There are endless takes on tomato sauce, as well as pesto- or yoghurt-based accompaniments, and you’ll find a very versatile friend in tahini … I find making sauces for my vegetarian diet quite challenging. Any advice about how to moisten my meals? Eric, Melbourne, Australia There are so many directions in which you could happily go, tomato sauce being possibly the most obvious. I batch-cook all my tomato sauces – whether it’s infused with a dried chilli (which is great on butter beans), or just a basil sprig (again, for butter beans, or to stir through pasta); it’s also lovely spooned over cubed tofu or for braising eggs shakshuka-style. Then there’s perhaps my favourite vegan ingredient, tahini, not least because it’s so rich and “creamy” and substantial. Thinned down with a little lemon juice and water, plus crushed garlic and salt to taste, it’s glorious drizzled over all sorts of roast vegetables, salad leaves, grains and so on – the possibilities are almost endless; if you like, blitz with fresh parsley or coriander (that’s wonderful on chickpeas or a whole roast cauliflower, by the way). I also love to mix tahini with soy sauce and maybe a touch of honey – the combination is a dream with steamed aubergine or even just plain rice. Continue reading...

The model and musician on wanting to be a spy, a brush with gun violence, and the pleasure of fishfingers with ketchup Born in London, Guinness, 56, married at 19, moved to Switzerland and had three children. She went on to work as a model, fashion writer and muse to Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfeld. In 2011, she created a show from her own archive for the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She began recording music in 2011 and, this summer, released her fourth album, Sleep. Divorced, she lives in London. When were you happiest? I am often happiest on a shoot with David LaChapelle, being pushed to the extremes – either suspended from a harness or immersed in a tank of water. He calls it “extreme modelling”. Continue reading...

Noisy devices are making public transport hell. But do passengers realise the pain they inflict? Earlier in the summer I started a social experiment – one you might consider ingenious or insufferable, depending on how much you prioritise a peaceful life. It began with a fragmented journey from north to south London, during which at each section of the journey (bus, overground, bus), someone was playing content on their phone, loudly. First there was a woman flicking impatiently through TikTok videos: four-second assaults of traditional Chinese medicine tutorials, girls pranking their boyfriends and self-help tips. The woman next to her put in her earbuds, but said nothing. Next, there was a woman listening to a nearly 20-minute long voice note from a friend out loud that all of us could hear. This is the life of the passenger in our new ambient hell. Hannah Ewens is a freelance editor and writer, and the author of Fangirls: Scenes From Modern Music Culture Continue reading...

His spy series became the TV hit Slow Horses, and now his earlier novels are being adapted for screen, starring Emma Thompson. Mick Herron talks about finding recognition “Let me guess,” says a woman exiting a private detective’s office and finding another one coming in. “You’ve got a husband, he’s got a secretary. Am I getting warm?” So far, so Raymond Chandler, and, indeed, Zoë Boehm, first glimpsed storming out of a row with her husband, fellow gumshoe Joe Silverman, has more than a touch of hard-boiled noir about her: sardonic eyes and laughter lines, cigarette jammed into mouth, a handbag from whose depths she can produce not only vodka but a small silver gun. “I read once that you should take salt on a long journey,” she later declares. “To liven up what you catch and eat.” But Zoë is not in the canyons and boulevards of Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles, she is in pre-millennial Oxford, the setting for Mick Herron’s first novel, Down Cemetery Road, now being reissued and adapted by Apple TV+, the makers of the award-winning Slow Horses series. Emma Thompson will play Zoë, with Ruth Wilson taking the role of Sarah Tucker, a woman whose problem is not her husband’s secretary, but the fact that one of her neighbour’s houses has just been blown up. There are four Boehm books, all to make a reappearance, providing plenty for the screenwriters to get their teeth into. Continue reading...

Tips and tricks for getting the best deals when renewing home insurance and car cover Watchdog urged to clamp down on ‘abysmal’ claims handling Households facing 100% increases to their car insurance premiums and 25%-plus rises to home insurance renewals may well be able to slash the price by shopping around and using a couple of other tricks. How do I know this? I’ve just done it – several times. Continue reading...

