The average Premier League game lasts 100 minutes and 36 seconds, but the ball is only in play for 54.7% of that

By Opta Analyst

The start of every football match brings a little flutter in the stomach. Will the stars perform? Will the referee have a good game by giving your players every decision? And will the football gods shine down on your team? A more pertinent question to ask this season, though, is how much football will we actually see?

We wrote about ball-in-play time a few seasons ago, revealing that fans were not seeing as much football as in previous years. We’re not saying our data nosiness led to referees adding more stoppage time, but there was a notable rise in ball-in-play time over the next two campaigns. It went up from 54 minutes and 49 seconds in 2022-23 to 58 minutes and 11 seconds in 2023-24. It’s still early in the 2025-26 season, but the pendulum may be swinging back the other way.

The city – the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the west of the country – has withstood more than 500 days of attacks by paramilitary RSF

The besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has been declared “uninhabitable” with new data indicating most homes are destroyed and critical levels of malnourishment among people trapped there.

The stark assessment comes as the city endures constant artillery and drone attacks, shoehorning its 250,000 starving people into a shrinking urban enclave.

• Canadian club folded during Covid-19 pandemic in 2020

• Players receive around £750,000 in unpaid income

Players from the former Super League club Toronto Wolfpack have finally been paid around £750,000 in unpaid salaries following a five-year legal battle, the Guardian can reveal.

The Wolfpack folded in 2020 during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic leaving their playing squad – which included the likes of Sonny Bill Williams – unemployed and without a contract. Some of those players were able to source deals for 2021 and continue playing but others retired from the sport altogether and had to take jobs outside rugby league to make ends meet.

Plus: more players ignoring tactical instructions, free-kick flurries and Wembley Stadium’s first resident club

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Last month, Jeremy Ngakia scored twice for Watford against Oxford to take his career goals total to three from 116 senior club appearances. Excluding players who scored only once, has anybody with 100+ appearances managed a higher percentage of their career goals in a single match?” wonders Peter Skilton.

Denis Boone writes in with the tale of Matthieu Chalmé. “French right-back Chalmé played 362 professional matches during his career, mostly for Lille and Bordeaux,” Denis writes. “He scored four career goals, with three of them coming in a single game. Chalmé netted all three goals in Lille’s 3-0 win at Ajaccio in March 2004, recording the most unlikely of hat-tricks.”

Any more for any more? Mail us with your suggestions.

This six-part adaption of Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s novel is an odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of an isolated 19th-century village … but the murder investigation at its heart is risible

A debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers by Deborah Bragan-Turner). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which population comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.

Legislative change comes five years after treaty suspended in response to city’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists

Exiled Hong Kong dissidents say they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the city could put them in greater danger, saying Hong Kong authorities will use any pretext to pursue them.

An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to the government crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, and its imposition of a Beijing-designed national security law.

Ultra-slim and light smartphone feels special, but cuts to camera and battery may be too hard to ignore for most

The iPhone Air is a technical and design marvel that asks: how much are you willing to give up for a lightweight and ultra-slender profile?

Beyond the obvious engineering effort that has gone into creating one of the slimmest phones ever made, the Air is a reductive exercise that boils down the iPhone into the absolute essentials in a premium body.

Inspired by Gustav Klimt’s ‘golden phase’ and the religious icons of medieval Europe, US photographer Tawny Chatmon reimagines Black identity by upturning art history

From prosthetic testicles for dogs to sociable reptiles, a behavioural scientist explains what we get wrong – and right – about animal minds

In the 1970s a former Soviet naval officer named Igor Charkovsky popularised a concept which came to be known as dolphin-assisted birth. Likely inspired by New Age theories, he urged expectant mothers to dip in the ice-cold water of the Black Sea, commune with dolphins, and give birth underwater. In the “very near future,” he claimed, “a newborn child would be able to live in the ocean with a pod of dolphins and feed on dolphin milk”.

The oddest thing about Charkovsky was not so much his theory, but its remarkable resilience within both Soviet and western culture, as Justin Gregg sets out in his illuminating and lively new book. Gregg’s work is both a dissection and an ode to the irresistible allure of anthropomorphism, our tendency to apply human characteristics to non-humans, whether animals, objects, AI, or God. An expert on animal cognition who also teaches improv, Gregg deftly guides us through our alternately charming, destructive and wrong-headed fantasies about everything from marine mammals to our iPhones.

For years, I kept a stash of ‘nice things’, waiting for the right occasion to use them. The accident taught me to live now, rather than in the future

I used to have a drawer where the “nice things” lived: posh candles and fancy bubble bath; two flagons of Greek extra virgin olive oil; that Aesop handwash, to bring out for visitors. A bottle of fizz gathered dust on the kitchen side and, in the bathroom, an expensive moisturiser remained unopened. Life’s little luxuries, I believed, weren’t for enjoying now, but were to be saved for some unspecified “special” time in the future.

