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In latest legal twist, appeals panel rules US does not have to reinstate signage on climate, immigration and slavery

The Trump administration does not have to reinstate materials related to climate change, immigration and slavery that it has removed from national parks, a US appeals court ruled on Thursday.

It’s the latest twist in a legal battle over how history is remembered at American public monuments.

Former intern and employee awarded 5,000 yuan (£554) in emotional damages after court found former manager had harassed her

A woman in China has won a rare legal victory in a workplace sexual harassment case.

The woman, a former intern and employee at Beijing Grassland Alliance, an environmental NGO, was awarded 5,000 yuan (£554) in emotional damages, to be paid by her former manager, who the court ruled had sexually harassed her. The manager was also ordered to write an apology to her.

One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship

For Michael Scurr, a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, it was “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he sat down in late May to catalogue a collection of documents from the British national collection that had never previously been recorded in detail.

As he opened a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence, however, Scurr unfolded a document whose opening words he recognised. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America …”

Nearly 3,000 people have been evacuated in southern France as the country swelters through a record-breaking heatwave. The fire started at a campsite, destroying dozens of mobile homes before spreading to the marina area, where thick, toxic smoke blanketed boats. The fire broke out in the town of Sainte-Marie-la-Mer and spread to Canet-en-Roussillon on Thursday [• This gallery’s headline and subheading were amended on 3 July 2026; an earlier version referred to south-western France]

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Annual celebration on 12 July enables social players and children to challenge some of England’s best

On Sunday, 12 July, ChessFest, the game’s annual celebration, returns to Trafalgar Square in central London and offers a unique opportunity for ordinary players and their children to experience top chess free of charge. Complete beginners are welcome and will receive helpful instruction from Chess in Schools and Communities tutors.

The action starts at noon and continues until 7pm. Throughout the day, experts including nine-time British champion Michael Adams, three-time champion Gawain Maroroa Jones, and many other international players will give simultaneous displays or be available for one to one speed games in the Challenge the Chess Master tent.

The New Zealander was the right man to take on the job of persuading a group of jaded senior players to play brilliant cricket, but may not suit a rebuild

Wait, what? Four days on, and nothing about the weekend that’s just gone seems to make much sense. It was England’s seventh defeat in nine Tests, and somehow, at the end of it, they’ve lost the last man anyone really wanted to go. Ben Stokes, his own man all the way to the end, has apparently decided he would rather spend his remaining days in the game playing championship cricket for Durham. A man whose career has been marked by copper-bottomed self-conviction has left English cricket facing a whole lot of questions.

The first of them is whether Brendon McCullum is really the right man to try to rebuild this England team in the years ahead.

• England beat South Africa by 40 runs

• Women’s T20 World Cup hosts through to Lord’s final

England launched themselves into the T20 World Cup final after defeating South Africa by 40 runs at the Oval on Thursday evening.

Emotions ran high, especially after England were left reeling at 23 for three having been put in to bat. But with a crowd of 21,000 roaring them on, the World Cup hosts were jubilant at the end as a record partnership of 133 from 90 balls between Nat Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight put them in the driving seat. Sunday’s battle against Australia at Lord’s will be their first T20 World Cup final since 2018.

• Teenager wins 3-6, 6-3, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 in match held over

• Zverev and De Minaur reach round three in straight sets

This is Rafael Jodar’s first Wimbledon and yet the way the 19-year-old plays and talks, you would think he is playing his 10th. Trailing two sets to one to another Spaniard, Pablo Carreño Busta, in a match held over from the previous evening when the light ran out, he could easily have been nervous when the encounter resumed, thinking his first time here could be about to end.

Not a bit of it. Jodar quickly levelled and then edged the fifth to win 3-6, 6-3, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 and move into the third round. “I knew I had to get my body ready for the next day, because obviously I was down,” said Jodar, who has burst on to the scene this year and who reached the quarter-finals at Roland Garros last month. “But I believed in my chances. I believed that I could come back and win the fourth set and then the fifth set. That’s what happened.

• Third seed more at ease in dominant 6-1, 6-3 victory

• ‘Today I felt like it was a normal day at the office’

In the final minutes of her quick afternoon on Centre Court, two points from defeat, Karolina Pliskova curled a precise first serve out wide that landed dead on the line, sending a wisp of white titanium pigment flying through the air. Against most other players the serve would not have come back, but Iga Swiatek is not any player. The Pole frantically shuffled to her right and brilliantly improvised with a low, cutting slice return that died on the grass, leaving Pliskova with little chance of a response.

