Little known Queyras nature park promises blue-green lakes, mountain views, pretty villages and plenty of cheese – but almost no crowds

The baguette was fresh from the boulangerie that morning, a perfect fusion of airy lightness and crackled crust. The cheese – a nutty, golden gruyère – we’d bought from Pierre: we hadn’t expected to hike past a human, let alone a fromagerie, in the teeny hillside hamlet of Rouet, and it had taken a while to rouse the cheesemaker from within his thick farmhouse walls. But thankfully we’d persevered. Because now we were resting in a valley of pine and pasture with the finest sandwich we’d ever eaten. Just two ingredients. Three, if you counted the mountain air.

As lunches go, it was deliciously simple. But then, so was this trip, plainly called “Hiking in the French Alps” on the website. The name had struck me as so unimaginative I was perversely intrigued; now it seemed that Macs Adventure – organisers of this self-guided walk in the Queyras region – were just being admirably to the point.

We shouldn’t celebrate a falling population, according to this persuasive debunking of demographic myths

As a member of the 8.23 billion-strong human community, you probably have an opinion on the fact that the global population is set to hit a record high of 10 billion within the next few decades. Chances are, you’re not thrilled about it, given that anthropogenic climate change is already battering us and your morning commute is like being in a hot, jiggling sardine-tin.

Yet according to Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, academics at the University of Texas, what we really need to be worried about is depopulation. The number of children being born has been declining worldwide for a couple of hundred years. More than half of countries, including India, the most populous nation in the world, now have birthrates below replacement levels. While overall population has been rising due to declining (mainly infant) mortality, we’ll hit a peak soon before falling precipitously. This apex and the rollercoaster drop that follows it is the eponymous “spike”.

From Mitch Epstein’s early colour experiments to Ori Gersht smashing glass prints of iconic paintings, these images celebrate three decades of the New York gallery

Another four people were killed in an attack on the Dnipropetrovsk region, officials said

Russian overnight strikes on the frontline region of Zaporizhzhia in south-western Ukraine killed 16 and injured at least 35 people at a correctional facility, local officials said.

Writing on the Telegram messaging app, governor Ivan Fedorov said the penitentiary facility’s buildings had been destroyed and nearby private homes damaged.

Changes to welfare reforms not enough to protect newly sick and disabled people from financial hardship

About 50,000 people who become disabled or chronically ill will be pushed into poverty by the end of the decade because of cuts to incapacity benefit, despite ministers dropping the bulk of its welfare reform plans, MPs have warned.

The work and pensions select committee report welcomed ministers’ decision earlier this month to drop some of the most controversial aspects of its disability reforms in the face of a parliamentary revolt by over 100 Labour backbenchers.

All the punchy elements of greek salad in a flaky, puff pastry tart

Everything about this tart screams summer, from the cheery lines of sliced tomato to the ribbons of lemony cucumber. Eat a slice, shut your eyes and you will instantly be transported to the Aegean. Bake the tart ahead of time, because it’s perfect served at room temperature. If I am taking it on a picnic, I like to tub up the cucumber ribbons separately, then squeeze over the lemon and crumble in the feta just before serving.

The BMA’s demand for pay restoration is a slap in the face for the health secretary who gave them a 22% rise – and it’s testing the public’s sympathy

There were no pickets when I set out at the weekend to talk to striking doctors. Not even at St Thomas’ hospital, a prime site opposite the Houses of Parliament, or at Guy’s at London Bridge. “It’s a bit sparse,” said the duty officer from the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union. The British Medical Journal (owned by the BMA but with editorial freedom) ran the headline: “Striking resident doctors face heckling and support on picket line, amid mixed public response.” Public support has fallen, with 52% of people “somewhat” or “strongly” opposing the strikes and only 34% backing them.

Alastair McLellan, the editor of the Health Service Journal, after ringing around hospitals told me fewer doctors were striking than last time, which isn’t surprising given that only 55% voted in the BMA ballot. Managers told him strikes were less disruptive than the last ones. But even a weaker strike harms patients and pains a government relying on falling waiting lists.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Prof Tommy J Curry reflects on leading the institute’s slavery review – and why it must lead to meaningful action

For Tommy J Curry the question about Edinburgh University’s institutional racism, or its debts around transatlantic slavery and scientific racism, can be captured by one simple fact: he is the first Black philosophy professor in its 440-year history.

As the Louisiana-born academic who helped lead the university’s self-critical inquiry into its extensive links to transatlantic slavery and the construction of racist theories of human biology, that sharply captures the challenge it faces.

Indian government has called for better oversight on safety at the legacy airline as regulators issue warnings

Just three years ago, it looked as if the fortunes of Air India were finally looking up.

