Head coach urges parents to ‘write an excuse for school’ so kids can see his team’s World Cup last-16 game against Mexico

Harry Kane came to England’s rescue as they avoided a seismic World Cup upset against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to set up a last-16 tie against co-hosts Mexico next week.

The Bayern Munich striker scored twice in the last 15 minutes to save manager Thomas Tuchel’s blushes after Brian Cipenga had given the African side a shock early lead. It was the first time that England have won a game at the World Cup after conceding the first goal since beating West Germany in the 1966 final at Wembley.

Aviva Studios, Manchester
The artist’s latest show is a staggering takedown of colonial history, warfare and the migrant crisis, featuring buttons by the tonne and richly perfumed tea

History has repeated itself all over Ai Weiwei’s vast exhibition of monumental sculpture in Manchester. The flags of long-lost nations hang from the ceiling, bronzes looted by dead empires have been recast and reclaimed, dilapidated ancient ruins have been rebuilt. Everywhere you look here, you will find death, exploitation, greed and suffering from across human history, brought back to life and put morbidly on display. The first thing you see is a black glass chandelier made of skeletons – The Human Comedy – and a wall covered in images of the most powerful bombs ever invented. Like a head on a stake, this is art as warning.

This massive, ambitious exhibition is the Chinese artist at his most monumental, and as a result at his most effective. His subject matter works best at enormous scale, blown up, expanded, shoved in your face. Lining the back wall of this warehouse is a giant inflatable dinghy, 100 metres long, filled with figures in lifejackets. Think you can ignore the migrant crisis? Not here you can’t, because Ai has taken everyday, normalised tragedy and made it into a monument. He spent years interviewing hundreds of refugees, meeting people desperate for safety and a new life and produced a huge amount of work about it. This is the culmination of that project. Is it a good-looking work of art? Not really, but it makes a point, and makes it loudly.

Parliament, media and thinktanks are united in their view that more military spending is still not enough. But sacrificing domestic projects to pay for it is indefensible

Britain should spend less on defence. It is a waste of money and should be reduced so more could be spent on supporting employment, welfare and growth.

Why is there no such debate? Why should “defence” be awarded an almost religious invulnerability? At present, parliament, broadcasters, print and social media, thinktanks and pundits all admit to only two points of view. One is that Britain should spend more on defence, the other is that it should spend far more.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Whether it’s in the queue for Wimbledon or in a Boston bar on match day, romance is suddenly in the air – especially if you’re Scottish

Name: The sporty sex boom.

Age: New for summer 2026.

Americans eat 20bn hotdogs every year, but experts say they’re also among the most highly processed foods

In 1969, the late writer William Zinsser toured a hotdog factory and described his visit in Life magazine, opening with the lines: “I’ve often wondered what goes into a hotdog. Now I know and I wish I didn’t.”

All these years later, his words still reflect our love/hate relationship with the humble wiener. We love eating them, but would rather not think about what’s in them.

The pop and football giants’ combined star wattage will be united in matrimony this weekend – probably – in an event shrouded in secrecy. But here’s what we’ve gleaned

After an agonising 10 months’ wait, the wedding of the century is apparently here: if the reports are true, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will be tying the knot this weekend, uniting the houses of sports and entertainment in holy matrimony. When the couple announced their engagement on Instagram in August, as part of a carefully coordinated album rollout/podcast promotion tie-in, it shattered platform records, drawing 14m likes in its first hour. (It’s now up to 37.4m.)

Yet it’s remarkable, given the couple’s profile and the investigative horsepower apparently dedicated to cracking this wedding wide open, just how little we know for sure in this, the (purported) week of the event. We’ve sifted through all the speculation, sources “close to the couple” and scarcely concealed grumbling from spurned guests to answer the burning questions.

Thomas Tuchel’s mission to put a second World Cup star on the England shirt did not look as though it would reach the second knockout round. On a fraught and chaotic occasion in Atlanta, his team flirted aggressively with disaster. For 75 minutes, England mixed loose defending with an inability to take their chances. Which were plentiful. The Democratic Republic of the Congo goalkeeper, Lionel Mpasi, had the game of his life. Who needs Lionel Messi?

It was easy for England’s long-suffering fans to feel their minds being taken to dark places. Iceland 2016, anyone? They had only ever lost once to an African team – to Senegal in a friendly in June last year. The DRC, who have brought the romance to this tournament, a team to unite a war-torn nation, led through Brian Cipenga’s seventh-minute goal. They were primed to do something utterly extraordinary.

Analysis reveals extent of impact on NHS of placating Donald Trump over price of British medicine exports

The NHS will have to divert £45bn from essential services to pay for new medicines under the terms of the UK-US trade deal agreed last December, leading to more than 200,000 avoidable deaths of patients, analysis has found.

Ministers have defended the deal as a way of helping British drug exports to the US avoid tariffs, and giving patients in England access to potentially life-extending drugs that would otherwise be denied.

Parents and grandparents charged as police say case in Hamden not human trafficking but ‘intra-family situation’

Sixteen children were rescued from a dilapidated home in rural Ohio after being confined to just one room in “deplorable conditions” for much of the past four years, authorities said on Wednesday.

The children, who officials said are from the same family and were living in squalor with human waste all around, ranged in age from one and a half to 18 and included boys and girls. Some of them were unable to speak and one – an 18-year-old who was developmentally disabled – could not even spell her name.

Watchdog criticises ‘lack of proactive, effective casework quality assurance’ but says CCRC ultimately fit for purpose

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) must urgently improve its investigations to avoid a repeat of failings such as those in the Andrew Malkinson scandal, a watchdog has found.

Anthony Rogers, the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, delivered the warning after carrying out an independent inspection of casework by the body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice.