• Briton to race in LMP2 class for French IDEC team

• ‘In the next decade we’ll see a huge transition’

Jamie Chadwick believes motor racing is undergoing a fundamental change in female participation, a transition the British driver has played a central role in. Chadwick is committed to taking it even further as she prepares to compete for the first time in the endurance classic, the Le Mans 24 Hours, this weekend.

The 27-year-old has long been an advocate of promoting women in motorsport, including founding her own female karting championship, and is convinced the motor racing landscape is finally beginning to change.

Helen had broken her wrist so Freddie reached for the roller … but he’s no details man. You decide who’s painted themselves into a corner

I’d broken my wrist – if you offer to decorate for someone who is injured, you should do it all

She knows I’m not a details guy – I don’t want to mess up the part I know she can do perfectly

Today’s rumours are ingratiating mothers

It’s a wingers special for today’s tittle-tattle. Starting with Liverpool’s willingness to splash £100m on Paris Saint-Germain’s Bradley Barcola. Arne Slot has already signed Jeremie Frimpong and is set to add creativity in the form of Florian Wirtz. Naturally, there is not a bottomless pit of cash at Anfield, so they are open to selling Luis Díaz, Diogo Jota and Darwin Núñez to fund the spending.

After it was confirmed that Jadon Sancho will not be joining Chelsea permanently, his next move is a hot topic. Manchester United will be eager to earn some cash for the winger, and are no doubt enticed by the prospect of Aston Villa, Newcastle and Tottenham considering a move for the 25-year-old.

Forty years on, a Trinidadian woman has never stopped looking for the daughter she gave up for adoption, in a quietly devastating novel

Claire Adam’s 2019 novel Golden Child was her debut, but it felt like the work of a master. It was tender, ravishing, shattering – you believed every word of it. The book had an effortless narrative authority that most first-time novelists would kill for.

Love Forms is every bit as alive and convincing, and returns us to Trinidad, with its potent fizz of colour, heat and political instability. But unlike the earlier book, it’s also set partly in south London – the writer’s own home turf – and has a mother, rather than a father, at its heart.

Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed star in an entertaining odd-trio crime caper with turns by Sean Bean and Paddy Considine

Producer and screenwriter Colin Trevorrow has co-created this amiable, high-concept action comedy about three hapless improv actors dragooned into going into deep cover to bust a drug ring. It’s entertaining, though I think some of the cast understand comedy better and more instinctively than others. It’s set in London (though Trevorrow might originally have imagined it set in LA or New York) and the credit is shared with his longtime writing partner Derek Connolly, and also with Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen, the funny British double act known as the Pin, who also amusingly appear as two squabbling coppers with a Mitchell and Webb energy. The director is the talented Tom Kingsley, who has a substantial TV career and with Will Sharpe got a Bafta nomination in 2012 for the dark comedy Black Pond.

Bryce Dallas Howard plays Kat, an American actor whose career is tanking and who now runs an improv workshop in London. Orlando Bloom is Marlon (as in Brando), a smoulderingly hunky method performer and wannabe star reduced to doing TV commercials, and Nick Mohammed is Hugh, a sweet, shy beta-male IT guy who gets bullied in the office and turns to Kat’s improv classes as a way of boosting his self-esteem. The lives of all three are turned upside down when hard-faced Met cop Detective Billings, played by Sean Bean, offers these cash-strapped losers £200 each to infiltrate a criminal organisation run by a narcotics kingpin played by Paddy Considine, on the grounds that career officers are too easily recognisable.

J-15 fighter jet took off from Chinese aircraft carrier off Japanese coast and came within 45 metres of Japanese Self-Defence Force aircraft

Japan has voiced “serious concern” over a near miss involving one of its military planes and a Chinese fighter jet in the Pacific, where recent manoeuvres by Chinese aircraft carrier groups have raised tensions across the region.

