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Welcome to the beginning of the business end of the Lions tour 2025. All of the performances, incredibly awkward and forced social media content, and speculation about who will be selected for the big one has led to this: Australia vs British & Irish Lions in Brisbane.

All of the talk in the build up has focused more on the margin of the expected Lions victory with the result an apparently foregone conclusion. The Wallabies are currently ranked 6th in the world, and have only climbed from 8th due to losses by Argentina and Scotland in recent weeks, while the visitors are pulling from a fuller stock of four nations.

The New York mayoral candidate has piqued the interest of South Asian Americans and Muslims – not only because of his identity, but his platform, too

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor has a group of Pakistani American aunties and uncles so excited that they are wondering if they should have given their own children more freedom in choosing their careers. “What if we let our kids become politicians, and not just doctors and engineers?” a member of the grassroots political organizing group, DRUM Beats, asked at a small celebration held at an Islamic school last month in south Brooklyn.

DRUM Beats, which represents New York City’s working class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean populations, was one of the first grassroots groups to endorse Mamdani, when he launched his campaign in October – long before he became a household name. More than 300 volunteers, who spoke near a dozen languages, knocked on at least 10,000 doors to support him. DRUM Beats says these efforts helped increase voter turnout by almost 90% among Indo Caribbean and South Asians in some neighborhoods.

When he left the Soviet Union for a new life in America, the novelist never imagined he would live under another authoritarian regime. Then Trump got back into power ... Is it time to move again?

Oh, to have been born in a small, stylish country with good food and favourable sea breezes. No empire, no holy faith, no condescension, no fatal ideologies. The fish is grilled, the extended family roll in on their scooters, the wine looks amber in its glass as the socially democratic sun begins its plunge into the sparkling waters below.

This was not my fortune. I was born to one dying superpower and am now living in another. I was born to an ideology pasted all over enormous granite buildings in enormous Slavic letters and now live in one where the same happens in bold caps on what was once Twitter and what purports to be Truth (Pravda?) Social. America, Russia. Russia, America. Together they were kind enough to give me the material from which I made a decent living as a writer, but they took away any sense of normality, any faith that societies can provide lives without bold-faced slogans, bald-faced lies, leaders with steely set jaws, and crusades against phantom menaces, whether Venezuelan or Ukrainian.

• UK government will give £35m to help push for event

• Previous successes leave city in strong position for bid

London is in prime position to stage the 2029 World Athletics Championships after finally securing a substantial government funding commitment for the bid.

It is understood that the UK government has agreed to give £35m to help bid for the championships, which would be the first to be staged in London since 2017, with the mayor’s office expected to commit around £10m.

In a social media trend, the airline’s joyful advert jingle is being played over cheerless summer holiday footage

You’re the boss of a travel company, it’s early summer and your brand is going viral. Millions of people are watching and sharing social media clips of people on holiday, the soundtrack to which is your company jingle.

It sounds like a PR dream, but is it?

The Swedish striker has become more meme than man but he is the very good thing fans asked for, on a tray, ready to go

The current edition of France Football magazine has a photo of Viktor Gyökeres on the cover. Not that I’ve looked at it much, or pored over its details searching for meaning, but the photo shows Gyökeres half in shade, half in sun, displaying his famously shredded physique, not so much the standard male musculature, more a selection of lines and bulges, like he’s made entirely from giant walnuts, like a perfect human challah loaf designed by a robot.

In the photo Gyökeres is smiling with a kind of fervour, as though he’s about to sell you a miracle muscle powder. And I for one would buy this powder. Make me into a cyborg, Viktor. Maximise my hidden hyper-potential. Basically, I want Viktor Gyökeres to hold me brusquely in his arms while he talks about good proteins and explains the blockchain, in a way that isn’t sexual. Not for me anyway, but that definitely is for him.

The foam footwear is selling fast at the high-end store in London but the price remains controversial

Rounded, cushioned and with a thick strap, foam sliders have been a familiar sight on feet this summer. While they are available for £30 from Adidas or £3.49 on the online marketplace Temu, a high-fashion version is now also on offer. The Ama sliders, in a choice of black, red or white, were launched by the American fashion brand The Row this week. They cost £600.

Laura Reilly, the writer of the influential fashion newsletter Magasin, called them “The Row’s latest rage bait”, using the name for posts online designed to provoke anger, and go viral in the process.

One is a former child soldier, the other lost 30% of his brain to a boxing injury, and together they’ve built the Briton into fighter who can challenge Usyk

‘We understand human psychology because of what we went through rather than going to university to study it,” Don Charles says as he sits alongside his assistant Kieran Farrell on an old church pew in his gym in Hertfordshire. The contrasting trainers explain how their extraordinary back stories have helped them unlock the reclusive and complex character of Daniel Dubois as he aims to beat Oleksandr Usyk and become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night.

“It’s true because I’ve found a second life after I had a bleed on the brain,” Farrell says as the 35-year-old from Manchester remembers the terrible injury he suffered in 2012 when he fought Anthony Crolla. “I lost 30% of my brain but it’s incredible to now be working with Don who knew me when I was boxer.”

