• Updates from Wednesday’s stage around Toulouse

• Stage-by-stage guide | And you can also email Amy

There’s about 8km left of the neutralised start. On the TV coverage, reporters have been asking the riders how they spent the rest day. Both Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar say they had haircuts. Pogačar seemed very pleased that he’d had a ride with a proper cafe stop as well.

Bill has emailed in with his thoughts on today’s stage:

Given the profile of the parcours, I can’t see any breakaway thrilling heroics ending well, as the day sets in for the bunch sprint.

I’m genuinely pleased that Healy is in yellow, he got a proper stomp on on Monday, and seems to be in a position to keep hold of the jersey today. If he keeps his wits about him, it’s only his Toulouse.

• Updates from the series opener in Southampton

• Read today’s edition of The Spin | And mail Rob

Read The Spin, our weekly cricket newsletter. Or don’t. Life’s too short to do things you don’t enj- ah, you’re at work, aren’t you?

Sophie Ecclestone returns to the England side after missing the ODI series against West Indies earlier in the summer. That means there’s no place for Linsey Smith, who took seven very cheap wickets in that series.

• All the latest Euros news and quarter-final buildup

• Schedule | Top scorers | Player guide | Mail Emillia

Some transfer/contract news for you now as Ethan Nwaneri is poised to sign a new deal with Arsenal despite receiving interest from other clubs.

Meanwhile, Brentford are pushing to sign Omari Hutchinson.

From the mysterious ‘return’ of a vanished mother to a London love affair gone awry, check out our guide to the freshest fiction to read by the pool

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Amid an already bumper year of literary wins for Black authors, with the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s Pen Pinter prize among the most recent, there is no better time to beef up your summer reading list. In this week’s newsletter, I’ll talk you through some of my favourite page-turners – from a romcom about old flames to stories about queer life in Nigeria and a debut coming-of-age novel about class, affluence and grief.

US president faces Maga backlash over suspicion his administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect rich elite – including Trump

Donald Trump has dismissed a secretive inquiry into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as “boring” and of interest only to “bad people”, but said he backed the release of any “credible” files, as he sought to stamp out a conspiracy-fuelled uproar among his supporters.

The US president is facing a political crisis within his usually loyal Republican Make America Great Again (Maga) base over suspicion that the administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect the rich elite he associated with, which included Trump.

There’s no room for sentiment as Wallabies assistant bids to leave country on a high before his move to Leicester Tigers

Geoff Parling is a perfect example of just how far sport can propel you in life. Growing up in Stockton-on-Tees he was a goalkeeper who did not start throwing a rugby ball around until the age of 12. Back then the chances of him coaching Australia in a British & Irish Lions series were about the same as seeing a snoozing koala up a gum tree in Hartlepool.

Yet here he is now in a Wallaby tracksuit, preparing to complete the unique double of playing a Test for the Lions and then also coaching against them at the same exalted level. It is a parallel universe to 2013 when Parling was part of the triumphant Lions side in the final Test in Sydney. That night it was his crucial tackle on Jesse Mogg – “My long arms came in useful for once” – which snuffed out any chance of a home fightback. This weekend the aim is to do the precise opposite and restore a golden glow to Australian rugby.

Jo-Ann Mort and Beth Miller go head to head on Zohran Mamdani

While headlines would have you believe otherwise, Jewish New Yorkers supported Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary in droves. We showed up because our communities want to live and thrive alongside our neighbors in an affordable city where no one is left behind, and because we want a mayor who believes in Palestinian human rights.

Beth Miller is the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action

Jo-Ann Mort is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? She writes frequently about Israel for US, UK, and Israeli publications

Television versions of the author’s writing have been mixed, to say the least. Ahead of The Institute – about a bootcamp for telekinetic kids – we rate the lot, from the volcanically dull to the Tim Curry-as-Pennywise brilliant

There are several things we have come to expect from small-screen adaptations of Stephen King’s many, many novels and short stories and they are, generally speaking, these: there will be a small town beset by an Ageless Evil. There will be children, some of whom will be dead, others merely telekinetic and/or screaming in pyjamas. There will be blood. And flannel shirts. And dialogue so awful you will want to bludgeon it with a spade and inter it in an ancient burial ground, despite the suspicion that it will rise from the dead and continue to torment you.

Like the generally superior film versions of the author’s works, some of these TV adaptations will, in fact, be very enjoyable. Others will not. And then there is The Institute (MGM+), a new adaptation of a middling 2019 thriller that manages to capture the endearingly wonky essence of King’s genius by being both extremely well crafted and, at times, astonishingly silly. But how does it measure up to its predecessors?

