• Updates from second game of the series at the MCG
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The teams are now entering the field for the pre-match ceremony. There’s a huge roar for the Maroons as they’re led out by Daly Cherry-Evans. The Blues get a much more frosty reception. Though maybe the crowd is shouting Boo-lues and not boo? We can never be certain.

Superstar NBA player Patty Mills is delivering the game ball in a Maroons jersey, which is apparently a thing that happens now. Hopefully we’ll see him doing some warm ups with a Steeden before an NBA game at some point in the near future.

Royal Mail staff are being asked to sell their shares to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, while Doordash reportedly approached Deliveroo about a takeover

Investment management giant Legal & General’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) funds are to divest from Glencore due to concerns over its coal production.

LGIM warns this morning that it believes companies need to do more to play their part in efforts to mitigate climate change risks.

“LGIM remains concerned that Glencore has not disclosed plans for thermal coal production that are aligned with a net zero pathway.”

Outgoing Dutch PM will take over from Jens Stoltenberg as secretary-general in October

More congratulations are coming in from European leaders.

Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister and incoming Nato secretary-general, is a well-liked figure among heads of state and government.

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Ali ponders England’s chances:

Good morning Tim Maitland! “Spent more time than I’d care to admit trying to decide who to watch now that Yorkshire have been so inconsiderate as to win inside three days. I’ve plumped for Essex v Durham on the basis that it’s the most significant in terms of the championship itself and that I should at least get a spirited rearguard action from second-placed Essex.

”Judging from the second over of the day Dean Elgar is not going to last long facing Callum Parkinson and a Kalahari Desert of rough outside the left-handers off stump. And the nightwatchman Jamie Porter has gone for 3. A beautiful ball from Matthew Potts nipped in a fraction to literally take the top of off: it would have done for better batsmen.Essex 43 for 2.

”It’s something to do while I get the char siu and poached eggs on rice ready.” Sounds delicious. While you’re at it, I think buginabreeze was up for a lunch order…

• Reaction to England 0-0 Slovenia and much more besides
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The lopsided draw explains away the general bafflement about why England are favourites with the bookies. There are better teams on what we’ve seen so far but the odds on England’s main rivals are kept higher due to their more complicated paths to the final. England’s are artificially lower as they avoid most of the big guns and have less to beat.

Euro 2024 odds: 4/1 England, 9/2 Germany, Spain, 5/1 France, 6/1 Portugal, 14/1 Netherlands, 18/1 Belgium, Italy, 25/1 Austria, 40/1 Switzerland, 66/1 Denmark. The rest 100/1 or more.

Potential tie-up with meal-delivery firm Doordash was reportedly discussed but rejected in May

Shares in the UK food delivery company Deliveroo have risen after reports that US rival Doordash held takeover talks with the business, with analysts suggesting other bidders could come forward in the coming weeks.

The US meal-delivery group Doordash flagged an interest in a takeover of Britain’s Deliveroo last month, but talks ended because the two sides could not agree on the value of the deal, Reuters reported.

Annual pre-tax profits climbed 186% to £34.3m, lifted by television upgrades and tumble dryers

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The online electrical goods seller AO World has enjoyed a near-tripling of profits thanks in part to booming tumble dryer sales during the wet winter and televisions for Euro 2024.

Revenues at the retailer, which sells 15% of all domestic appliances in the UK, were also bolstered by the continued popularity of air fryers, with the company attributing this to customers looking for a cheaper alternative to takeaways amid the cost of living crisis.

Alice Diop, whose documentaries have explored the lives of people in housing estates, wants to mobilise voters against the far right

The award-winning French film-maker Alice Diop has warned of “rampant racism” in France and launched a collective to mobilise residents of housing estates to vote in the snap election in an attempt to hold back the far right.

“For people like me it’s life or death,” said the acclaimed director, as Marine Le Pen’s far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is forecast by pollsters to take the largest number of seats in the French parliament on 7 July and is seeking an absolute majority to form a government.

