The latest character dressing trend may be a little silly but there’s an off-kilter pleasure in its mellow, vintage vibe

Welcome to the season of the Posh Grandpa, fashion’s newest main character. We’ve had Brat, we did Coastal Grandma, we loved Tomato Girl Summer. The world is pretty heavy right now, as you’ll have noticed, so any opportunity to lighten up is precious. The nonsense is the point.

Character dressing is style that makes you smile, but it’s not just that. There is infinitely more joy in these looks, however silly they are, than there is in aspiring to look rich and pretty, which is where the aesthetic centre of gravity of our culture swings back to again and again. The esoteric sides of fashion’s personality capture something important about style, which is that it needs a bit of friction to make it interesting. The pebble in the boot, the surprise to snag the eye. This is where the magic happens.

Whether it’s the traditional boiled diet, a dental epidemic or white-winged extremism, Patrick Gathara explains why political turmoil is engulfing the UK

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The UK has been in a state of political crisis for months, but recent local elections have resulted in the most serious challenge yet to the country’s prime minister and ruling elites, with experts predicting the UK could be facing its sixth regime change in 10 years amid “tribal disputes and separatist movements.”

To make sense of it all, I spoke to the Nairobi-based British affairs satirist Patrick Gathara about the future of the “island Kingdom of Britain”.

Plants whose beauty is flawed carry a message in Children’s Society garden, a gold medal winner at Chelsea flower show

Gardens do not have to be perfect to be beautiful – and neither do teenagers. That is the central message behind the Children’s Society garden, which has won a gold medal at this year’s RHS Chelsea flower show. And prickly poppies, a bird’s nest fern planted in a drain and verbascum arcturus, a delicate-looking yellow flower with hairy stems, are among the plants chosen to convey it – plants whose beauty is flawed.

“The overlaying narrative of the garden is ‘beauty in imperfection’,” said the designer, Patrick Clarke. “Perfection is the most debilitating thing for young people because it’s something that is unattainable, and when they’re bombarded with images of perfection on social media … that is very, I think, threatening to people’s mental health.”

When drum’n’bass grew stale in the 90s, it got a samba-splicing Brazilian twist. As that style returns, the scene’s legends and newcomers celebrate a cross-cultural triumph

Wagner Ribeiro de Souza wasn’t carrying much in his backpack. A local compilation of techno, house and jungle hits, a couple of news clippings and a VHS tape with footage from the club where he played weekly: small fragments of a music scene that he, under the moniker DJ Patife, and some friends were building in São Paulo, Brazil.

It was 1998. He had travelled to London to talk his way into the office of Movement, one of Britain’s most important drum’n’bass nights, with a single goal: pitching an edition of the party in Brazil. “I played that tape recorded at the club,” Patife remembers. “And when Bryan Gee saw like 2,000 people singing, he said: ‘Let’s go to Brazil right now!’”

Trolling and other forms of online violence against female journalists have also triggered offline attacks, harassment and abuse. Some reporters have paid with their lives

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This month, to mark World Press Freedom Day, the Guardian has been highlighting the growing threats to journalists around the world, particularly those working in conflict zones and under authoritarian regimes.

Today, I’d like to share some thoughts on the specific dangers faced by female reporters. We can’t talk about press freedom without talking about misogyny.

Choreography of back-to-back visits appeared deliberately mirrored but China made sure the differences were noticed

Days after Donald Trump was greeted in Beijing with a military band, an honour guard and dozens of youths waving American and Chinese flags, Vladimir Putin arrived in China to an almost identical spectacle.

The choreography of the two welcomes appeared deliberately mirrored, designed to showcase Beijing’s ability to host leaders from Washington and Moscow with equal grandeur.

In first Commons speech since quitting cabinet, Streeting says party must deliver change or it will hand keys of No 10 to Reform

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Labour must be bolder and deliver real change, Wes Streeting has said in his first Commons speech since resigning as health secretary, saying that he quit the government because it was “currently losing” the fight against populist nationalism.

Streeting reiterated his view that leaving the EU had been a damaging mistake for the UK, and argued that young people had been let down by a system stacked against them.

Far-right figure Itamar Ben-Gvir shares footage of himself taunting bound international detainees

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid.

There was a rapid and furious response from countries whose citizens were on board the boats, including the UK, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland, in many cases delivered in person from the top of government.

Father describes Jane Adetoro, Christina Walter and Rebecca Walter as ‘the beautiful light that filled our family with happiness and love’

Three women whose bodies were recovered from the sea off Brighton beach were sisters described by their father as the “beautiful light that filled our family with happiness and love”.

Emergency services were called after concerns were raised for a person’s welfare at about 5.45am on 13 May, before three bodies were pulled from the water near Madeira Drive.

PM’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, among aides briefed on investigation into reporters writing about Labour Together

Keir Starmer’s most senior advisers were briefed about an “indefensible” investigation into journalists writing critical pieces about the Labour Together thinktank, according to a newly released document.

Among the aides who received updates on the probe, commissioned by the thinktank’s director, Josh Simons, were Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff to the prime minister.