Then I was hit by a car. It happened in May last year, while I was walking down a quiet street soon after lunchtime in Bermuda, where I’d been sent on an assignment for work.

• Ronaldo double includes 41st World Cup qualifying goal

• Republic of Ireland keep dream alive with Armenia win

Cristiano Ronaldo set a record for World Cup qualifying goals but the Group F leaders Portugal were denied early World Cup qualification by a late Hungary equaliser to snatch a 2-2 draw.

Two Ronaldo goals – the first his 40th in qualifying to set the landmark – put Portugal on the verge of qualification but Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai struck in added time to stop the celebration party in Lisbon.

• ‘It’s British humour and I can take it,’ says England head coach

• Tuchel says his side have achieved something ‘special’

Thomas Tuchel laughed off the mockery from the fans and hailed his side for achieving something special after England qualified for the World Cup finals tournament with a 5‑0 win against Latvia in Riga.

The head coach was in good spirits after another fine display and he did not mind being the butt of the joke at a rain-sodden Daugava Stadium. England’s fans did not hesitate to express their displeasure with Tuchel’s critical comments about the atmosphere during the win against Wales at Wembley last week but the German admitted he was fair game and insisted he thought the chants aimed in his direction were funny.

Royal Albert Hall to host Grand Sumo Tournament marking only the second time a full competition is held overseas

They play Major League Baseball at the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham’s ground is a second home for the National Football League, the National Basketball Association is staging a game at the 02 Arena next year, and South Africa just beat New Zealand in a rugby Test at Twickenham, but it’s been a long time since London has hosted anything on the scale of the Grand Sumo Tournament taking place at the Royal Albert Hall this week. Forty wrestlers have flown over from Japan to compete in it. That’s around six tons of elite athlete to be fed, watered, transported and supported.

“We’ve actually had to source and buy new chairs which can take up to 200kg in weight,” says Matthew Todd, the Royal Albert Hall’s harassed director of programming. “Our usual standard is only 100kg.” They’ve also had to reinforce the toilets. “It’s the ones that are screwed into the wall which are the most challenging,” Todd explains, wearily.

A new documentary, The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay, follows a band of explorers into their underground world

The surf was up off the north coast of Cornwall but a hardy band of adventurers turned their backs on the temptations of the sunny beaches and headed inland to burrow into the darkness.

Over the next few hours members of the Carbis Bay Crew explored the shafts and tunnels of an old mine, laughing, joking and making sure each other was OK as they clambered down precipitous ladders and squeezed through tight gaps.

Mimi’s Shebeen, choreographed by Alesandra Seutin, charts South African legend’s exile and ascendancy with ‘beautiful songs, strong messages and moments that hit’

“You speak about Miriam Makeba in South Africa and it’s like speaking about a queen,” says Alesandra Seutin. The legendary singer Makeba was known as Mama Africa, and the Empress of African Song; but she also hung out in Greenwich Village with Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. She was a teenager sent out to work to support her family in Johannesburg who later became a diplomat for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the UN. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife of a Black Panther. And her rich life and legacy are the inspiration for choreographer Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, about to get its UK premiere.

Mimi’s Shebeen blends dance, live music and spoken word in a piece of theatre that’s no straightforward biodrama but draws on Makeba’s history, particularly her story of exile: after moving to New York in 1959 Makeba was barred from South Africa for 30 years because of her anti-apartheid stance. She was later banned from the US after marrying the Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The show comes across like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with the fabulous South African singer Tutu Puoane at the centre bringing Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Caramelised apples on a buttery biscuit base, and an apple cake with a rubbly topping

It’s easy to forget just how extraordinary apples can be. Often relegated to less exciting regions of the fruit bowl, they actually come in a dizzying array of varieties – sharp, sweet, floral, crisp – and each with their own quirks. And now is the time to celebrate apples, so this week I’m giving them the attention they deserve in a no-bake toffee apple pie (banoffee’s autumn cousin) and a soft, cinnamon-spiced crumb cake.

Allegations related to flood control projects have sparked widespread anger and protests in the Philippines

Philippine health worker Christina Padora waded through July’s waist-high flood water to check on vaccines and vital medications stored in the village clinic, something she had regularly done during previous typhoons.

But this time she didn’t make it. Taking hold of a metal pole that she failed to see was connected to a live wire, the 49-year-old was fatally electrocuted in the water.

The French president dominated the centre ground but has failed to build a legacy there. Labour is in danger of doing the same

Britain and France do not share a fixed quota of political stability such that reduced volatility on one side of the Channel causes chaos across the water. It was just a coincidence that Keir Starmer won a huge majority at precisely the moment last July when legislative elections made France ungovernable for Emmanuel Macron.

