• Updates from the second day’s play at Edgbaston

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88th over: India 327-5 (Gill 121, Jadeja 49). This partnership continues to look serene and untroubled. Stokes bangs one into the pitch and Jadeja nudges it off his ribs for another quick single, Gill adds another, then Jadeja repeats the shot for one more single.

87th over: India 322-5 (Gill 119, Jadeja 47). Woakes, yesterday’s stand-out, starts from the City End, and concedes four first up thanks to a gorgeously timed clip through midwicket by Jadeja. The umpire then has a word with Jadeja about running on the pitch (to give himself some juicy rough to bowl into later presumably), and the No 7 responds by veering sharply left and running the next single from the very edge of the strip. More anguish for Woakes ensues when a no-ball is edged through the cordon for four by Gill, who to be fair played it with good, soft hands.

• Updates as the second round continues at SW19

• Email Katy | Raducanu storms past Vondrousova in style

Navarro isn’t messing around. Twelve minutes in, the 10th seed leads 3-0, and has hit only once unforced error.

Pinnington Jones, looking like the 2002 champ Lleyton Hewitt with his backwards cap and diminutive frame, has begun his match too, but it’s been an inauspicious start. The Brit is broken in the opening game, to 30, after three successive errors: on the forehand, the backhand and then a double fault. Cobolli consolidates the break and it’s 2-0.

Wildfires have been reported in Greece, Turkey, Spain and Germany as Europe’s heatwave continues

in Italy

Due to the climate emergency, Italian seas have reached temperatures above 20C even at depths of 40 metres, according to a report released on Wednesday by Greenpeace.

PM and health secretary say only possible to transform the NHS due to decisions taken by chancellor in the budget

Streeting says he has to go to the Commons to make a statement to MPs.

But first he introduces Rachel Reeves, saying that she has put an extra £29bn into the NHS.

It is thanks to her leadership that we’ve seen interest rates in our country fall four times. It’s thanks to her leadership that we see wages finally rising faster than the cost of living. And it’s thanks to her leadership we have the fastest growing economy in the G7.

If Australia can effectively serve communities living in the remote outback, we can meet the needs of people living in rural England.

If community health teams can go door to door to prevent ill health in Brazil, we can do the same in Bradford.

Real Madrid head coach likens unfettered midfielder to former Liverpool teammate after Club World Cup heroics

Fede Valverde once said that he could spend all day watching Steven Gerrard play; his coach sometimes feels like he still is, and no one is better placed to see it or make it so. Xabi Alonso had been in charge at Real Madrid for just two games when he said that the Uruguayan reminded him of his former partner in the Liverpool midfield. “ I haven’t seen many players with his physical performance,” he said. “I’m very happy to be coaching him. Every manager would like a Valverde on the team.”

Coming from Alonso, it was quite the compliment. There was always something special between him and the Liverpool captain. Gerrard described the Spaniard as “pure quality, a class act on the pitch and a gentlemen off it,” and was “devastated” at his departure, writing: “I missed you every day from the moment you left.” Alonso said that Gerrard was the better player, the man with whom he won the European Cup, scoring six minutes apart, and shared the Istanbul kiss that inspired endless fan fiction; the man he once called “my hero, my mate”.

Bond yields fall, reversing a sharp rise on Wednesday sparked by speculation over the future of the chancellor

• Business live – latest updates

UK government bond markets have rallied after Keir Starmer backed Rachel Reeves to remain as chancellor for “a very long time” despite lingering investor concerns over a multibillion-pound hole in Britain’s public finances.

The yield – in effect the interest rate – on British government bonds, also known as gilts, fell by about 0.1 percentage points on Thursday morning to trade close to 4.5%, reversing a sharp rise on Wednesday sparked by feverish speculation over Reeves’s future.

Today’s rumours are here for you

Last week it was Istanbul, this week it is Turin. Jadon Sancho’s next destination for employment is like an Interrail trip around our favourite city break destinations. According to Corriere dello Sport, Manchester United want £25m for the England winger, 25, and Juventus are interested. Helpfully, Sancho is said to be prepared to lower his wage demands in order to join the Old Lady.