US president’s attempt to help his rightwing ally avoid jail has sparked wave of anger and given boost to rival Lula

Silvana Marques was one of thousands of Brazilians who flocked to São Paulo’s most famous art museum one afternoon last week. But the 51-year-old teacher wasn’t there to marvel over fog-filled London landscapes at Masp’s new Monet retrospective. She had come to join a protest heaping scorn on Donald Trump.

Beneath the museum’s brutalist hulk, Marques spotted a cardboard effigy of the US president and took a picture with her phone before the Trump dummy was set on fire. “Laranjão safado,” which translates as big orange dirtbag, she wrote under her photo on Instagram. Nearby, demonstrators hoisted a red banner into the air which read: “Nice try Trump. But we’re not afraid.”

Guards at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fired teargas or pepper spray on crowds, say health authorities and witnesses

• Middle East crisis – live updates

At least 20 Palestinians have been killed in a crush at a food distribution site in southern Gaza run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It happened after GHF guards used teargas or pepper spray on hungry crowds arriving at the centre, Palestinian health authorities and witnesses said.

Nineteen people were crushed and one stabbed in a “chaotic and dangerous surge” on Wednesday morning, GHF said in a statement. It did not respond to questions about the use of pepper spray or teargas by its staff at the site near Khan Younis.

No one knows more about admin than administrators. They share their top tips, from ‘eating the frog’ to drawing up a ‘ta-da’ list

Some of us are utterly hopeless with admin, others so good they do it for a living. What are the best ways to get your working life under control? Administrators share their productivity tips and efficiency hacks.

Robinson is magnificently cringeworthy as a man in thrall to his cool neighbour Rudd in Andrew DeYoung’s film, as divisive as a Vimto/Marmite cocktail

Here is a goofy-surreal comedy from first-time feature-maker Andrew DeYoung starring sketch comic Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd; it is potentially as divisive as a Vimto-Marmite cocktail. It is a shaggy dog tale of ineffable silliness, operating ostensibly on the realist lines of indie US cinema but sauntering sideways from its initial premise, getting further and further from what had appeared to be a real issue: how difficult it is for grown men to make new friends.

In this case, a beta-male chump attempts to be mates with his supercool new neighbour and you might even suspect that the film’s progressive excursion into stoner unseriousness itself enacts men’s avoidant nature, their inability to find an emotionally intelligent connection with each other. The result is not unlike the darkly wacky entertainments of Jim Hosking or Todd Solondz; there’s also a tiny hint of Charlie Kaufman and the white-collar-workplace losers of Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell.

First she wanted to be a princess – and now this. I blame Frozen

I suspect I might be issuing this plea on the wrong website but … is anyone here pals with King Charles III? Can you please tell his majesty to keep an eye on the post because my four-year-old has written the king a letter cordially inviting him to pop over to Philadelphia for ice-cream and “a big hug”. I’m not banking on this request being fulfilled, but I’m trying this new thing where I put my hopes and dreams out there in the world and wait to see what happens. (One hopes a restraining order from Buckingham Palace is not what happens.)

To be crystal clear: sharing ice-cream with aristocracy is not one of my personal hopes or dreams. I think the monarchy is ridiculous. However, I seem to have inadvertently raised a staunch royalist who has developed a fixation on King Charles. I blame Elsa of Arendelle from the film Frozen for this. Like many little children, my daughter had an intense Frozen phase, which led to her falling victim to the broader princess industrial complex. I then made the mistake of mentioning the fact that Britain has a royal family and showing her a clip from the coronation. She was not impressed with Queen Camilla (her dress wasn’t frilly enough), but Charles and his fancy crown stole her heart.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The Base, a far-right group with suspected links to Russia, said killing of Ivan Voronych was ‘only the beginning’

The Ukrainian wing of an internationally proscribed far-right terrorist organization with suspected links to Russia is claiming involvement in the brazen assassination of an intelligence officer in Kyiv.

Late last week, a masked assailant shot and killed Col Ivan Voronych of the Ukraine security service (SBU) as he walked through a Kyiv parking lot in broad daylight. Shocking footage of the assassination circulated in Ukrainian media and caused a stir among residents in the capital.

More than 2in of rain fell in an hour in the region, killing two people, and such storms are only going to intensify

Monday night’s downpour was one of the most intense rainstorms in New York City history, the kind of storm that’s now happening much more often due to climate warming.

More than 2in of rain fell in New York City’s Central Park in the 7pm hour on Monday evening, part of a regional downpour that filled the city’s highways and subway tunnels and prompted several water rescues.

Inspired by Indigenous practices, Mikaela de la Myco has collected stories of mothers who say psilocybin helped them during pregnancy. US scientists are skeptical

When Mikaela found out she was pregnant six years ago, she knew she needed to stop drinking. What she wasn’t sure about was how she would manage the cravings.

