The Palestinian activist described a bittersweet feeling as he emerged from Ice detention into the Louisiana sun

Mahmoud Khalil squinted in the afternoon sun as he walked away from the fences topped with razor wire, through two tall gates and out into the thick humidity of central Louisiana.

After more than three months detained in this remote and notorious immigration detention center in the small town of Jena, he described a bittersweet feeling of release, walking towards a handful of journalists with a raised fist, visibly relieved, but composed and softly spoken.

Thousands took to the frigid waters amid shrieks and yells to mark the end of the restored annual festival, which had run lean in 2024

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Swimmers have stripped off and raced into chilly waters on the shortest day of the year.

Wearing nothing but red swim caps, 3,000 courageous souls took the annual nude sunrise plunge into Hobart’s River Derwent to mark the winter solstice.

Don’t let limited space deter you from gardening in an apartment or townhouse. Here are some tips for growing your own food when outdoor areas are limited

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Gardening is good for our physical and psychological health, and there’s great pleasure in plucking ripe tomatoes, salad leaves or fresh herbs to add to a meal. Growing your own food has environmental benefits too, especially if you use a compost heap, worm farm or bokashi bin to divert kitchen scraps from landfill.

But can you garden without a backyard? To meet Australia’s housing challenge, more city dwellers will live in apartments and townhouses, and gardening in small spaces like balconies and courtyards can be challenging.

Jurors must find accused not guilty if ‘reasonable possibility’ mushroom poisoning was an accident, defence says, while prosecution points to ‘calculated deception’

• What the Erin Patterson jury heard in the eighth week of her triple-murder trial

Colin Mandy SC, Erin Patterson’s barrister in her triple-murder trial, was into the final minute of a closing submission that spanned three days when he started repeating one phrase, almost like a mantra, over and over.

It was the last time the jury would hear from anyone in the case other than Justice Christopher Beale, a coda after the prosecution’s closing argument and evidence from more than 50 witnesses.

The Logie-nominated actor and disability activist on playful fashion, being a cowboy and owning 150 teddy bears

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In a bunker in Sydney’s north-west, the Heartbreak High actor Chloé Hayden poses on a white circular plinth. Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan – one of Hayden’s favourite artists – is playing on repeat, and the revolving floor beneath her is surrounded by objects: an old wooden rocking horse, a tattered teddy and a pair of embroidered suede Miu Miu boots.

Hayden is filming a video for a new exhibition at the Powerhouse museum, one she has co-curated about textural objects. Every object in the exhibition has been selected by the 27-year-old from the Powerhouse’s vast collection.

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Much of Studio Ghibli’s success is down to one man: 84-year-old Hayao Miyazaki, a master animator whose presence towers over the studio’s output

Disney, Pixar … Ghibli. For its legions of admirers, the Japanese studiohasn’t just held its own against the American powerhouses, it has surpassed them with the impossible beauty of its hand-drawn animation and its commentary on the ambivalence of the human condition.

Although he would refuse to acknowledge it, much of Studio Ghibli’s success is down to one man: Hayao Miyazaki, a master animator whose presence towers over the studio’s output. Making a feature-length anime the old-fashioned way may require a large and multitalented cast, but Miyazaki is the thread running through Ghibli’s creative genius.

Once confined to upmarket spas and grimy gyms, saunas are popping up across the country

On a clear winter morning on the coast of New Zealand’s capital, a procession of steaming bodies emerge from a small shed-like building to throw themselves into the frigid sea.

Dripping wet, they return to sit in its 100 degree heat and wait for their skin to gather a patina of sweat before bolting back to the cool waters. Back and forth between the extreme temperatures they go, until an hour later they depart dreamy-eyed.

Prince is a throwback batter playing the game with patrician disdain to leave England’s bowlers toiling in the heat

For a man who moves so slowly, Shubman Gill can fit a lot into a split second. Gill is one of those rare athletes who works in a different rhythm to the rest of us, so that even when a ball’s coming down at 90mph he seems to be able to take a beat to whistle a bar of Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle while he thinks about what he’s going to order for dinner that evening, finally decides how to meet this latest delivery and then, at the last possible moment, follows through. He is, as any number of players and coaches say, someone you only need to see hit one shot to know exactly how good he is.

