City plans to triple system of underground pipes that distribute chilled river water, reducing need for individual cooling units

As heatwaves intensify across Europe, most cities are reaching for a familiar fix of more air conditioning. But in 1990s Paris, planning began for a different kind of solution: one of the world’s largest district cooling networks.

The system has 120kms (75-miles) of underground pipes distributing chilled water to museums, offices, hospitals, schools and other public buildings including the Louvre, the Grand Palais, and some luxury hotels and office districts. Instead of thousands of individual air-conditioning units, cooling is produced centrally and shared across the city like a utility.

The Makerfield MP’s surge towards No 10 is a seductive ad for the power of positive politics. How long that proves effective depends on his next moves

The creation of hope is a vital but risky part of democratic politics. Leaders or would-be leaders who arouse hope attract supporters, motivate activists, achieve momentum and win over voters – and then have a chance of holding together political parties, governments and societies in harder times. From Barack Obama to Clement Attlee, Salvador Allende to Zohran Mamdani, leaders from across the left in particular have heavily relied on hope to launch and sustain their ruling projects.

Meanwhile, an absence of hope has quickly doomed other left of centre governments. Keir Starmer’s decision, only eight weeks into his premiership, to summon the media to the Downing Street garden and tell them that “things will get worse before we get better” in the UK was a mistake from which his administration never recovered. In a society where most lives have been getting harder since the 2008 financial crisis, Starmer’s downbeat manner, however justified by the deep problems he inherited from the Tories, was not an emotional register that much of the electorate desired.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

They were a big 00s buzz band – but looked in danger of fading out. Empowered by fatherhood and anger at war and AI, the New Yorkers explain why they ‘really showed up’ again

Suits. Gnomic poetry. Moody, insistent riffs. It used to be that you’d know what to expect from NYC rockers Interpol. The band’s first two albums, in the early 00s, were blockbuster successes, shifting half a million units each thanks to dramatic songs also fit for jerking around at an indie disco. Interpol duly jumped up to a major label, but then quickly fell back down again. Their talismanic bassist Carlos Dengler quit, and the band settled into a decade of solidly successful but pretty predictable albums. The most recent, 2022’s The Other Side of Make Believe, only reached No 178 on the US charts.

So it’s a bit unexpected that their upcoming eighth album, This Mirror Weighs a Ton, is their masterpiece. “We just all really showed up,” frontman-guitarist Paul Banks says of a band that has swelled to a quintet as two touring musicians, bassist Brad Truax and keyboardist Brandon Curtis, become full-time members. “The lyrics on the last record, it’s really hard for me to identify with what I was doing,” Banks continues. “I felt as if I made some mistakes.” What were they? “I don’t want to draw attention to them! I just didn’t want to walk away with that feeling again.”

Packed with fun memories from Ben Elton and Stephen Fry plus heartbreaking regret from his former partner, the Bottom star is so adored that this documentary risks descending into cringe – but his punky spirit shines through

Rik Mayall: Magnificent B’Stard is a homage to the man and an elegy for what you have to presume were the lost youths of most of the viewing audience. I don’t know what the current youth would make of it. I suppose they’re not watching television anyway, so the question’s moot.

Plus, of course, it doesn’t matter. This is 90 minutes of television for us – the generation that grew up with Mayall on screen as Rick the Poet (“This is my angriest poem – Theatre!”), then self-styled investigative reporter from and mostly in Redditch, Kevin Turvey, then in The Young Ones as anarchist sociology student Rick and on through its less wildly popular follow-up Filthy Rich & Catflap. Then there was his unforgettable turn as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder II (and as the horndog lord’s equally priapic descendant Squadron Commander Flashheart in Blackadder Goes Forth); the unexpected pivot towards a more restrained demonstration of his comic talents as oleaginous, ruthless, corrupt, entirely fictional Tory MP Alan B’Stard in Marks and Gran’s brilliant The New Statesman; a Hollywood punt as Drop Dead Fred; then the huge success of Bottom as a sitcom and a live show throughout the 90s until a terrible quad biking accident in 1998 trimmed his sails.