Sancho’s departure will free up some cash to fund the potential signing of Ollie Watkins, because nothing says thought out transfer strategy like paying £60m for a 29-year-old striker due a big payday. Multiple back pages suggest that Jim Ratcliffe’s crew are intensifying their pursuit of Watkins, with Rasmus Højlund potentially returning to Italy.

Donna Kashanian, 64 and a community service volunteer, arrived in 1978 on a student visa and has no criminal record

Kaitlynn Milne says her mother is usually always up first thing in the morning, hours before the rest of the family. She enjoys being productive in the quiet hours around sunrise. It’s an especially optimal time to do yard work, when the rest of her New Orleans neighborhood still sleeps and she can count on peacefully completing chores.

Gardening and rearranging the shed is how an average morning would go for Madonna “Donna” Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian mother, wife, home cook, parent-teacher association (PTA) member and lifelong community service volunteer.

Between his so-called ‘big, beautiful bill’ and his bombing of Iran, Trump has confirmed he is a man of a familiar past

The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America is ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.

The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism, the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.

Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College

Without his, my husband resembles an estate agent. It’s time more men took advantage of this hairy little glow-up

It’s a convenient truth of our time that if you Google for long enough, you will eventually find the answer you want. In other words, there’s a lot of anti-beard propaganda out there, and I’m not falling for any of it. I love beards. So I keep scrolling.

Past the recent Washington Post report that some toilets contain fewer germs than the average beard (that’s pretty much true of phone screens, and we happily rub them on our faces). Not even pausing on an investigation into whether it would be hygienic to scan canines and humans in the same MRI machine, which found most beards contained more microbes and bacteria than dog fur. La la la, I’m not listening.

Tadej Pogacar’s UAE team and Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma lead the way but watch out for Soudal-QuickStep

Two men, Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, with one plan: stage wins and the green jersey; VDP is the big star, but in recent Tours de France it’s been “Jasper Disaster” who has delivered. On the flat stages, VDP uses his explosive power and superlative bike handling to lead out Philipsen, who has won nine stages in the last three Tours and the green jersey in 2023. Anywhere a bit lumpy will be for VDP, although he has taken only one Tour stage in his career. That was at Mûr de Bretagne in 2021, so watch out for him when the Tour returns there on 11 July.

The time travel comedy was a surprise smash in 1985 and remains a Hollywood touchpoint and as it reaches a major anniversary, those who made it share their memories

The actor Lea Thompson has had a distinguished screen career but hesitated to share it with her daughters when they were growing up. “I did not show them most of my stuff because I end up kissing people all the time and it was traumatic to my children,” she recalls. “Even when they were little the headline was, ‘Mom is kissing someone that’s not Dad and it’s making me cry!’”

Thompson’s most celebrated role would be especially hard to explain. As Lorraine Baines in Back to the Future, she falls in lust with her own son, Marty McFly, a teenage time traveller from 1985 who plunges into 1955 at the wheel of a DeLorean car.

Whether brushing their teeth in the shower or wearing slip-on shoes to save time, people are finding all sorts of ways to fine-tune their routines. Are these fun life hacks or symptoms of a snowed-under society?

As you read this, there will probably be a cup of tea going cold on Veronica Pullen’s kitchen counter. Every time she wants a cup, Pullen makes two, one milkier than the other. She drinks the milkier one (she likes her tea lukewarm) immediately. She lets the other one sit for 40 minutes before drinking it once it has reached optimum temperature. It is an efficiency – albeit a tiny one – that she has been perfecting for two years. A copywriter and online trainer, Pullen, who is 54 and lives on the Isle of Wight with her husband and their chihuahua, says it takes her five minutes to boil a kettle, so she saves five minutes with every other cup. Over 24 hours, that adds up to 20 minutes saved. Across two years? She has clawed back slightly more than 10 full days.