Barbican, London
From Cuba to Mexico, from Hong Kong to Iraq, the Belgian artist has made 40 mesmerising films of kids at play, including three with guns up to no good in a war zone

Cries and laughter, clapping and calls and screams of delight fill the gallery. There are children everywhere on the multiple screens that fill the lower floor. Kids in Cuba careen round the streets of Havana on precarious trolleys fashioned from bits of wood and discarded junk. They rattle and slew on cobbles and jink round corners, under the amused and indulgent eyes of adults as they come hurtling past. The game is both exhilarating and frightening to watch, the young pilots and passengers inches away from hideous injury. Talk about health and safety.

Little girls on a London housing estate swipe at each other’s conkers in a game that’s been largely banished from British school playgrounds. Of course, there’s a lot more to the culture of conkers than whacking horse chestnuts on a bit of string. How careful you have to be – preparing the conker, drilling it and threading it on to a string. All games, like art, have their rules and conditions.

Green New Deal Rising is backing six of party’s candidates but says leadership cares more about business than climate

• UK election live – latest updates

Rachel Reeves talks to business executives. She met some in December, after a £150,000 donation to Labour from a financial services firm. She met more in January, at capitalism’s annual jamboree in Davos. And just this week she told a meeting of City bankers their “fingerprints are all over” Labour’s manifesto.

But she does not talk so much to young people worried about the climate emergency. Or so 23-year-old Zak found when he tracked Reeves down to a cafe where she was campaigning on Wednesday morning. “I’m a young person with Green New Deal Rising,” he said, approaching her.

Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams in spacecraft attached to International Space Station as engineers fix problem

Boeing’s public relations crisis is now out of this world: the company’s Starliner spacecraft – and the two astronauts on board – is currently stuck in space.

After what started as an eight-day mission, US astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have now spent the better part of a month on their space capsule attached to the International Space Station as engineers work out the problems with Starliner.

West Indies all-rounder’s T20 World Cup final heroics left him feeling listless but joy of playing eventually returned

“Will 2016 be the sole focus of the piece?” comes the text back. That’s after a couple of friendly nudges and even more days of SMS silence. Carlos Brathwaite doesn’t really want to talk about his T20 World Cup-winning exploits at Kolkata in 2016. Three more pixellated dots unfurl on the phone screen … here we go. That drawing board is getting a revisit any second now. “Sorry, I don’t just want to regurgitate the same story.”

Fair enough. With the latest T20 World Cup reaching the business end in the Caribbean, the footage of a 27-year-old Brathwaite peppering the Eden Gardens stands eight years ago while the bowler – a body-buckled Ben Stokes – looks on in pained disbelief, will do the rounds once more.

Our digital ecosystem thrives on division in everything from politics to pop. Devoted fanbases are one result - ready to unleash hell on haters

Being a geriatric millennial means I was born too late to take advantage of cheap house prices and too early to become an influencer. I was, however, born at the perfect time to be a fan. The late 90s were the halcyon days of teenage fan culture: technology was advanced enough to let you connect with other devotees through online discussion forums and pour your heart into fan sites (I had a GeoCities site devoted to the grunge band Bush). But it also wasn’t easy to spend unhealthy amounts of time obsessing online: dial-up connections meant regularly getting booted off the internet so your parents could use the phone.

Now, of course, there’s nothing preventing people spending every waking minute cultivating unhealthy parasocial relationships. Superstars like Taylor Swift have armies of fans that span the globe, ready to unleash hell on haters. Earlier this year, for example, Paste magazine published a (negative) review of Taylor Swift’s album The Tortured Poet’s Department without a byline, to keep the writer safe. The outlet explained that “in 2019 when Paste reviewed Lover, the writer was sent threats of violence”.

Trump has convinced many Americans that stridency is a sign of strength while truth and humility signal weakness

I just turned 78, and frankly I’m scared about what might come down Thursday evening when the oldest candidates ever to compete in a presidential race debate each other.

