From improving biodiversity to managing antisocial behaviour, the benefits of greening towns and cities are massive. These names are leading the charge…

The importance of green space in Britain’s increasingly urban landscape – from city parks to community gardens and allotments – is unequivocal. Public Health England reports that regular exposure to green space reduces stress and improves wellbeing and physical fitness, while the Natural History Museum has highlighted its value in cooling city infrastructure and reducing pollution. Functional cities depend on functional greenery, yet the upkeep of these vital environments remains precarious. With parks and green spaces classified as non-statutory services, local authorities continue to slash their funding, relying increasingly on volunteer groups to maintain them.

A leading voice advocating for change is John Little of Care Not Capital, a community interest company offering free training for gardeners working in the public sphere so that they can have a greater influence on the spaces they maintain and those who govern them. “Green spaces are not sustainable unless you have someone looking after them,” says Little. “Yet in the public realm, the investment is often about infrastructure – overly designed landscapes and extravagant architecture – and rarely the ongoing care.” Investment in skilled gardeners, he argues, leads to positive outcomes far beyond good horticultural upkeep, from biodiversity increase and climate crisis mitigation to better community engagement and reduced antisocial behaviour.

The Hacks lead was cast in meta-slasher sensation Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma for her ‘deranged physicality’ – but it’s a fitting role for an actor who has made a point of confronting shame and speaking her mind

‘God is good all the time,” laughs Hannah Einbinder. She’s fresh off a plane from Los Angeles and curled up barefoot in an armchair. This, she says, is “a crazy time in life. Starring in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in the midst of Hacks ending … it’s definitely an embarrassment of riches.”

Hacks is the HBO comedy that ended earlier this year; in May, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s queer meta-horror, became the breakout hit of this year’s Cannes film festival.

The new PM is enjoying a honeymoon period but, longer-term, the Greens have the freedom to say whatever Labour won’t

Cackling happily into their pints, the two most powerful men in the country scoff their way through a selection of pub snacks.

Pork scratchings or scampi fries? Or maybe old-school peanuts? It’s hardly the toughest choice currently facing Andy Burnham and the chancellor, John Healey, so some may find this week’s made-to-go-viral Instagram reel of them gleefully ranking crisps a bit silly. (I’m writing this, laptop balanced on my knee, beside a hospital bed; right now I couldn’t care less whether the chancellor likes bacon fries.) But I do care, intensely, about a government that is promising once-in-a-generation reform of care for elderly people winning the public’s confidence for long enough to actually carry out that promise, and weirdly in 2026 that means chomping crisps on camera to establish your bona fides with people who’d scroll straight past conventional political content.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Emerging from this week with unity over Fifa’s World Cup sell off was quite an acheivement but Europe cannot rest on its laurels

It was a phrase not always heard when Europe’s football associations discuss a pressing issue. “Touchingly unanimous,” was the assessment of a senior Uefa executive within moments of Thursday afternoon’s seismic decision to boycott Fifa tournaments unless Gianni Infantino scraps his private investment plan. United fronts on this scale are vanishingly rare and there is now a narrow window in which to make it count.

Fifa doubled down on its proposal overnight with “clarifications”, which blamed the media for disrupting the “consultation process” of a scheme that had been constructed under cloak and dagger. There was no suggestion that it will shift from its 19 September deadline to effectively ram the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal through. Anyone would be forgiven for asking what the rush is but Uefa and its allies must not allow the next seven weeks to drag.

As parks turn brown and paddling pools go unfilled, exemptions mean sports pitches can stay lush – even in school holidays

After multiple punishing heatwaves, and no rain in parts for over a month, it seems the whole of the south of England is golden brown.

But by Hammersmith Bridge in Barnes, south-west London, there is the unmistakable scent of damp soil. The playing fields of St Paul’s school, where fees are up to £57,000 a year, are a bright, lush green.

​She faced racist bullying as a child – then pigeonholing as an artist. Now following up a hit debut album championed by the A-list, the Croydon singer-songwriter says she finally understands who she really is

In October 2017, Rachel Chinouriri had her first panic attack. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. She’d just landed her first major gig as a professional musician, supporting Celeste at the London members’ club Laylow. Out of nowhere, she began to spiral. “I don’t know what happened,” she says. “I just started having a mental breakdown.” Her manager told her to go home, try again next time. But that only made things worse. “I started feeling like I was wasting everyone’s time,” she says. “I started feeling ashamed.” It would be better, she decided, to go on stage and sing, “half crying”.

Tears were already a familiar response to Chinouriri’s performance anxiety: the first time she sang in front of her classmates at the Brit school – the performing arts institution that trained Adele, Amy Winehouse and more – she burst into sobs afterwards. A rather inconvenient habit for an aspiring pop star, but at least she front-loaded the humiliation at the start of her career. “That was a big milestone for me,” she says of the Celeste show. “The fact that I could stand up there completely embarrassed, with people looking at me like, ‘Don’t really know what’s up with this girl’, but I still got through it and everything was fine.” The experience taught her that the catastrophic scenarios in her head rarely come to pass. “I’d given myself this pressure of, ‘This is the music industry. If they think I’m rubbish, I’m never gonna perform again.’” Chinouriri rolls her eyes at herself.

US president hails breakthrough but Israeli far-right minister says ‘only solution’ is ‘encouraging emigration and destroying Hamas’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• What is Trump’s Board of Peace and who is involved?

Donald Trump has declared a breakthrough in negotiations over the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, issues that have so far stalled implementation of last October’s ceasefire, but Israel has yet to respond officially to the plan and government officials have voiced scepticism over the deal.

Announcing the agreement in a social media post on Thursday night, Trump said it involved the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza and was “a monumental step toward ending the fighting”.

Some drowned and others got caught up in crush, official says, as incident prompts criticism by other EU nations

• Europe live – latest updates

At least 24 people have died trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after more than 40,000 migrants entered the tiny territory from Morocco in a matter of hours, triggering a political crisis for the Madrid government and unleashing a barrage of criticism from other EU countries.

The large influx of people arriving in Ceuta by swimming across from neighbouring Morocco or scaling the high border fence has caught the city of 85,000 off guard and resulted in what one local police association has called a “serious humanitarian crisis”.

Rudakubana, serving life sentence for murders of three girls at dance event ⁠in 2024, charged with multiple assaults

The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, serving life in prison for ⁠the murders of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event ⁠in 2024, ⁠has ​been charged with assaults on prison staff, police have said.

On ⁠29 July 2024, Rudakubana, then 17, launched a frenzied knife attack in Southport, north-west England, killing Bebe King, six, Elsie ​Dot Stancombe, seven, ‌and Alice da Silva ‌Aguiar, nine.

• Infantino’s role as president under increasing pressure

• 143 of Fifa’s 211 members now stand against scheme

Gianni Infantino’s authority has been dealt a fresh blow after Carlos Cordeiro, one of his senior advisers, resigned with immediate effect in protest at proposals to sell a stake in the World Cup.

In the latest embarrassment for Infantino, who saw European FAs threaten to boycott future Fifa tournaments on Thursday, the former US Soccer chief Cordeiro criticised “a bad deal for football” and pointed out that the global governing body already sits on huge amounts of debt-free reserves.