Pullen is just one of many people incorporating microefficiencies into their daily lives. There are people who brush their teeth in the shower; lay out their clothes the night before to save time in the morning; boil hot water for the day first thing and keep it to hand in a flask. But are these small, savvy streamlinings that shave minutes (sometimes, just seconds) off a task merely fun life hacks? Are they a symptom of a snowed-under society? Or are they indicative of an obsession with productivity?

Lee Jae-myung shows no sign of grandeur, cutting very different figure to impeached predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol

South Korea’s president, Lee Jae-myung, has given his first big press conference, a month after winning an election in a country shaken by a brief declaration of martial law imposed by his now-impeached predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol.

Everything about the event seemed designed to signal a break from the defensive, isolated style of previous Yoon administration.

As new tech imperils the £3bn dubbing artists industry, Germany’s voice of Julia Roberts, India’s Ryan Reynolds and France’s Sly Stallone explain why audiences should listen to their fears

When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere’s Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: “Man, this baby must corner like it’s on rails!” In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood’s sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same.

The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors’ strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan “Don’t steal our voices”. In Germany, home to “the Oscars of dubbing”, artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent.

It is understood that Jota and his brother were travelling in a car that came off a road in the province of Zamora

• Tributes paid after accident in Spain – latest updates

The Liverpool forward Diogo Jota has been killed in a car accident in Spain. He was 28, a father of three young children and had married his long-term partner, Rute Cardoso, less than two weeks ago.

Liverpool said they were devastated and tributes were paid by Portugal’s prime minister and the country’s football federation. It is understood that Jota and his brother, 26-year-old André, who was also killed, were travelling in a car that came off a road in the province of Zamora. André was a professional footballer with the second-tier Portuguese club Penafiel.

Novelist and husband suspected of helping to sell bullion taken decades ago from ship that sank off Brittany in 1746

An 80-year-old US novelist and her husband are among several people facing a possible trial in France over the illegal sale of gold bars plundered from an 18th-century shipwreck after French prosecutors requested that the case go to court.

Eleonor “Gay” Courter and her husband, Philip, 82, have been accused of helping to sell the bullion online for a French diver who stole it decades ago. They have denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.

Keir Starmer says Downing Street should have engaged more with Labour MPs and repeats support for Rachel Reeves

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has admitted No 10 “didn’t get the process right” in handling the government’s controversial welfare bill and says he shoulders the blame.

Looking to repair some of the damage done by Labour’s 11th hour climbdown on the central plank of its welfare changes, Starmer said the government would reflect on its mistakes.

Analysis finds key to survival for children found to be unconscious and unresponsive is a quick dose of drugs and fast access to specialist care

For the hundreds of children who arrive every day at hospitals in parts of Africa unconscious and unresponsive, their survival chances have remained unchanged for nearly 50 years. But new research is raising hopes that swift treatment with antibiotics could improve those chances.

Despite huge strides in healthcare and vaccination rates for children in sub Saharan Africa, the odds remain stacked against those who become so ill they fall into a coma. Depending on the cause, between 17% and 45% are expected to die. Many more will be left with disabilities.

The women in the case endured horrors to tell their stories. Still the jury – and Diddy’s jubilant supporters – sided with their alleged abuser

Sean Combs, the musician variously known as “Diddy”, “Puffy”, “P Diddy” and “Love”, made a conspicuous scene in the courtroom when the verdict was read. He put his hands into a prayer gesture and mouthed “thank you” to the jurors, and pumped his fist in the air. A federal jury in New York on Wednesday had acquitted Combs on federal charges of sex trafficking women, finding him guilty only on lesser charges of transporting the male prostitutes he allegedly forced the women to have sex with across state lines. The mixed verdict was seen as a triumph for Combs, who faced the possibility of life in prison if convicted on trafficking and conspiracy charges. Outside, jubilant supporters of Combs – which have in recent weeks included the provocative rapper Kanye West – erupted into celebration. Some reportedly poured baby oil on each other and yelled: “It’s not Rico, it’s FREAKO.”