After decades of being regarded as a floundering drain on the Indian taxpayer, with a reputation for shabby services and dishevelled aircraft, a corporate takeover pledged to turn it into a “world class global airline with an Indian heart” that would outgrow all its domestic and international competitors.

Government launches licensing round for 52 fossil fuel blocks, potentially undermining a flagship conservation initiative and affecting an estimated 39 million people

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is opening crucial gorilla habitats and pristine forests to bids for oil and gas drilling, with plans to carve up more than half the country into fossil fuel blocks.

The blocks opened for auction cover 124m hectares (306m acres) of land and inland waters described by experts as the “world’s worst place to prospect for oil” because they hold vast amounts of carbon and are home to some of the planet’s most precious wildlife habitats, including endangered lowland gorillas and bonobo.

Many of his supporters hoped the Prime Minister would restore the UK’s commitment to international law. Yet Labour’s record over the past year has been curiously mixed

The international human rights system – the rules, principles and practices intended to ensure that states do not abuse people – is under greater threat now than at any other point since 1945. Fortunately, we in the UK couldn’t wish for a better-qualified prime minister to face this challenge. Keir Starmer is a distinguished former human rights lawyer and prosecutor, with a 30-year career behind him, who expresses a deep personal commitment to defending ordinary people against injustice. He knows human rights law inside out – in fact, he literally wrote the book on its European incarnation – and has acted as a lawyer at more or less every level of the system. (Starmer is the only British prime minister, and probably the only world leader, to have argued a case under the genocide convention – against Serbia on behalf of Croatia in 2014 – at the international court of justice.) He is also an experienced administrator, through his time as director of public prosecutions (DPP), which means he knows how to operate the machinery of state better than most politicians do.

Unfortunately, there’s someone standing in Starmer’s way: a powerful man who critics say is helping to weaken the international human rights system. He fawns over authoritarian demagogues abroad and is seeking to diminish the protections the UK offers to some vulnerable minorities. He conflates peaceful, if disruptive, protest with deadly terrorism and calls for musicians whose views and language he dislikes to be dropped from festival bills. At times, he uses his public platform to criticise courts, whose independence is vital to maintaining the human rights system. At others, he uses legal sophistry to avoid openly stating and defending his own political position, including on matters of life and death. He is, even some of his admirers admit, a ruthless careerist prepared to jettison his stated principles when politically expedient. That person is also called Keir Starmer.

Living in Kharkiv, where Russian bombs fall every night, Pavlo Makov says his country needs its artistic mettle as well as military strength

Unlike younger men, who must stay in Ukraine in case they are mobilised into the army, Pavlo Makov, 66, could leave the country if he wanted.

Instead, the artist, one of Ukraine’s most senior and respected cultural figures, is living in Kharkiv, his hometown.

With many parents struggling to afford childcare, an army of grandparents have stepped up. They speak about the joys – and burdens – of caring for their grandkids at a time when they could be taking it easier

When I first call Rita Labiche-Robinson, a 59-year-old retired project manager, she can’t chat because she is with her nine-year-old granddaughter. Rita looks after Nia two days a week – Thursdays and Fridays. Today is a Tuesday, but they live together, along with Nia’s mum, and Labiche-Robinson is too in the thick of it to talk.

The three of them have been in the same home since March last year, when Labiche-Robinson’s daughter and granddaughter moved back from Canada. “While they’re waiting to be housed, they’re staying with me,” she says. On her designated days, she gets Nia up and takes her to school – a 10-minute walk from her home in Hackney, east London. At the end of the day, she picks Nia up, prepares her dinner and reads to her before bed.

Maxwell, sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking, says 2007 plea deal negotiated by Epstein should have protected her

Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, has requested that the US supreme court overturn her conviction, saying she was unjustly prosecuted.

In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced in Manhattan to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other related crimes. Her legal team, however, submitted a request to the supreme court on Monday, seeking to overturn the lower court’s decision, arguing that a prior plea deal that Epstein took protected Maxwell from prosecution.

The dentist-turned bestselling author had caravan park named after him after making a killer shark movie in 1930s Australia. A swashbuckling new biography unspools the unlikely tale

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The story begins with a shadow beneath the waves. A great white, pitiless and silent. Dorsal fin like a mean knife. Eyes dark and empty. The setting: a tight-knit coastal town where the locals are being picked off, one by one. They need a hero – a man with the audacity to challenge a legend. There’s blood in the water. The cameras are rolling. Movie history is being made.

Behind the scenes, it’s chaos. There’s a mechanical shark that barely resembles a living creature and is far more trouble than it’s worth. The production is beset by so many delays and accidents, it begins to feel cursed. But the crew push on. There’s a lot riding on this big fish film: fortunes, careers, legacies.

