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A record amount of sargassum has piled up along coastlines of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Sargassum is a brown seaweed that causes lower oxygen levels and foul-smelling gases when it decomposes on beaches. Researchers and marine scientists have warned that the algae build-up starves underwater plant life of sunlight, affects human health and can leak arsenic into sand Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/lR9MD43

Chief justice signs temporary order to permit work while court considers emergency appeal from administration The US supreme court has allowed Donald Trump to continue construction of his controversial White House ballroom for now, temporarily pausing a lower court order that would halt much of the project. Supreme court chief justice John Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday, permitting work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from Trump’s administration. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/cN1DJSs

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh This fantastic comic play from the Radio 4 trio unleashes a torrent of great gags and illusions Horror pastiche has a proud lineage at this festival – for example Garth Marenghi , and Andrew Doherty’s hit Gay Witch Sex Cult two summers ago. In that company, Crybabies ’ The Scaring can stand as tall as the demon Haeldrrun towering over its finale: it’s another fantastic comic play from the Radio 4 trio of Michael Clarke, James Gault and Ed Jones with chills as well as laughs, and production values rarely seen on the fringe. A tale of demonic possession and a disillusioned priest, set in a guesthouse that makes the Overlook in The Shining seem five-star by comparison, it’s as tightly packed with smart gags as a hotelier’s cellar with the corpses of slaughtered guests. The plotting, too, is twistier than Regan’s neck in The Exorcist , a moment referenced in one creepy/comical scene here featuring a haunted dolly. It begins with two priests exorcising a bea...

Canadian contest sparked outrage from scores of frustrated runners online and in Canadian media The organisers of the Edmonton Marathon have admitted the course was more than half a kilometre too long, after outrage from scores of runners who complained about the distance. The error resulted in the upending of runners’ personal bests and potentially prevented some from breaking records. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/dv5NfyF

Boxing champion says he will raise their daughter, Kaya, to remember the late actor’s ‘immense talent’ Hayden Panettiere ’s daughter will be raised to remember her mother’s “immense talent” and “incredible career”, according to a tribute posted on social media on Tuesday by Wladimir Klitschko, the ex-lineal world heavyweight boxing champion and the late Hollywood actor’s former partner. Their daughter, Kaya, has been raised by the Ukrainian retired world boxing champion since 2018, when Panettiere ceded full custody to concentrate on her battles with alcoholism, depression and substance abuse. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/qvYr6Tj

Lawyers seek dismissal of state charges after Mangione pleaded guilty in federal case over Brian Thompson killing A New York state ⁠judge on Monday ⁠effectively ​postponed Luigi Mangione’s trial on murder and weapons charges over ⁠the 2024 killing of a health insurance company CEO, after Mangione pleaded ⁠guilty last week to separate federal charges. The ​trial had ‌previously been ‌scheduled to begin on September 8. Mangione ‌has pleaded not guilty to the state charges. Mangione’s lawyers on Friday asked New York state justice Gregory Carro, who is overseeing the state case, ‌to dismiss the charges. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/uvlHEZy

Chelsea chair Boehly and Walter each own about 13% Sale would give Clearlake effective control of club at 86% The Chelsea chair, Todd Boehly, and director Mark Walter are considering selling their shares in the club to the majority owners, Clearlake Capital, in a deal that would give the private equity company complete control at Stamford Bridge. Clearlake, whose investment is managed by Behdad Eghbali and José E Feliciano, already owns more than 60% of Chelsea, but in an unusual arrangement agreed when buying the club from Roman Abramovich four years ago, they share operational control with a consortium led by Boehly, who along with Walter and Hansjörg Wyss each own about 13%. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/v8eJDfw

Four-year-old boy, two men and three women among those who died since storms began on 11 August, officials say Days of storms and flooding in Indiana left at least six people dead as flood waters peaked in Indianapolis’s White River – and rains were expected to ease in the state capital region and other parts of the state on Sunday. A four-year-old boy, two men and three women were among those who had died since the storms began on 11 August, state homeland security department spokesperson Liz Woods said. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/jBoebNy