I’m less worried that Joe Biden will suffer a mental lapse or physically stumble than I am that Biden will look weak and Donald Trump appear strong.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Spooked by Biden’s wealth tax, big tech venture capitalists are showing their progressive credentials were only ever skin deep

Hardly a week passes without another billionaire endorsing Donald Trump. With Joe Biden proposing a 25% tax on those with assets over $100m (£80m), this is no shock. The real twist? The pro-Trump multimillionaire club now includes a growing number of venture capitalists. Unlike hedge funders or private equity barons, venture capitalists have traditionally held progressive credentials. They’ve styled themselves as the heroes of innovation, and the Democrats have done more to polish their progressive image than anyone else. So why are they now cosying up to Trump?

Venture capitalists and Democrats long shared a mutual belief in techno-solutionism – the idea that markets, enhanced by digital technology, could achieve social goods where government policy had failed. Over the past two decades, we’ve been living in the ruins of this utopia. We were promised that social media could topple dictators, that crypto could tackle poverty, and that AI could cure cancer. But the progressive credentials of venture capitalists were only ever skin deep, and now that Biden has adopted a tougher stance on Silicon Valley, VCs are more than happy to support Trump’s Republicans.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of several books on technology and politics. His latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, is available now

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar for his uproarious performance as a swivel-eyed news anchor – a cross between Billy Graham and Donald Trump

‘The time has come to say … is ‘dehumanisation’ such a bad word?” The speaker is Howard Beale, the sweat-drenched, swivel-eyed TV news anchor in this classic 1976 satire from screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky and director Sidney Lumet, now on rerelease. Depressed by the loss of his wife and by getting fired due to dwindling audiences, Beale proclaims he will kill himself live on air and is then re-hired as a colossal popular and then populist success, his celebrity delirium turning him into a crazy prophet, telling millions of Americans to scream out of the window that they are as mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Beale is a mixture of Billy Graham, radio star Orson Welles telling America the Martians are coming, and that notorious ratings-obsessive Donald Trump.

Network finds its place in the distinctive Hollywood tradition of showing TV as meretricious, mindless and corrupt … as opposed, presumably, to movies. It’s a classic 70s mainstreamer, a terrifically well-made, well-written talking point to put alongside other richly enjoyable small-screen dramas such as Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George from 1968, James L Brooks’s Broadcast News in 1987, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show from 1994 – and Antonio Campos’s Christine, about Christine Chubbuck, the American TV news reporter who in 1974 really did kill herself live on the air. Chayevsky denied she was the inspiration for this film. Peter Finch gives an uproarious performance as Beale, for which he posthumously won the best actor Oscar after succumbing to a fatal heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel – a fate hardly less satirical or poignant than Beale’s own.

A journalist merges family history with his own experience in Beijing to provide a fascinating insight into Chinese life and politics

It’s hard to think of a country that has changed as fundamentally as China without altering its basic political system. When I first visited Beijing, three weeks before the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, the main avenues of the city were rivers of bicycles. The very few cars you saw were official ones, with senior party figures sitting stiffly in the back. In the street, you’d be surrounded by staring, smiling people who had never seen a European before. When I jotted things in my notebook, they would crane their necks to see the strange, barbaric signs I was making. If you asked the students in Tiananmen Square what they wanted, they invariably said “democracy”; yet scarcely any of them had the slightest idea what that meant.

Deng Xiaoping, who ultimately gave the order to open fire on the demonstrators, was responsible for the extraordinary enrichment of ordinary Chinese people, eventually lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. It’s conventional to say that modern China is based on a compromise: we’ll make you rich, if you don’t ask for political change. But that makes it sound as though it’s an open choice. In fact, the Chinese Communist party decided after 1989 that even the slightest letup in its fierce control over society might lead to a new Tiananmen, or to the kind of collapse which happened to the Soviet Union. There’s very little ideology in today’s Chinese system, as anyone who has had to plough through the basic documents of “Xi Jinping Thought” can attest. It’s all about keeping control.