Luke spoke about how he irons his T-shirts and keeps a strict budget spreadsheet. I was hooked

The Dull Men’s Club popped up on my Facebook feed one day in late 2023. It’s now called Banana for Scale – a reference to a running joke in the group – as there were many clubs with similar names. It’s a place for people to celebrate the ordinary things in life. Every post had this dry sense of humour, which I’m drawn to.

One member regularly posts about his outings with his friend Nigel; others show off their collection of rocks.

(Dead Oceans)
The US singer took years off after becoming ‘world-weary’ of public life – and in the meantime, her silvery balladry reshaped pop. Her return is an ornate reinvention

In the press materials for Phoebe Bridgers’ return, the 31-year-old US singer talks about taking time to make her third album after coming to feel “a little world-weary” about public life. Who could blame her? Bridgers became a figure of invasive parasocial behaviour from fans after her spooked, sad second album, 2020’s Punisher, resonated with life under lockdown and made her a superstar. In recent years, young women making introspective and ornate indie-rock songs have risen to startling, pop star levels of fame and scrutiny – and none more so than Bridgers, her Boygenius supergroup with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and their peer Mitski. When Bridgers was rumoured to be engaged in 2022, fans possessed by her devastating music rued her happiness; when she started a new relationship, the gossip mill churned. In 2023, she castigated the so-called fans who aggressed her in an airport while on the way to her father’s funeral.

Even her recent analogue return has prompted reactions that might have a less self-possessed artist wondering why they bother. Last month, mysterious posters started appearing in small towns across the US advertising surprise $1 Bridgers shows in intimate venues later that night, before a concluding gig at New York’s gigantic Madison Square Garden. Phones were banned, along with any kind of recording device, including pen and paper, to stop audience members from writing down lyrics from her third album and sharing them online. The backlash to this – some fans accused her of ableism – prompted its own backlash, a tiresome Russian doll of discourse that’s still dragging on.

Study also finds high humidity means people in hundreds of cities are enduring their worst ever heat stress

The heatwave scorching western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever and is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning, scientists have said.

Almost half of Europe’s 850 largest cities are also enduring their worst ever heat stress, a combination of temperature and humidity, they found. Muggier conditions mean sweating is less effective at cooling the body, making heatwaves even more dangerous.

Sarah Steele waives anonymity to call for greater scrutiny of how US military courts are allowed to ‘rip apart’ vulnerable witnesses in the UK

• Why did a US fighter pilot avoid British trial after strangling a woman in England?

• Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts

A woman strangled by an American fighter pilot at his home in an English city has come forward to criticise the handling of his prosecution via a US court martial, a process she described as “military first, justice second”.

Sarah Steele, a British academic, has come forward to speak about the “distressing and degrading” experience she had with the US military justice system after she was assaulted by the airman in Cambridge.

US among countries sending help to search for survivors on north coast, where dozens of buildings flattened, as official death toll reaches 235

Rescue teams are racing to Venezuela’s shattered northern coast after almost simultaneous earthquakes reduced dozens of buildings to rubble, killing at least 235 people but with thousands more fatalities feared. Officials said at least 4,300 people were injured as rescue missions continue.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the defence department would help search and rescue teams deploy to the affected region after Venezuela’s main gateway, the Simón Bolívar international airport, near the capital, Caracas, was badly damaged by 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes less than 40 seconds apart, late on Wednesday afternoon.

Charles and Camilla to remain at Clarence House and are said to want the public to have more access to ‘monarchy HQ’

• King Charles’s tax bill: what did we learn and what is still in the dark?

• Crown estate makes more than £1bn profit for third year running

King Charles and Queen Camilla will not move into Buckingham Palace when £369m of buildings works to update it finish next year, preferring to remain at Clarence House, their London home nearby.

The announcement came as it was revealed the king paid £12.9m in income and capital gains tax in 2024-25 on his personal income, known as the privy purse, making him among the country’s top 100 taxpayers. Prince William paid £7.76m for the same period.