Emmanuel Macron says Europe ready to provide such guarantees at meeting in Paris today

Rutte says that despite adopting more ambitious spending targets earlier this year, “cash alone can’t provide security.”

He goes on:

“We need the capabilities, real firepower, heavy metal, as well as new tech, and that’s what our defence industry across the Alliance needs to deliver faster than ever in Europe and also in the United States. Simply all over the Alliance, we are not producing enough.”

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

The price of oil is dropping this morning, on predictions that the Opec+ group could increase production again.

Opec+ are due to meet on Sunday when they will consider whether to agree another increase in output targets.

Bolivia, Peru, struggling Nigeria and flagging Italy face an uphill struggle, but others have reason for optimism

There are only three automatic places available via the Concacaf World Cup qualifiers because the USA, Mexico and Canada have secured their spots as hosts, although the two best runners-up head into the inter-confederation playoffs. Suriname have made it to the final round of qualifying only once before and will be hoping to kick off their campaign with a victory when they host Panama in Paramaribo on Thursday. Managed by the former Netherlands goalkeeper Stanley Menzo, they have been steadily climbing Fifa’s rankings since allowing players born in the Netherlands with Surinamese heritage to represent the national side and have the Huddersfield defender Radinio Balker in their ranks.

• Victory would cement England’s position at top of Pool A

• Jess Breach will win 50th cap on the left wing in Brighton

Alex Matthews will captain England for only the second time in her career in their final pool match of the Rugby World Cup against Australia, among one of 12 changes made to the Red Roses’ starting XV.

Jess Breach will win her 50th cap on the wing in Brighton and Holly Aitchison will potentially make her first appearance of the tournament from the replacements bench with a victory cementing a top of the pool finish. The Red Roses have already secured their quarter-final place.

Paul loves his spuds and finds Noor’s preference for rice mystifying. She wants a more equal approach to carbs. You decide who gets a roasting?

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

We split the cooking, so it’s a battle between us as to which carb is better. To me, rice is more versatile

I made thousand-layer potatoes and they were amazing. Noor pretended she didn’t like them

Yes, there were some serious problems for Labour this week, but overblown claims in the press undermine what remains of our political debate

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Tell me, fellow Brits, how are you getting used to our island version of North Korea? How are you coping with life, now that we are a global pariah alongside Pyongyang? How do you feel about modern Britain having to vie with North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan for the wooden spoon on every international index of oppression?

For that is the country Wednesday’s Daily Mail front page insists we have now become. It is tempting to laugh off a headline that asks “When did Britain become North Korea?” as just another here-today-gone-tomorrow piece of journalistic hyperbole. That’s even more the case when you read the cobbled-up pandemonium of provocations that form the contents of the headline-writer’s charge that Britain is being strong-armed into “Starmer’s socialist utopia” – nervy bond markets, the possibility of compulsory ID cards, the arrest of the Father Ted writer for his tweets and, of course, Angela Rayner.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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The country’s fisheries and the health of its seas still rely on a method practised for nearly 1,000 years – catching skipjack tuna one fish at a time

• Photographs and video by Ibrahim Bassam

At 3.04am, most of the residents of the northern Maldivian island village of Kanditheemu are fast asleep. Only the faint sound of waves lapping against anchored boats and the crunch of sand under weathered sandals breaks the silence. Carrying buckets and small bags, 14 fishers emerge and move quietly towards the harbour, crossing a narrow wooden plank to board a 24-metre-long dhoni boat named Mas Vaali.

For captain Ibrahim Hamid, 61, this routine has been the same for decades: rise before dawn, steer a dhoni across the Indian Ocean, and oversee a crew hauling in silvery skipjack tuna using single poles and lines – in a process that is often unchanged from how they fished as boys.

Mixing dense political ideas with allusions to The Sound of Music and BoJack Horseman, these films have become a thrilling DIY artform – one entirely conceived, written, filmed and performed by their stars

Thirty eight million people and counting have watched Hbomberguy’s near four-hour video Plagiarism and You(Tube), in which the YouTuber – real name Harry Brewis – forensically dissects intellectual theft across the platform in a work of investigative journalism worthy of a Pulitzer. To put that into perspective, 32 million people in the UK tuned in to watch Princess Diana’s funeral broadcast live on the BBC. If you’re not familiar with the work, video essays may just be the biggest cultural phenomenon you’ve never heard of.

Early versions of video essays – thoughtful deep dives that filter cultural analysis through the distinct personality of the creator – emerged in the early 2000s, but it was the converging currents of the “online left” and the creativity that flourished under lockdowns that saw the number of creators rise and the format swell in popularity. For the past eight years, the British Film Institute has put out a yearly ranking of video essays of the year. BBC auteur Adam Curtis has said if he were starting out again, he would become a YouTuber, calling it “the last wild west” of online creativity.

