Men who were held in Nafha prison say they were brutally beaten, bound at the hands and feet, verbally abused, allowed to contract fungal and skin diseases, and assaulted with loud music for up to two days straight

Before releasing him, Israeli prison guards decided to give Naseem al-Radee a farewell gift. They bound his hands, placed him on the ground and beat him without mercy, saying goodbye the same way they had said hello: with their fists.

Radee’s first sight of Gaza in nearly two years was blurry; a boot to the eye left him with blurred vision two days later. Vision problems added to the laundry list of ailments he gained during his 22-month stay in an Israeli prison.

How do you invent a convincing fictional band for your play, film or novel? And what happens if they actually top the charts? The creators of Scott Pilgrim, the Commitments, Stereophonic and more reveal all

They have sold out venues on both sides of the Atlantic. Their first-ever gig was opening for a former member of Arcade Fire. Their 2024 album has been acclaimed as sounding like a lost classic of 1970s rock. Their two top tracks, Bright and Masquerade, have notched up 700,000 streams on Spotify. In fact, by the numbers, they’re having one of the most buzzy rock debuts of recent years. Yet they don’t really exist. They don’t even have a name.

The band is in fact the unnamed five-piece featured in Stereophonic, a hugely successful, Tony-winning drama, currently playing in London’s West End. Written by David Adjmi, with music by former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, Stereophonic earned five stars from the Guardian, which praised its “moments of creative transcendence, including a late-night epiphany so electrifying that the sound waves will excite your internal organs”.

PM tells Commons that ceasefire between Israel and Hamas only first tentative step to peace in the Middle East

Keir Starmer has always known that Monday’s visit to Egypt was going to be the Donald Trump Show. After all, almost every day is the Donald Trump Show and there was no way the US president was going to share the limelight on this of all days. The day when the living Israeli hostages were freed, 1,900 Palestinian detainees were freed and the first aid trucks entered Gaza.

This was The Donald’s peace deal. A narcissist is going to narcissise. Everyone else reduced to supporting actors. At best. Keir was relegated to a non-speaking walk on part as an extra. Pushed away after a couple of seconds. Probably preferable to being arm-wrestled like Emmanuel Macron. Though not much.

The wrong pillow can disrupt sleep, so finding the right one can guard against decline in mental and physical health

I thought I found the perfect pillow. Could these three unseat my favorite?

Life is full of mysteries: What is dark matter? What happened to DB Cooper? And the most perplexing to me personally: how tall should pillows be?

I can never seem to find the right pillow. They always seem too soft and flat, or too tall and stiff, and I end up tossing and turning all night. Currently, there are six pillows on my bed, none of which are quite right.

Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s part newscaster, part professor, part friend

On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of ‘I have money.’”

Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing – the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally – and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news programme that he calls “Wang Jian’s Daily Observations”. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences.

Speculating on basketball players’ menstrual cycles is creepy and intrusive. In other words, it’s just what you’d expect when women must be punished for standing out

Forget the bald eagle or the Statue of Liberty – the best symbol of modern America may well be a neon green dildo. Women’s basketball fans will know exactly what I’m talking about. On 29 July, a brightly coloured sex toy was thrown on to the court during the final minutes of play in a WNBA game between the Golden State Valkyries and the Atlanta Dream. In the weeks that followed, more neon dildos were flung at female basketball players, with at least six WNBA games disrupted.

The culprits were reportedly members of a cryptocurrency group trying to boost a memecoin called Green Dildo Coin. It was all very 2025: brainrot stunts, get-rich-quick schemes and memeified misogyny. And, of course, the Trump family joined in. Donald Trump Jr, who fancies himself an edgelord, posted a crude meme of his dad throwing a green dildo on to a court of young, female basketball players.

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Hamas accused of breaching agreement by withholding bodies of hostages but Palestinian militants say they face obstacles in retrieving them

The fragile ceasefire in Gaza faced its first test on Tuesday when Israel said the flow of aid into the devastated Palestinian territory would be cut by half and the crucial Rafah border crossing with Egypt would not open as planned, blaming Hamas for delays in the return of bodies of hostages.

The militant group handed over the remains of four hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Tuesday night, bringing to eight the number of bodies transferred since the US-brokered ceasefire took hold, leaving 20 to be accounted for. Hamas said it was facing obstacles as not all the burial sites had been identified.

Exclusive: Source says senior legal figures appear reluctant to head investigation launched by Keir Starmer in June

Keir Starmer’s national grooming gangs inquiry has stalled amid wrangles over its remit and difficulties in finding a senior legal figure willing to become its chair, the Guardian has been told.

Terms of the statutory investigation are still being discussed by a panel of stakeholders including survivors of abuse rings, four months after the prime minister bowed to pressure and set it up.

It was the night when England confirmed the inevitable. Thomas Tuchel and his players are going to the World Cup finals tournament next summer as the winners of qualifying Group K, their progress serene, their record – with two ties still to tick off next month – without blemish.

The serious business awaits, the only frisson of jeopardy here provided by the England fans, who sought to make a few points to Tuchel during the first half after his criticism of the Wembley crowd in the 3-0 friendly victory against Wales last Thursday. He had complained about them being too quiet.

US president says ‘we will not be generous’ if leader fails to win key midterms after promising $20bn to prop up struggling economy

Donald Trump has warned he could cut financial aid to Argentina if his ally Javier Milei loses crucial legislative elections later this month.

“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” the US president said as Milei visited the White House to seek the Republican’s political and economic support. “I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct. And he may win and he may not win – I think he’s going to win. And if he wins we are staying with him, and if he doesn’t win we are gone.”