The Chinese aircraft took off from a moving aircraft carrier, the Shandong, and reportedly flew within 45 metres of a Japanese Self-Defence Force (SDF) patrol plane shortly afterwards. On Thursday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, urged Beijing to prevent a repeat of the incident, which took place at the weekend.

Any film where cast members talk about chosen family and Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson busts a cast off his broken arm by flexing his biceps has a place in the gay canon

I am a 42-year-old lesbian who can’t drive. And, since I’m baring all, I will add that I loathe people who drive extremely fast in obnoxiously large cars. Which, unfortunately, seems to be every third person in the US. In short, I’d wager I’m probably not the target audience for the Fast & Furious films.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain the blockbuster franchise to you: the first instalment came out in 2001 and the series has generated billions. But if you are somehow unfamiliar with them, the basic premise is that a ragtag team of misfits and street racers travel around the world, driving cars fast and furiously, beating up baddies.

The chancellor is no mere technocrat: her spending review revealed a visceral commitment to social and economic mobility

The consensus has long been that the 2025 spending review would be a defining moment for Keir Starmer’s government. For once, the consensus proved spot-on. The government’s main priorities were set out on Wednesday in a blizzard of Commons announcements from Rachel Reeves, some economically substantive, others more for show. The upshot is that the shape of the British state, as Labour intends it, is now decided until the eve of the next election.

There are further crossroads still to come, some of them major, as the years covered by the review unroll. Taxes are likely to rise, probably as soon as the autumn budget, to pay for Reeves’s big ticket boosts on Wednesday for defence, health and housing. Council tax could rise too, with possibly dramatic results. The review’s emphasis on capital spending means current spending could be squeezed again, perhaps heralding pay battles. Nevertheless, Labour has set its course.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Hundreds of woman in one cane producing district were agreeing to the surgery, say activists, in order to keep working long, physically punishing hours

Women working in sugar cane fields are still being “pushed” to undergo surgery to remove their womb and enable them to work longer hours without period pain, activists in India’s state of Maharashtra have said.

Large numbers of women undertake long hours of manual work harvesting, gathering, lifting and loading large stacks of cane to trucks and tractors. A combination of poverty, low pay of less than £4 a day, and the threat of fines for missing or incomplete work days, was putting pressure on women to agree to hysterectomies, despite promises of reform, said labour rights’ campaigners.

Some dishes make a lasting impression, and this week two memorable creations from Rome and London meet to inspire a nutty salad of creamy gorgonzola and mixed leaves

Recently, I listened to the Italian chefs Niko Romito and Salvatore Tassa in conversation about Italian food culture, and in particular the role of the trattoria. During the warm conversation, Romito, who is one of Italy’s most visionary chefs and whose Ristorante Reale in Abruzzo has three Michelin stars, spoke about the first time he ate at Tassa’s Nu’ Trattoria Italiana dal 1960 in Acuto, which is in the province of Frosinone about an hour south of Rome. Romito recalled the homely atmosphere and Tassa as an old-school host: welcoming, communicative and the conduit (which didn’t sound pretentious when he said it) between local traditions, producers and those who came to eat. But Romito also described a dish of onions, simply braised, but of such goodness that he couldn’t stop thinking about and imagining them. In fact, Romito credits those onions as being the starting point for one of his own most well-known dishes: “absolute” onion broth with parmesan-filled pasta and toasted saffron. Tassa returned the affection and respect, before both chefs reminded those of us listening that everything begins and ends with the ingredients.

On the bus on the way home, I kept thinking about Romito thinking about those braised onions, which led me to think about the times I have left a table in a trattoria, restaurant, cafe, pub, chip shop or friend’s house really thinking about something. And how those thoughts are quite rare and completely different from simply remembering a dish or liking something; they are vivid and intrusive thoughts. The deep-fried mashed potato and mozzarella ball from the canteen just under our flat last week; the gravy around the liver and onions at a local trattoria; hazelnuts on the salad at the same trattoria; a plate of green beans that tasted like butter; the honey dressing on a salad that has been nagging me since January.

