Public warned to check travel information before leaving home as disruption from heatwave continuesRail travellers face continued disruption on Sunday after record temperatures, thunderstorms and heavy rainfall played havoc with the transport network.A spokesman for East Midlands Trains told people to expect a significantly reduced service in and out of London at the weekend after an overhead line was damaged. Meanwhile, the number of flights arriving at airports continued to be restricted. Continue reading...

Prime minister blasted for ‘terrible error of judgement’ in making Dominic Cummings – found in contempt of parliament - his aideProminent MPs on the committee investigating fake news and disinformation want Boris Johnson’s aide Dominic Cummings, who has been found in contempt of parliament, to face sanctions in his new role at the heart of government. These could include docking his salary, denying him a security pass and putting pressure on the prime minister to force him to give evidence to parliament.Johnson’s decision to appoint Cummings as a key adviser outraged many MPs because it came less than four months after parliament unanimously passed a motion, tabled by the government, to censure him for failing to testify at the fake news inquiry. Continue reading...

Starring in Crazy Rich Asians and Captain Marvel turned Gemma Chan into a household name. But it was not always so easy. She talks about giving up law, dealing with shyness and becoming Hollywood royaltyGemma Chan is nervous, as if she’s waiting for the dentist to perform a particularly painful extraction. We meet in a café filled with babies and tired-looking mothers, in a fancy, rich-people part of north London. The setting is appropriate, given what we’re here to talk about: I Am Hannah, the new improvised Channel 4 drama she co-created with director Dominic Savage. It tells the story of a woman in her mid-30s who dates, scattershot, via apps, while feeling the weight of the biological and social pressures to have a baby. Chan, 36, is keen to point out that it is not autobiographical.“I mean, God. I have friends who are so happily married with children, on their third, some friends who’ve done it who are struggling with elements of it, and other friends who have no interest in it, are free and single.” She inhales sharply. “Yeah. It’s weird. I do find it strange that in your 30s, suddenly, you become more aware that, if I’m going to do it, try to have a biological child, I need to think about it now.” She clams up. “Sorry, I don’t have anything to add to that.” Continue reading...

If street protests are too shouty, craftivism may offer an alternative and still powerful means of political expressionCraftivism is like punk. Sarah Corbett say this so gently and rationally that if you squint at her workshop of women peacefully stitching dream clouds in a Devon studio, you might try to summon the spirit of the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. You might.Where punk snarled and spat to dramatically shake up the nation, craft looks ineffably twee by comparison: needlework is not the Buzzcocks, knitting is not the Ramones. And yet through painstaking, collective action, craftivism has become an unlikely social and political force. Continue reading...

Independent MP Alex Greenwich to introduce bill developed by cross-party working groupThe New South Wales health minister has declared it’s “time for change” when it comes to abortion law, ahead of the introduction of a new bill which would see pregnancy terminations regulated as a medical procedure around the state.Currently abortions in NSW are dealt with under the Crimes Act 1900. Continue reading...

CSIRO says dramatic climate events are compounding the effects of underlying global heatingExtreme climate events such as heatwaves, floods and drought damaged 45% of the marine ecosystems along Australia’s coast in a seven-year period, CSIRO research shows.More than 8,000km of Australia’s coast was affected by extreme climate events from 2011 to 2017, and in some cases they caused irreversible changes to marine habitats. Continue reading...

Thousands of curious visitors – and fascists – descend on the Apennine townDressed in black T-shirts, their arms inked with tattoos, Fabrizio and Mameli Gamberini are on their yearly homage trip to Predappio, the birth town and burial place of Benito Mussolini.“We’re fascists,” Mameli proudly admits as she leaves Predappio Tricolore, a souvenir shop teeming with Mussolini memorabilia, on Friday morning. “We come every year at the end of July to buy a few new keepsakes, visit his tomb and leave some flowers in his honour.” Continue reading...

Passengers advised to check conditions before travel as Met Office issues yellow weather warningFlights have been cancelled and rail travellers face delays after the UK experienced record temperatures, thunderstorms and heavy rainfall.East Midlands Trains (EMT) told people to expect a significantly reduced service in and out of London at the weekend after serious damage was caused to an overhead line, while the rate of arrivals was restricted at airports. Continue reading...