2026 film Michael ‘panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy’, 27-year-old says, denying any involvement

Paris Jackson has criticised an upcoming biopic of her father, Michael Jackson, saying she had “zero per cent involvement” in the film, which she suggests has been “sugar-coated” in a broader swipe at Hollywood biopics that contain “full-blown lies”.

The comments came just two days after the actor Colman Domingo, who plays the family patriarch Joe Jackson in the film Michael, praised Paris’s contribution.

Elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, medical workers and children among 6,000 Palestinians held

Only one in four detainees from Gaza are identified as fighters by Israel’s military intelligence, classified data indicates, with civilians making up the vast majority of Palestinians held without charge or trial in abusive prisons.

Those jailed for long periods without charge or trial include medical workers, teachers, civil servants, media workers, writers, sick and disabled people and children.

A new walking tour offers a chance to meet the city’s Ukrainian community, with stops for hearty dumplings, castle views and shared histories

Before arriving in Edinburgh, Nataliya Bezborodova’s impression of Scotland was shaped largely by Hollywood. “My knowledge of this country was pretty much based on the film Braveheart,” she admits with a laugh, standing before the grand neoclassical columns of the National Galleries of Scotland. As if on cue, the castle’s daily gun salute fires overhead, scattering pigeons and punctuating our conversation with a jolt.

Three years have passed since the 47-year-old anthropologist left her home in Kyiv for Edinburgh, after the Russian invasion. Celluloid warriors have long been replaced by the rhythms of life in a city she now knows like the back of her hand. So well, in fact, that she has launched a walking tour revealing a layer even locals might miss: the story of Edinburgh’s vibrant Ukrainian community.

With 12,000 expected to attend in Birmingham, Nigel Farage’s party hopes to present a more professional image

Reform UK’s party conference will last barely more than 30 hours this weekend, but its rivals fear the glitz and political noise are going to be hard to beat.

“We’re the only party conference to have our own pyrotechnics budget,” says one Reform insider with pride.

Surfer Todd Weaver takes magical pictures of the Golden State – from ombre skies reflected in the sea to crashing waves and rising full moons

Additional 5x telephoto camera, actually useful AI tools, Qi2 support and slick software make for a quality Android

Google’s new cheapest Pixel 10 has been upgraded with more cameras, a faster chip and some quality software that has brought it out of the shadow of its pricier Pro siblings to set a new standard of what you should expect from a base-model flagship phone.

The regular Pixel 10 costs £799 (€899/$799/A$1,349) – the same as last year’s Pixel 9 – undercutting the 10 Pro by £200 and matching rivals from Samsung and Apple while offering more for your money.

Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)

Processor: Google Tensor G5

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 128 or 256GB

Operating system: Android 16

Camera: 48MP+ 13MP UW + 10.8MP 5x tele; 10.5MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, eSim, wifi 7, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 6 and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)

Dimensions: 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.6mm

Weight: 204g

This luminous and tender 20th-century saga of wounded souls and small-town secrets has a deep melancholy

I am not the kind of reader who naturally gravitates toward slice-of-life Americana. I’m an enthusiast for the sort of American fiction where cowboys make dolent pronouncements while staring into fires, sure – but less the kind where people are generally nice, and go to places called things like “Fink’s Drugstore” to drink “root beer floats”.

So when Buckeye – the new novel from American author Patrick Ryan, whose collections of short fiction have garnered comparisons to William Faulkner and JD Salinger – clunked obstreperously on to my doorstep, I thought “you’ve got to respect a 440-pager”, and somewhat reluctantly pulled my little socks up for some Norman Rockwell-type business. And you know what? I now think slice-of-life Americana is good, actually.

Senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins discusses a historic week in China – including a 20-plus country summit and an unprecedented military parade – and analyses what it tells us about the country’s attempt to remake the world

It has been a historic week of diplomacy in China.

As senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins explains, it started on Sunday, with more than 20 heads of state attending the opening of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Among them were strongmen from across Europe and Asia: presidents Putin of Russia, Erdoğan of Turkey, Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Lukashenko of Belarus and many others.

Six contenders for the prestigious UK award for excellence in architecture also include two houses, a medical research centre and a college of fashion – but nothing north of the Fens

Rather like contenders for best in show at Crufts, where the perfect chihuahua is obliged to do battle with the perfect great dane, the new British buildings vying for this year’s Stirling prize for excellence in architecture are supremely dissimilar in scale, style and purpose. The shortlist encompasses a medical research centre, almshouse, college of fashion, two houses and a quintessential national monument. Geographically, though, they are conspicuously less disparate, with four schemes in London, one in Hastings and one in Cambridge, which begs the question: is there really no noteworthy new architecture north of the Fens?

