2026/08/14 Daily Edition

The new record surpasses the previous official hydrogen combustion title set in 2004 by more than double the speed.

CEOs of the country's two biggest theater chains say they support the merger of Paramount-Skydance with Warner Brothers-Discovery.

Summerhall, Edinburgh Fadi Murad’s unconventional drama is a collage structured with the free-form imagination of a poet Last year, a group of Scottish producers staged a four-day mini festival called Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine. One of the excerpts was a scratch performance by Fadi Murad, which now returns as a full-length show. It is not a conventional drama. Rather, Come Back Home is structured with the free-ranging imagination of a poet, an impressionistic collage that resists straightforward interpretation. Murad’s theme is one of loss and the pull of home, focusing in particular on the death of his mother in a car accident when he was nine. He speaks touchingly from a child’s perspective of what it meant to lose the nurturer in his life, the one he turned to in just such a moment of distress. And he shares video footage of his younger self singing Mad World by Tears for Fears at her memorial. It is as cute as it is sad. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

NPR's science podcast rounds up new studies about a wandering black hole, humans' ability to detect AI-generated text, and the impact of cougars on vehicle-deer collisions.

CEO announces steps after reports that system is used to target immigrants or people seeking out-of-state abortions For nearly a decade, the company Flock Safety has gradually built out a network of cameras across the US that allows law enforcement officials to conduct about 20bn license plate scans every month. In that time, the company had largely left the decision to turn on safety measures up to its customers. Many of those organizations did not turn them on...

This blog is now closed Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Police say the remains found in a suitcase near Goulburn are not human. Supt Linda Bradbury with NSW police said: Some good news here that we don’t have a suspicious death of a human on our hands. … We are still undertaking more forensic work to identify what they are. But we can identify that they’re not human. But we’ve confirmed by other means that they are not. The undersupply of housing combined with population growth is expected to partially offset the impact of higher interest rates and recent federal government policy changes on the housing market...

Gianni Infantino is facing intense heat over a failed plan to privatize the World Cup. He is a lawyer who rose to the pinnacle of soccer and is now trying to hold onto his job.

A vulnerable girl took her life at 16 having faced terror charges and online grooming by neo-fascists. The catalogue of failures by British authorities is utterly enraging The Schoolgirl Terrorist? contains its answer within its very question. Titles are designed to catch your attention. Normally they contain the baldest, most extreme possible summary suggestion of what you are about to see that the makers think they can get away with. A question mark introduces the idea of interrogation, of nuance, of doubt from the off – all things commissioners believe will put people off. The exception is when the subject is so clearly an abominable, Kafkaesque tale of mismanagement and incompetence visited upon ordinary people. To pretend otherwise even for a titular moment would be to undermine your programme’s integrity from the start...

Two families have been trapped by settlers for days, casting a spotlight on the army’s struggle to curtail settler violence and protect Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.

The court interpreted the scope of a Supreme Court judgment that provides one-time protection to law students who were prevented from appearing in their examinations

Randall Lane left his job last month after accepting money from founder of firm that does business with magazine The top editor of Forbes left his job last month and was reportedly dismissed for accepting $6m from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine. The New York Times reported this week that Randall Lane was paid by RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, worked with Forbes since 2016 to publish rankings of wealth advisers. The payment was made after Shook sold a majority stake in the company to a private equity firm a year ago...

Tech billionaire’s $158.3bn deal an outlier in report showing widening gap of CEO to worker pay at top companies Elon Musk received over 2.5m times as much compensation at Tesla as the company’s average worker, according to a new report on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their workers. Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an outlier but came as the gap between CEO and worker pay continued to grow. Excluding Musk, last year the average ratio of CEO to worker pay for the top S&P 500 companies was 312 to 1, up from a 285:1 ratio in 2024. With Musk, the average pay ratio was 5,387:1, according to the executive pay watch report released this week by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US...

President signed memorandum giving private sector a role in fighting ‘transnational criminal organizations’ Donald Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that aims to give private companies the power to carry out offensive cyber-attacks against foreign criminal entities. The president ⁠signed a ​national security presidential memorandum directing his administration to “leverage the capability and innovation of the private sector to help conduct these ⁠cyber operations under the direction, control and authority of the US government”, the White House said...