England, unfortunately for them, got to watch a lot more than one on the first day of the opening Test.

• British & Irish Lions 24-28 Argentina

• Tries from Aki and Beirne not enough for victory

The 2025 British & Irish Lions tour is up and running but here was an abrupt reminder that not everything can be perfectly choreographed. This proved to be anything but a routine sendoff for the Lions coaches and players, who already have a good deal to reflect on as they head for Perth this weekend to embark on their eagerly awaited Australian tour.

Should they win the Test series 3-0, of course, this pre-departure ­wake-up call will rate as only a minor footnote in the great scheme of things. The Wallabies, nevertheless, will have taken due note of both the historic result and the positive manner with which Argentina approached the ­contest. The Pumas, despite the absence of some first-choice players, led by 11 points at half-time and were good value for their history-making win.

Terminations of 639 employees were announced at organization founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda

The Trump administration has terminated 639 employees at Voice of America and its parent organization in the latest round of sweeping cuts that have reduced the international broadcasting service to a fraction of its former size.

The mass terminations announced Friday rounds out the Trump-led elimination of 1,400 positions since March and represents the near-complete dismantling of an organization founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, whose first broadcast declared: “We bring you voices from America.”

• Group D: Flamengo 3-1 Chelsea

• Bruno Henrique 62, Danilo 65, Wallace Yan 83; Neto 13

It would be easier for Chelsea to rationalise the humiliation of being swatted aside by Flamengo if another statement win for South America could be attributed solely to Nicolas Jackson’s latest rush of blood to the head. Unfortunately, this was also a dreadful afternoon for Enzo Maresca, who got his tactics wrong and somehow found a way to produce the self-sabotage of treating the Lincoln Financial Field to a masterclass on how to neutralise Cole Palmer.

So much for all the hype about Palmer taking the No 10 shirt. Why leave him isolated on the right? Palmer yearned for his normal central role and he did not look impressed when he went off in the 82nd minute, by which point Flamengo were 2-1 up, in possession of a one-man advantage and presumably very happy to see Maresca remove Chelsea’s likeliest source of salvaging something from the wreckage of their six-minute implosion midway through the second half.

ACIP panel to discuss influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal, which Kennedy called ‘dangerous’ in 2014 book

A key vaccine advisory panel reconstituted by health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr is slated to discuss thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines in its first meeting – an ingredient which has been a fixation of anti-vaccine activists for decades.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will hold two separate votes later this month: one on “influenza vaccines” and one on influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal.

Temperatures at or above 100F expected as extreme hot air and humidity are trapped in atmosphere

Scores of millions of people across the central and eastern US will swelter under the summer’s first “heat dome” beginning this weekend and extending through the end of next week as extreme hot air and humidity get trapped in the atmosphere.

The arrival of the heatwave coincides with Friday’s first day of summer and will bring temperatures at or above 100F (37.7C) to numerous cities as it moves to the east of the US in the coming days, forecasters say.

• Tourists end opening day at Headingley 359-3

• Former England captain Vaughan questions choice

The former England captain Michael Vaughan said he was “staggered” that Ben Stokes chose to bowl first after winning the toss on the opening day of the Test series against India. The tourists proceeded to plunder 359 runs for the loss of three wickets on a flat pitch with Yashasvi Jaiswal and the new captain, Shubman Gill, both scoring centuries.

The last six Tests played at Headingley had all ended in victory for the side that bowled first, and Vaughan, a former Yorkshire batter, accused England of making their decision based on the history books rather than the conditions on the day. “I am an old-school traditionalist here at Leeds that when the sun is shining, with dry weather, you bat,” said the 50-year-old Vaughan, who played 51 first-class matches at Headingley including four as England captain.

Leaked document marks significant moment in relations with ally but stops short of calling for immediate sanctions

The EU has said “there are indications” that Israel is in breach of human rights obligations over its conduct in Gaza, but stopped short of calling for immediate sanctions.