Division between minority populations drag Syria further into cycle of violence and attracts Israeli opportunism

Seven months on from Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Syria is descending into yet another wave of bloody sectarian violence.

A local dispute between a Bedouin tribesman and a member of the Druze minority sparked clashes that drew in Syrian government forces and triggered Israeli airstrikes – leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

A scene from Sandra Bullock’s 2000 film gave me the courage to intervene at a crucial moment – and eventually led me to a career in journalism

It was a brie and cranberry panini that nearly killed my friend George. Six of us were squashed on to one picnic bench in Edinburgh, nine years ago, on our lunch break at a magazine. I felt an instant click with George when he we first met. I was an intern when I first met George, nauseous with first-day nerves. “Is that a Welsh twang I can hear? Sorry, I’m George!” he’d said, before talking me through the office milk-buying etiquette. We had that frenetic compatibility that makes you assume you’ll be friends for ever.

Within a couple of years I’d become part of the team. That day at lunch, as someone cracked a joke, George mistimed his bite. He cleared his throat while we slapped his back and chuckled. Then the colour drained from his lips. His coughs turned to rattly gasps, his fingers flew to his collarbone and his eyes rolled back.

From Olly Alexander, Simon Le Bon and Karen O to Beatrice and Virgil, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Who used to celebrate the anniversary of his 1658 kidney stone operation?
2 Virgil and Beatrice were whose poetic guides?
3 Which country is currently in its Reiwa era?
4 Who is the only driver to win world titles on two and four wheels?
5 Under what rural-sounding name did Amanda Owen find fame?
6 Which river flows from Black Forest to Black Sea?
7 Who is the Hindu creator god?
8 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg was the US counterpart of which British artist?
What links:
9 Lariat; opera; matinee; princess; choker?
10 Olly Alexander; Simon Le Bon; Karen O; Marti Pellow; Katie White?
11 A Room of One’s Own; The Common Reader; Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid?
12 46656; 3125; 256; 27; 4; 1?
13 Image orthicon tube; gramophone; Margaret Herrick’s uncle (possibly); Antoinette Perry?
14 Viv Anderson, 1978, and Kerry Davis, 1982?
15 Buchanan Castle; Tower of London; Spandau prison?

When clients started getting random calls about making personal injury claims, Jan and Michael Reed set out to discover who was stealing data from their family-run garage

Michael and Jan Reed can remember the moment their family business received its first indelible blow. It was 2015 and three of their regular customers were standing in the reception of their accident repair centre in County Durham. It had been a busy period and, unusually, all three had come to collect their cars at the same time.

One had got a call from an accident management company trying to persuade him to make a personal injury claim. Unusually, the caller knew the make and model of the car and the date of the accident. The second man said the same had happened to him. By the time the third customer confirmed he had also got the cold call, the three of them were pulling out their phones.

This action-packed thriller, which sees a mother forced out of retirement to defend herself and her clueless son, is supremely confident TV. It takes the genre somewhere totally new

Telly assassins have many good qualities, as well as one obvious red flag. We admire their prowess, method, patience and improvisation. We may be jealous of their efficiency, or their extraordinarily brief phone conversations, some of which merely involve listening to the words “Is it done?” or “Call me when it’s done.” The Assassin (Friday 25 July, Prime Video) features a supremely confident title and many of these aspects. It is also funny.

The set-up is low-key. Journalist Edward Green visits his estranged mother Julie on a Greek island. Following an attempt on her life, which she settles with brutal efficiency, he discovers she is actually a deactivated hitwoman. Fleeing across Europe, he attempts to learn about her past as they untangle a giant conspiracy threatening their lives. There’s also a mystery around who his father is, so it’s a bit Mamma Mia, too.

Biebs drops a surprise R&B passion project, while Ella Al-Shamahi delivers a joyful look at the origins of humanity. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days

Euro favourites give Switzerland hope before sealing their place in the semi-finals but France or Germany could challenge their supremacy

Afterwards, there was an awful lot of messing about. Probably more than you would expect after a briefly absorbing quarter-final whose outcome was never seriously in doubt. The Swiss players performed the world’s slowest lap of honour. The Spanish players posed for a group photo, but it kept having to be retaken as more players arrived. OK, now one more with Aitana. Now one more with Irene. Now one with the staff. Now in portrait for the ’gram. Then the teams gave each other an honour guard off the pitch. At one point you would swear someone laid out some picnic blankets and Scotch eggs.

Finally they left. And if there was a strangely ceremonial feel to the post-match perhaps it was because there was a strangely ceremonial feel to the match itself: more event than genuine contest, even as Switzerland held out for more than an hour, counted their blessings, fleetingly hoped. But there was always too much time on the clock. There were always Athenea del Castillo and Salma Paralluelo and Vicky López to come on. There was always one more attack to weather, one more shot to block, one more ricochet that had to bounce just right.