Country-pop singer and noted equine enthusiast tells BBC of plans ahead of her ‘legend’ slot on Sunday

Shania Twain has said she hopes to ride on horseback to her set at Glastonbury on Sunday.

The US country-pop star light-heartedly told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday: “I love horses. I love all animals. I’m going to go see if there’s a horse around I can borrow – maybe I could go riding, that would be awesome.”

Lawn Mowing Simulator joins a long line of popular simulation games of real-life activities. But why trim fake grass? We ask some cutting-edge experts

There’s a school of thought that insists video games are purely about escapism. Where else can you pretend you’re a US Marine Force Recon (Call of Duty), a heroic eco warrior preventing a dodgy company from draining a planet’s spiritual energy (Final Fantasy), or a football manager (Football Manager) – all from the comfort of your sofa?

But the antithesis of these thrills-and-spills experiences are the so-called anti-escapist games. Farming Simulator, PowerWash Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator – these hugely successful titles challenge the whole concept of interactive entertainment as something, well, exciting. Now we have what at first glance appears the most boring of all, Lawn Mowing Simulator.

Whatever your outside space – garden, balcony or window box – you can turn it into a haven for nature with a pint-sized pond and a slowworm sunbed

It is easy to feel hopeless about the future of British wildlife. The 2023 State of Nature report found that one in six species are at risk of extinction, with the groups most under threat including plants, birds, amphibians and reptiles, fungi and land mammals. But many of us can do something simple to help: gardening.

“There are 23m gardens in Britain, so we can make a real difference,” says Rob Stoneman from the Wildlife Trusts. Gardens cover a bigger area than all the UK’s nature reserves combined, he says. “If you haven’t got a garden, perhaps you could have a window box, or get involved in a community garden, or apply for an allotment.”

We’re already drowning in US pop culture. Surely there’s a case for giving our homegrown talent a chance to compete

• Elijah is a DJ and writer specialising in Black British culture and electronic music

It’s been five years since Stormzy headlined Glastonbury, a defining moment in Black British music history. But if you listen to stations like Capital Xtra, Kiss and BBC Radio 1Xtra, they still centre American hip-hop and R&B – a staggering amount of it from the early 2000s – such as 50 Cent, Ja Rule and Chris Brown. It’s particularly vexing that BBC Radio 1Xtra, which uses “Amplifying Black music and culture” as its tagline, still doesn’t prioritise Black British artists in its daytime programming. Homegrown music is reserved for the night-time slots, when fewer people are listening. Why are we paying for a station that doesn’t focus on representing our music?

It’s no secret that the publicly funded station faces heavy competition from commercial rival Capital Xtra, but the answer can’t be to copy its tired formula of “hits” all day and night. Last week I listened to 1Xtra and Capital Xtra, and they both played Joe Budden’s Pump It Up, a US rap hit from 2003, within minutes of each other in the middle of the afternoon. It’s as if our airwaves are frozen in time, with no benefit to our artists or ecosystem.

Study finds carbon credits could raise billions for climate action but only with changes, such as rigorous standards

The carbon-credit market must reform or “go out of business”, leading scientists have concluded in an international review of the offsetting industry.

The market for carbon offsets shrank dramatically last year after a series of scientific and media reports found many offsetting schemes had little environmental impact.

President corrects ‘great injustice’ with clemency for military personnel ‘convicted simply for being themselves’

Joe Biden has moved to correct a “great injustice” by pardoning thousands of US veterans convicted over six decades under a military law that banned gay sex.

The presidential proclamation, which comes during Pride month and an election year, allows LGBTQ+ service members convicted of crimes based solely on their sexual orientation to apply for a certificate of pardon that will help them receive withheld benefits.