Those triumphant chants were references to the organized group sex encounters that women – including two who testified as witnesses for federal prosecutors – have described as rapes. The women – two ex-partners of Combs’s, the singer Cassie Ventura and another alleged victim known as Jane – told the court repeatedly over the course of an eight-week trial that they were coerced into participating in the encounters, which Combs called “freak-offs”, with violence, drugs, coercive financial arrangements, and threats. The encounters were filmed by Combs, and the videos were shown to the jury; in addition to the testimony of the women and the videos of what they say were their assaults, jurors were also shown security footage of a savage beating Combs inflicted on Ventura in a hotel hallway following one such party in 2016, and heard from a hotel security guard who says that Combs paid him $100,000 to destroy video evidence of his conduct.

To free ourselves from our technofeudal overlords, we must think like Karl Marx. The corporations would asset-strip our brains, but we can take back control

A young woman I met recently remarked that it was not so much the existence of pure evil that drove her berserk, but rather people or institutions with the capacity to do good who instead ended up damaging humanity. Her musing made me think of Karl Marx, whose quarrel with capitalism was precisely that – not so much that it was exploitative but that it dehumanised and alienated us despite being such a progressive force.

Preceding social systems might have been more oppressive or exploitative than capitalism. However, only under capitalism have humans been so fully alienated from our products and environment, so divorced from our labour, so robbed of even a modicum of control over what we think and do. Capitalism, especially after it shifted into its technofeudal phase, turned us all into some version of Caliban or Shylock – monads in an archipelago of isolated selves whose quality of life is inversely related to the abundance of gizmos our newfangled machinery produces.

Yanis Varoufakis is the leader of MeRA25, a former finance minister and author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

Two-time Ballon d’Or winner is back with the squad, giving the favourites added momentum at the ideal time

If Spain required any form of pick-me-up before a summer that many assume will bathe them in gold, it came in the sight of Aitana Bonmatí appearing at their second training session in Switzerland. She tuned up on an exercise bike during the first part of Tuesday’s warm-up before later working with the ball.

If the sighs of relief were audible from Madrid, Barcelona and beyond, the Spanish football federation’s accompanying statement resembled a giant exhalation of its own. “With Aitana back, the entire group is now at their base camp in Lausanne, ready to take on the European dream,” it said.

French far-right leader’s ‘grand plan’ to expand AC comes under attack, while Germany braces for possible record heat

The European heatwave has moved east, threatening record temperatures in Germany, as a political row broke out in France over air conditioning.

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen seized a canvassing opportunity before the 2027 presidential election, announcing she would launch a “grand plan for air conditioning” for the nation if she won power.

• All the latest news and reaction from Switzerland

• Email Will | Interactive player guide | Wallchart

Here is Tom Garry’s story on Martin Ho becoming the new Tottenham Hotspur Women’s head coach.

Speaking of finding out more about those involved in Euro 2025, we have a cunning in-depth guide to each player.

• Englishman leaving Norwegian club Brann

• WSL experience includes time at Manchester United

The English coach Martin Ho has signed a three-year deal as Tottenham Hotspur’s head coach until 2028, the Guardian understands.

The 35-year-old had been in charge of the Norwegian club Brann’s women’s team for two years, since leaving his role as the assistant coach at Manchester United women in July 2023.

Cleo’s green fingers are making Jade see red, and filling their home with plant paraphernalia. You decide who needs to turn over a new leaf

Every surface has something sprouting on it. I didn’t sign up to live in a botanical experiment

It’s not just a hobby, I’ve created an ecosystem of calm in our city home. Plus, I make good money

Bravo Rosie O’Donnell for calling out America’s queen over her attendance at the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials. That takes courage

A very unusual thing happened at the weekend, an event so outlandish, so vanishingly rare, that even in these times of general chaos and disorder it deserves our attention: someone prominent joined the tiny cohort of people willing to publicly criticise Oprah. I’m not talking about an attack from the right. Donald Trump and his Maga cronies routinely go after Oprah Winfrey as (feel free to laugh) a lefty agitator. I’m talking about the actor Rosie O’Donnell, on Instagram, calling out America’s queen for showing up at the Jeff Bezos wedding.

