• Game-by-game coverage from the HSBC Championships

• Big interview: Nick Kyrgios | And you can email Daniel

Lehecka to serve, ready … play.

Our coverage has, finally, started, and our players are out. Lehecka will have to start well, but if he can he’s a live dog.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Whatever happened to hitchhiking? You rarely here of people thumbing a lift any more. Is the world more dangerous or just meaner? Ann Langdon, Essex

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.

From medically unqualified influencers pushing expensive supplements online, to nurses peddling myths about pregnancy, I had to find out all I could about my condition myself. This is what I’ve learned

I suspected I had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) long before it was confirmed. The signs were there: the acne scars that littered my back, the irregular periods, the hair in places on my body that I didn’t see on many of my friends. I suspected it from the moment that one of my best friends, who as a girl taught me about bleaching my body hair and waxing my legs, was diagnosed with it as a teenager.

Admitting all this publicly feels like an unburdening, but also an invitation to more shame. But I write this because my experience is far from unique. As many as one in 10 women have PCOS, a condition associated with hormonal disturbances that can range from weight gain, “unwanted” body hair and hair loss, to irregular periods and struggles to conceive children (including an increased risk of miscarriage). It can leave women more likely to develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease. It is not clear what causes PCOS, but it is known to be passed down generational lines and can be influenced by lifestyle.

From feeding to bedtimes, toys to piercings, from the day your child is born, you’re monitored by other parents. And I’m as complicit as anyone else …

Not all heroes wear capes; some have a box in their bedroom instead. Dragons’ Den’s Sara Davies says she confiscates her kids’ friends’ phones when they come round, so instead of sitting glued to their devices, they talk to each other and play together.

“I have a box at the front door … they put their phones and iPads in the box and it stays in my bedroom,” she told the Daily Mail. “No one complains. They’re outside playing football, they merge so much better – and they communicate.”

A look back at 1960s Black arts movement explains why Trump is obsessed with eliminating Black artistry and the museums and institutions that support it

By the time Jesse Owens bowed his head from the highest podium tier to be crowned with his fourth Olympic wreath in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Europe’s premiers knew they had a problem. In front of a record-setting crowd at games that should have been a lavish display of Aryan propaganda, Owens’s unmatched athleticism on the track humiliated the host Nazi regime and smashed one of the vital ideological pillars upon which European empires annexed the world into their racial order. Since the inception of race-based slavery and settler-colonialism in the 15th century, the novel idea that human beings could be stratified into distinct “races,” with superiority defaulting to white Europeans, was bolstered by the claim that white racial supremacy was the rational outcome of the “natural” biophysical, intellectual and aesthetic ascendancy of white people, and thus of whiteness itself.

Adolf Hitler watched Owens, the five-time world record holder and grandson of enslaved people, triumph in his first event from a lavishly decorated imperial box, and abruptly exited the arena thereafter rather than witness Aryan athletes stumble to place second. In his conspicuous departure, a reluctant admission heard around the world had been made. A pillar was smashed. European physical superiority had been proven an undeniable fallacy and, more insultingly, Black dominance on the track was now a quantifiable fact. The ideological stakes of white supremacy – that whites were the smarter race, the sole ones capable of higher thought, that white people were the most physically beautiful, and also that the cultural products of whiteness were the most artistically valuable to advanced civilization – had suffered a powerful blow and shifted on its heels.

The band remember their hit 2005 record Stars of CCTV and talk about coming back with a new dynamic

Hard-Fi formed in 2003 in Staines, Surrey. Frontman Richard Archer, guitarist Ross Phillips, bassist Kai Stephens and drummer Steve Kemp released their debut album, Stars of CCTV, in 2005. Featuring Cash Machine, Hard to Beat and Living for the Weekend, it reached No 1 in the UK, sold 1.2m copies worldwide and earned Brit awards and a Mercury prize nomination. The band released two further albums before going on hiatus in 2014. They reunited in 2022 and released a new EP in 2024.