Pilot scheme will provide three weeks of training as part of UK government’s latest attempt to address Neets crisis Young people out of work or at risk of unemployment in the UK are to join “AI boot camps” where they harness the technology to get a foothold in the workplace. The government’s latest attempt to address the crisis in Neets – young people not in work or education – involves turning to a technology that many view as a potential threat to employment...

Search efforts continue though hopes are fading as teams dig for survivors from the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 250 people.

Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament A.A. Rahim said that the use of facial recognition technology and covert surveillance on peaceful protesters was unconstitutional

Hoult, known for his roles in X-Men, Superman and Mad Max: Fury Road, will play Gilderoy Lockhart.

Armagh Planetarium hosts an early album listening party for American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers.

The NDRF said it ended the search and rescue operations in consultation with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials at around 1.25 p.m., more than 33 hours after the incident

A shattered window through which a passenger was partially sucked out of during a Ryanair flight last month was caused by broken engine parts, US investigators have said.

Three American warships were sent to Valencia to capture pictures of the sun’s corona with a high-definition camera that would cost over $34,000 in today’s money.

The actress, best known for playing Dawn in The Office, has revealed she has incurable breast cancer.

Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson's acting relationship goes back a long way, mirroring the show the pair have been reunited on.

In a place known for its fickle weather, eclipse watchers took a risk. Only some got to see the sun.

President Trump’s Air Force One subterfuge pales in comparison to the secrecy surrounding Russia’s president, whose fixation on security has reached new heights in recent years.

The sky will go dark for six minutes or more over landmarks like the Rock of Gibraltar, the casbah of Tangier and the temples of Luxor, Egypt.

The allegation makes Reiner eligible for the death penalty - which has been paused in the state. Prosecutors have not said if they will pursue it.

Sachie Mikawa has cancelled two shows following the theft of instruments she inherited from her late father.

The musician shares the personal stories behind her third album, and the time she teased a legend.

Decrees restricting women’s rights to study, work, travel and act independently now threaten to damage Afghanistan permanently, experts say.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it had found a bird’s remains and feathers on a broken engine.

Betting on what people say is becoming an increasingly popular category of prediction market sites. Now, federal officials have opened a probe examining whether those markets are a magnet for manipulators.

Bonnie Tyler's friend Mal Pope heard Total Eclipse of the Heart playing throughout Mumbles in Swansea.

The former GB Olympian posted images of her in hospital while on holiday in France.

The crucial 72-hour window to find survivors has passed, but rescue teams in Colombia keep digging.

Taipei is seeking to dissolve the China Unification Promotion Party over its alleged ties to Beijing.

The U.S. has tightened economic sanctions against Iran and other individuals and entities that it ‌says are helping it procure weapons

Grifols, a Spanish company, said “unfounded attention” on its blood plasma business in Canada had led it to temporarily end collections at 17 clinics.

America's downtowns are changing. Storefronts that used to showcase clothes or gifts are giving way to gyms and salons. Last year marked the first time that more retail space went to shops offering services rather than things.

Norway’s FM Espen Barth Eide says the Iran war failed to achieve its initial aims and strengthened hardliners in Tehran.

Traverse theatre, Edinburgh An encounter in a police cell with a Nazi officer could have been the end of the political theorist, but Jenny Lyn Bader’s play has little feel for the dramatic The Mrs Stern of the title is the married name of Hannah Arendt, the political theorist much remembered for her “banality of evil” insight. Jenny Lyn Bader sets her play not, as you might expect, in the Prussian state library, but in a police cell where Arendt has been hauled in for questioning not long after the Reichstag fire. The Nazi apparatus has extended its remit to political crimes and she, what with her bookish ways, errant husband and associations with Jewish intellectuals, has come under scrutiny...