The EU’s Josep Borrell made the remark in a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi We are restarting our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine and will give you the latest updates throughout the day. The EU’s most senior diplomat, Josep Borrell, warned that Russia’s war against Ukraine is an “existential threat” to Europe as he urged China to support the peace process to end the conflict during a meeting with the country’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. The EU high representative/vice-president explained why the European Union considers Russia’s war against Ukraine is an existential threat to Europe. He expressed his concern because China’s exports of large amounts of dual-use goods and items represent a support to Russia to build up its military equipment. The EU high representative/vice-president asked China to use its influence on Russia to contribute to end the war. He asked China to support the Ukraine peace process and considered that the joint statement with Brazil of May 2024 does not go in that direction. Ukraine’s air defences shot down four attack drones and one missile fired by Russia in an overnight attack on Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said. “All targets were shot down by the Ukrainian defence forces in Dnipro, Poltava, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions,” the military said in a statement. The governor of the Bryansk region in southern Russia, Alexander Bogomaz, reported a “massive” drone attack on the region yesterday evening and overnight. No casualties were reported. “22 unmanned aircraft-type aerial vehicles have been intercepted and destroyed,” Bogomaz wrote on Telegram. Ukrainian missile forces struck a Russian military airfield in Crimea that had been used for long-range attacks, Ukraine said on Friday, in the latest in a series of blows to the Russian military on the occupied peninsula. Russia’s Saky airfield in western Crimea was targeted, the Ukrainian military’s general staff said, adding it was assessing the aftermath. “This is one of the operational airfields that Russia uses to control the airspace, in particular the Black Sea, and for launching airstrikes on Ukrainian territory.” There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defence ministry or local Moscow-installed officials. The US Treasury secretary said “things look good” for Group of Seven wealthy democracies to agree the terms of a $50bn loan to Ukraine backed by Russian assets by October. Janet Yellen told Reuters on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting in Brazil that talks to advance the loan were constructive, including over US demands for reassurances that the assets would stay frozen for a longer period of time. The $50bn loan, agreed in principle by G7 leaders in June, would be serviced with proceeds generated by about $300bn of Russian central bank assets frozen in the west after Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Tally over four days comes after Israeli operation to extract hostages’ bodies from southern Gaza city, which includes area previously declared a safe zone It has gone 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. More than 180,000 Palestinians have fled fierce fighting around the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in four days, the UN said on Friday, after an Israeli operation to extract captives’ bodies from the area. An Israeli official has criticised US vice-president Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, after she said it was time for the war in Gaza to end given the suffering being caused by the fighting. Harris’s remarks at a press conference, after a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, reflect the growing pressure on the Israeli prime minister to reach a deal with Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza. Britain said on Friday it would not proceed with efforts to question whether the international criminal court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant. In May, the ICC’s prosecutor said he had requested arrest warrants for the two as well as three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes. Netanyahu visited Donald Trump at the former president’s Florida resort, concluding the Israeli leader’s week-long US visit that has been marked by large protests against the war. The two men have had a strained relationship in the past after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, but on Friday photographs showed Trump warmly greeting Netanyahu and the two appeared to have reconciled. “We’ve always had a good relationship,” Trump said before the meeting, while also saying Harris’s statement on the Gaza war was “disrespectful”. CIA director William Burns will meet on Sunday in Rome with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts and Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, for talks on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday. The CIA declined to comment. The prime ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand have declared that a ceasefire in Gaza is “needed desperately” and urged Israel to “listen to the concerns of the international community”. The leaders’ joint statement on Friday said they were “gravely concerned about the prospect of further escalation across the region”, including between Hezbollah and Israel. The World Food Programme has been forced to reduce rations for families in Gaza to ensure broader coverage for newly displaced people, it said on Friday. “Food stocks and humanitarian supplies in central and southern Gaza are very limited and barely any commercial supplies are going in,” WFP posted on X. A Hamas leader in the West Bank died in Israeli custody after a deterioration in his health condition, a Palestinian governmental body said. Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara, 63, died after being transferred to a hospital from the Ramon jail in southern Israel, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees Affairs said. Continue reading...

The Olympic host city is one of cinema’s favourite places, whether real or romanticised, in films ranging from Breathless to Ratatouille and La Haine The Paris Olympics are being held at the very time of year when the City of Light is least desirable as a destination, as all those inhabitants who vacate the city in August for their summer getaways well know. Cole Porter might have recommended Paris when it sizzles, but when it sweats? An acquired taste. Sometimes the city is best enjoyed from a distance – via the Olympics coverage if you wish, or the surfeit of films that have made Paris a veritable capital of cinema. Like any tourist, there’s no shame in starting with the obvious: Parisians may roll their eyes at the airbrushed Montmartre in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie (2001), but this gaudy romantic bonbon still has its winsome charms. It’s only a shade less artificial than the Hollywoodised musical visions of the city in the 1950s. Gigi, Vincente Minnelli’s absurdly lavish take on Colette’s slender coming-of-age novella (currently unavailable to stream in the UK), used more location shooting than the same director’s An American in Paris, shot almost entirely on LA backlots, though both are delicious faux-French fancies. Ditto Audrey Hepburn swanning around Paris in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face, though it’s at least more Gallic-chic in spirit. Continue reading...