When documentary-maker Lauren Greenfield immersed herself in the online and offline lives of 25 teenagers, she unearthed a world of sexually explicit images, rape culture, bullying and suicidal ideation. Adolescence, she says, has become like the wild west

Reactions to Lauren Greenfield’s documentary series Social Studies tend to fall into two categories. Young people think it is validating; adults think it’s a horror show. After all, the screen of a teenager’s smartphone is a shiny black hole to which access is rarely granted. “Our kids are right there,” as Greenfield puts it, “and yet we don’t really know what’s going on in their lives.”

Her five-part series, which tracks the online and offline lives of a group of teenagers and young adults – the first generation of social media natives – is being tipped for an Emmy. Under the noses of their parents, she captures teenagers climbing out of bedroom windows to spend the night with boyfriends, posting sexually explicit images, tracking their longest-ever fast (91 hours) and living out their experiences of rape, cyberbullying, whitewashing, the tyranny of Caucasian beauty standards and suicidal ideation. She makes adolescence look like the wild west.

• Manchester United forward talks up 17-year-old

• Barça also retain interest in Nico Williams

The dream destination for Marcus Rashford after his exit from Manchester United appears to be Barcelona after he declared an interest in playing alongside Lamine Yamal.

An interview with Spanish YouTuber Javi Ruiz revealed something of the 27-year-old’s thoughts on his future. Asked if he would like to be teammates with Lamine Yamal, Rashford said: “Yes, for sure. Everyone wants to play with the best. Hopefully … we’ll see.” Barcelona’s sporting director, Deco, told Catalan radio station RAC1 in May that the club like Rashford.

• Elly De La Cruz vomits then hits two-run homer

• Seattle pitcher Trent Thornton forced out of game

Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz and Seattle Mariners reliever Trent Thornton fell ill on Saturday while playing in the extreme heat covering much of the United States.

De La Cruz vomited on the field with two outs in the fourth inning of Cincinnati’s extra-inning loss at the St Louis Cardinals.

Politicians express ‘grave concern’ and urge all parties to de-escalate and return to talks on Iran’s nuclear programme

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Nations in the Middle East and beyond responded with alarm after US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night as the EU and the UN called for immediate diplomacy, amid mounting fears that the war could trigger a wider escalation that could spiral out of control.

Qatar, which hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East, said on Sunday that it feared there could be serious repercussions regionally and internationally.

Guardian reporting reveals confusing and contradictory events surrounding death of Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado

A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US.

Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident.

Social media popularizes the deadly activity, and a 1847 law stymies families who try to hold the city to account

Jaida Rivera’s 11-year son, Cayden, was supposed to be in school at Brooklyn’s Fort Greene preparatory academy on the morning of 16 September last year. Staff saw him in the cafeteria after his grandmother dropped him off at 7.45am.

But 30 minutes later he was marked as absent. Cayden had somehow slipped out, boarded a G subway train traveling south and was riding on top of one of its carriages when he fell on to the tracks at the Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street station just after 10.00am. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Arepas are Latin American cornbreads of the most delicious kind. But there are so many variations, so let’s start with one that’s soft on the inside, crisp on the outside and oozing melted cheese…

When I first came across arepas, at a food market in Williamsburg, New York, almost a decade ago, I was attracted mainly by the fact that these stuffed South American corn breads were, as the stall proclaimed in big letters: “110% gluten-free!” which meant I could share one with a coeliac friend. One bite later, I regretted my generosity: crunchy, buttery and filled with sweetcorn and salty, stringy cheese, I could easily have polished off the whole thing without any help.