Summerhall, Edinburgh With increasing speed, Sam Ward tells the story of a woman who finds holes in her garden – but is it just a shaggy dog story? And there is a man sitting at a desk, welcoming us to the theatre and opening a folder. And the folder contains a sheaf of paper that the man proceeds to read. And the more the man reads, the faster he goes. And the man hits such a speed we realise why he did not learn this script: it would be too prodigious a feat of memory. And as if to emphasise the pace, the man is soon accompanied by a percussive score by Carmel Smickersgill, which has a jazz freedom as well as a sense of urgency and is rather good. And as the story rattles out, so Han Sayles’s lighting design closes in on the man, who is the writer Sam Ward in this solo show by his company YESYESNONO and he seems to be going faster still. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

Summerhall, Edinburgh Vengeance for a slaughtered pig is the starting point for a riotous parody that suggests the meat industry poses an existential threat to human survival That’s my next hotdog ruined. Shakespeare’s “too solid flesh” is squeezed into a sausage-shaped form in Mary Higgins and Ell Potter’s inventively guilt-trippy new show. Leaping wildly from Hamlet, this outrageous, confrontational performance-activism layers hooting comedy with world-ending dread as Mary (a vegan) attempts to persuade Potter (nicknamed “the sausage queen” by their dad) to change their meat-eating ways. Transposing Hamlet’s existential questions to the future survival of humanity via the meat industry’s impact on the planet, Higgins takes on the role of our stubborn, sauntering prince, seeking vengeance for the ghost of a poor, slaughtered, strangely seductive pig. Suave and silly, Potter is both ghost and Gertrude, the latter reading madness into the truth only her son is brave enough to face. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 30 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh This is a spiky, interrogative and surprisingly conventional set from an act who usually pushes standup to its limits You can fall victim to your own high standards – and few comics have set higher standards than Jordan Brookes. A new show from the 2019 comedy award champ is an event, at which half the fun is seeing how he’s monstered the form into some unforeseen new shape. If this year’s offering, The Part of You That’s Always Screaming, were delivered by any other comic, I’d be hailing it as one of the twistiest and deepest-thinking hours on the fringe. But it lacks Brookes’ usual ambition: its delivery is fairly conventional; things aren’t pushed as far as we expect. It’s all relative, mind you: this is still a set in which, at one unexpected moment, our comedian turns down the lights, turns up some disturbing industrial soundscape, and jerks threateningly across the stage. But then we act differently when we’re being watched – which is Brookes’ point here, in a show that worries intensely at the relationship between selfhood and being seen. It’s structured, deliciously, around an innocuous experience on a train, when Brookes snacking on a croissant becomes a performative act, awkwardly positioned as he is between the window and a window-gazing fellow passenger. At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 30 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz praised radical Hilltop Youth settlers for ‘holding onto’ Palestinian land.

(Loma Vista) The genre-blending Californian artist casts off past toxic influences with a powerful set of tender, brooding and emotionally charged songs that wouldn’t feel out of place as festival anthems When Chelsea Wolfe was interviewed by the Guardian in 2015 about her fourth album, Abyss, she revealed that her music had been informed by the bouts of sleep paralysis she’d suffered from since childhood. The condition – a transitional state between being awake and asleep – affects sufferers in different ways. Some wake up feeling paralysed, others see ghosts or demonic figures. For the California-born singer-songwriter, it meant “waking up, and you can move your body and your eyes are open, but there are figures and people from your dreams still present in your room”. No surprise, then, that her music – a blend of drone, alt, folk, industrial and doom metal – had ended up so spookily unsettling. She appeared on album covers with pupil-less eyes, spoke in interviews about “following the path of witchcraft” and even covered Norwegian black metal act and convicted arsonist/murderer Burzum. She did have a sense of humour about it all, however, telling one interviewer, with a chuckle: “It’s not party music.” Since then, though, much has changed. Wolfe left Los Angeles for the mountains above the city – where she’s finally been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep. Sobriety since 2021 has also brought what she calls “a new clarity”. Both developments inform The Dark...

It’s a decade since the Los Angeles musician released the seminal album Blonde. To lessen the pain of his hiatus, we count down the best of an artist who redefined R&B Frank Ocean’s pre-fame demos are hard to find – there’s a fan-made, 64-track compilation called The Lonny Breaux Collection floating around – but worth checking out, as evinced by this brief but potent piano ballad. Sweet but heartsore, it packs an emotional punch; it would have been a highlight of the mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra, had it made the cut...