Underbelly, Edinburgh The story of Henry ‘Box’ Brown, who succeeded in mailing himself out of bondage, is recounted rather than fully dramatised Henry “Box” Brown is wrapped up in chains when he has an idea to claim his freedom. As inspiration hits him, actor Josiah Alpher flexes his muscles and, miraculously, the chains appear to pass through his neck. Magic! It is a neat visual metaphor for a true story that seems miraculous in itself. In 1849, Brown made a break to flee slavery near Richmond, Virginia, by posting himself in a wooden crate to Philadelphia, a state where ownership of human beings had been phased out by the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. Alpher describes a painful journey, squashed, upturned and knocked about, before Brown’s happy delivery . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/IJoC4vO

Figures disclosed by 33 NHS trusts show temperatures on wards during July rose above 28C limit set by NHS England Hospitals in England have recorded temperatures of almost 42C this summer, with surgeries being cancelled because operating theatres’ cooling units stopped working in the intense heat. The Northern Care Alliance NHS foundation trust, which runs four hospitals in Greater Manchester, recorded a temperature of 41.8C during last month’s heatwave – 14C above the recommended safe maximum. Some patients are also cancelling their own surgery because it is too hot for them to travel. Hospitals and GP surgeries are offering frail elderly patients appointments at the start and end of the day, when it is less hot, to make it easier for them to attend. Ambulance services are struggling to keep some medications at the right temperature because it gets so hot in the back of their vehicles. NHS ambulance trusts have relaxed their usual dress code rules to help crews stay cooler, for examp...

Pole beats Rybakina to win her first title in 11 months but is angry about disapproving voices from her own country It came as no surprise that almost a year of pent-up emotion exploded from Iga Swiatek the moment she slotted her final backhand winner to clinch the Canadian Open title by defeating Elena Rybakina in two clean sets on Thursday night. As she screamed towards her team members on her corner of the court, pointed to her head and furiously pumped her fist, though, it was the tenor of Swiatek’s emotion that made her reaction noteworthy: she was angry. Her anger, she explained later, stemmed from the doubtful, disapproving voices she has heard throughout these difficult periods, most of it coming from viewers and the media alike in Poland. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/d4hT7B3

Actor who played Shirley Johnson in the sitcom Citizen Smith, and whose dozens of other roles included EastEnders, Doctor Who and The Bill Cheryl Hall, who has died aged 76, was an actor best known for her roles in 1970s sitcoms. As Shirley Johnson in Citizen Smith, she was the girlfriend of Wolfie, the would-be revolutionary leading the Tooting Popular Front with the battle cry “power to the people”. Wolfie Smith, played by Hall’s then husband, the actor Robert Lindsay, and his small “army” of self-styled urban guerrillas, are simply inept, concocting plans such as stealing a Scorpion tank in order to mount an attack on the House of Commons, only to discover that parliament is in recess. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/DbmVUI4

Summerhall, Edinburgh Fadi Murad’s unconventional drama is a collage structured with the free-form imagination of a poet Last year, a group of Scottish producers staged a four-day mini festival called Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine . One of the excerpts was a scratch performance by Fadi Murad, which now returns as a full-length show. It is not a conventional drama. Rather, Come Back Home is structured with the free-ranging imagination of a poet, an impressionistic collage that resists straightforward interpretation. Murad’s theme is one of loss and the pull of home, focusing in particular on the death of his mother in a car accident when he was nine. He speaks touchingly from a child’s perspective of what it meant to lose the nurturer in his life, the one he turned to in just such a moment of distress. And he shares video footage of his younger self singing Mad World by Tears for Fears at her memorial. It is as cute as it is sad. At Summerhall, Edinburgh , until 31 August All our Ed...

Move by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is latest government rollback of climate science activity The Trump administration has pulled its support for an annual report on the environmental changes across the Arctic, a region that is already heating up four times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis. On Tuesday, Kim Doster, the communications director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), said the federal agency was withdrawing its support for the Arctic Report Card, which has provided environmental updates on the region to scientists and the public since 2006. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/EFgzKAo

The former Al-Ahli head coach, chosen by the club’s Saudi owners to replace Eddie Howe, admits ‘vacuum’ after sale of three key players Matthias Jaissle has been described as “fire” and a “rock star”, but his formal “unveiling” as Newcastle’s manager revealed a rather more considered and conservative character than advertised. At the precise moment the clock struck 3pm on Tuesday the 38-year-old German walked into a packed media suite at St James’ Park. Before taking his seat on the stage Jaissle, wearing a smartly understated open necked suit complete with a silk pocket square, took a deep breath and jumped down into audience, making a point of shaking everyone’s hand. It was a courteous and classy gesture. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/42EuH7B

