Handful of ticketholders will be selected at random for up-close visits to ancient site throughout August

Trips to Stonehenge can be a little hectic. Tens of thousands of people turn up to celebrate summer and winter solstices and most other days the site is a place of bustle, excited conversation and selfie action.

But throughout August, English Heritage is offering visitors the chance to win some guaranteed solitude within the hulking stones.

Nigel Farage’s constituency takes in genteel resorts and one of England’s poorest villages. With a snap byelection approaching, what do the residents want from the Reform UK leader – or the bin who’s challenging him?

‘If it’s the Tin Man, then I suppose I’ll vote for Nigel,” says a Clacton resident, a retiree on a slow stroll towards the seafront, when I ask whom she will vote for in the forthcoming byelection. “I would sooner have Farage than the Tin Man!” As political slogans go, it is as good as any.

The sun is beating down, but the sky is hazy, which accurately describes the mood of this constituency since the Reform UK leader quit as MP for Clacton on 7 July, forcing a byelection that sent shock waves through Westminster and confusion through Clacton. I am spending a couple of days here with the photographer Andy Hall, traversing the coast between Jaywick to the west and Walton-on-the-Naze to the east. An incessant wind is blowing from the North Sea, sending waves crashing on to Clacton beach. Nicky Friday, who at 11am is already handing out 99s from her aptly named kiosk, Seabreeze, isn’t exactly exercised by the Reform UK leader’s latest gambit. “This is going to sound terrible, but I’m so busy running this business and working here,” she says. “I don’t really do politics.”

Nicky Friday, who owns and runs the Seabreeze kiosk in Clacton

Five years ago, I wrote an open letter asking climate scientists to speak out against fossil fuels. Now governments are in retreat, it is surely time to act

• France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins

Such is the astonishing scale of the wildfires burning at the gates of Bordeaux and Madrid, that if they had happened 20 – even 10 – years back, they may well have shocked the world into taking action on the climate crisis. But like the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water, we have become inured; not only to the ever more devastating impacts of climate breakdown, but increasingly to the actions needed to bring global heating to heel.

Even as more than 35,000 wildfires rage across the surface of our world, and as we continue to rewind our planet’s climate so it resembles hotter episodes from its distant past, governments and trading blocs are very deliberately turning away from climate action.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and author of The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis

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European football has shown an increased willingness to talk tough with Fifa but words can only be wielded so many times

• FA joins criticism of Fifa plan to sell off World Cup stakes

As the World Cup neared its conclusion, one leading figure in European football pondered how Gianni Infantino might attempt to rinse away the damaging stain of the Folarin Balogun scandal. It all came down to money. “He will just announce more funds for everyone,” was the gist, although the tournament passed without any explanation of how Fifa would carve up its record $15bn (£11.2bn) haul.

That was the tip of the iceberg. Infantino’s plan to sell chunks of the World Cup to private investors, announced nine days after the final, has sent shockwaves around the sport and left senior personnel scrambling. There is little time for a coordinated response given Fifa, at the height of what passes for football’s holiday period, has given FAs until 19 September to decide whether to accept the initial $20m (£15m) payment that would effectively count as endorsement of the new scheme.

As extreme heat claims the lives of workers in India’s poorest areas, many fear the true mortality rate is being dangerously undercounted

The morning air was already hot and cloying when Palli Mahalaxmi rose at about 5am. It was May, and in the summer heatwave that had engulfed this corner of southern India, even night-time did not give the villagers respite.

A single ceiling fan hung above Mahalaxmi, her husband and her son as they slept in a small windowless room made of thick concrete. Mahalaxmi set about preparing breakfast, and the family ate together from steel plates, just as they did every morning. Sweat dripped from their foreheads as the sun rose higher.

The prime minister says that current inefficiencies in the system will be tackled first, as he reveals final recommendations will be out by summer 2027

Andy Burnham is speaking now.

In a reference to how he started campaing for social care reform almost two decades ago, he says it is good to see faces in the room “who’ve been on this journey with me for a long, a long time”.

When someone in your family is receiving care, you look at everything through new eyes, don’t you? You notice things that maybe you didn’t notice before because you watch it so closely and so carefully.

And I’ve just been really overwhelmed by their care, the skill in what they do, the professionalism.

Can I just remind everybody that nobody thought we could get everybody in off the streets?

So we can do difficult in this country and we can do it well.

Oil price spikes after flare-up of fighting and claimed Iranian attacks on three tankers in strait of Hormuz

The US military said it knocked down an Iranian missile barrage and worked with Saudi Arabia forces to strike sites in Iraq that Tehran-backed militias have used to launch attacks in recent days. The strikes on Wednesday killed at least 20 members of a former paramilitary alliance that includes pro-Iran groups.

In what Washington cast ⁠as “an attempted surprise ⁠attack” by Tehran, Iran had launched multiple ballistic missiles at US forces in the Middle East, shattering a brief pause in fighting. Iran’s target was a US base in Jordan, Axios cited a US official as saying.

Emergency workers are continuing their search for survivors in southern Japan after yesterday’s powerful earthquake

• ‘Race against time’: Japan earthquake death toll rises as rescue teams search for missing

Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper has been speaking to people at the Nippon Paper Industries factory in Yatsushiro, where a chimney collapsed on to the site.

“I never imagined something like this would happen,” said a 33-year-old man who worked at the factory. “I never thought that the chimney could collapse. I’m worried about the people inside.”

He was off duty and at home when the earthquake struck, and was unharmed. The names of those rescued and those trapped have not yet been released. “Someone I know might be affected,” he said.

According to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, as of 2pm local time today seven people had been rescued. Of those rescued, five have died and two were injured. The whereabouts of four people remain unknown.

Authorities fear progress in containing the fires in the Gironde and Madrid regions may be set back by temperatures expected to hit the low 40s

Authorities in the Gironde region said the blaze had not spread overnight, but rising heat and afternoon winds could revive smoldering hotspots, carry embers across firebreaks and open new fronts beyond crews’ reach, AP reported.

At the command center in Lège, firefighters bent over maps spread across a car hood, tracking three danger zones: northern Cap-Ferret; the wooded corridor around Marcheprime, Cestas and Saint-Jean-d’Illac; and a military site near Martignas, where a major outbreak forced a large deployment.