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“Future of rugby in Aus won’t be helped by dripping condescension”

That is the impressive title of an email sent in by David Britton:

Northern hemisphere takes on this series speak to the inevitable decline of the game outside the UK, and frankly within it. If you look at the feeder schools for union in Australia, a large and meaningful majority of those players are excelling in league, or choosing to play AFL in southern states.

The idea that ‘this vintage is poor’ obscures the ‘posh boy’ sport that rugby has become in Australia which will continue to see it decline. To be frank, that dynamic is also playing out in the UK but without as many competitors for the more robustly built.

Never let it will be said that the powers that be won’t add more dates to player calendar.

In that spirit …Maybe instead of warming up against Argentina, there are four matches in France two Wednesday two Saturday tests against France. Then off they toddle to SA, NZ or AUS.

• All the news before the big match at Stade de Genève

• Mail Tom | Russo’s rise | Italy icon Girelli | Power rankings

Songs from the big chair: it’s getting busy in Geneva …

Everton sign Pacheco from Villa. Some WSL transfer news, courtesy of PA Media, which reports that Everton have snapped up the Philippines international full-back Maz Pacheco following the expiry of her contract at Aston Villa. The Ormskirk-born 26-year-old is manager Brian Sorensen’s eighth summer signing and joins the club as they prepare for their first full season of football at Goodison Park.

• Riders take on 171.5km mountain route to Montpellier

• William Fotheringham on Mont Ventoux | And mail John

165km to go: Lenny Martinez is up the front, and will fancy another breakaway to land his polka points. The breaks aren’t snagging just yet. Montpellier is left behind as the Med coast appears in view. It looks ridiculously beautiful.

Huw Morgan gets in touch: “Work web filtering means I’m on the live updates only. My colleague Libby has wisely chosen to WFH so she can watch it. I’m not so lucky with a board meeting to attend at 3pm. I’ve been following cycling for 3 years now and I’ve never seen a stage like this. Flat, flat, flat, BANG. Absolutely buzzing to watch it with my wife when I get home from work! We’re Pogacar super fans but hoping for a real tussle on Ventoux with Pog losing some time.”

• Germany international, 26, signs four-deal deal

• Promoted Leeds have now had six summer arrivals

Anton Stach has become promoted Leeds’ sixth summer signing after joining from Bundesliga side Hoffenheim for an undisclosed fee.

The 6ft 4in two-cap Germany midfielder has signed a four-year deal at Elland Road, subject to international clearance and a work permit.

Democrats need to win back the working class in 2028. Our research shows what does and doesn’t work

To win in 2028, Democrats need to win back a lot of working-class voters, including a lot of blue-collar Donald Trump voters. Doing so requires dispensing with some long-held myths that have captured the minds of Democratic party strategists. The first is that persuading working-class Trump supporters is a waste of time. They are – so the story goes – so totally absorbed in Magaland that there is no winning them back. Why bother? On the flip side, some liberals insist that some of these voters are winnable, if only Democrats can make themselves more like Trump by embracing tax cuts and tough talk. A third notion, favored by progressives, says that if liberals just crank the progressive economic message up to eleven, blue-collar voters will come running home.

The truth is, none of these strategies are particularly useful. Because none of them take working-class interests, values and attitudes seriously enough. Fortunately, new research from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) can help shed light on what working-class voters actually want. And it can offer the Democrats a path out of the wilderness.

Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics

Despite their skills, careers and vast amount of knowledge, I often fail to see their adult selves fully formed

I am spending a lot of time at my late mother’s house, sorting things out, wondering why she had so much asafoetida and thinking about the past. Every time I’m there, my sister asks me to water the garden, and I never do. Then she says: “Please, just do the window boxes, otherwise the plants will die,” and I still don’t. “I may come and take the potted plants away, or you could take some, if you want to kill them in your own house?”, she says, and still I ignore her, because I don’t know anything about gardening. So it follows that, being my sibling, she doesn’t either. No amount of evidence to the contrary – her own, frankly magnificent garden – can convince me otherwise.

This is a two-way street. She is a fashion designer and exquisite draughtsperson – which I, also, after many decades, have yet to wrap my head around – but she can’t drive, and if ever she is a passenger when I’m driving, she is on red alert, pointing out things – mainly other cars, pedestrians, trees – as if, without her intervention, I would plough straight into them. Our brother is a skilled decorator and, when he uses words such as “primer” and “dust sheet”, I can’t help looking at him as if a cat is talking. He is a photographer by profession, and, even if we point the same phone at the same object, he creates images that are unfathomably deeper and more pleasing than mine. I look on this not so much as a knowledge base he has that I don’t, and more like an act of hocus-pocus. My other brother is a maths teacher, my other sister is a physicist, and I cannot describe how fanciful I find it that they may really be doing these jobs. Obviously, I have to pretend to believe it. I don’t even know whether you get wired in childhood to think all knowledge is equally distributed because otherwise it isn’t fair, or that every fine difference in skillset is just a question of whoever is younger catching up. But no amount of adulthood can overturn it.