An ever closer alliance between Beijing and Moscow has the Pentagon worried as a threat to US power in east AsiaIt sounds unpleasant, even painful. But as they ponder the linked challenges posed by China and Russia, Pentagon strategists are earnestly discussing whether Vladimir Putin, Russia’s famously athletic leader, will perform a “reverse Nixon”.This is neither a daring swivel on the parallel bars nor an unusual sexual position. At issue is whether Putin will emulate the 37th US president, Richard Nixon, whose groundbreaking 1972 cold war outreach to China tilted the strategic balance in America’s favour. Continue reading...

When the writer and director arrived in Wales to shoot a new drama, she was nursing a broken heart and romantic ideas of British life. Then she discovered the reality soap opera...As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma, The Woman In White to Notting Hill, filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthering Heights. And my nights were short because soon I was smacked with a 9pm curfew. No, I haven’t been convicted of a crime and placed under house arrest. I discovered Love Island.The real drama is in what they don’t say as they wash their bronzer off for bed and change into their night-time thongs Continue reading...

Police being given military air support as authorities scour areas of Manitoba for teenage murder suspectsCanada’s armed forces have been drafted in to provide air support as police go door to door in the search for two teenagers suspected in three killings in the country’s remote wilderness.Authorities have urged “all Canadians” to be on the lookout for 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, after the fatal shooting of a tourist couple – American woman Chynna Deese, 24, and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler, 23 – and the murder of Vancouver professor Leonard Dyck, 64. Continue reading...

Berejiklian government says stage two offer from Lendlease ‘did not meet the government’s expectations’A firm that knocked down Sydney’s Allianz stadium has refused to rebuild the venue for the amount of money on offer from the Berejiklian government.The New South Wales government is searching for another company to rebuild the stadium after Lendlease rejected its offer. Continue reading...

Canadian authorities have released surveillance video from a store in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, taken on 21 July that shows teenage murder suspects Kam McLeod (with moustache and beard) and Bryer Schmegelsky (in army fatigues). Both teenagers are being sought by police after they were charged with the murder of Vancouver university professor Leonard Dyck and are suspected in the murder of a young Australian-American couple – Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese.

A reluctance to offend China and an information blackout has meant the persecution of the ethnic minority has gone under the radar. But pressure for change is buildingOn Wednesday, Sadam Abdusalam went to Australia’s federal Parliament House for the first time and spent almost 12 hours meeting politicians – meetings he has spent almost two years hoping for – in which he pleaded for their help to bring his wife and nearly two-year-old son home.Last week Abdusalam’s story was broadcast on Four Corners, detailing how his wife and son are trapped in China because they are Uighurs – ethnic minority Muslims. Continue reading...

The Labor leader defends the party’s recent pattern of capitulation, promising a policy reboot that won’t happen overnightAnthony Albanese does not hold back when sharing his situation report. “We’ve just got the lowest vote for the Australian Labor party in over 100 years,” the Labor leader tells Guardian Australia’s politics podcast.We are talking about a progressive backlash evident on social media – a negative response to Labor’s tendency post-election to vote for the Morrison government’s policy after critiquing it. Continue reading...

The Arctic Circle is suffering from an unprecedented number of wildfires in the latest sign of a climate crisis. With some blazes the size of 100,000 football pitches, vast areas in Siberia, Alaska and Greenland are engulfed in flames. The World Meteorological Organisation has said these fires emitted as much carbon dioxide in a month as the whole of Sweden does in a year

The owner of Sports Direct has battled with investors since his company’s stock market debutThe farce over Sports Direct’s annual results is the latest fraught episode in Mike Ashley’s relationship with the City.Shares in the company sank on the group’s stock market debut in 2007 and continued their downward trajectory for two years as profits disappointed and Ashley, the founder and controlling shareholder, kept his distance from investors and the media. A pick up in trading then won over fund managers, helping to nearly triple Sports Direct’s share price, taking the company’s value to a peak of more than £5bn by mid 2014. Continue reading...

Forty cases may have been tainted by involvement of police informer Nicola GobboMore than a dozen of Australia’s most high-profile criminals could have their convictions quashed after their lawyer was revealed to be a police informant.At the end of the first trial related to the “Lawyer X” informant scandal, Faruk Orman was freed on Friday after serving 12 years in jail for the killing of a Melbourne crime figure. Continue reading...

Roundhouse theatre, London

Joseph McCann fails to enter pleas on 35 charges relating to attacks against 11 victimsThe alleged serial rapist Joseph McCann has again refused to appear in court to enter his pleas over 35 charges relating to attacks against 11 victims.The 34-year-old is accused of attacking victims aged between 11 and 71 across five police force areas over a two-week period between 20 April and 5 May. Continue reading...

Sheffield Hallam MP stops short of quitting after being accused of sexual harassmentSheffield Hallam MP, Jared O’Mara, has announced he will be taking time out to deal with his mental health after his former aide accused him of being “the most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with”.In a statement on his website, the independent MP apologised to his friends, family and constituents, saying: “I have not been honest with you about the depths of my depression and self-loathing.” Continue reading...

Ex-Swedish PM tells US president political interference in rule of law is off limitsSweden has hit back at Donald Trump after the US president reacted angrily to a decision to press assault charges against the American rapper A$AP Rocky, insisting its independent judicial system must do its work.“The rule of the law applies to everyone equally and is exercised by an independent judiciary,” tweeted former prime minister Carl Bildt. “That’s the way it is in the US, and that’s certainly the way it is in Sweden. Political interference in the process is distinctly off limits. Clear?” Continue reading...

Extra police called in to restore order after disturbance at party in Bavarian townAbout 50 German teenagers rioted as they attempted to free a 15-year-old reveller from police custody after he disrupted a school-leavers’ party, police in Bavaria have said.The police said only a large-scale show of force restored order after the teenagers threw bottles at the windows of the police station in Starnberg, near Munich, and tried to break open the entrance door late on Thursday. Continue reading...

Bank accuses Andrea Orcel of ‘dubious moral behaviour’ over its withdrawn job offerSpain’s Santander has accused one of Europe’s highest-profile banker of “dubious ethical and moral behaviour” after he sued the bank for €100m (£90m) when it withdrew an offer to make him chief executive.The bank accused Andrea Orcel of making secret recordings during the dispute. Continue reading...

Exclusive: New prime minister refuses to say if he abandoned security for 2018 night in billionaire’s castleA trip Boris Johnson made to Italy for a party held by a billionaire socialite ended with the then foreign secretary at an airport “looking like he had slept in his clothes”, struggling to walk in a straight line and telling other passengers he had had a heavy night, the Guardian has been told.Pictures of the now prime minister along with an account from a fellow traveller shed further light on Johnson’s weekend away at the home of the media owner Evgeny Lebedev, who is known for hosting uproarious parties for the rich and famous at his converted castle near Perugia. Continue reading...

Minister says withdrawal agreement including backstop will not be renegotiated

An urban waterway is more than just a short cut through the city – it’s a testament to the power of nature over neglectThe roar of the road is receding with each step down and with it the light is changing; it is dancing, mirrored and then dappled in the ripples of the water. One layer down and the city has become an entirely different place.I, like many, am using the canal as a quiet cut-through. It smells different down here; there’s the dankness of the water, for sure, but there’s a wealth of green filtering the fumes from above. And the soundscape changes – song birds, the curious grunt of a bank of geese eyeing me and the dog warily, the lap of the water’s edge and the groan of metal sidings that are there to repair the bridge. Continue reading...

