Our critic returns to the place of his birth to find the rough old town where he grew up has been transformed – and not just by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buying the football team

The actor Rob McElhenney, reclining and bare-chested, gives a come-hither look as you enter the Tŷ Pawb (“Everybody’s House”) art gallery/market in Wrexham, Wales. McElhenney, famously, co-owns Wrexham football club with Ryan Reynolds and, clearly, you can’t get away from their glamour in this small city. I’ve only just got out of the taxi and here they are.

This is my first visit in years to the place where I was born. My earliest memories are set in these redbrick streets: standing on a carnival float costumed as an astronaut, going to the cinema for the first time to see Sleeping Beauty, visiting a cafe in the High Street for a rum baba. Later on, my dad would find me asleep in my seat in Wrexham football club’s Racecourse Ground, in the year we’d got season tickets in a final attempt to fill me with a love of The Game. It was money wasted – doubly so as he was an Everton fan.

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© Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

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© Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

From safe-for-swimming shores to grand expanses of golden sands, classic seaside activities to exciting beachside adventures, the Welsh coastline is a haven for families of all ages

For more information on holidays in Wales, see visitwales.com

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© Photograph: Visit Wales

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© Photograph: Visit Wales

Memory-making holidays don’t have to cost the earth. Welsh travel writer Ross Clarke rounds up three family-friendly getaways that come in at under £1,000

Whether you’re looking to build sandcastles and soak up the sun on the seashore, get active with adrenaline-pumping pursuits, or simply want to get out in nature with the kids in tow, Wales has you covered. The best part? You don’t need to break the bank, thanks to a wealth of budget-conscious options from accommodation to activities. Here are three budget-friendly Welsh holiday suggestions …

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© Photograph: PR image

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© Photograph: PR image

With wildlife, hiking and miles-long sandy beaches on offer without leaving the UK, visitors look back on times spent enjoying the beautiful landscapes of Wales and its bustling, vibrant capital

Annie, 32, London
I love taking city breaks to Cardiff in the summertime. You can’t beat sitting in Cardiff Bay in the sunshine, having lunch while looking at the boats, and heading into town for a night out. Everything is within walking distance – you don’t have to trek across the city to get to another bar you like – it seems so much more manageable than the sprawl of London. One Saturday my girlfriend and I just followed the sun around Cardiff Bay from bar to bar, which seemed to coincide with all the happy hours – we got drinks and nibbles everywhere we went and always had a gorgeous view of the water. Also, being a huge Gavin and Stacey fan, I like going to Barry Island for the sandy beach, slot machines and chip shops – not just the Nessa tea towels I seem to buy every time I visit.

Honor, 63, North Yorkshire
I was first introduced to sea kayaking in Pembrokeshire more than 40 years ago. Exploring by kayak is fabulous; you’ve got hidden coves, sea cliffs, beaches and islands to travel out to and circumnavigate. Depending on the time of year, you have lots and lots of different seabirds; puffins if you’re lucky, but other birds as well. I’ve never seen a whale, but when you’re paddling around the coast you can find inaccessible little rocky bays and often a great mass of seals have hauled themselves on to the rocks to sunbathe.

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© Photograph: WLDavies/Getty Images

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© Photograph: WLDavies/Getty Images

Exclusive: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies says rules result in overcriminalisation and discriminatory outcomes

Labour is being urged to fulfil its pledge, made in opposition, to reform the law on joint enterprise in England and Wales, which is causing “systemic injustice”.

A report by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) says that the law on joint enterprise – where two or more defendants are accused of the same crime in relation to the same incident – has led to overcriminalisation, over punishment, discriminatory outcomes and convictions where there is no compelling evidence of intent.

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© Photograph: Chris Ryan/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Chris Ryan/Getty Images

Kai McKenzie, 23, expresses gratitude for outpouring of support in first public comments after attack by ‘biggest shark I’ve ever seen’

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An Australian surfer whose leg was bitten off by a shark has promised he’ll be “back in that water in no time” as he recovers from surgery.

Kai McKenzie, 23, was surfing off North Shore beach on the mid-north coast of New South Wales on Tuesday morning when a suspected three-metre great white shark bit him.