Family in yacht pulled young man from the sea off Costa del Sol

A man who was apparently trying to reach Spain from Morocco using a rubber ring and flippers has been rescued after he was spotted by a family sailing to the Balearic islands.

The family were on their yacht 13 nautical miles south of the Andalucían town of Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol, on 16 July when they manoeuvred around the stern of an oil tanker and saw something moving on the waves.

Jones played 100 times in trophy-laden spell at Anfield, winning two European Cups, a Uefa Cup and a league title

The former Liverpool and Wales defender Joey Jones has died at the age of 70. Jones played 100 times in a trophy-laden spell at Liverpool, winning two European Cups, a Uefa Cup and a league title in three years.

The Llandudno-born left-back earned 72 caps for Wales, starting and ending his career at Wrexham after spells at Anfield, Chelsea and Huddersfield.

A treasure trove of manuscripts, notebooks and recordings from the theatre legend has been acquired by the Library of Congress in Washington DC

Mark Horowitz had done his homework before Stephen Sondheim came to visit. He filled the room with scores by Bartók, Brahms, Copland and Rachmaninoff; manuscripts in the hand of Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein. “The last thing I brought him out was the manuscript for Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess,” Horowitz recalls. “That’s when he started to cry.”

The “show and tell” of Sondheim’s favourite composers, mentors and collaborators at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 1993 planted a seed. It convinced him, Horowitz believes, that his papers would be in good company at the world’s biggest library. “Shortly after that he said he was going to be changing his will and he in fact did. He sent me a printout of the paragraph in his will that left his manuscripts and things to the library.”

It’s never been easier to build an impressive-looking library, especially if you’re mostly interested in the colour and size of your books. Is this necessarily a bad thing?

People have always used books to assert their sophistication and affluence. You need only visit the library of a National Trust property to see that. The novelist F Scott Fitzgerald famously critiqued the shallowness of the super-rich via his character, Jay Gatsby, who lined his shelves with books in order to project a cultured image of himself – yet they were “uncut” and had never been read.

To one guest at Gatsby’s party, that doesn’t matter – he describes the shelves (that he had at first assumed to be cardboard facades of books) as “a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

UK company to fund new drug manufacturing facility in Virginia and expand R&D facilities around US

• Business live – latest updates

AstraZeneca has announced it will invest $50bn (£37bn) in the US by 2030, the latest in a string of pledges by pharmaceutical companies as the threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs looms over the industry.

The British drugmaker, which is headquartered in Cambridge, said its investment would fund a new drug manufacturing facility in Virginia and expand its research and development and cell therapy manufacturing in Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Indiana and Texas.

The White House confirmed that Trump called Netanyahu to ‘rectify’ the situation after ongoing clashes in the city of Sweida

Donald Trump was “caught off guard” by Israeli strikes on Syria last week, the White House has said, adding that the US president called Benjamin Netanyahu to “rectify” the situation.

Israel launched strikes on the capital Damascus and the southern Druze-majority city of Sweida last week, saying it aimed to put pressure on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the region amid ongoing clashes there.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Bank’s FPC committee testify to Treasury committee

• Full story: UK borrowing rises more than expected, putting pressure on Rachel Reeves

Britain’s monthly borrowing in June would have paid for half a nuclear power station!

The UK government has, thiss morning, struck a deal worth more than £38bn with private investors to back Britain’s biggest nuclear project in a generation at the Sizewell C site on the Suffolk coast, my colleague Jillian Ambrose reports.

Head of UN Palestinian Refugee Agency says health workers, journalists and humanitarians are fainting while performing duties

Prof Nick Maynard is a consultant surgeon at Oxford university hospital who has been travelling regularly to Gaza for 15 years. He is currently volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) at Nasser hospital in Gaza.

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

We will express our position regarding the E3’s comments on the snapback mechanism, which we think lacks any legal ground.

Nonetheless, our effort will be to see if we can find common solutions to manage the situation.

It has been seven years that the nuclear deal is not being implemented by the Europeans following the U.S. departure from it. How can they argue that Iran is not following the deal when they themselves have not done so?

At least a dozen people injured in strikes, after the two countries agreed to meet for negotiations on Wednesday

Separately, the Kremlin also responded to reports in The Times newspaper (£) that the US had stationed nuclear weapons in Britain for the first time since 2008 that could be in future carried by Britain’s new F-35A fighter jets.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “We see a line towards escalation of tensions, towards militarisation, including nuclear militarisation.“

Today’s fluff is naming its price

Manchester United are stopping at nothing in their efforts to win the transfer gossip column inches Club World Cup. With the summer-long saga of Bryan Mbeumo’s future finally settled in their favour, they’ve set about linking themselves with a whole range of new targets. Among them, Nicolas Jackson. The Senegal forward has been nudged down Chelsea’s pecking order in recent months but United reckon he could be just the man to illuminate some mid-table scraps. According to the Metro, United have intensified their interest in Jackson but Chelsea will want a whopping £80m-plus to top up their profit and loss stats. Jackson has rebuffed Milan and Napoli but wants to stay in the English top flight.