One of the stars of last year’s breakout hit Succession, the actor is getting used to being recognised in the US. He talks about juggling success with family life – and why he’s starring in a film about electricityMatthew Macfadyen was idling on the stoop of his boutique Manhattan hotel last month when a man walked past and said warmly: “I loved you in Billions.” Macfadyen, at 44, is one of the handful of male British actors on US TV – among them Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West and the actor for whom Macfadyen was mistaken, Damian Lewis – whom to American eyes can appear indistinguishable. “Thank you!” he replied, cheerfully. (Macfadyen is extremely polite, and inclined to be grateful for any recognition at all.) “Then he came back two minutes later and said: ‘Succession! So sorry.’” He roars with laughter.Tom Wambsgans, the role Macfadyen plays in Succession, is robustly against type. In the 14 years since he played Darcy to Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Macfadyen’s career has leaned heavily towards period drama. He did Anna Karenina and Little Dorrit. When the pilot script for Succession reached him, he had just played Mr Wilcox in the BBC adaptation of Howards End. Tom, the ambitious, oleaginous husband to an Elisabeth Murdoch-type heiress was as far from these foppish roles as Macfadyen could get, a gift even before the show took off. “I thought: ‘I don’t know if this is going to have a life and I don’t know where the characters are going to go. But it’s clever and farcically funny.’” At the very least, he thought, “it’ll show I can do an American accent”. Continue reading...

A third of Latvia’s culture budget goes on music education and a new festival aims to galvanise national identityIn the UK it is almost obligatory for a culture minister never to have attended an opera. In Latvia, a small country that takes these things very seriously, the newly installed culture minister hasn’t just seen plenty of operas, he’s starred in them.Nauris Puntulis a tenor who also had a successful pop career in his 20s, but is now the craggy, grey-haired minister-from-central-casting in the country’s centre-right coalition government. Continue reading...

Minh was 16 when he was kidnapped, raped and trafficked to the UK, and then locked up and forced to grow cannabis. But when the police found him, he was treated like a criminal rather than a victim. By Annie Kelly

Woman claimed killings were a crime of passion, but prosecutors say international ‘criminal groups’ were involvedA woman disguised in a blond wig shot to death two Israeli men at a Chinese restaurant in an upscale Mexico City shopping mall, in what appears to be an assassination carried out by an organized crime hit squad.The alleged assailant was quickly arrested and claimed the double murder was a crime of passion – but authorities said on Thursday that both victims were well-known figures in the Israeli underworld. Continue reading...

Friday: A purported letter from a constituent killed a motion for a formal inquiry into Angus Taylor – for now. Plus: Katharine Murphy on medevacGood morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 26 July. Continue reading...

Cambridge was hottest spot at 38.1C, as Met Office issues storm and flood warnings overnightBritain has experienced its hottest July day and second hottest day on record as the mercury hit 38.1C, the Met Office said.The highest temperature recorded on Thursday was in Cambridge, which is only the second time temperatures over 100F have been recorded in the UK, according to the Met Office. Thursday’s record temperature surpassed the previous high for the month of 36.7C (98.06F) set at Heathrow in July 2015. Continue reading...

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Exclusive: candidate who contested John Frydenberg in Kooyong says material was ‘clearly designed to deceive voters’Independent candidate Oliver Yates has confirmed he will challenge Liberal party Chinese language signs, designed to resemble Australian Electoral Commission material, in the court of disputed returns.Yates – who unsuccessfully contested the seat of Kooyong against treasurer Josh Frydenberg – told Guardian Australia he will lodge a challenge before the 40-day deadline after the return of writs, set to expire on 31 July. Continue reading...

Father of Cpl Joshua Hoole says soldiers may still be at risk in hot weather trainingThe father of a soldier who collapsed and died during a fitness test on a hot summer’s day has said there were organisational failings in the way the exercise was run.Afghan veteran Cpl Joshua Hoole, from Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, died during the routine physical assessment in Brecon in south Wales in July 2016. Continue reading...

A new anthology collects 12 authors’ visions of life in the region in 2048 – providing a liberating change for some

Country’s first democratically elected head of state played major role after fall of Ben AliBeji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia’s president and a major figure in the country’s transition to democracy after the Arab spring, has died.Politicians and social media users had been calling for greater transparency about the president’s health since he was admitted to hospital in May amid fears for the country’s stability. Continue reading...

Dublin voices concern over UK government’s plan to seek new deal without backstopThe Irish government has expressed alarm at Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit as tension begins to mount over the increased risk of no deal.Michael Creed, Ireland’s agriculture minister, said the new position of the British government, which involves demands for a new deal without the Irish border backstop within 98 days, was a concern. Continue reading...