“There are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under article 2 of the EU-Israel association agreement,” states a leaked document from the EU’s foreign policy service, seen by the Guardian.

• Live updates from the 8pm BST kick-off in Dublin

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It looks like there are excellent vibes in and around the Aviva right now. A good few pints of Guinness put away, no doubt. (Other stouts are available.)

The two sides are out on the pitch, the backs running a few passing drills and the forwards warming up on the tackle pads. Just under half an hour to go until kick-off.

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6 min Liam Delap breaks free on the right side of the Flamengo area but just delays his shot a touch – he does let fly, forcing Rossi to palm the ball away for a corner.

4 min Sánchez provides two wayward kicks from the back to land Chelsea in trouble but a toe-punt from De Arrascaeta, from outside the area, flies high.

Columbia graduate freed from Louisiana facility after judge ruled he is ‘not a danger to the community – period’

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was released from US immigration detention, where he had been held for more than three months over his activism against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Khalil, the most high profile of the students to be arrested by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism, and the last of them still in detention, was ordered to be released by a federal judge on Friday afternoon from an Ice facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been held since shortly after plainclothes immigration agents detained him in early March in the lobby of his Columbia building.

Football competitions are expanding, overlapping and bleeding into one another, but is a month off too much to ask?

Does it feel too much? Premier League bleeding into the playoffs into the Champions League into the international break … we’re still bleeding … rip off your shirt and make a tourniquet! The European Under-21 and Under‑19 Championships into the Club World Cup, overlapping with the Women’s Euros … oh look the Premier League fixtures for 2025-26 are out and the EFL ones come out next week … and there’s David Prutton paying (excellent) homage to David Mitchell’s pisstake of Sky Sports on Sky Sports: “Catch all of the constantly happening football here it’s all here and it’s all football. Always. It’s impossible to keep track of all the football.”

You start to imagine Billy Joel rewriting We Didn’t Start the Fire … an endless list of footballers and pundits, of owners and streaming services, of controversies and grimness amid the beauty and joy. Will it ever reach breaking point?

State to argue in federal court that control of national guard – deployed to Los Angeles – should return to Gavin Newsom

California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment on the streets of Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday after an appeals court handed Donald Trump a key procedural win in the case.

Friday’s hearing comes a day after the ninth circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of national guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.

Knowledge trumps popularity in the long haul of trying to be influential, researchers say

When it comes to social climbing, it’s not who you know, or how many people you know, it’s about knowing who knows whom, research suggests.

Experts studying social connections made by first-year university students say those who ended up with the most influence were not necessarily the most popular, but those who had a good idea, early on, about who belonged to which clique or community.

• Germany’s attacking midfielder to cost initial £100m

• Andy Brassell: Wirtz is set up to be key piece of puzzle

Liverpool have confirmed the signing of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen. The German will cost a club record £100m and his price could rise with add-ons to £116m, which would make him the most expensive British transfer.

Leverkusen had wanted €150m (£127.6m) for the 22-year-old, who also attracted interest from Bayern Munich, but weeks of talks brought down the price. Wirtz, an attacking midfielder, scored 16 goals and provided 15 assists in the past season in 45 club appearances. He has signed a five-year deal at Anfield.

‘Basically a whole shelf of a mountain came loose’ said one person who fled the scene in Banff National Park

Two people have been killed and another three injured when a major rockfall crashed onto a group of hikers on a popular Rocky Mountain trail in western Canada.

The accident happened on Thursday near the Bow Glacier Falls in Banff National Park, about 225km (140 miles) north-west of Calgary, Alberta. The area is known for its natural beauty and is particularly busy in summer.

• First Test, day one: India 359-3 v England

• Gill makes hay in his debut Test as tourists’ captain

India slightly snuck into the country four weeks ago, dribs and drabs getting an A tour under way before the bulk of the first-teamers landed and began playing intra-squad cricket. The delayed finish to the Indian ­Premier League commanded eyeballs, then the World Test Champion­ship final last week. All told, it was a soft launch.