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© Photograph: Phil Gallagher

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© Photograph: Phil Gallagher

Wales might be small, but between its dramatic coastline and rolling hills, the country offers a jam-packed roster of incredible options to make any stay unforgettable

Experience mountain bike paradise
With its famously hilly terrain, dense forests and sweeping valleys, Wales is a mountain biker’s dream. From the rugged trails of Coed y Brenin in Eryri (Snowdonia), north Wales, to the forest tracks of Afan Forest Park in south Wales, there’s an epic adventure for every rider. For an adrenaline-fuelled biking experience try Antur Stiniog’s network of 14 trails, from beginner through to rocky, technical options. There’s also a handy uplift service, so you can enjoy the downhill thrill without the upward push. Meanwhile, BikePark Wales, near Merthyr Tydfil, boasts more than 40 purpose-built trails for novices and pros alike, complete with jumps, drops and technical sections. Most facilities offer high-quality bike hire, too.

Be enchanted by Portmeirion
Designed by Welsh architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1973, Portmeirion is both wonderfully charming and entirely unexpected. An Italian-inspired village nestled on the coast of north Wales, its vibrant, pastel-coloured buildings, lush subtropical gardens, and scenic coastal views make it a photographer’s dream. Indulge your Wes Anderson fantasies as you explore quirky shops, quaint cafes, and relax in uniquely serene surroundings. For the ultimate experience, consider staying overnight in the historic Hotel Portmeirion, to enjoy the village’s magical atmosphere after day-trippers have headed home.

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© Photograph: Visit Wales

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© Photograph: Visit Wales

Morgan was only candidate to put herself forward to replace Vaughan Gething as Welsh Labour leader

The new leader of Labour in Wales has described her pride at being on the brink of becoming her party’s first female head of state in the UK as she promised to heal divisions within the Welsh government.

Eluned Morgan, who is a peer, admitted it was “odd” that a baroness had become leader of Welsh Labour but said her connections in both UK houses of parliament would help make life better for the people of Wales.

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© Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Torsten Bell’s comments come as party leadership has become embroiled in a row over the two-child benefit cap

• UK politics live – latest updates

One of Labour’s rising stars has said the party will have failed in government if it does not reduce inequality, even as the prime minister faces a bitter internal battle over a key poverty-reduction measure.

Torsten Bell, the former head of the Resolution Foundation turned Labour MP, said Britain’s longstanding economic problems could not be solved by economic growth alone.

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© Photograph: Mark Thomas/Alamy

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© Photograph: Mark Thomas/Alamy

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly acknowledged significant leadership changes within the agency. This CISA leadership change marks the departure of Brandon Wales, who has served admirably as Executive Director for several pivotal years. Taking this place is Bridget Bean, serving as the next director of the agency.  Reflecting on Wales's tenure, Director Easterly expressed deep gratitude, stating, "Brandon has guided CISA through some of the most serious threats facing our Nation." With over two decades of federal service, Wales played a crucial role in shaping CISA into its current form, navigating challenges such as the SolarWinds breach and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. His departure, planned collaboratively, ensures a seamless transition to new leadership.

CISA Leadership Change: Bridget Bean Takes Over as the New Executive Director

[caption id="attachment_83474" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Source: CISA[/caption] Stepping into the role of Executive Director in August is Bridget Bean, currently serving as Assistant Director for Integrated Operations. Bean brings over thirty years of federal government experience to her new position. Director Easterly highlighted Bean's exceptional leadership qualities, emphasizing her pivotal role in fostering a unified team within CISA. "We thank Brandon for his dedicated service and welcome Bridget as she assumes this critical role," Director Easterly remarked, highlighting the CISA leadership change and the agency’s commitment to continuity and operational excellence. This leadership change at CISA follows other recent leadership appointments within CISA, including Jeff Greene as Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity and Trent Frazier as Assistant Director for Stakeholder Engagement. Director Easterly expressed confidence in these appointments, noting their extensive backgrounds in cybersecurity policy and stakeholder collaboration, respectively.