• Irishman penalised for ball roll during practice swing

• ‘I didn’t want to get slaughtered for being a cheat’

Shane Lowry said he was conscious of his reputation after accepting a two-stroke penalty for a rules infringement during the second round of the Open. Lowry was adamant he did not see his ball roll backwards in rough at the 12th hole during a practice swing, with officials determining he was in breach of the rules of golf.

Lowry was informed of a potential issue on the 15th before detailed discussion after he closed out on the 18th green. Lowry’s 70 became a 72, leaving him 10 adrift of the tournament leader, Scottie Scheffler, with his score on the 12th changed from five to seven.

• No guarantees from new manager over captain staying

• ‘We’re probably not favourites to win Premier League’

Thomas Frank has said he is yet to decide whether to keep Son Heung-min as his captain at Tottenham and the new manager did not offer any guarantees that the club’s marquee player would stay beyond the closure of the summer transfer window.

Frank addressed a host of subjects at his official presentation on Friday before his first Spurs game – the friendly at Reading on Saturday – taking in his targets, how he intends to play and the desire to guard against the level of injuries that undermined his predecessor, Ange Postecoglou. He revealed that Dejan Kulusevski, who underwent knee surgery on 14 May, would not be available for the start of the season.

Writers Guild of America requests New York attorney general investigate ‘potential wrongdoing’ after shock cancellation

The Writers Guild of America has called on New York state officials to launch an investigation into Paramount following its sudden decision to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

In a strongly worded statement issued on Friday, the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West asked the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, to investigate Paramount over “potential wrongdoing” after the company announced the cancellation of the Late Show on Thursday.

The tourists are favourites against Australia, who need everything to go their way if they are to compete in this series

There is nothing that can compare to running out for a British & Irish Lions Test for the first time. I was speaking to Andy Farrell this week and I was getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Running out on to the field, the noise, the energy, the stakes – it’s completely different from anything those players will have experienced before. It’s a new chemical stimulus and in conversation with Farrell I was immediately transported back to Durban and 2009.

For all the sports psychology, visualisation and every bit of preparation you can do, it’s still different. It changed the way I warmed up. I made sure I got out on to the field early just to be able to absorb it. You are not a spectator when the whistle goes, you’re not looking around thinking: “This is cool”. That’s for the fans, so I would go out early to feel it, to sense it and just get used to it.

As pressure builds over the president’s broken promise to publicly release details about the convicted sex offender, his base has a new target: Trump himself

“I feel so betrayed and so angry. This is not what I voted for.” “This cemented permanent deep state power.” “I’m concerned about being able to trust Donald Trump to keep his word.” “What about justice for these young ladies who were trafficked? What about their justice? Don’t they deserve justice?”

These were just a few of the calls that besieged conservative radio hosts across the US this week. The president’s ardent supporters spent the past decade fulminating over various foes, from Barack Obama and the deep state to undocumented immigrants and transgender children. Now they have a new target: Donald Trump himself.

Gulim in Kazakhstan keeps her very first one as a souvenir while Coco in Thailand breaks the law by having them, and Serena in Italy says they’re essential. But there’s still a stigma when it comes to talking about sex toys. That’s why Gabriele Galimberti’s images are so powerful, writes author and academic Roxane Gay (Warning: explicit content)

Most of us are taught to keep our sexual lives private. We’re taught to hide our desires, and all too often, to be ashamed of them. Cultural instruction about sex tends to be very prescriptive. Sex happens in our bedrooms, behind closed doors, between a man and a woman. Sex is for procreation rather than pleasure. Sex is for marriage. Sex should only happen when you fall in love. If you’re a woman, you should only have one sexual partner for the whole of your life. If you’re a man, the sky’s the limit.

Certainly, some of these mores have shifted over time, relaxed a bit. But mostly, we’re supposed to keep our sex lives to ourselves. And certainly, we aren’t supposed to partake of anything that would strain the strictures of “good taste”, like say, pornography or sex toys.

Starmer’s successful ‘reset’ with Europe highlights an underlying incoherence. The only rational long-term strategy is to rejoin the EU, but our politics is far removed from that

Like a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer’s real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe – witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz – does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.

After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain’s global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second circle, now the European Union, Britain has withdrawn from it. With the revolutionary nationalism of President Donald Trump, the third circle is also fading fast. So here’s an 80-year countdown of Britain’s strategic circles: three … two … one, going on none.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

I spend all afternoon watching the dog. Then an email pings and I turn to read it. When I turn back, the dog is gone and there’s a new hole in the lawn

Shortly after its first birthday, the new dog suddenly starts digging giant holes in the lawn. I don’t know why I imagined a year would be a cut-off point for a dog developing new unwanted behaviours. Why shouldn’t an adult dog find a hobby?

Anyway, these giant holes represent one of the key challenges of canine training: encouragement is easy; discouragement is hard. It’s easy to teach a dog that peeing outside is good. It takes a lot longer to teach it that peeing inside is bad.