Daniel Křetínský asks more than 100,000 shareholders, including current and former staff, to sell shares

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The Czech billionaire bidding to buy Royal Mail has sent letters to more than 100,000 shareholders, including current and former staff, setting out its formal £3.75bn offer for the business.

Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group is asking Royal Mail staff, who own more than 5% of the shares in the company, to sell in a move that would help pave the way for the takeover.

He’s the most popular YouTuber in the world, known for his extravagant videos and now … chocolate. Caitlin Cassidy goes to see what all the fuss is about during his Australia visit

It is just shy of 2pm and I am high on sunshine and pop music and free chocolate bars.

In 15 minutes Jimmy Donaldson, better known as social media sensation MrBeast, is due to take to a stage outside the Sydney Opera House and give away 10 – mostly –luxury vehicles.

Met police say suspect is accused of harassment and offences under the Online Safety Act

A man has been arrested after several men in political circles were targeted in an alleged honeytrap plot.

The Metropolitan police said the suspect was held in Islington, north London on Wednesday accused of harassment and offences under the Online Safety Act.

President should rethink goal of reclaiming all lost territory, says Reform UK leader in latest remarks about war

• UK election live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has urged Volodymyr Zelenskiy to seek a peace deal with Russia, “otherwise there will be no young men left in Ukraine”.

The Reform UK leader, who has been criticised for suggesting the west provoked Russian aggression against Ukraine, said it was time for the Ukrainian president to rethink his goal of reclaiming all territory lost to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, as such a mission was going to be “incredibly difficult”.

Kenya is in shock after unprecedented scenes in Nairobi left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted, as protests over proposed tax hikes turned deadly, prompting the government to deploy the military

WikiLeaks founder’s release was culmination of years of behind-the-scenes diplomatic lobbying, which got a big boost when Albanese took office

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Standing outside a US court on the island of Saipan in the western Pacific Ocean, lawyer Jennifer Robinson hailed the “historic” plea deal to secure the freedom of fellow Australian citizen Julian Assange.

After denouncing the case against the WikiLeaks founder as “the greatest threat to the first amendment in the 21st century”, Robinson gave a shoutout to the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, “for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy”. It was those outstanding qualities, she said, “which made this outcome possible”.

Pine writes, directs and stars – alongside Danny DeVito and Annette Bening – in this rambling comedy mystery about a shaggy, quirky pool attendant

Chris Pine is usually a likable screen presence but he’s let down here by a flimsy script and over-indulgent direction – which could have something to do with the co-screenwriter (Chris Pine) and the first-time director (er, Chris Pine). You can see what he was going for: a knockabout stoner neo-noir paying homage to old-school Los Angeles, but this is more like Chinatown without the savagery, or Inherent Vice without the brains, or The Big Lebowski without the drugs.

Pine’s character is very much a watered-down version of Jeff Bridges’ Dude (the strongest thing he consumes is an egg cream mocktail). He’s a shaggy, aimless slacker who lives in a trailer next to the apartment-complex pool he tends with zen-like focus. As his character name, Darren Barrenman, forewarns, he’s little more than a collection of quirks: he makes origami gifts; meditates underwater at the bottom of his pool; types soul-baring letters to Erin Brockovich. He also dresses in short shorts and a pink blazer, but later seems to have a bottomless dressing-up wardrobe, and regularly campaigns about public transport at the city council with the aid of hand-made dioramas. None of this really makes any sense.

The Lakers legend sees parallels between the WNBA rookies and the rivalry that defined his career. Both relationships have plenty to say about America itself

In the 1970s, the NBA was sputtering. Playoff games were on tape-delay. Many of the league’s teams were in debt, baseball was still firmly America’s game and lesser-known small market franchises were winning titles. But then an influx of talent changed the entire operation. The 1979-80 NBA season saw rookies Magic Johnson and Larry Bird explode on to the scene with the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, respectively. But even then, the two were known quantities and so, too, was their budding rivalry. It all began in college the year prior. The 1979 NCAA title game featured Johnson’s Michigan State team defeating Bird’s Indiana State in what is still the most-watched basketball game ever in the US. It was a matchup that featured Magic’s flash and charisma against Bird’s quiet genius. Two skilled passers making their teams better. Fast-forward 45 years and history is repeating itself, this time with the WNBA’s Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Just ask Magic himself.