The tuxedo-clad US president – accompanied by first lady Melania – promised a ‘golden era’ for America at his first Kennedy Center production in Washington

“Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!”

When the rousing anthem of revolution filled the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night, Donald Trump may have had a Pavlovian response along the lines of “Get me Stephen Miller” or “Send in the marines”. We will never know.

• Indiana beat OKC 116-107 in Game 3 of NBA finals

• Mathurin scores 27 as Indiana dominate fourth quarter

• Thunder shoot 6-17 in fourth, go scoreless from three

Leave it to Indiana’s bench to swing the biggest game of the season. With the starters fading and the game hanging in the balance, Bennedict Mathurin and TJ McConnell turned Gainbridge Fieldhouse into a madhouse, leading the Pacers past the Thunder 116–107 on Wednesday night to seize a 2–1 lead in the NBA finals.

Mathurin poured in 27 points off the bench and McConnell was all over the court – diving for loose balls, snatching steals, dishing dimes – as Indiana overwhelmed Oklahoma City with a 32–18 fourth quarter. The Pacers outscored the Thunder 49–18 in bench points and closed the game on a 22–8 run, flipping a five-point deficit into a win that puts them two victories from their first NBA title.

• England coach wants midfielder to channel ‘fire’ correctly

• Tuchel praises Bellingham’s talent and intelligence

Thomas Tuchel has told Jude Bellingham to concentrate on intimidating the opposition rather than his England teammates as he opened up on what it was like to manage one of the game’s “special” talents.

The England head coach talked about Bellingham’s “edge”, which can make him erupt during matches – even at colleagues – and come across in a way that “can be a bit repulsive”. Tuchel admitted his mother sometimes had “mixed emotions” when watching Bellingham play.

Community groups say people who attended cultural events have faced questioning when visiting Turkey

Members of the Turkish and Kurdish community in the UK have accused the Turkish government of intimidating and interrogating them for holding arts and cultural events in London parks.

They claim that about 150 people who have participated in activities organised by Gik-Der – Refugee Workers’ Cultural Organisation have been detained by Turkish authorities when visiting Turkey and questioned about their involvement with the organisation.

Improvement of side has been slow and steady since Harry Redknapp and Ray Wilkins had short spells in charge

Would Harry Redknapp have taken Jordan to the World Cup had the 2018 tournament featured 48 teams instead of 32 and Asia had eight spots instead of four? It is an interesting question but the former West Ham manager’s short time in charge in 2016, not long after Ray Wilkins had the job, is not a subject anyone in the capital, Amman, is much focused on at the moment.

“Redknapp and Wilkins? Now is not the time to talk about that,” said a smiling Jordan Football Association official on Monday. The reaction given the country has just qualified for a first World Cup and is in serious party mode is understandable.

In an astonishing new documentary, former inmates go back to the cells that once held them – and reflect on what led them there in the first place. The result is a powerful indictment of our justice system

The directors of Holloway use a simple but powerful visual device to demonstrate how badly the British prison system is failing the women it incarcerates. Towards the end of their eponynmous documentary, six former inmates are invited to play a version of Grandmother’s Footsteps in the chapel of the deserted ex-prison, where they have been filming for five days.

They begin lined up against the wall and a voice tells them: “Step forward if you grew up in a chaotic household.” All six women step forward, before being instructed: “Step forward if you experienced domestic violence growing up.” Again, they move ahead in unison. “Step forward if somebody in your household has experienced drug use. Step forward if you grew up in a household where there wasn’t very much money. Step forward if a member of your family has been to prison …”

This look at Virginia McCullough tells a deeply strange story. Unfortunately, it also leaves the viewer in suspense about her motive for so long it feels horrifically manipulative

Well, what do you think a 90-minute documentary entitled Confessions of a Parent Killer is going to be about? That’s right, well done! It’s the story of a murder by an (adult) child of her parents. Virginia – Ginny – McCullough killed her mother, Lois, and father, John, and confessed immediately to police when they raided her home in 2023 that she had done so four years previously. The twist was that she had been living with their bodies ever since. “She was weird at school,” says a childhood friend. “But not ‘kill your parents and hide the bodies’ weird.”

