Despite contamination at Malkins Bank in Cheshire, it is deemed suitable for golf … and now a children’s play area

One morning in Sandbach, a neighbour appeared at Graham Warner’s door with a large folder: a delivery, she said, from an unidentified source.

“I think you’ll find this very interesting. Happy reading,” she said.

The class politics of extreme heat are very real and very dangerous – but that doesn’t stop the billionaire press from peddling its agenda

Every time you think the idiocy has hit rock bottom, it discovers a new level. It turns out there’s an even deeper hole you can dig for yourself than climate-science denial: heat-stress denial. Across the billionaire press last week, columnists and leader writers minimised the health impacts of the heatwave, particularly in schools. Expect more of this next week, when temperatures are forecast to soar again.

An editorial in the Telegraph (which represents the newspaper’s view) titled “Hot weather alarmism treats the public like children” maintained that “unlike in the seventies, when people were largely trusted to look after themselves, officialdom now feels the need to lecture the public about the risks of hot weather at every opportunity”. Extreme heat warnings are issued and weather maps are “painted in an alarming red”. Outrageous! Instead of issuing warnings, the government should just trust people to “take the appropriate precautions”. We should all “learn to live” with it. Quite right too: whatever happened to the bulldog spirit of ignorance and needless death? Cricket, warm beer, excess mortality: these are the markers of national character.

From Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You to Jodie Foster in A Private Life, an onscreen parade of psychoanalysts are unravelling before us, tapping into our worst fears

There is an old adage that “every therapist needs a therapist”. Even while the treatment was still in its infancy, Sigmund Freud said all psychoanalysts should “submit” themselves to being analysed. Recent cinema has been acutely aware of that painfully unbreakable cycle. In the likes of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Mary Bronstein’s hallucinatory Rose Byrne vehicle in which she plays a therapist and floundering mother caught in a downward spiral, or 2022’s Smile, in which a psychiatrist (Sosie Bacon) is pursued by a malignant metaphor for her poor mental health, therapists are as much at the mercy of their traumas as anyone else.

Rather than being relegated to supporting character status, as they long have been in everything from Good Will Hunting (1997) to The Sopranos, film is finally giving therapists their moment on the couch. Within the space of a month in UK cinemas, two more trick cyclists are taking on lead roles. Backrooms sees Renate Reinsve totally unravel from a secure, calm and collected psychiatrist and self-help author (albeit one who lives alone and subsists on a diet of lacklustre ready meals) to a nervous wreck attempting to navigate the uncanny corridors of her own mind. Meanwhile in Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life, a Francophone Jodie Foster takes on the role of shrink turned sleuth, deciding to investigate the death of a former client without realising she is trying to make up for her shortcomings as a spouse and parent.

It has hosted everything from Miss World to the Chemical Brothers. Now the vast London venue has become a city within a city boasting offices, hotels, a theatre, commanding views – and even a school

The money shot for the redevelopment of London’s Olympia exhibition centre is a bank of staircases and escalators soaring upwards, Aztec temple-style, to an elevated concourse sandwiched between the colossal barrel vaults of the original exhibition halls. In a modern homage to its historic predecessors, the concourse is also crowned by a glass vault, crimped like a fan, its origami pleats connoting sparkling, flashy newness, a tiara of cubic zirconia among the heritage diamonds.

Looming behind the tiara is what appears to be a cluster of cylindrical towers, but are actually the rounded ends of a steroidal stepped office block, with master-of-the-universe views over London, from Wembley to Crystal Palace. Already ensconced and enjoying those views are the staff of the Premier League’s media production arm, which has a brand-appropriate mini football pitch on its expansive terrace.

Birds of War is an award-winning docudrama in which its own directors fall in love while reporting the horrors in Syria. They explain why they needed a psychotherapist to complete it

The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles. Children scream and sirens blare as activist and videographer Abd Alkader Habak rushes to help the injured after the bombing of an evacuee convoy in Aleppo at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble pops up on Habak’s phone screen. “My bird are you OK?” says BBC journalist Janay Boulos. “Get away from there, run.”

For more than a year, Habak and Boulos have been working to document Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities against his own people, their connection deepening all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange represents the moment the pair’s relationship shifts from colleagues to something more. “I don’t want footage,” Boulos says, fear clearly detectable in her voice as she tries to follow things from her desk in London. “I don’t want anything, just please take care. I am here whenever you want to talk.”

I thought I knew what it was to be a good citizen. But after seeing him scramble up a ditch, beaming with pride at his rubbish-filled bag, I realised what it actually involves

I’ve always thought of myself as a good person: a good citizen and a good member of my community – at least in the ethical sense of the word. I presumed being good required refraining from harming the world and the people within it. An example of this being that I never litter.

However, when I moved home to Staffordshire after graduating in the summer of 2025, my understanding of what it means to be a good citizen – what it means to be “good” altogether – changed significantly.

⚽️ Kick-off time: 12pm local/5pm BST/1am AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Scott

The DRC make one change following the 3-1 win over Uzbekistan. Striker Cédric Bakambu makes way for an extra midfielder in Ngal’ayel Mukau. There are plenty of stars familiar to fans of British football in the team: Aaron Wan-Bissaka (West Ham), Axel Tuanzebe (Burnley), Noah Sadiki (Sunderland) and Yoane Wissa (Newcastle) start, while Aaron Tshibola (Kilmarnock) and Edo Kayembe (Watford) are on the bench.

No surprises in the England starting XI. Especially if you’ve just read that communiqué from Jacob Steinberg. Thomas Tuchel makes three changes to his starting XI after the 2-0 win over Panama. Djed Spence replaces the injured Jarell Quansah at the problem position of right-back. Declan Rice returns at the expense of Morgan Rogers. And Noni Madueke starts on the right wing again, displacing his Arsenal colleague Bukayo Saka.

Prime minister says he will take no lectures from Tories after Kemi Badenoch says investment plan is insufficient

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has suggested Andy Burnham borrow billions more to cover the hole in the government’s Defence Investment Plan (Dip), in a move which economists say would severely reduce Burnham’s headroom against his fiscal rules.

The prime minister said on Wednesday that his successor – who is very likely to be the Makerfield MP – should use the headroom to fund a £4.7bn gap in defence spending over the next four years.

Labour leader-in-waiting wants to close loophole preventing deportation of sex offender

Andy Burnham will explore “all possible options”, if he becomes prime minister, to close a legal loophole that prevented the deportation of a “vile” Rochdale grooming gang leader.

In his first significant intervention as Labour leader-in-waiting, Burnham said nothing would be “off the table” in the case of Shabir Ahmed, 73, who is expected to be released from prison on Thursday.

Dr Bill Kirkup says section of Valerie Amos’s report criticising ‘normal birth ideology’ was removed before publication

The head of an inquiry into maternity care altered its final report to remove criticism of “normal birth ideology”, one of her expert advisers claims.

Dr Bill Kirkup said Valerie Amos “listened to the wrong voices” before a section outlining the potential risks of encouraging women to have a vaginal birth “disappeared” from the final version of her government-commissioned report.