This documentary follows the shocking case of Neil Hopper, a top surgeon who had his own legs removed due to a fetish. No fetish or obsession is unique, and the internet can always connect you with others whose minds work the same way. It’s one of the great blessings and curses of the digital age, and central to An Amputation Obsession: the Monster and the Surgeon, a two-part documentary on which the “contains material some viewers may find disturbing” disclaimer is no exaggeration. We begin at the Royal Cornwall hospital, known locally as Treliske, in Truro, Cornwall. It used to have a man on its staff who was a minor medical superstar: Neil Hopper, a vascular surgeon, was well known for his clinical expertise and comforting bedside manner, particularly when advising on and performing amputations. He acquired full hero status in 2019, when he was diagnosed with sepsis and had both legs amputated below the knee but miraculously returned to work within six months, astonishing physiotherapists and other medical professionals with how well he adapted to disability. An Amputation Obsession: the Monster and the Surgeon is on Prime Video..

No injuries were reported in the attack, which the UAE called 'piracy' and a threat to global energy security.

Phillipa Northeast is brilliant as a young woman rebelling against society’s expectations in 1890s Australia. It is witty, intelligent and absolutely glorious to watch “I’m hot headed, with a snub nose, and that’s why I prefer a direct gaze.” So speaks Sybylla, the charmingly irrepressible and irrepressibly charming heroine of My Brilliant Career, played utterly convincingly and with vim, vigour and joy by Philippa Northeast in the new adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 Australian classic of the same name. Creator Liz Doran must have wept with happiness when they found an actor capable of bringing so much to an already glorious script – and who embodies the joie de vivre upon which so much of the plot, as everyone she meets becomes part of her orbit, depends. My Brilliant Career is on Netflix..

As his new film & Sons hits the screen, the actor turned podcast agony uncle relives his ‘cliched’ ambitions, deplores working lunches – and yearns to do the splits like Prince A dying patriarch summons his brood for a dramatic announcement. It may not be the most original starting point for a movie, but & Sons adds an eccentric twist – one that it would be unfair to reveal here but which nudges the material into the realm of science fiction. The father in question is a revered novelist who is as reclusive as JD Salinger and as whiskery and dishevelled as Catweazle. Dormant for decades, the fictional AN Dyer is first glimpsed in a horizontal position on the sofa, refusing to come to the telephone: “I don’t do phonecalls,” he grumbles. That is patently not true of the actor who plays him. “I spend a lot of time on the phone,” Bill Nighy says breezily. He is speaking to me from north-west London, where he has been nosing around bookshops. “I’m also an enthusiastic texter. I was always very quick on the old Nokia. Quite proud of myself, I was.” Where does he stand on emojis? “I used to be philosophically opposed. Most of them are a bit naff.” He then proceeds to list the exceptions. “I like the flamingo and the purple dahlia. I like the leaping shark. Sometimes I combine it with the leaping dolphin. Very occasionally, I like the golfer in mid-swing if I’m congratulating someone. I don’t do smiley faces.”..

The actor answers your questions on working with her dog, becoming a dame, Harry Potter, and making televisual history in The Singing Detective You and Bill Nighy were comrades in Pride, but play estranged spouses in & Sons. Was it more fun marching alongside him or giving him a piece of your mind? MrSOBaldrick It’s fun doing anything with Bill Nighy! I once saw you at RHS Garden Wisley. Are you a keen gardener? What’s your favourite plant? HeyJudithB Yes, I am a gardener. We love doing the garden. My favourite plant – this week – is the rose Munstead Wood, which has an incredible scent, and a deep, dark raspberry colour. It’s a rose we might be in danger of losing because of climate change. Roses need water, so I think we’re going to have to change our planting...

Updates as the Test at Marrara Cricket Ground continues Play starts in Darwin at 10am ACST/10.30am AEST Any thoughts? Email Jonathan It is hot and humid at Marrara Cricket Ground with temperatures peaking at around 33C. Please send me your emails and keep me company throughout the day. The address is jonathan.howcroft.freelance@theguardian.com...