“Larry and I heightened the NBA’s overall popularity,” Johnson wrote on X on Monday. “The Lakers and Celtics sold out arenas throughout the league and increased television viewership exponentially. The higher viewership numbers led to the NBA signing significantly larger TV contracts which then led to higher salaries for the players. Caitlin and Angel are now doing the same thing, selling out arenas and increasing the viewership.”

Edward Kang, 20, allegedly broke in to the home of the victim and attacked him over an online feud

An online gamer from New Jersey recently flew to Florida, broke into the home of a fellow player with whom he had feuded digitally but never met in person, and tried to beat him to death with a hammer, according to authorities.

The allegations leveled by the Nassau county, Florida, sheriff’s office against 20-year-old Edward Kang constitute an extreme example of a phenomenon that academics call “internet banging” – which involves online arguments, often between young people, that escalate into physical violence.

Our series on transformative theatrical discoveries continues with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, as remembered by the man who played Aaron Burr on its London premiere in 2017

My agent said: “They want to see you for this show, Hamilton.” I had never heard of Alexander Hamilton but I knew it was hip-hop. I’m not really that kind of performer. My agent said: “Just listen to it.” When I did, I thought the person who has written this is obviously aware of all of musical theatre. They’re aware of Sondheim, they’re aware of Kander and Ebb – and Gilbert and Sullivan, even.

The chosen form is hip-hop in parts, but essentially it’s a very strong piece of musical theatre about the creation of the US as we know it. It’s also about a young man who is really struggling to try to make something of himself which is the stuff of musicals.
It was so beautifully written, so smart, so witty and yet very raw emotionally. I just fell in love with it.

Film-maker Erica Tremblay tells a thoughtful tale about a woman’s battle to care for her niece against backdrop of the authorities’ ambivalence towards Native American peoples

In Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone made a deep impression with her stillness and controlled presence. This is different; in a fiction-feature debut from Native American documentary-maker Erica Tremblay, Gladstone’s performance is looser, more open, less reserved. Simply put: she does more acting, and gives strength and substance to a dense, knotty family drama which though maybe anticlimactic in the final act – and too reliant on a handgun plot-point – is fluent and heartfelt.

Gladstone plays Jax, living on Oklahoma’s Seneca-Cayuga Nation reservation, trying to put behind her a life of dealing drugs but still on the fringes of crime. She has been looking after her teen niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), since the disappearance of Roki’s mother Tawi, but Roki fervently believes that Tawi will reappear for the annual powwow at which they once the stole the show with their mother-daughter dance. Things are even more complicated by the fact that Jax’s father is white; this is Frank (Shea Whigham) who, since the death of Jax’s mother, has remarried Nancy (Audrey Wasilewski), a white woman.

Statutory nuisance complaint lodged by Save Windermere against United Utilities is a first over sewage pollution

Campaigners fighting to stop sewage discharges into Windermere, the Lake District’s largest lake, have made a statutory nuisance complaint against a water company in the first legal action of its kind.

The civil complaints are normally used in noise disputes, or over noxious smells. But the environmental barrister Nicholas Ostrowski has for the first time lodged a complaint on behalf of campaign group Save Windermere against United Utilities over raw sewage discharges into the lake.

Euro 2024’s lowest-ranked team have already made history – now Sagnol and Kvaratskhelia are dreaming of the last 16

“But, I mean, it’s Portugal,” came the typically frank and measured reply from the Georgia manager, Willy Sagnol. Minutes earlier, such was the giddiness surrounding the nation’s first point at a major tournament on Saturday, he had been given a standing ovation as he entered the press conference room in Hamburg from journalists who follow the team. The same went for Giorgi Mamardashvili, after his staggering goalkeeping display.