These, I later learned, were Colombian arepas de choclo, but arepas – flat, unleavened maize patties that pre-date European settlement – are found in many forms and flavours in many other countries, too, most notably Venezuela, but also Bolivia, Ecuador and parts of Central America. As J Kenji López-Alt notes on Serious Eats, to think of arepas like thick tortillas “is the equivalent of a Colombian native hearing about bread and saying: ‘Oh, it’s that European wheat cake, right?’” Within the first three days of his first visit to the country, he says he sampled more than a dozen different variations: “Arepas stuffed with cheese and baked on hot stones in coal-fired ovens. Arepas with sour milk cheese worked right into the dough. Arepas de choclo, made like a pancake with sweetcorn on a hot griddle. Arepas de huevo, golden yellow deep-fried puffy arepas split open and stuffed with an egg. Tiny arepitas eaten as a snack. Even packs of arepa-flavoured corn chips.”

The writer’s account of the Trump trials is packed with revenge and barbed wit. She has little to hide

At his wedding to Marla Maples in December 1993, two months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany, Donald Trump got talking to Howard Stern. According to the shock jock, Trump allegedly opined, charmingly: “Vagina is expensive.” Trump and Maples split in 1997. Nearly 30 years later, E Jean Carroll, an adjudicated victim of Trump’s verbal and sexual abuse, might at least in one way concur with his crude and sexist analysis.

Carroll was assaulted by Trump in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the New York department store. Thanks to court cases arising from that encounter, Trump owes her “slightly over $100m”, Carroll writes.

Not My Type: One Woman vs a President is published in the US by Macmillan

An exhibition explores the authors’ love of theatre, highlighting the dramatic impact of his works

As a sliding doors moment, it leads to arguably one of the greatest “what if?” questions in literary history. Passionate about the theatre, Charles Dickens, then just 20, wrote to the famous Covent Garden theatre actor-manager George Bartley seeking an audition, saying he believed he “had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in others”.

Bartley responded saying they were producing “the Hunchback” and arranging an appointment. Dickens planned to take his sister, Fanny, to accompany him singing on the piano.

Tackling inflation from companies raising prices during cost shocks requires more than adjusting interest rates

The heatwave that gripped much of the UK this week was the latest sweltering reminder that the climate emergency is already making daily life more volatile.

Many of the places most brutally exposed to out-of-kilter weather patterns and natural disasters are in the global south, and rightly demand solidarity from the wealthier countries responsible for most historical emissions. But the costs of the emergency are being felt everywhere.

Trump has fallen slap bang into the trap laid for him by Netanyahu. His reckless gamble makes a nuclear weapon for Iran more, not less, likely

Bombing will not make Iran go away. US bombs will not destroy the knowhow needed to build a nuclear weapon or the will do so, if that is what Tehran wants. The huge attack ordered by Donald Trump will not halt ongoing open warfare between Israel and Iran. It will not bring lasting peace to the Middle East, end the slaughter in Gaza, deliver justice to the Palestinians, or end more than half a century of bitter enmity between Tehran and Washington.

More likely, Trump’s rash, reckless gamble will inflame and exacerbate all these problems. Depending on how Iran and its allies and supporters react, the region could plunge into an uncontrolled conflagration. US bases in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the region, home to about 40,000 American troops, must now be considered potential targets for retaliation – and possibly British and allied forces, too.

• Manchester City face Al Ain in their second group game

• Manager also hints that Gündogan could leave the club

Pep Guardiola has said he will select 10 new players to face Al Ain in Manchester City’s second Club World Cup group game on Sunday night, though Rodri and John Stones are not yet ready to start because of respective injury problems.

City face Al Ain at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium at 9pm local time (2am BST) having beaten Wydad 2-0 in their opening Group G match. While goals from Phil Foden and Jérémy Doku beat the Moroccan team, Guardiola revealed only one player from the victory will be in Sunday’s XI.

The race has turned into an Israel-Palestine proxy war of sorts, even as voters on both sides wish the focus remained on local issues

Speaking from a Jerusalem bomb shelter last week as Iran and Israel exchanged fire, a New York state senator posted a video message to New York City voters: “There is a mayoral primary coming up this week where one of the candidates does not believe the Jewish state has a right to exist,” said Sam Sutton, the senator from Brooklyn. “We don’t want to be in a situation like this in America.”