Swimming, cycling and hockey in Paris. Plus: another double-bill of sturdy Aussie crime drama High Country. Here’s what to watch this evening 8am, BBC One Continue reading...

Defining nature as separate from people perpetuates troubled relationship with the natural world, say campaigners It was last year, during a conference at the Eden Project, the botanic garden and conservation centre in Cornwall, that Frieda Gormley first heard the dictionary definition of nature. The businesswoman and environmental activist was answering questions about her plans to appoint a representative of nature to the board of her company, House of Hackney, when a member of the audience read it out. Continue reading...

The 2024 FA Cup winners have lost several big names but have added the Norway striker who sparkled for Brighton Elisabeth Terland’s first taste of English football was one of sour defeat. She came on in the 84th minute to make her tournament debut at the 2022 European Championship for a hopeless Norway side who went on to lose 8-0 against England, the eventual winners, in their Group A encounter. That humiliation took place at the Amex Stadium and, as such, Terland could have been forgiven for never wanting to step inside the venue again. Instead, however, she made it her home that summer, moving from Brann to Brighton in August 2022 and subsequently scoring 23 goals in 50 appearances for the club. Of those goals, 13 came in 22 Women’s Super League appearances last season, leading to her finishing joint-second in the race for the golden boot. Continue reading...

Visitors will need to pay up to €15 to stroll – and take photos – along romantic 900-metre walkway in Liguria, Italy Stifling though the crowds of tourists can be at the height of summer, a hint of love is in the air across the five villages of Italy’s Cinque Terre as a Ligurian riviera coastal path famed as a meeting point for courting couples reopens after an almost 12-year closure. Sculpted into the steep cliffs wedged between the villages of Riomaggiore and Manarola, the Via dell’Amore (Path of Love) had been closed since being damaged by a September 2012 landslide that injured four Australian tourists. Continue reading...

The weight of expectation is part of the experience and so I’m backing Emma Finucane to lead Team GB’s rush for medals The Paris Olympics are here, at last, and it’s strange to admit that I am excited rather than nervous. It’s taken me 12 years to reach this point. I am proud to have won five gold medals at three successive Olympic Games in London, Rio and Tokyo but I’ve also got one title that you might not expect. On the surface I was pretty good at looking confident and relaxed but, deep down, I always thought I was the most nervous Olympic champion you could ever meet. I would be sick with nerves before a race while my hands were sweaty and shaking. But one thing made a difference. I was able to understand that this was normal at the Olympics. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlash Earlier this month, a popular lifestyle magazine introduced a new “fashion and lifestyle editor” to its huge social media following. “Reem”, who on first glance looked like a twentysomething woman who understood both fashion and lifestyle, was proudly announced as an “AI enhanced team member”. That is, a fake person, generated by artificial intelligence. Reem would be making product recommendations to SheerLuxe’s followers – or, to put it another way, doing what SheerLuxe would otherwise pay a person to do. The reaction was entirely predictable: outrage, followed by a hastily issued apology. One suspects Reem may not become a staple of its editorial team. This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects” that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment taking hold among many of its customers. Continue reading...

Research exposes flaws of older, often industry-funded studies and finds lowest mortality risk in lifelong abstainers Humans have been drawn to the idea that alcohol may have health benefits for almost as long as they have been drinking it. In ancient China, rice wine was widely used for medicinal purposes, while Hippocrates, the ancient Greek “Father of Medicine”, advocated moderate amounts of alcohol for the mind, body and soul. Later, proponents of the temperance movement, who urged 19th century workers to quit booze, were met with resistance by those who thought beer was necessary for good health. Continue reading...

Changes include converting Bentleys to run on biofuels but helicopter use shows difficulties in balancing priorities A pair of gas-guzzling Bentleys are not the most obvious candidates to burnish the monarch’s green credentials. But news that King Charles is converting his chauffeur-driven luxury vehicles to run on biofuels was this week billed as a small step in a bigger plan to reduce emissions – perhaps the equivalent of lesser mortals separating paper from plastic in the weekly rubbish. “The two existing state Bentleys will undergo refurbishment in the coming year to enable them to run on biofuel,” said Sir Michael Stevens, the keeper of the privy purse, adding that it was an interim measure in advance of “the next generation of state vehicles being fully electrified” and part of a “wider plan to make a significant impact on our carbon emissions in the years ahead”. Continue reading...

A mother’s quest to understand why the murder of her two daughters was not taken more seriously Four years ago, two of Mina Smallman’s grown-up daughters failed to come home from a summer evening picnic in the park. Vanishing like this was out of character for Bibaa, who had been celebrating her 46th birthday, and 27-year-old Nikki. So when the police didn’t launch an immediate search of the park, her friends and family started combing it themselves. Continue reading...