You can probably tell from such unimpeachably phlegmatic commentary that this case occurred in England. Great Baddow, Essex, to be exact, and the film paints a portrait of quintessential small-town, almost-rural life in these sceptred isles that has gone unchanged for generations and, you suspect, will survive for many more.

The anti-Islam ideologue has exposed the limits of his insular, badly organised operation. For a ‘radical’, opposition is a much easier place

• Koen Vossen is the author of The Power of Populism: Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands

Earlier this month, Geert Wilders decided he had had enough. “No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the coalition agreement. The PVV is leaving the coalition,” he posted on X. After 11 months, he was withdrawing support for the Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof’s rightwing cabinet, forcing the Netherlands back to the polls.

The decision put an end to Wilders’ far-right Freedom party’s (PVV) first spell in power. Following an unexpected victory in the 2023 elections, the PVV joined a government for the first time in its 18-year history – alongside the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), and the agrarian-populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) – although Wilders’s coalition partners did not let him become prime minister. But the promise to drastically reduce immigration and implement a strict asylum policy proved difficult to deliver due to numerous constitutional and legal restrictions.

Koen Vossen is a political historian and the author of The Power of Populism: Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands

As Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s mother remains on hunger strike, supporters say activist’s continued detention is campaign of vengeance by Egypt’s president

Family, friends and supporters of the jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah have spoken about the conditions of his long imprisonment as his mother, Laila Soueif, remains in a London hospital in declining health on a hunger strike to secure his release.

Amid a mounting campaign to put pressure on British ministers to intervene more forcefully on Abd el-Fattah’s behalf, supporters say his continued detention is part of a campaign of vengeance motivated by the personal animus of the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, towards him.

Once upon a time, Pakistanis scorned raw fish. Now sushi is everywhere from Ramadan meals to wedding buffets – and it all started with one man and a dream

When the 17-storey Avari Towers opened in Karachi in April 1985, it was the tallest hotel in the city. “It felt otherworldly,” said one chef who worked there as a teenager. “It was there that I saw a swimming pool for the first time,” he remembered, “and swimsuits.” By December 1986, this $32m building had another novelty to offer – Fujiyama, a Japanese restaurant at its summit. There had been no advertisements for Fujiyama, and for its first six weeks, the only way to get in was with an invitation; these began to land in the homes and offices of the city’s bankers, businessmen, doctors and other members of Karachi’s elite. By the new year, the restaurant was so busy it had waiting lists. There were now two kinds of people in the city of 6 million: those who had tried sushi and those who had not.

In the late 80s, a Japanese restaurant like Fujiyama was an expensive proposition: foreign chefs had to be hired, staff trained, and ingredients, from wasabi to rice, constantly imported. Sushi – raw fish – in a country where daal roti is a staple and vegetables are often cooked down until they lose their crunch: who would take such a risk? And yet, somehow, it paid off. Fujiyama was the first place to serve Japanese cuisine in Pakistan, and it was where many Pakistanis encountered sushi for the first time.

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• Erin Patterson says she didn’t deliberately source death caps and serve to guests as murder trial evidence concludes

• Who are Erin Patterson and the other key figures in Australia’s mushroom trial?

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Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC turns to evidence about factory resets performed on the mobile referred to as “Phone B”.

The court previously heard four resets – one in February 2023 and three in August 2023 – were performed on the phone that Erin Patterson provided to police during the search on 5 August 2023.

Rogers says one of these resets were done when she was left alone to call a lawyer while police searched Patterson’s Leongatha home.