It was a misfortune for both men, and for Europe, that their political trajectories were out of sync. Macron had dealt with four Tory prime ministers before finding a potential ally in the ascendant Labour leader. By then his presidency was in spiralling decline. Britain was rousing itself from Brexit delirium just as France was losing the plot.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Bloc’s first affordable housing plan to cover issues such as tenants’ rights, property speculation and tourist lets

The EU executive will propose rules to tackle the “huge problem” of short-term rentals via platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com, as it seeks to confront the “social crisis” of people struggling to afford a home, its first-ever housing commissioner has said.

In an interview with the Guardian and other European newspapers, Dan Jørgensen said it was time for Brussels policymakers to take housing seriously or cede ground to anti-EU populists, who, he said, did not have the answers to the shortage of affordable homes.

Citizens have enrolled with little opposition, albeit with some concerns over security and privacy, as UK plans system

• Keir Starmer to look at India’s digital ID system during visit to Mumbai

For Danish teenagers, getting enrolled for MitID (my ID) has become somewhat of a rite of passage.

From the age of 13, Danes can enrol for the national digital ID system, which can be used for everything from logging into online banking to signing documents electronically and booking a doctor’s appointment.

Few psychiatric conditions are as stigmatised or as misunderstood as narcissistic personality disorder. Here’s how it can damage careers and relationships – even before prejudice takes its toll

There are times when Jay Spring believes he is “the greatest person on planet Earth”. The 22-year-old from Los Angeles is a diagnosed narcissist, and in his most grandiose moments, “it can get really delusional”, he says. “You are on cloud nine and you’re like, ‘Everyone’s going to know that I’m better than them … I’ll do great things for the world’.”

For Spring, these periods of self-aggrandisement are generally followed by a “crash”, when he feels emotional and embarrassed by his behaviour, and is particularly vulnerable to criticism from others. He came to suspect that he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) after researching his symptoms online – and was eventually diagnosed by a professional. But he doesn’t think he would have accepted the diagnosis had he not already come to the conclusion on his own. “If you try to tell somebody that they have this disorder, they’ll probably deny it,” he says – especially if they experience feelings of superiority, as he does. “They’re in a delusional world that they made for themselves. And that world is like, I’m the greatest and nobody can question me.”

The acting may be brilliant in the horrible real-life story of a family whose sordid tale ends in a double murder. But when everything about the subjects is so rotten, why on Earth would you want to watch?

How fascinatingly horrible were the Murdaugh family? Very, according to how much true-crime content they’ve generated. There’s already been a hit podcast about them, untangling a narrative that began in enviable luxury and ended with a sordid double murder. There’s already been a TV documentary. Now the Murdaughs complete the set with Murdaugh: Death in the Family, the plush fictionalised drama retelling the same awful tale.

At its heart is a trio of strong performances, primed for awards season. Jason Clarke – also currently excellent as a different kind of alpha male in The Last Frontier on Apple TV+ – is Richard Alexander “Alex” Murdaugh, a powerhouse personal injury attorney and member of a South Carolina dynasty whose men have been the biggest beasts in the courtroom for generations. Over the years, the Murdaughs – their name looks like “murder” but is pronounced “Murdoch” – have built up a network of acolytes who owe them a living or a favour. Their legal acumen and wealth, combined with a gangster-ish propensity for exploitation and bullying, give them a level of impunity that Alex blithely pushes to its limit. Patricia Arquette is Alex’s wife Maggie, who worries that both his philandering and his opioid addiction have returned – and on the second point at least, she is correct.

Climate advisers warn that current plans to protect against extreme weather are inadequate

Britain must prepare for global heating far in excess of the level scientists have pegged as the limit of safety, the government’s climate advisers have warned, as current plans to protect against extreme weather are inadequate.

Heatwaves will occur in at least four of every five years in England by 2050, and time spent in drought will double. The number of days of peak wildfire conditions in July will nearly treble for the UK, while floods will increase in frequency throughout the year, with some peak river flows increasing by 40%.

• World Cup 2026 cohosts defeat Socceroos 2-1 in Colorado

• USA captain Christian Pulisic injured; Jordan Bos opens scoring

USA captain Christian Pulisic was forced off early with a lower leg complaint as the World Cup cohosts scrapped to a 2-1 win over Australia at Dick’s Sporting Goods Stadium in Colorado on Wednesday.

A double from striker Haji Wright cancelled out a shock opening goal from Socceroos left-back Jordy Bos, handing Tony Popovic his first loss and denying Australia the chance to climb the Fifa rankings and potentially face an easier group at next year’s tournament.