Underbelly, Bristo Square, Edinburgh Audience members are invited to examine what they will do with their lives in this earnest shared thought experiment If you could hold the years of your life in your hands like coins, would you choose to spend them differently? This is the thoughtful, earnest tone of Ten Ways to Die Happy, an existential but somewhat formulaic Italian production (performed here in English) created by Emanuele Aldrovandi and Jacopo Giacomoni. In this gentle gameshow, we are asked not just to consider how we would use the finite time we have, but to put this thought experiment into practice. Eight people are plucked at random from the audience. My number is called, so I don a white robe, choose a new name for my new life, and take a seat on stage. Perla Ambrosini is our ethereal host, standing in fabric armour in a shallow pool of water. Each of us has a tray of flowers that we throw into the pool, every plastic bud representing the “energy” available to invest in wor...

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh With the air of a hungover postmortem, Richardson gives a head-spinning account of an encounter with an older comedian If you’re partial to a bit of gossip and scandal, Harriet Richardson is your girl. In this gloriously juicy debut hour, she dishes the dirt on the DMs she received from an older comedian and the intense, utterly absorbing events that followed. Yes, she found his eBay account. And yes, she spent six months tracking him down on a dating app only to play his profile song hundreds of times. But what else is a girl driven by obsession supposed to do? We meet Richardson, who until now has worked primarily as a performance artist, all smiles and ready to share. She takes us back to the creation of her 2024 viral piece 100 Dates , in which she spent Valentine’s Day online speed-dating in an attempt to analyse her relationship with infatuation and connection. The comedian in question used the project as the opening line of his first message to her...

Astronomers say viewing conditions promising for this year’s shower, and 50 to 100 meteors an hour may be visible The Perseid summer light show is back, and viewing conditions are especially promising across the northern hemisphere. The meteor shower’s is expected to peak on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and coincides with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade – though the best time to view the fireballs will come after totality. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/UwZoAQY

Warning of increased activity as patrols spent 21 days in July shadowing Moscow’s ships in Dover Strait and North Sea The Royal Navy has warned of increasing Russian activity around the UK’s waters after it spent 21 days in July monitoring Moscow’s ships. Naval operations to monitor Russian vessels increased by 25% last month compared with the previous year, with warships making repeated voyages through the Dover Strait and North Sea. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/qsGcmEg

While able to play deeper, the onus will also be on Arsenal’s £75m signing to provide creativity in an attack that has struggled to break down the low block Data shows deal could be another set-piece masterstroke If there was one of his many assets Newcastle supporters grew to love above all about Bruno Guimarães then it was best summed up by the man himself after being unveiled as Arsenal’s new £75m signing . “That’s a tough one,” said the Brazil midfielder when asked what fans in north London can expect from him. “I would say I can pass the ball, run a lot and play like a warrior. I’ll never give up.” After more than four years on Tyneside and having seen Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali precede Eddie Howe’s departure, Guimarães – who was devastated after missing a penalty for the Seleção in their defeat against Norway in the last 16 of the World Cup – was determined to seize his opportunity. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4AzVD0J

Police arrested Herbert Wayne Smith, 65, in connection with the Gann fire, which has burned more than 15 sq miles in Calaveras county At least one person has died in a wildfire burning in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range that officials believed was sparked by a man using a chainsaw. Police arrested Herbert Wayne Smith, 65, in connection with the Gann fire, which has destroyed seven buildings, scorched more than 15 sq miles in Calaveras county and killed a well-known dog breeder in the town of Angels Camp. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/U3bxVtO

Social media video shows 60-year-old woman being led away in handcuffs, but she was released minutes later The Argentinian government posted a video on social media showing a 60-year-old woman being led away in handcuffs by two federal police officers during an immigration operation in Buenos Aires. The woman’s face is shown unblurred in the video, which has nearly 1m views and depicts one of hundreds of such operations carried out by the administration of the far-right president, Javier Milei, directly inspired by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the US. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/DTzlMvo