As a teenager, she had discovered that alcohol and opiates could dull traumatic memories, including recurrent sexual assaults that played in her mind nonstop and led to suicidal thoughts. But as she entered her 20s, eager to address her mental health, she realized what helped most was psilocybin.

We need counterstrategies against the Trumpists’ usurpation of what should remain separate powers

It has been said many times, but saying it appears to have no consequences: our system of checks and balances is failing. The US supreme court allowing the president effectively to abolish the Department of Education only reinforces this sense; Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, explicitly wrote that “the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave” – but she did not explain how to counter the threat.

The picture is complicated by the fact that what critics call “the stranglehold the checks and balances narrative on the American political imagination” has prevented positive democratic change. Hence it is crucial to understand where the separation of powers itself needs to be kept in check and where it can play a democracy-reinforcing role. Most important, we need counterstrategies against the Trumpists’ usurpation of what should remain separate powers.

• Contract expected to be four years plus one-year option

• Brentford fail with move for Ipswich’s Omari Hutchinson

Ethan Nwaneri is poised to commit his future to Arsenal by signing a new contract despite interest from Chelsea and clubs in Germany.

Negotiations with Nwaneri’s representatives are understood to be in the final stages, a four-year deal with an option to extend by a year having been agreed in principle. The 18-year-old has entered the final 12 months of his contract and had been linked with Chelsea in recent weeks. Borussia Dortmund were also believed to be keen after his brilliant breakthrough season in which he scored nine goals in 37 appearances.

Defence secretary says it was ‘never the plan to bring everyone’ on dataset to UK, while Ben Wallace denies Tories sought superinjunction

• UK politics live – latest updates

The defence secretary, John Healey, has said there is no automatic right to resettlement for Afghans named in a leaked Ministry of Defence database, as the former Conservative ministers Ben Wallace and Johnny Mercer clashed over whether “thousands of people with little or tenuous links” had been admitted to Britain.

The controversy revolves around a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) that was released “in error” in February 2022 by a British defence official.

US president talks of low tariff to give pharmaceutical firms a year or so to build, and then making it ‘very high’

• Business live – latest updates

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his “reciprocal” levies on individual countries.

The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced “probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff”.

Announcement that people from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen were deported comes after eight others were sent to South Sudan this month

A flight carrying immigrants deported from the US has landed in Eswatini, the homeland security department announced, in a move that follows the supreme court lifting limits on deporting migrants to third countries.

In a post online, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin named five deportees from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen and said they were convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder.

The summer success of the streamer’s Trainwreck series of docs shows how so many of us just can’t look away from unfolding chaos

Trainwreck has become TV’s unlikely summer breakout, a runaway blockbuster for Netflix.

Not to be confused with the 2015 comedy starring Amy Schumer, Trainwreck is the Netflix-produced anthology documentary series that revisits the shocking, bizarre and chaotic real-life media sensations of yesteryear. Episodes run the gamut from pop culture disasters (Travis Scott’s Astroworld tragedy) to public meltdowns (crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford) to wildly improbable fiascos (the Carnival “poop cruise”), with each seemingly destined to land on the streamer’s most-watched list.

Scotland’s domestic league has been dominated by Celtic and Rangers, but American investors see untapped potential

A club that plays in red, white and blue was always ripe for American investment. The arrival of Andrew Cavenagh and the San Francisco 49ers as Rangers’ new owners has the potential to shake up a Scottish top division that has been won by Rangers’ fierce rivals, Celtic, in 13 of the last 14 seasons.

It’s not just at the top, however, where American money is reshaping Scottish soccer. Six of the Scottish Premiership’s 12 clubs are now American-owned. The 49ers’ purchase of Rangers wasn’t even the only US takeover of a Scottish club this summer: Calvin Ford, the great-great-grandson of Henry Ford, completed a deal to buy Livingston. Scotland’s top division is now just one club away from having a majority of American owners.

Collagen-boosting retinoids and antioxidants do hold their own south of the chin, but ensure you lather on sunscreen first and foremost

If you’ve ever kindly searched for a recommendation of a neck cream from me, then you’ll know there are virtually none on record. This is because, despite so many being marketed in my direction and so many requests for a column about the best of them, I am consistently grumpy about neck products on principle. I certainly don’t neglect my own neck in my routine, and encourage anyone engaged in their appearance to take good care of their entire skin, scalp to toe. And I can obviously understand why people seek out a specialist neck treatment when they notice changes in firmness and texture on the throat. But skin doesn’t become different when it passes the jawline, it responds in the same way to TLC as the face, so I can see few good reasons for spending extra money.

The things we know can help produce collagen lost on the face and neck as we age, naturally or prematurely, are retinoids and, to a lesser degree, antioxidants like vitamin C. So I use these on my face and neck (usually at both ends of the day).