Conversation, however, soon flipped to the game in Gelsenkirchen on Wednesday night and it was a case of carefully dousing the flames of unfiltered excitement. The obvious thing to say at this juncture is Georgia won’t stop dreaming.

Plus: second-tier stadiums in the Euros; the player who was even younger than Lamine Yamal and more

• Mail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

“When is the latest in a tournament a team has scored a goal and gone on to win it, or at least made the final?” asks John McDougall. “For example: qualifying for the knockouts with three 0-0 draws, then maybe winning on penalties after another 0-0 draw before finally in the quarter-final …”

We’ve been through every World Cup, European Championship, Copa América and Africa Cup of Nations where data is available, because what else is there to do in a heatwave. Alas there are no goalless runs to match John’s hypothetical scenario, but there are some decent tales nonetheless.

I read them all so you don’t have to. None in isolation would set the world alight, but look closely and there are some good ideas

It is true that election manifestos can’t be compared like with like – and in recent years, the variation of detail, trustworthiness and meaning has become more pronounced than ever. But it is also true that there are things to be gleaned from their recurring themes. Moreover, there are objectively good ideas which may emanate from a party that will never be able to enact them, but nevertheless deserve exposure.

Looked at that way, it’s a great year to be a dentist, or in construction. Every party (bar Reform and the SNP) talks a great game on dental provision – even, ironically, the Conservatives, who have a £200m “recovery plan”. Toothache doesn’t feel very metaphorical when you have it, but the issue speaks to a broader truth that Keir Starmer made explicit in his manifesto launch speech: that the real-life impacts of degraded public services are too stark to ignore – which is precisely why everyone is pledging that the nothing-works years are over.

Chess players from Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are introducing children traumatised by violence to the joys of playing the board game

WSJ reporter faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of spying charges US says are politically motivated

A Russian court has begun a closed-door trial of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges that he, his employer and the US government have all described as politically motivated.

Gershkovich appeared in a courtroom in Ekaterinburg on Wednesday, his head shaven by prison authorities, after being transferred from the Moscow jail where has been held since March 2023.

From being popular to taking risks, a myth-busting study of adolescence

What does your reminiscence bump look like? If this sounds like a blow to the head with a touch of amnesia, it isn’t – but it might be just as painful. No, as Lucy Foulkes explains in her eye-opening guide to the psychology of adolescence, it’s the period of life during which people report the greatest number of important autobiographical memories. For most of us it starts around 10 and peaks at 20, taking in a plethora of firsts: first kiss, first love, first time drinking alcohol or taking drugs, first time away from home. Not to mention exams, bullying, breakups and bereavement. Thinking about it, maybe a concussion would be preferable. But then, as Foulkes shows, it’s these enduringly vivid years that define the adults we become.

Chloe’s reminiscence bump gets off to an accelerated start, thanks to her wild friend Natalie: “When I was 14, I broke my ankle, so was off school. Natalie knew where my spare key was so she let herself in, and she woke me up with a spliff and a bottle of alcopop. The school rang me but I said I hadn’t seen her.” Once the ankle had healed, they headed to Skegness to get tattoos, and then spent much of the coming years “having sex with lots of people, taking lots of drugs, truanting from school, going out in cars with much older men”.

After a season of loss and sadness, scuba diving had brought me some peace. When the beast burst out of the wreckage to join me, it provided an invaluable lesson in perspective

It just floated there, a turtle huddled in the black corner of the wrecked ship’s bow. Its head, melon-sized and scaled, was about all I could see, as it dipped in and out of the torch beam. My partner and I were in Barbados in 2023 on a holiday we could barely afford but had booked through a veil of grief, after the death of my mother-in-law eight months before.