More Leadership Changes at CISA

Jeff Greene, previously Senior Director at the Aspen Institute and Chief for Cyber Response & Policy at the National Security Council, emphasized the importance of CISA's cybersecurity mission. "I'm honored to join Team CISA," Greene remarked, highlighting the agency's pivotal role in safeguarding national cybersecurity. Trent Frazier, who transitioned from Deputy Assistant Director for Stakeholder Engagement, spoke enthusiastically about his new role. "I look forward to continuing our strategic collaboration efforts," Frazier stated, emphasizing the importance of engaging both governmental and industry partners in CISA's initiatives. As CISA continues to evolve under new leadership, Director Easterly reaffirmed the agency's commitment to enhancing national cybersecurity and resilience. The agency's ability to attract top talent highlights its critical role as America's Cyber Defense Agency. The changes in CISA's leadership signal a proactive approach to addressing evolving cybersecurity challenges, ensuring continuity in strategic initiatives, and reinforcing collaborative efforts across sectors essential to national security.

Kai McKenzie fought the shark off before catching a wave into North Shore beach, where an off-duty police officer used a dog leash to save his life

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The severed leg of a surfer has been retrieved after it washed up on a beach after a shark attack off the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

Kai McKenzie, 23, was surfing at North Shore beach near Port Macquarie on Tuesday morning when a suspected three-metre great white shark bit him.

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© Photograph: NSW Police

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© Photograph: NSW Police

Richard Bonfield recalls how he organised a peaceful gathering that led to an inquiry and, ultimately, victory for local people

Re George Monbiot’s article about peaceful protests following the jailing of four Just Stop Oil activists (A record sentence for a Zoom call, arrests for those holding signs outside. This is a blight on British democracy, 19 July), I agree with peaceful protests that can make a difference in changing people’s minds and hearts, but not with actions that cause misery to ordinary people, as was the case with the M25 protest.

In May 2011, I was the organiser of the biggest peaceful protest outside the Senedd Cymru against proposals for swathes of windfarms and pylons to cover huge areas of mid-Wales. Initially, each village set up it own protest group, but quickly everyone realised that we needed one group to fight these imposed developments – result, all 25 groups came together.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images/Bloomberg Creative Photos

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© Photograph: Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images/Bloomberg Creative Photos

Expected to be the only candidate to lead Welsh Labour, she will have to use her experience to unite her party

• UK politics live – latest updates

Earlier this summer, a party was held at a church hall in Ely, a housing estate a few miles west of Cardiff city centre, to mark the 30 years Eluned Morgan has spent in frontline politics.

It was a chance to celebrate how Morgan went from an idealistic youngster picking coffee in Nicaragua alongside the Sandinistas in the 1980s to seats in the European parliament, the House of Lords and the Welsh parliament, the Senedd.

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© Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

National Police Chiefs’ Council analysis reveals 2m women a year estimated to be victims of male violence

Two million women are estimated to be victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”, police chiefs have warned.

Crimes including stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence affect one in 12 women in England and Wales, with the number of recorded offences growing by 37% in the past five years and the perpetrators getting younger.

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© Photograph: Robert Matton AB/Alamy

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© Photograph: Robert Matton AB/Alamy

Welsh-Jewish film-maker Mike Joseph records his dialogue with a Palestinian journalist that reaches across an agonising divide

Made on an infinitesimal budget but with compassion, empathy and consideration, this documentary is the product of an encounter between two journalists. Mike Joseph is a Welsh Jew whose mother just barely escaped the Holocaust (the rest of her immediate family weren’t so lucky); Sami Abu Salem is Palestinian reporter living in Gaza, who has lost members of his family and close friends in the violence inflicted on Palestinians since the founding of Israel. His mother remembers the slaughter that killed dozens of people in her village, Bureir or Burayr, in 1948, a decimation wrought as Israelis established the kibbutz Bror Hayil nearby.

Years later on that kibbutz’s farms, Abu Salem worked as a young man, excited to be visiting the location of his family’s home town, even if it had all been wiped out. He even tried to find the eucalyptus tree his mother told him she once planted as a child. Now in middle age, Abu Salem tells Joseph about his family’s history on a Zoom call, the camera filming Abu Salem on the screen and cutting away to Joseph sitting at his desk. In voiceover, Joseph apologises for the seeming one-sidedness of the setup, which seems to favour Joseph as the interviewer-protagonist, but it couldn’t be helped. The complementary footage shot in Gaza at the same time by Abu Salem was destroyed when bombing commenced in the wake of Hamas’s brutal 7 October attack.