Sutton called on New Yorkers to elect a “great friend of the Jewish people”: Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former governor.

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files

‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”

I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life.

Effective opposition calls for a laser focus on change, no matter how small. We should consider these activists’ examples

Around the end of 2022, I had an idea for a book about the history of resistance to Nazism. I wanted to show that Nazism has faced nonconformity, refusal and protest ever since it was born in 1920. I also wanted to explore beyond a handful of famous heroes and cast a spotlight on people who changed history without entering popular memory. When I began my research, Donald Trump had just announced his candidacy for the Republican ticket in 2024. When I gave the manuscript to the publisher a little over two years later, he was president-elect.

His comeback, the darker version of Maga that came with him, and the Democratic party’s collapse gave fresh relevance to the stories of resistance to far-right extremism that I was finding. Even as I was piecing them together, they began to intrude on the present. It was a haunting transformation – and it helped me to understand why the resistance to Trump has been flawed from the moment he stepped on to the political stage.

They had different views on gender equality. Could they agree on the European convention on human rights?

Julian, 57, Ipswich

Occupation Financial services

• Updates from day three at Headingley, 11am BST start

• Counties to vote on radical shake-up to cut matches

• David ‘Syd’ Lawrence dies aged 61 | And email Rob

The players line up for a minute’s applause in memory of Syd Lawrence. Motor neurone disease sounds unimaginably horrific. You can read about it – or watch the Australian show Mr Inbetween, which has an astonishing portrayal of a man with MND – but I can’t imagine anything prepares a family for the impact it has.

Ben Duckett on Ollie Pope

He was just so calm coming out. He probably couldn’t come out in tougher conditions, with Jasprit Bumrah running down the hill with the lights on. I don’t know what’s inside his head, but he’s just stayed true to the way he plays, and there’s no better feeling than that, scoring a hundred against that attack, coming out in the first over. You could see it in the way he celebrated, and it didn’t just mean a lot to him, it meant a huge amount in the dressing room as well. I had goosebumps for him.

‘He knows my name,’ says California Democrat, as Newsom condemns US vice-president and challenges him to debate

JD Vance’s decision to refer to California US senator Alex Padilla by the name of a terrorist conspirator showed how “unserious” the Trump administration is, the lawmaker has said of the vice-president.

“He knows my name – he knows my name,” Padilla told MSNBC’s The Weekend on Saturday, 12 days after the FBI forcibly removed him from a 12 June news conference hosted by US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem amid anti-immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) protests in Los Angeles.

Shot in vertical, phone-friendly aspect and produced on the quick, the Chinese-import format is bringing work to an ailing industry

They’re a Chinese cultural phenomenon which keeps millions of viewers glued to their phones, but the runaway success of “vertical dramas” is providing an unlikely source of employment for film and TV crews here in the UK.

The bite-size melodramas have breathless titles such as A Flash Marriage with the Billionaire and My Firefighter ex-Husband Burns in Regret, and are chopped into one minute episodes for avid consumption on viewers’ vertically held smartphones.

About 30 bills concerning these figurines, known as ‘reborn’ dolls, have been introduced across the country

Even as a former president stands trial for attempting a coup and the current leader grapples with the worst popularity crisis of his three terms, many Brazilians have spent recent weeks focused on a very different subject.

On social media, in soap operas, and in newly proposed laws, it seemed that hyper-realistic baby dolls were everywhere.

Elon Musk’s autonomous robotaxis slated to hit the streets of the Texas capital on Sunday after delayed launch

Austin, Texas is set to be the first city worldwide to see Tesla’s self-driving robotaxi service on its roads. Elon Musk, CEO of the electric carmaker, has said he is “tentatively” planning to roll out a small number of these autonomous vehicles on the streets of the Texas state capital on Sunday.

Details about the company’s robotaxi service have been scant since its unveiling in October of last year, and its launch has been delayed. Musk has told reporters that there may be fewer than a dozen cars in Austin on Sunday and that the vehicles will stick to specific neighborhoods. Some analysts believe that the robotaxis will only be available to employees and invitees initially.