Also in Ruben Amorim’s sights is Emiliano Martínez. With André Onana ruled out for the start of the season, United need some goalkeeping resource and Aston Villa’s Argentinian World Cup winner fits their needs. Villa, however, will want at least £40m.

In his caustic critique of identity politics, Williams ends up condemning every kind of collective action

Thomas Chatterton Williams, a public intellectual of some standing in the US, dislikes the Trumpian right for its erratic authoritarianism. But he dislikes its hysterical leftwing critics too – arguably with more vehemence. He takes great pride in having no truck with tribes, but he does belong to one: like halitosis, as Terry Eagleton quipped, ideology appears to be only what the other person has. Williams may think he is a freethinker above the fray, but he has a creed – and it is liberal complacency.

His 2010 debut memoir Losing My Cool was the story of – as the subtitle had it – Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd. Rap, he declared, was not so much a genre as a subculture, seducing young black men into a world of crime. That, apparently, would have been Williams’s fate (when he physically attacks his girlfriend, for instance, hip-hop lyrics shoulder the blame) had it not been for Pappy, his disciplinarian father, who foisted 15,000 books on him.

A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – all could be achieved with political will

• Nick Maynard is a volunteer surgeon at Nasser hospital

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

This is my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I’m witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population.

Hong Sang-soo makes a genuinely intriguing addition to his booze- and conversation-fuelled oeuvre

With his own particular kind of unhurried ceaselessness and murmuring calm, Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has produced another of his elegant, discursive, low-key movies of the educated middle classes. These are movies so numerous and so obviously comparable to each other that they collectively constitute a kind of Balzacian Comédie Humaine, though on a more intimate scale. It will surprise none of Hong’s admirers to discover that this film once again shows us a series of conversations with familiar repertory players, informal one-on-one chats shot casually in available light, with people doing a vast amount of daytime drinking. Really, does any film-maker show characters getting quietly plastered as often and realistically as Hong?

It’s possible to feel simultaneously amused, bemused, intrigued and exasperated at Hong’s film-making, to wonder if the drinking and the consequent inevitable cathartic outburst are in fact cathartic or dramatically meaningful, to wonder what it is leading to. But arguably the enigma is the point. This movie lodged in my mind a little more than Hong’s earlier films, perhaps because it is less contrived and it features a genuinely funny and complex opening scene.

June figure of £20.7bn comes as chancellor prepares for autumn budget where she may have to make tax rises

• Reeves faces gloomy autumn after borrowing overshoots

• Business live – latest updates

The UK government borrowed more than expected in June amid speculation the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will need to raise taxes at the autumn budget to repair the public finances.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing rose to £20.7bn, up by £6.6bn from the same month a year earlier to reach the second-highest June borrowing figure since monthly records began in 1993.

Union hits out at changes to way health service is preparing for this week’s industrial action by resident doctors

The British Medical Association (BMA) has said the NHS plan for dealing with forthcoming resident doctors’ strikes will put patient safety at risk.

Up to 50,000 resident doctors in England, formerly known as junior doctors, are set to join the industrial action from 7am on Friday 25 July to 7am on Wednesday 30 July. They are demanding a 29% pay rise.

Government’s deal with EDF, Centrica and other backers marks end of 15-year journey to win funding for project

• Business live – latest updates

The UK government has struck a deal worth more than £38bn with private investors to back Britain’s biggest nuclear project in a generation at the Sizewell C site on the Suffolk coast.

The long-awaited multibillion-pound deal, which will be paid for through taxes and energy bills, gives the final go-ahead for construction of the nuclear project which has almost doubled in cost from when it was first proposed.

Stade de Genève has arguably been the epicentre of Euro 2025 – England need to stamp their mark on the ground

Just off the shore of Lake Geneva, the Jet d’Eau fires a relentless, arching cascade 140 metres into the air. It is the centrepiece of an effortlessly refined city that has taken leave of its senses at times during Euro 2025. England supporters landing on a clear Monday morning could appreciate the landmark from high up; those feeling brave could stretch out and walk within a few dozen strides of a torrent pumped out of the ground at around 125mph.

There is hope that England’s women can channel similar momentum when they face Italy at Stade de Genève in their semi-final on Tuesday. It took the squad time to switch off from their epic shootout win against Sweden in the last eight, when they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Adrenaline coursed through Sarina Wiegman’s players in the hours afterwards and nobody would be averse to a sounder night’s sleep this time around.

England proved their mettle by coming back to beat India, and bringing in the experienced Liam Dawson makes them stronger

The third Test at Lord’s was an outstanding game and a brilliant win for England, particularly after the hammering they received at Edgbaston. To come back and show the mettle they did as a group of players was hugely impressive. Now, 10 days later, they have to go again, and the fourth game may be the most intriguing yet.

For England, Liam Dawson returns after an eight-year Test absence. I was involved with the side when he was picked and played in 2016 – he was a good cricketer then, and is a better one now. He is recognised as the best all-round spinning option in the country and my view is that England are stronger with him. Shoaib Bashir has great potential and seems to be making good strides forward as a young spin bowler, but in his place comes a vastly experienced 35-year-old who has played all formats and all round the world, has 18 first-class hundreds to his name and is clearly a better all-round package.