Lights may be enjoyed from Tasmania and New Zealand, experts say, but also as far north as Sydney and Perth

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Skywatchers may be treated to a celestial delight on Wednesday evening, with a severe solar storm making it possible to view the southern lights across large parts of Australia – possibly including Sydney and Perth.

An intense geomagnetic storm, caused by several powerful bursts of energy from the sun, has led the Bureau of Meteorology’s space weather forecasting centre to issue an aurora alert for “mid to southern parts of Australia”.

Schlossberg has drummed up a large following on social media with frequent posts weighing in on national issues

John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg has said he will run for the US House next year, announcing Tuesday that he was seeking a key New York seat set to be vacated by longtime Democrat Jerry Nadler.

“This district should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington,” Schlossberg said in a campaign video posted on social media late Tuesday.

Artist says ‘military style’ raids in US are ‘beyond belief’ while discussing new Southbank show next year

The artist Anish Kapoor is considering taking legal action after border patrol agents posed for a photo in front of his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, saying the scene represented “fascist America”.

The Indian-born artist said he was sent the image by a friend who lives in the US city on Tuesday morning in a conversation about his show at the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, which will open next year.

I had always wanted to see one and on a trek in Guyana there he was, his appearance quite bizarre

Seeing a special bird can take enormous effort, as I discovered recently on a quest in the jungles of Guyana. As we headed along a narrow river towards our destination, we had to cope with heat and humidity and navigate huge rocks and fallen logs. All this just to see a baby bird.

I say baby, but harpy eagles – named after mythical ancient Greek spirits with a raptor’s body and a woman’s head – are easily the biggest bird of prey in the Americas, and one of the largest in the world.

A declining sense of collective identity is corroding trust in our institutions and undermining democratic politics

Imagine you are given a pile of tokens, representing real money, and invited to donate to a common pot. There are other players but you can’t interact with them. The sum of collective contributions will be trebled, then shared equally among all players. What do you do?

If everyone submits all their money, all get richer. But if everyone except you pays in, you can enjoy the collective payout while retaining your original stash. The flaw in the selfish strategy is that other people might have the same idea. If no one pays in, there is no bounty to share.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Two transformative ways with vegetables: a roast cauli centrepiece with peanut tahini and a spicy salsa macha, and sticky-sweet, umami-heavy oyster mushroom skewers

Sometimes (or often) you need to push a bit of life into the humble vegetable. We’ve all had cauliflower cooked to mush, but the cauli just needs to be treated with the respect it deserves. Here, we blanch, marinate, roast and then grill it until it gets a dark, charred top, while the Mexican salsa macha provides a smoky, chilli heat. Then, arguably, our most popular dish, which might convert even mushroom haters. There is nothing not to like: great texture, full of umami, sticky, sweet, and often compared to meat.

The American takes strange film stills and turns them into monumental watercolours, full of Catholic guilt and paranoia – and it’s made him the most talked-about painter of the moment

‘All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions,” says Joseph Yaeger. “It’s what Polygrapher is about.” This is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, his first since joining the prestigious London gallery Modern Art in 2024, for whom it marks the opening of new premises in St James’s.

Honesty is important to Yaeger, whose upbringing in the US in Helena, a town that he says ambitiously calls itself the capital of Montana, was as decent as it was unremarkable. “We’d sit down for dinner together every night, we’d go to church every Sunday, we’re polite almost to a fault, and traditional in almost all senses of the word.”

Inspector general will be inaugurated to oversee service after report on how top officers steered investigation of Jevon McSkimming, who went on to become deputy commissioner

New Zealand’s government will take the unprecedented move of appointing an inspector general of police after a damning report found “significant failings” in the way senior police officers handled serious sexual complaints against a former high-ranking officer.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) released a 135-page report on Tuesday detailing allegations made against the former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming and the police’s response to them.

• ‘We can’t prepare how the has-beens maybe prepared’

• Captain says warmup will be ‘balls to the wall’ for squad

Ben Stokes has warned England’s players to be wary of an Australian media desperate to pounce on any indiscretion or hint of scandal, saying he and his team have already been the subject of some “unbelievable journalism” and that such treatment is “part of being in Australia … it’s not just stuff out on the field that can get you, it’s also the off-field stuff.”

The England captain’s disgruntlement with his side’s treatment in the press extends to recent criticism of their preparations, with Stokes hitting out at the “has beens” who have been leading the chorus of complaint and insisting that “we leave no stone unturned” and “have prepared incredibly well”.

What should be done about the small proportion of babies born with genitals that are neither typically male nor typically female? Many of those affected believe parents and doctors are often too quick to schedule operations

Small Luk was initially “so happy” to be offered genital reconstruction surgery, aged eight. Doctors had told her she was a boy, but that she had an illness, which was why she couldn’t urinate standing up. “They told me this is a problem,” the 60-year-old from Hong Kong says. “And that in the future, you cannot marry, you cannot have a baby, so you need to have surgeries.”

Having been bullied at school for her ambiguous gender presentation, she found the idea that she could be “modified back to normal” a compelling one. But it wasn’t as simple as the doctors made out: Luk had an undeveloped uterus and vagina in her body as well as underdeveloped male genitals.

Desert settlement of Chinguetti faces rising sands, dwindling tourism and insecurity due to conflict in neighbouring Mali

On a recent afternoon, 67-year-old Saif Islam made his way into the courtyard of a library in Chinguetti, a tiny desert settlement nestled in the Sahara in Mauritania.