Officials insist China-based owner ByteDance must separate from its short video app in the US because it is a threat to national security and citizens’ data The US justice department has asked an appeals court to reject legal challenges to a law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok’s US assets by 19 January or face a ban. TikTok, parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok creators have filed suits seeking to block the law, which could ban the app used by 170 million Americans. Continue reading...

The jeopardy of a zombie show is surely whether the characters get bitten to death or not – but somehow the stars manage to survive endlessly. Will the spinoffs ever cease? Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. You just caught me writing a script for AMC’s mega-franchise The Walking Dead, which finally finished in 2022 after 177 episodes and has now splintered into a number of spin-off shows which are basically just the same. I’ve got the most obvious thing in there early (a scene where someone desperately tugs on another character’s arm and goes: “Please, we have to go!” while a mass of zombies get closer and closer to pushing the door down), so just need to pad out the other 55 minutes. What else? Oh, of course: I need someone to get bitten by a zombie and slowly transform into a zombie but the person who has to kill them is also their brother or sister or wife, so they dilly-dally and either they do kill them in the end but become a shell of a person afterwards – or they mess about so long that they also get bitten by a zombie and die. Got to have an adult having an unbearable conversation with a child, obviously. A scene where a man gets a rifle out of the flatbed of a truck and goes: “No, you stay here – it’s safer,” before messing up their mission in a way where a second person could have been really helpful. A rumour about another city actually being safe, someone’s lost their husband and can’t find them, and the group taking refuge in a building you wouldn’t expect them to take refuge in. Right, that’s 60 pages. AMC, I’ll send you an invoice. Continue reading...

A set of cunning quizzes from the former Only Connect champion and the author of The Cryptic Pub Quiz Book. You might need a pen and paper … The eight answers in this round form a palindrome. That is to say, if the answers are seen collectively as a single string of letters (disregarding spaces, punctuation and capitalisation), it will read the same forwards and backwards. Continue reading...

From Berlin’s techno scene to Oktoberfest, a revolution in drinking culture is taking place, and it’s led by young people The first cliche that comes to mind when many think of Germany is thigh-slapping oompah music, embroidered lederhosen and, above all, litre-sized mugs of beer. And Deutschland’s beer culture is best epitomised by Munich’s Oktoberfest. Millions of revellers descend on the Bavarian capital each September for 16 days of booze, bretzel and bratwurst. But it’s a cliche out of sync with modern Germany, where abstinence is on the up – and boozing is in decline. One example is Die Null (The Zero). Before the world-famous beer festival kicks off this year on 21 September, a new alcohol-free beer garden has opened in the heart of the city, inaugurated by the mayor of Munich himself. The venue serves a variety of non-alcoholic beverages, from mocktails to alcohol-free lager. Continue reading...

An exclusive extract from Jess Phillips’ latest book • ‘I’ve got a massive ego!’: read an interview with Jess Phillips When I was elected to parliament, I had been inside the building maybe two or three times before. My husband had only been to London once before. My politics comes from exposure to the worst of people’s lives. Communities ravaged by arson attacks, so scared of their neighbours that they turn on each other. Children growing up in care who are left at the mercy of organised crime. Women brutally abused so many times that you have to arrange for a third time for children’s services to remove the new baby. I once had to hold the neck of a woman who had slashed it in front of me while I was sitting at my desk, desperately trying to stem the flow. I have held the hands of children as they waved off their sibling who had been adopted while they had not. I have seen things, heard stories and intervened in the kind of dangerous environments that would make the toughest men cry. In fact, since becoming an MP, I have been the only person in a group otherwise consisting of men to take charge when someone was suffering an angry psychotic episode. When I was asked to take part in a TV fly-on-the-wall programme inside a prison, I concluded that I would not make good telly as I have worked in prisons and would be largely unflappable, and would most likely within minutes be able to get the inmates on my side. Continue reading...

Stories from ‘ripped off’ customers lead Which? to call for ‘meaningful action’ against firms that fall short The consumer group Which? this week called on the regulator to clamp down on insurers that have been “ripping off” consumers with “abysmal” claims handling. Having surveyed how customers have fared at the hands of insurers over the past three years – and unearthed some shocking stories – the consumer body has demanded that the Financial Conduct Authority take tough action against companies that fall short of the regulator’s required standards. Continue reading...

An academic paper says the show creates ideal conditions for ‘cognitive overload’ and demonstrates how to avoid it BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute may be wonderfully entertaining for listeners but it is often excruciating for players as they attempt to speak for 60 seconds without repetition, hesitation or deviation. An academic paper jointly produced by a university linguist and one of the greatest exponents of Just a Minute has suggested the game is so devious that the best way to succeed is to let go of any ambition to win. Continue reading...