After critics and authors picked their top 100 novels we asked for your favourites. From Uruguay to the Isle of Skye, more than 3,000 readers cast their votes. Here’s your list – topped by a new number 1

• Read about your choices here

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The New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, briefly stepped away from City Hall to tackle the ultimate soccer challenge: predicting the entire World Cup bracket In the Guardian's exclusive interactive game. From shocking early exits to his definitive pick for the final, see how Mamdani maps out the world’s biggest tournament

• Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory

Thirty years after my parents were pressured into placing me with an adoption agency, I finally reconnected with them. But it was nothing like the neat stories you see on TV

One morning in late September 2023, I discovered by chance that my birth mother had been killed almost a year earlier. The revelation came while I was searching my work email for a stray message. In the bin folder, amid a slurry of irrelevant press releases, lay an unopened email, ­flagging a long-forgotten Google alert I had set up for her name, Susan Barras. We had been estranged for almost 15 years, so this in itself provoked trepidation. I had cut contact with her when our relationship had finally become too fraught and emotionally ­exhausting for me to continue. Opening the email, I realised with shock that the alert had been triggered by a probate notice about her estate.

Susan was only 69 when she died, and my first thought was that the breast cancer she was being treated for when we were in touch had returned. My second was the realisation that both my birth parents were now dead – my birth father had died of liver failure in late 2018, aged 70. But then the unfamiliar name listed on the probate notice, Suzann Doyle, captured my attention. Underneath this was confirmation that my birth mother had changed her name. Her address at the time of her death posed further questions. It was not that of the large detached house in Guildford I had visited just once, a few months after we were reunited, where she had lived with her husband. This address was for a tiny one-bed retirement flat overlooking Guildford train station.

Congressional Democrats say GOP majority is unraveling, but moves may in fact be aimed at retaining power

The wrath of Donald Trump has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus far. But as the November midterm elections draw closer, the president’s allies in the Senate and House of Representatives appear increasingly willing to defy a president who appears to have asked lawmakers for too much in some areas and too little in others, all while the public sours on his administration.

In both chambers, small groups of Republicans have in recent weeks joined with Democrats to advance resolutions requiring that Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing hostilities against Iran. Republican dissidents in the House helped pass another round of aid for Ukraine, as well as an effort to protect Haitians from deportation. In the Senate, a critical mass of Republican senators has given Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, a cold reception.

This word for outdoing or outshining others originated in the manosphere, but is now thoroughly mainstream. Why is it so popular – and should we be worried about slang that arises from toxic subcultures?

Until recently, if someone had said “mog” to me, I probably would have assumed they were talking about the children’s book cat created by the late great Judith Kerr. If asked about “mogging” or being “mogged,” I would have been completely baffled. But for many members of gen Z and gen Alpha (or anyone who is just a bit too online), the slang term, which means to outdo or outshine others, is everywhere.

Mogging’s origins are in the manosphere, where it began as a verb derived from the acronym “Amog” (alpha male of the group). In misogynistic forums in the 2010s, to “mog” came to mean to outdo someone in terms of sexual desirability. Mogging has been adopted by “looksmaxxing” influencers such as Braden Peters, known online as Clavicular, who encourage men to try to alter their looks – sometimes in extreme ways – to increase their “sexual market value”. Such an influencer might talk of “frame mogging” another person in a photo or video – a variation on mogging that specifically refers to being more muscular.

As Rosamund Pike found out recently on stage, many people now experience the arts simply as content to be documented for likes and shares

Have we lost the ability to surrender to a story? Surely, if there’s any narrative that deserves our undivided attention, it’s that of a crown court judge fighting the legal system’s approach to sexual violence against women, when she discovers her own son has been accused of rape. But as Rosamund Pike discovered last weekend, even such a visceral and emotionally demanding drama wasn’t enough to keep everyone in the room absorbed.

Pike made headlines when she walked back on stage at London’s Wyndham’s theatre after the curtain call for Inter Alia – not for a solo bow, but to remonstrate with an audience member for texting during the climax of her performance. “Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor, and you’re saving someone’s life, and I hope you are,” she said. “But we do see these, we do feel them. I feel like I’ve got to hold you all, so when I feel that and see it, it’s hard.”

Nadia Khomami is arts and culture correspondent at the Guardian

• Joint-chair of relegated club to tackle ‘false allegations’

• ‘I am not the person the media has decided to paint me as’

The former pornography baron David Sullivan has announced his resignation as a joint-chair and director of West Ham with immediate effect.

Sullivan and his legal representatives said in a statement that the 77-year-old billionaire was stepping down to apply his “full energy and attention” to fighting what he described as “false allegations” concerning his personal conduct, due to be aired as part of a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times on Monday.

Technology secretary Liz Kendall says she is ‘very concerned’ about role of social media but will not be ‘bullied off’ X

The government is considering fresh action to halt the spread of misinformation during public crises, Liz Kendall has said, insisting she will not be “bullied off” Elon Musk’s X.

The technology secretary was speaking after rioting broke out in Southampton over the police response to the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, a case about which Musk has repeatedly posted.

The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was in his mother’s arms when soldiers fired on family in Hebron

Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby in the occupied West Bank and injured his parents after opening fire on the family’s car, despite it having complied with an order to stop.

Soldiers opened fire on Friday on a car carrying the infant and his parents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was critically injured, evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died.

Ukrainian leader will attend UK meeting along with French president and German chancellor

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war.