The death came with a laborious house sale, orphaned dog and family feuds. This trip was an escape from the loss and shock. We learned how to scuba dive between sunburn sessions. As an anxious individual, diving is as close as I have ever come to genuine peace – the enforced isolation and unquestionable surrender to the slow and the still.

Insiders from sites such as eBay, Depop and Vinted give advice on how to get the best cash for preloved items

The competition is stiff, so finding the right place to sell your clothes will give you the best chance of getting them in front of people who might want to buy them.

With the collapse of centrist parties, voters are caught between the National Rally, a left mired in controversy – or abstaining altogether

It’s a choice between the plague and cholera. Millions of French voters are agonising at the prospect of having to choose between a candidate of Marine Le Pen’s hard-right anti-immigration National Rally (Rassemblement National – RN) party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise – LFI) movement in parliamentary election runoffs on 7 July.

Barring a dramatic comeback by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc in the 30 June first round, the second ballot in roughly half of the 577 constituencies will pit a representative of Le Pen’s illiberal national populists against a candidate of the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire – NFP), a hastily cobbled-together alliance of leftwing parties dominated by Mélenchon’s radical leftists.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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With huge views taking in four countries – on a good day – the Isle of Man’s fells and peaks offer walkers a true sense of untapped adventure

There’s a magic pool in Ballaglass Glen. Scored deep into the ancient flagstone, amid the oak, larch and beech, it’s fed by a cascade, spangled with shafts of sunlight and probably hides mooinjer veggey – Manx Gaelic for the mythical “little people”. As I slid my tired legs into the numbingly cold water, I felt a sense of exhilaration.

It had been the most glorious of days, tackling my first of the island’s eight new summit walks; between them, these medium-to-challenging routes conquer 25 of the Isle of Man’s 300-metre-plus peaks. The island might not be big – just 33 miles by 13 miles at its longest and widest points – but it has plenty of rugged terrain and satisfying highs.

It added Netflix even though I already have a subscription, and even after a five-hour chat, it hasn’t been removed

I’ve been a Virgin Media customer for more than 20 years but I am at the end of my tether over a £17.99 a month charge for streaming subscriptions that keep on mysteriously appearing on my bill.

Our contract is for TV and broadband at £55 a month. We pay each month by direct debit and never use any extras or charged-for services. We have separate subscriptions for things like Netflix and Amazon Prime and pay for them directly.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Mike Abrahams travelled the country photographing National Front marches, prison life and people’s everyday struggles

Oscar-nominated actor, who has been cast in the next Knives Out film, says he ‘can’t just go play make-believe’ after being run over by his own snowplough a year ago

Jeremy Renner doesn’t “have the energy” to take on challenging roles after his near fatal snowplough accident 18 months ago, saying he is “very terrified” to act again.

Speaking on the Smartless podcast, which is hosted by actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, the Oscar-nominated actor said he was finding acting harder than he did before January 2023, when he was hospitalised in critical condition after his own Sno-Cat ran him over while he was clearing snow from the roads near his home in Nevada.

Tory MP Alister Jack says he ‘had no knowledge of the date of the election until the day it was called’ and is not under investigation

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Here is a what we can expect on the campaign trail today:

Labour will talk up its pledge to end the 8am scramble for GP appointments by training more doctors and updating the NHS app so slots are easy to book and rearrange.

Home Secretary James Cleverly, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer will all be out campaigning in the East Midlands during the day.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting will be promoting the message, saying his party is also committed to bringing back the family doctor, to give patients continuity.

While Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey continues campaigning across traditionally Tory heartlands in southern England, his Scottish counterpart will be in the south-east of Scotland.

Alex Cole-Hamilton says his party is focusing its aim on getting the SNP out of power and targeting the Uparty in some key seats ahead of the 4 July ballot.

Reform UK chairman Richard Tice will be in Scotland giving a speech on net zero and “saving the oil and gas industry”.