Patterson rejects this and says she phoned a lawyer at 2pm.

Rogers says Patterson performed the three factory resets after the lunch to “conceal” the contents on Phone B.

Patterson rejects this.

Rogers then turns to her final points in the cross-examination.

She suggests Patterson deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms in 2023.

Patterson rejects this.

Rogers says Patterson deliberately included death cap mushrooms in the beef wellingtons she served her lunch guests.

It’s an agreed fact in this case.... that this [phone number] lost connection ... could be due to:

a. The sim card being removed from the handset;

Ukraine and Russia earlier returned fallen soldiers’ remains; Moldova and Romania next for Putin, Zelenskyy tells regional summit. What we know on day 1,205

Critics say the government’s plan to eradicate the country’s decades-long Maoist rebellion comes at a bloody price – and questions whether there are motives other than a wish for peace

For decades, guerrilla communist warfare has raged deep in India’s jungles. What began as an uprising in the 1960s, fuelled by inequality and discontent among the poorest, is now a fully fledged Maoist armed struggle vowing to overthrow the Indian state.

But after decades of insurgency and a corresponding state-led crackdown that has left almost 12,000 civilians, militants and security personnel dead, India’s home minister Amit Shah gave a clear-cut deadline earlier this year; the Maoist insurgency would be “completely eradicated” by March 2026.

Agents confiscated belongings and rushed deportees to California’s high desert or Texas, saying local facilities had not prepared for influx

• LA protests – live updates

As federal agents rushed to arrest immigrants across Los Angeles, they confined detainees – including families with small children – in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water, according to immigration lawyers.

One family with three children were held inside a Los Angeles-area administrative building for 48 hours after being arrested on Thursday immediately after an immigration court hearing, according to lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), which is providing non-profit legal services in the region.

But Columbia University graduate can be held for inaccurately filling out green card application, says judge

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can no longer detain Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of federal claims that he is a threat to US foreign policy.

In his order on Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz said that the ruling will go into effect at 9.30am on Friday, adding: “This is to allow the respondents to seek appellate review should they wish to.”

Dozens more wounded as crowds approached food distribution centres run by Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities.

Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza.

State department move comes amid increasing concerns about nuclear talks between US and Iran that appear to be deadlocked

The United States has ordered the departure of “non-essential” diplomatic staff and their families from embassies in the Middle East amid growing diplomatic tensions in the region.

The US diplomatic draw-down came as Iran threatened to target US military bases in the region if conflict breaks out, while Donald Trump said he was “less confident” about reaching a nuclear deal.

He was the Beach Boys’ resident genius, seeping melancholy into even peppy teenybopper hits. Beyond all the myths about his life, that brilliance is still intoxicating

• Brian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82

• Twelve of Brian Wilson’s greatest songs – from surf to psychedelia and beyond

• Brian Wilson: a life in pictures

It’s fair to say that no one who bought the Beach Boys debut single in 1961 would have realised they were in the presence of genius. Surfin’ sounded exactly like what it was: one of dozens of cheap, hastily-recorded singles released on a tiny independent label to cash in on the burgeoning craze for surf music, albeit a regionally-successful example of type. You might easily have expected to never hear of the band who made it again.

But the 19-year-old Brian Wilson was determined – he was the taskmaster that had relentlessly drilled his unwilling younger brothers Carl and Dennis into learning to harmonise – and a quick learner. The leap in quality between Surfin’ and its 1962 follow-up Surfin’ Safari was striking. The leap between Surfin’ Safari and Wilson’s glorious re-write of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen, Surfin’ USA – released nine months later – was staggering. Surfin’ USA was a pivotal record in the Beach Boys’ career, the moment where they began selling the world an idealised notion of Californian youth as a carefree, sun-kissed paradise of beauty, athleticism and unending material luxury. It was set to music that was still essentially primitive – three chords; guitars, bass and drums with only a brief splash of reedy organ for colour – but so thick with beautifully arranged harmony vocals, it felt weirdly sumptuous.