President Donald Trump on Thursday imposed tariffs of up to 100% on imported drones and components, including from key US allies, citing national security concerns and a need to reduce US reliance on foreign suppliers. The measures will take effect in 21 days.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the US can sustain its blockade against Iran 'indefinitely'.

Civilian and military casualties have been reported as fighting has flared across Yemeni front lines in recent days.

The star of Girls and The Book of Mormon talks about coming out, turning a showmance into a romance, and going toe to toe with the West Wing’s Allison Janney in new film Miss You Love You Imagine a cute, young, gay Jim Carrey with a withering line in put-downs: that is Andrew Rannells. Or rather, it was, back when he starred in Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls as Elijah, the formerly closeted ex of her character, Hannah. Dunham had seen Rannells playing Elder Price, the zealous missionary spreading the good word in the original 2011 Broadway production of the bad-taste musical The Book of Mormon, for which he received a Tony nomination. Girls, in turn, spread the good word about him. To this day, fans still shout “Your dad is gay!” at him in the street, a call-back to the moment when Elijah tartly advises Hannah that she might want to fine-tune her gaydar. It is an older, gentler, salt-and-pepper-bearded Rannells who stars in the comedy-drama Miss You, Love You. He plays Jamie, a personal assistant arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to shepherd the spiky and recently widowed Diane (Allison Janney) through the initial weeks after her husband’s death from Parkinson’s. As it dawns on them that Diane’s son – Jamie’s employer – may not make it to his stepfather’s funeral, these strangers navigate their way through the grey area of their flung-together friendship...

About to start his ninth season, his first under a club manager who isn’t Pep Guardiola, this could be the year we finally find out who the City enigma is Phil Foden says he is excited about working under Enzo Maresca, his new manager at Manchester City. We should call this exactly what it is: a very obvious barefaced lie. No doubt Foden is excited about playing football again, about challenging for trophies with his boyhood club, the new Premier League season, his new contract, a fresh start, etc, etc. But let’s be real. Holidays are something you get excited about. Birthdays. Weddings. Amazon deliveries. The new Charli xcx album. Christmas. Playing for Enzo Maresca inspires plenty of emotions, but excitement would probably feature pretty low down a list. At best, you brace for Maresca. You steel yourself. You look in the mirror every morning and ask yourself whether you’re man enough for him. But if you’re excited, then he simply isn’t doing his job...

Back-to-back world champions can use Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry to establish themselves as one of the greatest teams of all time South Africans are supposed to care about the All Blacks more than this. On Tuesday night 14,759 people dotted the 52,000-seat Kings Park Stadium to watch New Zealand dismantle the Sharks 54-0. Durban was cold and soaked, with snow falling elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal, but even allowing for the weather it made for an awkward for a grand new project. Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry – the eight-match tour by New Zealand, culminating in four Tests, including one in the US – is an attempt to turn more than a century of history into a modern commercial property. The unions have formed a 50-50 venture, sharing commercial income, while taking the final Test to Baltimore is expected to generate $4m-$6m more than another game in South Africa. Both unions need the money and professional sport is supposed to generate revenue. But a rivalry cannot live on branding alone...

The former England full-back is back in the Championship after 12 years away, hoping to lead Wolves out of it When the question inevitably comes, Kieran Trippier is happy to set the record straight. Fresh from training, head to toe in Wolves kit – vest, shorts and club-branded sliders – he walks into a suite at their Compton Park base, conversation soon shifting to an episode that rocked supporters and stopped outsiders in their tracks: three days after signing, the manager Trippier cited as a significant driver behind his decision to drop into the second tier, Rob Edwards, was sacked. All the while, a deal for his replacement, César Peixoto, was being accelerated. “I’m not going to sit here and lie, I wasn’t expecting it,” Trippier says. “But it’s the club’s decision. I had good chats with Rob, of course, but I’m here to play for Wolves. There are many surprises in football and that certainly was a surprise, I’m not going to deny that. But I just cracked on, I was with my kids on holiday, training in Mallorca and just looking forward to day one in pre-season.”..