Of course, criticising someone for throwing in their lot with Bezos shouldn’t be in the least controversial. The gross parade of wedding guests attending his marriage to Lauren Sánchez in Venice last weekend looked like a catwalk of shame. There was Leonardo DiCaprio, hiding his face with his hat (we still see you!), in the company of his positively geriatric 27-year-old girlfriend, Vittoria Ceretti. There were the Kardashians, not hiding their faces. There was Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. And there, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, Gayle King, who walked several paces behind her as is proper, was Oprah Winfrey.

Club World Cup upset may be a turning point in how football in the region is viewed by Europe’s elite

So it came to pass that the blue moon was eclipsed by the crescent and the world of football took on a slightly different hue. For the past couple of years, the Saudi Pro League had been dismissed as a destination for the old, greedy, unambitious or all three. On Tuesday, European football woke up to be faced with a new side of Saudi Arabian football as Al-Hilal celebrated a 4-3 win over Manchester City to go through to the quarter-finals of the Club World Cup.

If a member of the European elite being turned over by a team that had previously been little-known on the world stage was what the competition needed then this was it.

• Farrell, 33, will arrive in Australia on Friday

• Daly suffered the injury during win over Queensland Reds

Andy Farrell has called up his son Owen to join the British & Irish Lions squad in Australia as a replacement for Elliot Daly, who has been ruled out of the tour with a broken forearm. Farrell Jr, consequently, will feature on his fourth Lions expedition at the age of 33 and is due to join the squad on Friday.

With 112 caps for England and six Lions Test appearances, Farrell unquestionably has big-game experience a relentless competitive edge. He has endured an injury-plagued Top 14 season at Racing 92, however, and has not played international rugby since the end of the 2023 Rugby World Cup.

How the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker redefined high culture

Samuel Irving “Si” Newhouse Jr became chair of Condé Nast, the magazine group owned by his father’s media company, Advance Publications, in 1975. Under his stewardship, Condé’s roster of glossy publications – titles such as Vogue, GQ and Glamour – broadened to include Architectural Digest, a revived Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Newhouse spent big in pursuit of clout, and his company’s extravagant approach to expenses became the stuff of legend. Condé positioned itself as a gatekeeper of high-end living but, as Michael Grynbaum explains in Empire of the Elite, its success in the 80s and 90s was down to its willingness to embrace “low” culture.

Condé brought pop stars, television personalities and tabloid intrigue into the highbrow fold, reconstituting cultural capital to fit the sensibilities of an emerging yuppie class with little interest in ballet or opera. Several moments stand out, in retrospect: GQ’s 1984 profile of Donald Trump, which paved the way for The Art of the Deal; Madonna’s 1989 debut on the cover of Vogue; and the New Yorker’s coverage of the OJ Simpson trial in 1994. Tina Brown, appointed editor of the New Yorker in 1992 after a decade at Vanity Fair, said she wanted “to make the sexy serious and the serious sexy”. Purists bemoaned what they saw as a slide into vulgar sensationalism, but Grynbaum maintains Brown “wasn’t so much dumbing down the New Yorker as expanding the universe to which it applied its smarts”.

Last year, a single female was recorded returning to one tributary of a river usually celebrated for its fish. Now a plan is in place to change things – but it’s proving controversial

On an unusually hot May day in Aberdeenshire, Edwin Third stands on the bank of the River Muick, a tributary of the UK’s highest river, the Dee, talking us through the rising threats to one of Scotland’s most celebrated species, the Atlantic salmon. Against the hills of the Cairngorms national park, a herd of stags on the moorland bask in the sun.

It is a spectacular landscape, attracting hikers, mountain-bikers and salmon fishers, the latter contributing an estimated £15m to Aberdeenshire’s economy.