But on day one of this summer’s marquee series, the tourists announced their arrival with a flex of the muscles and an eruption of runs. Sublime centuries from Yashasvi Jaiswal (101) and ­Shubman Gill (127 not out) had driven England potty and taken India to 359 for three at stumps. Gill’s first outing as captain was an unqualified success – not least because the absence of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma barely got a mention.

A driver who got stuck on the Spanish Steps in Rome is the latest in a series of similar vehicular misadventures

The 1969 caper The Italian Job spawned a Hollywood remake, helped drive the cool-factor of the Mini and launched decades of dad jokes about bloody doors being blown off. It may also have inspired one driver who got stuck trying to travel down the Spanish Steps in Rome this week.

The film ended with Michael Caine teetering on the edge of a cliff in a coach, claiming to have a “great idea”. In Rome, the 80-year-old’s navigational error on his way to work ended with emergency services having to bring in a crane to winch his vehicle off the Italian capital’s landmark.

Israeli military chief says ‘difficult days’ ahead as salvo of ballistic missiles trigger air raid sirens across country

Israel’s military has warned of a “prolonged war” with Iran as the conflict entered its second week with no sign of stopping, as Israeli forces targeted Tehran and other areas while an Iranian missile attack wounded many people in the Mediterranean port city of Haifa.

The Israeli military said its aircraft destroyed Iranian surface-to-air missiles in southern Iran, as well as killing a group of Iranian military commanders responsible for missile launches. According to the IDF, the strikes prevented launch of missiles scheduled for later on Friday evening.

Fears grow of drought as well as hunger as medics report more killings by Israeli forces of Palestinians seeking aid

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The collapse of water systems in Gaza is threatening the territory with devastating drought as well as hunger, Unicef has warned, as medics reported that Israel had killed more desperate Palestinians seeking aid.

On Friday at least 24 people waiting for aid were killed by Israeli fire in central Gaza, according to local health authorities, in addition to other deaths by airstrikes.

A cinematic immersive experience and stampeding animal puppets are bringing the climate emergency into the city

As parts of the UK swelter, this week brought yet more alarming reports of increasing temperatures, extreme weather events and dwindling chances of meeting the global 1.5C target. It was the UK’s warmest spring on record and its driest in more than 50 years.

Communicating the urgency of our predicament without provoking despair and hopelessness is an intractable challenge, especially when it comes to children. But two trail-blazing theatre experiences are bringing the breakdown of the natural world into urban metropolises, and raising the alarm with such immediacy that even those of us fortunate enough to live in places that have so far been relatively unaffected by the climate crisis must pay attention.

Bill prioritizes ‘nation-building’ pipelines and mines, causing concern that sped-up approvals will override constitutional rights

Canada’s Liberal government is poised to pass controversial legislation on Friday that aims to kick-start “nation building” infrastructure projects but has received widespread pushback from Indigenous communities over fears it tramples on their constitutional rights.

On its final day of sitting before breaking for summer, parliament is expected to vote on Bill C-5. The legislation promised by Mark Carney, the prime minister, during the federal election, is meant to strengthen Canada’s economy amid a trade war launched by Donald Trump.

At the end there was high tension on both sides of a debate that for some was deeply personal

• Assisted dying set to become law in England and Wales after bill passed by MPs

When Kim Leadbeater walked out of the chamber of the House of Commons into parliament’s central lobby, she was embraced by some campaigners who did not even know if they would be alive when the vote came.

“Overwhelmingly the sense is relief,” she said. Her close colleague the Labour MP Lizzi Collinge was near to tears. For the Conservative Kit Malthouse, standing nearby, it was the culmination of a decade of campaigning within his own party. More than 20 of his colleagues – more than he expected – backed the bill.

Court votes to back challenge to state waiver that allows it to set tougher car emission standards than federal limits

Fossil fuel companies are able to challenge California’s ability to set stricter standards reducing the amount of polluting coming from cars, the US supreme court has ruled in a case that is set to unravel one of the key tools used to curb planet-heating emissions in recent years.