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© Photograph: Mike Joseph and Sami Abu Salem

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© Photograph: Mike Joseph and Sami Abu Salem

Inspector says monitoring after short sentences could be stopped and youth services could take on some cases

Ministers should consider reducing the caseload of the probation service by up to 40,000 offenders if they are to ease the overcrowding crisis in prisons, a watchdog has told the Guardian.

Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation in England and Wales, said the current model was “not sustainable” and suggested ministers should free up capacity by no longer asking probation officers to monitor people released from prison after short custodial sentences for crimes such as shoplifting.

He suspects that each of the probation service’s 12 regions in England and Wales are already struggling to cope with the number of cases.

Approximately two-thirds of the cases his staff inspect fall short of the standards that have been set to keep the public safe.

97% of probation delivery units examined by the watchdog were falling below the standards set for good practice.

He is drawing up an inspection programme for probation hostels – halfway houses for high-risk offenders – because at present there is no independent oversight of their work.

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© Photograph: Mark Richardson/Alamy

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© Photograph: Mark Richardson/Alamy

One of the greatest British snooker players who won the world championship six times

Ray Reardon, who has died aged 91 from cancer, was snooker’s world champion six times in the 1970s, the decade in which the game was changing from subterranean folk sport into a TV attraction.

Always immaculately dressed, a highly popular and genial ambassador for the game, ever adept at engaging a crowd, he remains the oldest champion and, on the strength of his 18-15 defeat by Alex Higgins at the age of 49 in 1982, its oldest finalist. After his wins in 1970, 1973-76 and 1978 he was still good enough to reach the 1985 semi-finals, when he was 52, before Steve Davis, the dominant figure of the 80s, trounced him 16-5.

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© Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas Sports Photography/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas Sports Photography/Getty Images

Police say they rescued second two-year-old unharmed after pram carrying twin girls rolled off platform at Carlton train station

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A father has been hailed a hero after he died alongside his two-year-old daughter when a twin stroller rolled off a railway platform in Sydney’s south on Sunday.

Police said the man jumped down to try to save his twin daughters who were in the pram that rolled into the path of an oncoming train at Carlton station shortly before 12.30pm.

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© Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

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© Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

After a washout July, Met Office forecasts it will be brighter and drier than of unseasonal conditions of late

After weeks of wet and chilly weather, it looks like summer might be finally arriving. Temperatures are expected to reach highs of 27C in parts of the UK next week as the school summer holidays get under way in England.

Clouds and cooler weather returned this weekend after the hottest day of the year so far on Friday, with a temperature of 31.9C at St James’s Park, central London, making it the warmest recorded day of 2024.

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© Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

A massive dump of snow on Friday night has continued into Saturday, bringing ‘super thick fresh powder snow’ to alpine areas

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Christmas in July has finally arrived for ski resorts this weekend as the first widespread snowfall of the season blankets parts of Australia’s south-east, bringing more than 50cm falls in popular tourist destinations.

David Clark, destination marketing manager for Mt Buller and Mt Stirling ski lifts, said the snow “just keeps coming”.

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© Photograph: Aidan Haynes/Falls Creek Resort

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© Photograph: Aidan Haynes/Falls Creek Resort

St James’s Park in central London records highest reading, with health alerts in place across the Midlands, eastern and southern England

UK temperatures have reached their highest point of the year so far, the Met Office has confirmed, with 31.9C recorded at St James’s Park in central London.

The high temperatures, which were recorded largely along the eastern half of the country, came as the majority of schools in England and Wales closed for the summer.

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© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

Northumbrian village was named as nation’s favourite, just ahead of Portmeirion and St Andrews

Bamburgh, the Northumbrian village known for its sprawling sand dunes and imposing castle, has retained its title as the UK’s best seaside destination for the fourth consecutive year.

A survey of 4,700 people by the consumer group Which? placed the Northumberland coastal village as the nation’s favourite, ahead of Portmeirion in Gwynedd and St Andrews in Fife.

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© Photograph: PindropandHop/Getty Images

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© Photograph: PindropandHop/Getty Images