Decked in a flowing boubou gown striped in two shades of blue, his steps unsteady but his presence still commanding, he sat on a handwoven mat stroking his grey beard, with his black croc sandals neatly placed to the side.

Animal behaviourists tested 61 gulls in Cornwall to find most effective method of countering feathery threat

Some people respond to the unwanted attentions of a gull eyeing up a bag of chips or a Cornish pasty by frantically flapping their hands at the hungry bird while others beat a rapid retreat into the nearest seaside shelter. But researchers have found that a no-nonsense yell – even a relatively quiet one – may be the best way to get rid of a pesky herring gull.

Animal behaviourists from the University of Exeter tried to establish the most effective method of countering a feathery threat by placing a portion of chips in a place where gulls were bound to find them.

The GDPR is Europe’s defence against digital oligarchy, child harm and foreign political interference. Deregulation plans are misguided

Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe’s digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe’s innovators and hand the future of Europe’s tech sovereignty to US firms.

Once Europe’s most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe’s tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake.

Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Georg Riekeles is the associate director of the European Policy Centre

Zambia, Zimbabwe and DRC take steps to protect decades of progress in reproductive health, as donor fatigue leads to steep cuts in aid

African governments are boosting funding for family planning programmes as cuts in foreign aid threaten decades of reproductive health progress and access to birth control for millions of women and girls.

Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are the latest countries to announce increased budgets for family planning supplies and services.

Women are banned from entering the ‘sacred’ dohyo. Sanae Takaichi is undecided on whether to attend a trophy presentation later this month

Anticipation is building among sumo fans in Japan as they wait to discover if the country’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, will defy centuries of tradition and step into the sumo ring to present a trophy later this month.

With 11 days of the current 15-day tournament in Fukuoka, south-west Japan, remaining, government officials have left the sport’s devotees guessing with vague comments over the likelihood of clash between Takaichi and the Japan sumo association.

• Referee’s chief says disallowed goal not unreasonable

• Webb dismisses comparison to similar ruling for City

Howard Webb has said officials did not act unreasonably in denying Liverpool an equaliser against Manchester City last weekend, but stopped short of calling the controversial decision correct.

Virgil van Dijk’s header was disallowed by the referee Chris Kavanagh, and not overturned by the video assistant Michael Oliver, after Andy Robertson was adjudged to have had an impact on the City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma while standing in an offside position.

Many in Serbia see the site – a former army headquarters damaged in a 1999 Nato bombing campaign – as a tribute to those who died

Thousands of people have protested against a plan to tear down a former army headquarters in the Serbian capital Belgrade to make way for a luxury hotel complex, as part of a project linked to US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The rally added to a spate of anti-government protests putting pressure on president Aleksandar Vucic triggered by the collapse a year ago of a railway station roof that killed 16 people.

The tech giant has released a statement acknowledging the use of different border displays between Western Sahara and Morocco

The dotted lines illustrating the border between Western Sahara and Morocco, indicating the former’s disputed territory status, have never been visible to people using Google Maps in the latter.

After media reports last week highlighted the discrepancy, tying it to the UN security council endorsing the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the tech company released a statement acknowledging it has always displayed the border differently depending on the search region.

• Australia No 1 defeated by Lorenzo Musetti 7-5 3-6 7-5 in Turin

• World No 7 needs convincing win over Taylor Fritz to reach last four

Alex de Minaur’s hopes of reaching the ATP Finals last four are hanging by a thread after a heartbreaking three-set loss to Lorenzo Musetti.

The world No 7 went down 7-5 3-6 7-5 after failing to serve out the match, keeping the Italian in the event and now leaving the Australian needing to convincingly beat Taylor Fritz in his third and final group match to reach the semi-finals.

New law will allow technology to be examined and ensure tools have safeguards to stop creation of material

Tech companies and child protection agencies will be given the power to test whether artificial intelligence tools can produce child abuse images under a new UK law.

The announcement was made as a safety watchdog revealed that reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material [CSAM] have more than doubled in the past year from 199 in 2024 to 426 in 2025.

Sberbank head German Gref gives unusually frank assessment; Zaporizhzhia situation has ‘significantly worsened’, says Syrskyi. What we know on day 1,358

A series of statements, articles, photos and even a new national holiday indicate a shift in Beijing’s stance over the island, analysts say

In recent weeks China has released a series of statements, articles and photos, that analysts say signal an escalation in the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s approach to Taiwan.

Beijing claims Taiwan as a province and has vowed to annex it under what it terms “reunification”. China’s military is not believed to be capable of a full invasion yet, but senior officials have recently started using sharper language.

Dozens storm venue at climate conference that has encouraged NGOs and Indigenous groups to play unprecedented role in talks

There were tussles between protesters and security guards at the Cop30 climate talks late on Tuesday night, when a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people stormed the conference centre in Belém.

Several dozen men and women, some in brightly coloured feather headdress, ran through the entrance, pushing at least one door off its hinges, before striding through the metal detectors and entering the Blue Zone.

I’ve learned that grief and love can coexist, not as opposites but as two currents running in the same river

Pregnancy after loss is full of contradictions. It is hope that feels cautious, like it might dissolve if you breathe too hard. It is learning to live again inside a body that remembers grief.

I am now officially in my third trimester, and each day brings small signs of life: a flutter, a roll, a hiccup, the steady rhythm of his heart. I am growing a baby I will meet, hold and raise. But I have also carried a baby I never got to meet. For 13 weeks, my body held her. It nurtured her, protected her, grew her placenta, still believing she was safe. And in a way, she was. My husband told me then: “She only ever knew love and warmth”, and that has never left me.