldn’t let her forget, and now, with publication of the first English translation, the million-plus-selling novelist and translator is enjoying a resurgence. Recently, says Sundström, “a young woman – in her 50s, which is young to me nowadays! – told me she had been given the book as a present from her father at 16 and it had changed her life. It had made her feel seen.” Sundström shrugs as if to say: this is nuts, but what can you do?
Engagement is not, after all, a traditional love story, but a study of a young woman’s fierce resistance to what she feels is the oppressive effect of being loved by a man. Martina and Gustav meet at college. Gustav wants their relationship to progress along traditional lines, an ambition that, Martina feels, risks leading her like a sleepwalker into a tedious, conventional life. At the casual level the pair’s relationship is loving and stable, but, observes Martina caustically, “Gustav is building so many structures on top of it that it’s shaking underneath them”. She wants to be loved but she also wants to be alone. She wants Gustav to stop repeating himself. When he asks her what’s wrong, she muses, “you can’t answer something like that. You can’t tell someone who wants to be with you always that he should be reasonable and ration himself out a little – if I saw you half as often, I would like you four times as much – no, you can’t say that.”
More than four decades after the violent policing at Orgreave during the miners’ strike and a failed prosecution criticised as a police “frame up”, the government has established a statutory inquiry into the scandal.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the inquiry having informed campaigners last Thursday at the site in South Yorkshire where the Orgreave coking plant was located.
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