From 1938 to 1957, the celebrated photo magazine captured tattooists, transgender women and topless men sinking pints – and changed the way the country saw itself

The number of women choosing to freeze their eggs has increased sharply, according to figures from the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). The number deciding to embark on the process abroad also appears to be rising. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian journalist Lucy Hough, who recently travelled to Brussels to freeze her eggs. She explains what prompted her decision and how she feels now that the procedure is over. Madeleine also hears from Joyce Harper, a professor of reproductive science at University College London, about what the freezing of eggs involves and why the small odds of success could be driving women to travel to do it

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Prime minister unveils 10-year health plan to ‘put care on people’s doorsteps’ and prevent illness in first place

• Wes Streeting: My job is to make the NHS fit for the future

The NHS will shift a huge amount of care from hospitals into new community health centres to bring treatment closer to people’s homes and cut waiting times, Keir Starmer will pledge on Thursday.

The prime minister will outline radical plans to give patients in England much easier access to GPs, scans and mental health support in facilities that are open 12 hours a day, six days a week.

Spokesperson Sean Parnell confirms defence department reviewing shipments may not affect only Ukraine

• Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

The Pentagon has said that it is reviewing weapons deliveries to allies around the world as reports grow of concerns over dwindling stockpiles of crucial munitions including anti-air missiles.

The announcement came after the White House confirmed that it was limiting deliveries of weapons to Ukraine to “put America’s interests first following a Department of Defense review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries around the globe”.

• Victory against Vondrousova sets up Sabalenka tie

• Raducanu: ‘I’m just so happy to have that level’

Emma Raducanu has described her stellar second-round victory over Marketa Vondrousova at Wimbledon as one of the best matches she has played in a long time as she set up a highly anticipated meeting with the world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

Raducanu produced an excellent performance to reach the third round of Wimbledon with a 6-3, 6-3 win over the 2023 champion Vondrousova, ensuring that she has now reached the third round or better at Wimbledon on three of her four appearances.

• Briton beaten in Wimbledon second round 6-1, 6-4, 6-4

• ‘I had chances that gave me confidence I was competing’

As a script it surely would have been rejected by Hollywood for being too outlandish. A 21-year-old British student, who has never played on the main tennis tour before, suddenly finds himself on Centre Court with 15,000 people cheering him on. And on the other side of the net is the Wimbledon champion.

Yet that was the situation that Oliver Tarvet, the world No 733 from St Albans, found himself in on Wednesday as he lined up to face the brilliant Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz.

Speaker struggles to muster enough Republican votes as lawmakers object to provisions and cost

• US politics – live updates

Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.

House speaker Mike Johnson is determined to pass the bill as soon as possible, but has been frustrated by lawmakers who object to its provisions and overall cost. They have blocked House Republicans from approving a rule, which is necessary to begin debate on the measure and set the stage for its passage.

In their popular podcast, the brothers talk about all the hidden horrors and hilarity of teaching – from burnout to bad behaviour, stress, trolling and a constant stream of embarrassing incidents ...

You can learn a lot about British society from what children bring into classrooms. Take sex toys, Lee Parkinson says. He co-hosts the highly popular Two Mr Ps in a Pod(Cast) with his brother Adam – they both work in primary schools – and their inboxes are bursting with stories from teachers of X-rated show-and-tells.

“You would not believe,” Lee says.

Alberto Varela claimed he wanted to use sacred plant medicine to free people’s minds. But as the organisation grew, his followers discovered a darker reality

The first time Dalia* took ayahuasca nothing happened. The second time it changed her life. It was 2017, and she had joined a dozen strangers in a chalet outside Barcelona. Everyone was searching for something. For many it was a way out of misery: an escape from years of addiction, or a last-ditch attempt to survive crippling depression. Dalia, a therapist in her early 30s, hoped ayahuasca would help her process the recent death of her mother. “I felt completely alone at that time,” she said. “And I think in some form that’s how everyone there felt.”

The retreat, run by a wellness company called Inner Mastery, began with the two dozen participants talking about their expectations, before imbibing ayahuasca. The Amazonian plant brew, which contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a powerful naturally occurring psychoactive, induces an altered sense of self and reality. Users often report revisiting past trauma or repressed experiences.