The creator documented her battle with rare bile duct cancer, inspiring more than a million followers online Sydney Towle, a TikTok creator who shared her battle with stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, with over a million online followers, has died at age 26, her family announced on Thursday. Towle gained fame for her posts about her life as a spirited young woman who encouraged her TikTok followers to rethink how a cancer patient might look and live. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/IJUNn41

Many online questioned how long the blogger’s broadcast remained up on the app and shared mental health resources Social media users have criticized TikTok after celebrity blogger Perez Hilton livestreamed himself self-harming on the platform, prompting many to question how long the broadcast remained live and others to share mental health resources and encourage those in need to seek help. On Tuesday night, Hilton, 48, livestreamed himself engaging in self-harm as viewers pleaded for him to stop. Shortly after, local authorities responded to his home in Miami, Florida, where he was transported to a nearby hospital for medical treatment. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/y54wY9Z

Obama-appointed judge seemed unmoved by Trump attorneys’ arguments in case also naming Murdoch A federal judge in Florida seemed skeptical of arguments from Donald Trump ’s legal team on Wednesday over whether the court should allow a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal to move forward. Trump sued the Journal and the News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch over a July 2025 article about a “bawdy” letter reportedly from Trump that was included in a 2003 birthday book for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein . Trump has denied authoring or signing the letter, and his attorneys have argued that the Journal published the story despite having been told it was false. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/o905FaS

Gill’s dramas of divided class loyalties such as The York Realist had a clear-eyed precision matched by his rigorous work as a director Peter Gill, playwright who turned ordinary lives into extraordinary drama, dies aged 86 Peter Gill, who has died aged 86, was one of the unsung heroes of British theatre. As both director and playwright his work was characterised by its uncompromising honesty and unflinching integrity. Much admired by his fellow artists, he at last achieved a degree of public fame in his annus mirabilis of 2002 when his terrific play The York Realist won a number of awards and the Sheffield Crucible staged a month-long retrospective of his work as well as a brand-new play, Original Sin . Few remember that Gill, born into a Welsh, working class Catholic family, began life as an actor: look closely and you can spot him in the film of Zulu. But it was at London’s Royal Court, where he began work as an associate director in 1964, that he learned his craft and acquired th...

Hundreds of structures damaged as firefighters battle to contain 15 major wildfires amid extreme heat and drought Firefighters in Washington state are battling wildfires that have forced 60,000 people to flee and destroyed hundreds of buildings as drought and extreme heat fuel an “extraordinary” fire season in the Pacific north-west. Fifteen major blazes are raging across the state, David Upthegrove, the head of Washington’s department of natural resources, told reporters over the weekend. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/nhgxq10

Health secretary, longtime vaccination skeptic, spent years boosting misinformation about vaccines including MMR Robert F Kennedy Jr , the US health secretary, on Sunday told American parents that they should get their children vaccinated against measles , as the surge in infections has reached numbers not seen in the past 35 years. Kennedy, a leading vaccination skeptic who has spent years amplifying misinformation about vaccines, including the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), made his call in the course of a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/wE0yKV2

The comedian and Drag Race Down Under judge on Harry Styles, not having the legs for short shorts, and why sleep is the most expensive beauty product You’re back on the judging panel of Drag Race Down Under vs The World. What do you think gives Australian queens the edge? I think our drag tends not to focus as much on female impersonation. It’s about building a character. People like Lazy Susan, who’s on the judging panel this year, is one of my favourites because there’s no illusion about this being a man in women’s clothing, but there’s creativity to it. I think Australian drag is about creating art, as opposed to creating a woman. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/iX5oZlu

Ryu’s bid for third consecutive major win in doubt England’s Lottie Woad and Charley Hull in contention Had this stumble taken place a day later, it would have counted as one of the most remarkable in recent major championship memory. Instead, Ryu Hae-ran has 18 holes to recover from events at Royal Lytham and St Annes in round three of this Women’s Open. Saturday proved it is never, ever over on terrain such as this. Adam Scott can verify that, such was his horrible capitulation here as Ernie Els claimed the Open of 2012. There must be something about Lytham. Ryu is looking to set an extraordinary record of three major wins in as many starts. Early in the third round, she looked firmly on course for that. The South Korean marched to a four-shot lead after four. Her advantage was the same on the 7th tee. By the time she walked from the 18th green, Ryu was three adrift of Yealimi Noh. Quite the turnaround. How damaging? That remains to be seen. Continue reading... from The Guardian h...