Historically associated with pastoral benevolence and distressed gentlefolk, the almshouse gets a modern reboot by architects Witherford Watson Mann. Their Appleby Blue development in Bermondsey, London, is a place of care and shelter, but above all, social connection. The human theatre of residents in its voluminous garden room can be appreciated from the street through a glazed walkway projecting out along the main facade like a shop window. “The idea was to build right in the heart of the community, not to hide people away,” says project architect Stephen Witherford. Both in its architecture and operation, Appleby Blue is a consciously extroverted presence and a retort to the notion that older people (especially poorer older people) should be shunted to the margins, with adverse effects on their mental and physical health.

The TV comedy duo are back this week with their first new sketch show in 15 years, Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. Do newer comics think they’re old farts? They tell all

David Mitchell and Robert Webb are back with their first new sketch show in 15 years. It’s a comedy smorgasbord that is as random as it is funny, and will feel like a glorious throwback for fans of their 00s series That Mitchell and Webb Look. And this time they have brought some friends, with guest appearances on Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping including Ghosts’ Kiell Smith-Bynoe and podcaster and Taskmaster star Stevie Martin. We caught up with the pair to chat about Gogglebox, The Two Ronnies, Downton Abbey and snooker.

A recurring joke in the show is that the younger comedians you feature think you are a couple of old farts. Are sketch shows a young person’s game?

Far from No 10, Nigel Farage has been amassing power in the sprawling, networked space where 21st-century politics happens

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With a buzz of activity in parliament and mandatory back-to-school metaphors, a new political season opens in Westminster, but is that where politics really happens? Yes, in terms of people making policy and law in buildings that are world-famous for that purpose, the SW1 postcode is where it is at.

But the heart of the machine beats with a weak pulse. The UK state is heavily centralised by the standards of most democracies, yet the people at the centre don’t feel powerful. Ministers can’t enforce bin collections in remote areas or call a halt to Middle East wars but they are made to feel answerable for all that is ill in the world, from hyperlocal to geopolitical.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Age ties in with theory tree was planted in 19th century by landowner known as ‘the man who saved Hadrian’s Wall’

Scientists have for the first time confirmed the age of the felled Sycamore Gap tree, adding weight to a theory that it was planted in the late 19th century by a landowner hailed as “the man who saved Hadrian’s Wall”.

Historic England published the conclusion of an investigation by a team of experts who carried out the first dendrochronological – or tree-ring counting – analysis of the tree.

Family, marking what would have been Martha’s 18th birthday, welcome adoption of system that gives patients right to request care review

Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care, is now in operation in every acute hospital in England, health service bosses disclosed on Thursday.

The system has helped hundreds of people receive potentially life-saving improvements to their treatment since its rollout began last year. It has led directly to patients being moved to intensive care or receiving drugs they needed, such as antibiotics, or benefiting from other vital interventions.

She was the morality crusader who became a figure of ridicule. Now Whitehouse is the subject of a new production starring Maxine Peake. We meet the gay feminist playwright who wrote it

The morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse was a trigger warning long before the term was used. From the 1960s onwards she pursued the BBC over sex and swearing on television and brought private prosecutions against the publisher of Gay News and the director of Howard Brenton’s play, The Romans in Britain, for what she viewed respectively as blasphemy and gross indecency.

So, when Maxine Peake plays the Christian cultural vigilante in The Last Stand of Mrs Mary Whitehouse at the Nottingham Playhouse this week, will there be a warning about its content?

Inspired by her favourite Italian detective Montalbano, our Roman sleuth tracks down the perfect summer dish

As he breaks three eggs into a glass bowl, Lt Columbo tells Joanna Ferris: “I’m the worst cook in the world, but there’s one thing I do terrific, and that’s an omelette.” The episode is Murder By the Book, and Columbo has taken Joanna, the wife of murder victim Jim Ferris, home to save her from more relentless questioning by his colleagues. Of course, we already know it was Jim’s less talented writing partner, naughty Ken Franklin, who did it.

At first, Joanna resists Columbo’s offer of something to eat, but he gently gets on with it, in his trademark raincoat: he cracks the eggs into a bowl, picks out a bit of shell that inadvertently falls into the bowl and asks Joanna where he can get a bowl for the empty shells balanced in his hands. It is a perfect scene and perfect Columbo: bumbling and absolutely certain, attentive to needs and tiny details.

Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists say

The extreme weather that fuelled “astonishing” blazes across Spain and Portugal last month was made 40 times more likely by climate breakdown, early analysis suggests.

The deadly wildfires, which torched 500,000 hectares (1.2m acres) of the Iberian peninsula in a matter of weeks, were also 30% more intense than scientists would have expected in a world without climate change, according to researchers from the World Weather Attribution network.