Adults over the age of 50 represent nearly a third of US gamers and are becoming more visible in the mainstream

Michelle Statham’s preferred game is Call of Duty. It’s fast and frenetic, involving military and espionage campaigns inspired by real history. She typically spends six hours a day livestreaming to Twitch, chatting to her more than 110,000 followers from her home in Washington state. She boasts about how she’ll beat opponents, and says “bless your heart” while hurtling over rooftops to avoid clusterstrikes of enemy fire. When she’s hit, she “respawns” – or comes back to life at a checkpoint – and jumps right back into the fray.

The military shooter game has a predominantly young male user base, but Statham’s Twitch handle is TacticalGramma – a nod to the 60-year-old’s two grandkids. Her lifelong gaming hobby has become an income stream (she prefers to keep her earnings private, but says she has raised “thousands” for charity), as well as a way to have fun, stay sharp and connect socially.

Authorities relocated 80,000 residents from China’s capital after registering rainfall of up to 543 mm in some districts

More than 30 people have been killed by heavy rain and flooding in Beijing and a neighbouring region, state media have reported, as tens of thousands more were evacuated from China’s capital.

State broadcaster CCTV said that as of midnight on Monday, 28 people had died in Beijing’s hard-hit Miyun district and two others in Yanqing district as of midnight. Both are outlying parts of the sprawling city, far from the downtown.

The ‘ugly-cute’ elf sold by Chinese company Pop Mart has become a sensation and the authorities are aggressively cracking down on fakes – pushing production into the shadows

Trolleys piled high with decapitated silicon monster heads, tattooed dealers lurking in alleyways, bin bags of contraband hidden behind shop counters: welcome to the world of Lafufus.

Fake Labubus, also known as Lafufus, are flooding the hidden market. As demand for the collectable furry keyrings soars, entrepreneurs in the southern trading hub of Shenzhen are wasting no time sourcing imitation versions to sell to eager Labubu hunters. But the Chinese authorities, keen to protect a rare soft-power success story, are cracking down on the counterfeits.

Russian air travel chaos as pro-Ukraine hackers claim hit on Aeroflot; drone targets Ukrainian man taking cow out to pasture. What we know on day 1,252

Trump lawyers ask judge to order Wall Street Journal owner to testify within 15 days. Key US politics stories from Monday 28 July at a glance

Donald Trump has asked a US court to order a swift deposition for billionaire Rupert Murdoch in the president’s defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.

The US president sued the publication and its owner over a 17 July article asserting that Trump’s name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein, who was later a convicted sex offender.

Police say a third man is in a life-threatening condition after incident in Long Lane, Southwark

Two men have died and a third is in a life-threatening condition in hospital after four people were stabbed in a businesses premises in central London.

Police were called to Long Lane, Southwark, at 1pm on Monday and found four men had been stabbed. A 58-year-old died at the scene while three other men were taken to hospital, the Metropolitan police said. A 27-year-old has since died in hospital.

Two huge swarms have made themselves at home inside author Pip Harry’s house – but learning to live together revealed bees can be excellent housemates

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As a child, I was allergic to bees. Just one sting on my fingertip could swell my whole arm. I was allergic to most things – dust, cat hair, pollen – and was always clutching an inhaler, sniffling into my sleeve and keeping a safe distance from stinging insects.

As an adult, when my family bought our first house, a mid-century gem nestled in thick bushland on Sydney’s northern beaches, I wasn’t expecting a visit from my former nemesis. But one warm spring day, we heard the unmistakable hum of 20,000 of those honey-producing insects.

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Ideas that were once fringe are increasingly part of Australian public life. Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson say they may not be about a singular event, but an overarching interpretation of how the world works

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On the edge of George Street in Sydney, a woman is wrapped in an upside-down Australian flag. She holds one side of a large banner that reads “GROOM DOGS NOT KIDS”, showing pictures of poodles with ears dyed rainbow and pink.

There are young people, people in their 60s and 70s, parents with children in prams. There are T-shirts imploring you to “think while it’s still legal”. Another person holds a sign declaring their staunch opposition to a town planning initiative that has been erroneously linked to the rollout of a new surveillance regime, “Aussies SAY NO to 15 minute cities. FREEDOM.”

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Artists and listeners are leaving the platform after its CEO invested in defence technology. Here are your options – along with how to keep your playlists

How do you switch over from Spotify to another music service? What are the options?

The music industry has long held mixed feelings about Spotify’s extensive influence over artists – and these feelings have intensified amid ongoing controversy over Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, leading a €600m (A$1.07bn) investment in Helsing, a German defence technology company specialising in AI-driven autonomous weapon systems.