For many, work starts before sunrise and stretches late into the night, with nearly 270 notifications a day, report finds

It is 10pm in Seoul, South Korea, but Hyun Jin Lee is not heading home. The recent college graduate – an employee in the IT industry – is at a mandatory team dinner.

“I end up working late almost every day,” laughs Lee. “By the end of the day, I feel completely drained, like I’ve used up all my energy [and] I can’t really do anything on weekdays after work.”

Simon and Nicole’s intimacy had waned after three decades together. Having sex with other people allows them to fulfil their personal needs and strengthen their bond as a couple
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I thought Simon might leave me if I said no to swinging. I agreed to it for him, for our relationship

He’s had supporting roles in almost every big TV show of the past few years, but now the man nicknamed Ideal Actor is taking the lead on stage, playing a top politician. He talks about challenging perceptions, being detained by the FBI and ‘redefining the idea of the everyman’

A decade ago, it would have been rare to have an Asian actor playing the British prime minister or leader of the opposition. But in the space of a couple of years, Adeel Akhtar has done both. He was the PM in the Netflix drama Black Doves, which took the world by storm last year, and now he’s stepping into the shoes of a man vying to be leader of the opposition at London’s National Theatre.

For Akhtar, who has been working as an actor for more than two decades, there has been an undeniable shift in the kind of roles he’s been offered in recent years. The British Asian experience is no longer a niche subject.

People were starting to laud the US president for his resistance to the Israeli PM’s pull, but what now?

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When he was elected, Donald Trump suggested he could hammer out a new relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who was used to getting his way with the White House. But after just over 150 days in office, it appears Trump has fallen into the same trap as his predecessors – and launched the most consequential strike on Iran in generations.

From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has manoeuvred the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from. And the US is now bracing for a retaliation that could easily bring it into a full-scale war.

The Scissor Sister has a complex relationship with the Smiths and gets parties started with Grace Jones, but who’s her (not so) guilty pleasure?

The first song I fell in love with
I was obsessed as a child with the Muppets and Sesame Street. My grandmother made me a puppet of the Count to help practise my counting. I loved The Pinball Number Count with the Pointer Sisters counting up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 / 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 / 11/ 12 which is prophetic because I still consider the Pointer Sisters one of my all-time favourite bands.

The first record I bought
I was playing Delirious by Prince for my mother in 1982, and she said: “He sounds like Little Richard.” I said: “Who is Little Richard?” and she said: “Get in the car, young lady,” and we went and bought a Little Richard greatest hits set. It was the start of a long conversation about music with my mom.

Tony Bloom has already bought three players this summer and can act quickly thanks to in-depth background research

It may not have been Tony Bloom’s week at Ascot for once but at least the Brighton owner could console himself by securing yet another signing for his football team before the summer solstice was here.

Confirmation of the Italy Under-21s defender Diego Coppola’s arrival on the south coast as Lake Forest finished a disappointing fifth in the Queen Anne Stakes took Brighton’s buys to three and the club are expected to announce any day that Olivier Boscagli is joining on a free from PSV Eindhoven. In with Coppola, who has joined from Verona, have come Sunderland’s 19-year-old playoff hero, Tommy Watson, for £10m and the Greece Under-21s striker Charalampos Kostoulas for £30m. Talk about getting your business done early.

Undaunted by being drawn in a formidable group, Rhian Wilkinson’s side go to Switzerland determined to create opportunities for girls back home

The rain cascading down on the Vale of Glamorgan is so heavy, so incessant, that the hotel’s reception has run out of umbrellas for guests to borrow and frustrated golfers crowd the lobby. Only two sets of residents seem oblivious to the weather; those heading to the spa and the Wales Women squad. It is late May and with Rhian Wilkinson’s players flying to Switzerland for Euro 2025 at the end of June far too much is at stake for anyone wearing a national tracksuit to be at a loose end.