Dutch actor who found fame in the 1982 sci-fi film classic Blade RunnerThe source of much of the plangent poetry in Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi drama Blade Runner was the electrifying and ruminative performance by the Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, who has died aged 75 after a short illness. Hauer played Roy Batty, a replicant in a futuristic society who revolts against his foreshortened existence by going rogue and demanding a longer lifespan; when he discovers that this request is impossible to grant, he crushes his creator’s head in his hands.Despite such extreme moments, Roy ended the film not as a villain but as a sympathetic creature tormented by his own mortality. Rather than killing his pursuer, played by Harrison Ford, Roy saves his life and then makes him an audience for a brief reminiscence – “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” – before surrendering stoically to his own inevitable demise: “Time to die.” Continue reading...

Andrew Buck, 37, and a teenager were part of a group of aircraft travelling from NorthumberlandTwo British men who died in a plane crash in France were on “the trip of a lifetime”, according to the firm which owned the aircraft.Andrew Buck, 37, and an 18-year-old who has not been named were travelling in a leisure aircraft when it crashed in a valley near Larche on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Soft Brexit opponent Matthew Elliott joins Dominic Cummings as key policymakerMatthew Elliott, the former chief executive of Vote Leave and the founder of the rightwing pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance, has been named as an adviser to Sajid Javid at the Treasury in the new government’s latest controversial backroom appointment.After managing the new chancellor’s failed campaign for prime minister, Elliott joins Dominic Cummings, the former head of the Vote Leave campaign who is now one of two senior advisers to Boris Johnson, at the heart of policymaking. Continue reading...

Australian dollar falls as Governor Philip Lowe says ‘reasonable to expect an extended period of low rates’The Australian dollar has fallen sharply after Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe said that the central bank could keep cutting the cash rate in the coming months to support the ailing economy.After two successive reductions in the rate in June and July left it at an unprecedented 1%, Lowe said in Sydney on Thursday that borrowing costs were likely to remain low for some time. Continue reading...

Frenchman was unable to refuel his jet-powered hoverboard on a boat as plannedFrenchman Franky Zapata has failed in his effort to cross the Channel on his jet-power hoverboard.Zapata fell into the sea as he attempted to land on a vessel to refuel half way across the Channel. Continue reading...

Scotland’s first minister uses first letter to Boris Johnson to ask for alternative Brexit optionScotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has written to Boris Johnson to tell him that she is “looking forward” to discussing with him her proposals for a second independence referendum.Using her first letter to the new prime minister to remind him of Scottish government analysis which found that a no-deal Brexit could cost 100,000 jobs across Scotland, she writes: “Given your public comments about leaving the EU on October 31 with or without a deal, “come what may” and “do or die” , it is now – more than ever – essential that in Scotland we have an alternative option”. Continue reading...

Police use loudspeakers to counter online reports that children were being killed for bridge-building project

One male body fetched out of Shadwell Basin while another is pulled from the river in KingstonTwo bodies have been found during police searches for swimmers who went missing in separate incidents on the Thames.Scotland Yard said the body of a man was pulled from the river Thames at around 4.30pm on Wednesday in Kingston, south-west London. A 47-year-old reportedly entered the water and began swimming on Tuesday evening. Continue reading...

Big challenges demand a big, convincing narrative that taps into the public mood

Dutch actor renowned for his role as ‘replicant’ Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci fi epic, was equally at home in Hollywood and European cinemaRutger Hauer, the Dutch actor best known for his role as android Roy Batty in seminal sci-fi film Blade Runner, died at the age of 75. His website announced the news, saying that Hauer had died on Friday “after a very short illness… Rutger passed away peacefully at his Dutch home”.Director Guillermo del Toro was among those paying tribute, calling him “an intense, deep, genuine and magnetic actor that brought truth, power and beauty to his films”. Continue reading...

Tusk mocks new PM’s ability to bluff as Barnier asks: is it an orderly Brexit, or a no deal?• Boris Johnson begins cabinet appointmentsBoris Johnson was put under pressure on his first day as prime minister by both Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier to explain “in detail” his Brexit plan.In a curt letter of congratulations, Tusk, the European council president, made a thinly-veiled reference to Johnson’s reputation for bluffing his way through difficulties. Continue reading...