The conservative-dominated supreme court voted by seven to two to back a challenge by oil and gas companies, along with 17 Republican-led states, to a waiver that California has received periodically from the federal government since 1967 that allows it to set tougher standards than national rules limiting pollution from cars. The state has separately stipulated that only zero-emission cars will be able to sold there by 2035.

The Guardian’s senior international correspondent Julian Borger reports from Tel Aviv as the Israel-Iran conflict enters its second week and the world awaits Donald Trump’s decision on whether the US will enter the war

If the United States joins Israel’s fight to try to finish Israel’s job, it will enter into a war of unknowable scope against a country of 90 million people

Two decades ago, as Americans debated whether their country should invade Iraq, one question loomed the largest: did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? If so, the implication was that the United States should disarm and overthrow his regime by military force. If not, Washington could keep that option in reserve and continue to contain Saddam through economic sanctions and routine bombings.

In time, the implications of the Iraq war far exceeded the boundaries of the original debate. Saddam, it turned out, had no weapons of mass destruction. But suppose he had possessed the chemical and biological agents that the war’s advocates claimed. Invading his country to destroy his regime would have given him the greatest possible incentive to use the worst weapons at his disposal. The war would have been just as mistaken – more so, in fact.

Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

I didn’t train for my first attempt and got stuck on a mountain with no signal, darkness falling and hypothermia setting in

Growing up, I loved the outdoors. I gallivanted through the Staffordshire countryside with my stepbrother, Greg. We used to pick a point in the distance and create “missions” to walk towards it. It was a mischievous challenge that saw us hopping fences, wading through rivers and sneaking around farmers.

I was also obsessed with maps, and even read the Birmingham A-Z for fun. When Google Earth came out in 2005, I spent hours studying satellite images.

Depending on who you ask, between 4 and 6 million people showed up – and according to one theory, this could be a turning point

The scale of last weekend’s “No Kings” protests is now becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest ever single-day protests in US history.

Working out exactly where the protest ranks compared with similar recent events has been a project of G Elliott Morris, a data journalist who runs the Substack Strength in Numbers, calculated turnout between 4 million and 6 million, which would be 1.2-1.8% of the US population. This could exceed the previous record in recent history, when between 3.3 million and 5.6 million people showed up at the 2017 Women’s March to rally against Trump’s misogynistic rhetoric.

Queues for water refills and ice creams surpassed even those for beer at a sun-baked ground offering unseasonably hot sustenance

After two years without a Test here, 23 in which India’s red-ball side had visited only once, seven months since the last tickets for the first three days were snapped up and six in which the sum total of England’s action in this format had been a low-key three-day win over Zimbabwe, it is fair to say that Leeds was ready for this. Or at least, in classic Yorkshire fashion, that it would be ready in its own sweet time.

Play started with the stands barely half-full and television commentators feeling they had to remind viewers the day was actually a sellout. That much was swiftly evident, but as India’s batters settled in for the long haul there was no need for anyone to hurry.

In the ​last ​of our miniseries,​ we look at how Hollywood has become a franchise machine​​. But in a sea of superheroes and sequels, there is still room for cinematic artistry

We’ve mulled over music, tackled TV and now, to finish our series looking at how pop culture has changed in the first quarter of the 21st century, we’re chewing over cinema.

And there’s quite a bit of chewing to do, equivalent to at least a medium-rare steak or a large toffee. Because, while film might not have been disturbed quite as dramatically by streaming as music or TV has, its still had to contend with some serious changes in audience habits. The more than a century-old practice of spending money to stare at a giant screen in a darkened room now has all manner of competition, including streamers like Netflix beaming films with the same production values and star names straight to your living room at a fraction of the price.

• Midfielder likely to have limited game time next season

• Former Germany international wants to keep playing

Galatasaray are considering a move for Ilkay Gündogan, with Manchester City open to a transfer for the 34-year-old midfielder.

The Turkish club are believed to have inquired about Gündogan’s availability in the winter window but City did not want him to leave midway through the season. But with Pep Guardiola having signed Nico González in February and Tijjani Reijnders in this window, with Rodri again fit after a serious knee injury and Mateo Kovacic expected back from an achilles problem in mid-September, game time for Gündogan may be limited.