This excellent documentary tells the tale of a BA plane’s Kuwait stopover … just as Saddam Hussein invaded. It’s a crucial tale of a four-month nightmare that is barely believable

If it were a work of fiction, the story of Flight 149 would probably be deemed too horrifying – or too unbelievable – for television. Indeed, as a documentary interspersed with dramatic reconstructions, at points it is almost unbearable to watch. But it is a crucial piece of work: a one-off film that goes deep into a bizarre and increasingly hideous ordeal to ask how and why it happened.

On 2 August 1990, a British Airways plane carrying nearly 400 passengers and crew from London to Kuala Lumpur touched down for a scheduled stopover in Kuwait. Those on board knew nothing of the unfolding Iraqi invasion of the country and the brutality Saddam Hussein was inflicting on his neighbours (this would, of course, soon lead to the Gulf war). British Airways maintains that it, too, was unaware of what was taking place, while the British government said it didn’t know what was happening until after the plane had landed. Later, it would emerge that it had, in fact, received information before the plane had reached the terminal, but that it wasn’t shared with the airline.

While there are mitigating circumstances, England showed an ominous lack of dynamism and control during friendly

It was 11pm on Tuesday and it sounded as if there was some kind of road rage incident on the forecourt of the City Ground in Nottingham. All that could be heard was the deep blare of a horn from a large vehicle, which went on for an uncomfortably long time. Then the realisation dawned. It was the Senegal team bus and the driver was geeing up the gaggle of fans draped in the country’s colours, still ecstatic at how they had beaten England 3-1.

The celebrations had got into full swing when Cheikh Sabaly, on as a substitute, swept home the clinching goal in stoppage time, the Senegal bench emptying, everybody wanting in on it. No team from Africa had beaten England before and it did not matter it was a friendly. The scene in the visiting dressing room was probably best described – as heard – by Thomas Tuchel.

Some residents put up union jacks in an attempt to be spared from attacks while others say their windows were smashed

When the mob comes hunting down Clonavon Road, the foreigners who remain entrust their fate to stickers on front doors and flags on windows that signal they are the good foreigners, the foreigners who cause no trouble, and deserve to be spared.

“Filipino lives here,” declare posters with the Filipino flag, pasted as talismans against destruction. Other families have erected union jacks and loyalist bunting in hope of deflecting the crowd’s wrath and avoiding selection.

Draft agreement may reassure top US military suppliers after president’s tariffs flip-flopping threatened production

The draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.

While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium – a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets – whose supply is entirely controlled by China.

Future of $240bn defense pact in doubt as Trump administration reviews it to see if it aligns with ‘America first’ agenda

The Pentagon has launched a review of the Aukus defence pact to make sure it is aligned with Trump’s “America first” agenda, throwing the $240bn agreement with Britain and Australia into doubt.

The review may trigger more allied anxiety over the future of the trilateral alliance designed to counter China’s military rise. Australia in particular is relying on Aukus to renew its entire submarine fleet.

The Pennsylvania course laps up its reputation as the sternest of tests with the players facing a severe physical and mental examination

Oakmont. OMG-mont. Over the top-mont. The prevailing sense among anybody who ponders a US Open at this site in rural Pennsylvania is how wonderfully demanding the challenge always is. Cue entertainment. As Xander Schauffele appropriately put it: “I don’t think people turn the TV on to watch some of the guys just hit a 200-yard shot on the green. They turn on the US Open to see a guy shooting eight over and suffer. That’s part of the enjoyment of the US Open for viewers.”

Strap in and enjoy the show. This version of Oakmont has rough that is routinely more than five inches thick. Menacing, sloped greens add to the idea of inevitable carnage. The 125th staging of the major will be a war of attrition, one which will physically and mentally exhaust the finest golfers in the world. Temper tantrums are guaranteed.