Charlie Estcourt has travelled to the sprawling Vale Resort from the United States where she plays for Washington’s DC Power, but the midfielder is not about to succumb to jet lag. Instead, she is focused on impressing Wilkinson as the team trains at the Welsh’s FA’s centre of excellence within the hotel’s verdant grounds. “We have a no-excuses culture now,” says Estcourt. “It’s something Rhian’s brought in and it’s really helped us get to the next level.”

Musical history is littered with cases like the failed $100m suit against the singer, and they risk stifling pop music

Leave Ed Sheeran alone. Four words I never expected to write, but we live in very strange times.

Cards on the table: I’m no fan of his music, but that’s neither here nor there when it comes to making sense of the recently concluded epic battle over alleged copyright infringement. To catch you up to speed: on 20 June 2014, Sheeran released his second studio album X, a worldwide chart-topper. On 24 September 2014, he released the third single from it, Thinking Out Loud, a standard love song about vowing eternal devotion, which was another worldwide chart-topper. In between, that July, BBC Radio 1Xtra announced its Power List of the most important figures in black and urban music, which, to much derision, placed the very white Sheeran at the top. This was nothing new: Sheeran had already received four nominations for a Mobo Award. And, at least according to the owners of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 bedroom ballad Let’s Get It On, Thinking Out Loud was indeed music of black origin.

Simon Price is a music journalist and author

With reports of violence against women and girls increasing, a group of officers are guarding large-scale London events this summer

In the hours leading up to Dua Lipa’s first headline show at Wembley stadium the stifling heat was as striking as the colours. Fans resplendent in costumes inspired by their idol milled around the concourse, and groups of women took selfies, jigging with excitement.

But among the jollity, specialist Met Officers interspersed in the crowd were on the hunt for something different: “We’re here to spot predatory men.”

Trump has warned of broader US involvement in Israel’s war if Iran attempts to strike back against US military sites in the region

• Full report: Trump says US has attacked three Iranian nuclear sites

• Live coverage: Iran strikes Israel after US attack

Iran had sought to deter Donald Trump from joining Israel’s bombing campaign with dire threats of retaliation, but its options now are limited and fraught with risk.

Iranian officials have said specifically that US ships and military bases would be targeted, but much of the capacity it had relied on as a deterrent has been stripped away over the past few days by Israeli strikes. Those strikes however, have focused on long-range ballistic missile launchers. Iran still has a formidable arsenal of shorter-range missiles and drones.

Exclusive: Joe Booth, 23, says he has PTSD after arrest in which seven officers entered his flat when he was in bed

The Met police operation in which officers raided a Quakers meeting house also resulted in the arrest of an autistic climate activist at his supported accommodation, the Guardian can reveal.

Joe Booth, 23, was in bed when seven police officers arrived at the flats for vulnerable adults in New Barnet, north London, to arrest him on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.

Ancient rituals and a profound respect for ‘Mother Earth’ bolster fragile Andean communities as the climate crisis and unchecked mining take their toll

• Words and photographs by Giordano Simoncini

In Cusco, the Quechua people are at the forefront of the climate struggle. Amid Peru’s sacred mountains and ancestral plateaux, they confront daily challenges, such as parched pastures, melting glaciers, disruptions to agricultural cycles and persistent mining that damages the land.

In this context, survival itself becomes an act of resistance.

Sheep grazing in the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River, once the heartland of the Incas’ empire

With outdoor concerts, alfresco dining, rooftop bars and plenty of parks and places to swim outdoors, these cities make for a great summer getaway

Quite why the Latvian capital remains so under the radar is a mystery; the cobbled streets of the Vecrīga (old town) and the elegant art nouveau architecture make it one of the most beautiful cities in eastern Europe. Long summer evenings, with temperatures rarely topping 30C, form the backdrop for rooftop bars thrumming with live DJs, as well as alfresco concerts in leafy parks, while the beautiful sandy beaches of seaside Jūrmala are just a half-hour bus ride away.