More than 200 health experts say regulatory proposals will lead to biggest increase in pollution in decades

US power plants will be allowed to pollute nearby communities and the wider world with more unhealthy air toxins and an unlimited amount of planet-heating gases under new regulatory rollbacks proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, experts warned.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would repeal a landmark climate rule that aims to mostly eliminate greenhouse gases from power plants by the 2030s and would, separately, weaken another regulation that restricts power plants’ release of hazardous air pollutants such as mercury.

Teammates say he is the world’s best bowler and judging by his first-day display against Australia he is not far off

Given there was a certain scepticism in advance of this game about South Africa’s suitability for a place in this final, their spot having been secured through a run of good results, mostly at home, in short series that notably did not involve either of the two sides currently ranked ahead of them, perhaps they needed an early marker of excellence, a demonstration of merit. Fortunately they had just the man.

At 10.30am the pre-match pyrotechnic mist cleared with Kagiso Rabada at the nursery end, ball in hand. Perhaps Usman Khawaja’s personal fog lingered a while longer, the first ball of the day zinging past his outside edge and sending the Australian opener into survival mode. Rabada started his day with a maiden, and then another, and then another. Khawaja faced every delivery, including a couple more that he barely survived. And then, two balls into Rabada’s fourth over of the day, one he didn’t.

• Players can get special ranking for three tournaments

• Sloane Stephens: ‘It will empower this generation’

Tennis players who choose to take time off in order to undergo fertility protection procedures, such as egg or embryo freezing, will be permitted to receive a protected ranking according to new rules announced by the Women’s Tennis Association.

Players ranked inside the top 750 on the WTA who undergo fertility procedures will be eligible to receive a Special Entry Ranking (SER) allowing them to enter up to three tournaments. The SER will be calculated using their average ranking during a 12-week period before and during their absence and can be used up to WTA 500 events.

Elaborating classic pop and doo-wop into divinely beautiful and inimitable hitmaking, these are some of the late musician’s most unmistakable masterpieces

Brian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82

Although co-written with Gary Usher, this reflective hymn to isolation was pure Brian autobiography, conceived as the pressures of pop success loomed. “I had a room I thought of as my kingdom,” Wilson said, “somewhere you could lock out the world.” The domain in question was the Wilson family’s music room where Brian slept “right beside the piano”. Part-inspired by the Charms’ 1956 doo-wop hit Ivory Tower, which the Wilson brothers sang themselves to sleep with, In My Room sonically recreates Brian’s feelings of sanctuary by blending his brothers’ sweet-sad harmonies with finger cymbals, harp glissandi and Santo & Johnny-style Sleep Walk guitar. Soothing yet eerie, the song spoke to the nation of 60s teenagers whose only refuge was their bedroom, and whose worries and fears all waited for them outside that door.

It often looks like tiny wood shavings or a gloopy gel, and experts say it has benefits – but make sure to take it with lots of water

• Gen Z in the US: tell us how you spend your money

As Ozempic and similar GLP-1s have transformed the world of weight loss, health companies and influencers have been scrambling to find “nature’s Ozempic” – cheaper, non-prescription products they claim can help with weight loss. The latest buzzy supplement? Psyllium husk.

“Psyllium husk has become popular thanks to a wave of social media influencers and wellness personalities touting its ability to suppress appetite, regulate digestion and even mimic the effects of more costly medications,” says Lena Beal, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. But comparing it to Ozempic is “oversimplified and misleading”, she warns.

Projected £1.2bn police funding shortfall expected to grow after spending review outlined fall in Home Office spending power

Police forces will struggle to fulfil Keir Starmer’s promise to recruit an additional 13,000 officers and the public will “pay the price”, police leaders have warned, after the chancellor outlined a decline in Home Office spending power on Wednesday.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said it would be incredibly difficult to deliver the prime minister’s election pledge within the lifetime of this parliament, with a projected £1.2bn shortfall in police funding expected to grow.