There are days when everything goes one player’s way, and the unique aspect of Swiatek’s career is how frequently she is the protagonist on such afternoons. Here she put together a dominant performance as her title defence gained some momentum, dismantling Pliskova 6-1, 6-3 to reach the third round.

• ‘There was that fall last summer. I knew it was over’

• Injuries hampered the final years of rider’s career

Chris Froome, the four-time winner of the Tour de France, who also took the 2018 Giro d’Italia and 2011 and 2017 Vuelta a España titles, has confirmed his retirement from professional cycling.

The longest retirement saga in the sport finally ended on Friday when the 41-year-old, speaking in Barcelona at the Grand Départ of this year’s Tour, said: “Unfortunately, there was that fall last summer. That wasn’t the way I wanted it to end. But even then, I knew it was over.” Asked if he had now definitively retired from racing, he replied: “Yes.”

Foreigners are not to blame for unemployment, crime and the state of public services. Leaders should have the courage to say so more clearly

Just over 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela expressed his sadness and anger at the rising hatred of foreigners in South Africa. “We had a legacy of unity and solidarity here,” the president told an African National Congress rally. “We are not victims to the influx of foreign people.”

Since then, xenophobic violence has periodically erupted. In 2008, anti-migrant attacks killed at least 62 people. Now a new wave is sweeping the country. Thousands marched in the streets on Tuesday – the arbitrary “deadline” that campaign groups had set for migrants to leave the country. More than 25,000 people did so in the run-up, with some countries evacuating their nationals and individuals fleeing in fear. Mozambique says five nationals were killed in anti-foreigner violence in May, and Ghana says a citizen was killed on Monday, though South African officials have offered different accounts. Migrants have been systematically blocked from health and other services by the Operation Dudula and March & March movements.

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Across the world, political uncertainty is being exploited to fan the flames of hatred. Now, the very principles that make South Africa great are at risk

This week, South Africa has been rocked by protests that have caught the world’s attention. These have been led by anti-immigration civic groups campaigning against what they describe as a crisis of illegal immigration. But to understand these protests, it’s key to view them as part of a broader conservative nationalist turn, as has been seen across countries in the west.

For the past two months, these groups have marched through townships and city centres demanding identity documents from African foreign nationals, ordering non-citizens to close their businesses and calling on undocumented migrants to vacate the country. They declared 30 June as the deadline for immigrants to leave and as the date of a nationwide shutdown.

Zanele Mji is a writer, investigative journalist and podcaster based in Johannesburg

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Despite a deadly heatwave sweeping through Europe, the US president’s ineptness has created reason for optimism on the climate crisis

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

Two real-life climate-themed movies are playing in parallel across the globe. They are about the world today, but they are also a snapshot of the future. The first is a slow-building horror story; the second, a feelgood summer hit. Both are worth watching.

Horror films are suddenly box-office gold, so let’s start there. The World Health Organisation says the extreme, record-breaking heatwave blanketing Europe has killed more than 1,300 people. But everyone knows that number will end up a dramatic understatement.

An estimated 185,000 babies were taken from unmarried mothers in England and Wales between 1949 and 1976. I was one of them

After my adoptive father died in November last year, my adoptive siblings found a short story by Enid Blyton among his possessions. The Child Who Was Chosen was read to us as children to explain the circumstances of my adoption. It follows a nice middle-class couple whose domestic bliss is marred by childlessness, prompting them to go to a “very kind lady” who helps them to find a “chosen baby” instead. In its foreword, Blyton advises adoptive parents to tell the tale to their adopted child “again and again … so that to him ‘adoption’ means something lovely”.

The “chosen child” narrative, where parents tell adoptees they were specially picked, helped to shape the still widespread public perception of adoption as unambiguously altruistic. But it has also long been criticised by adult adoptees for masking the trauma of separation from their original parents. Reading Blyton’s saccharine story, I was struck by its glaring omissions. There is no mention of how the boy, who is unnamed until he is adopted, came to be put up for adoption; nor any suggestion that he once had another family and identity. There is no recognition of his first mother or her loss, only the loneliness of the prospective adoptive mother. The woman from the adoption agency also tells the couple that if this child isn’t the one they really want, she will find another one – as though she’s running a baby market.

David Batty is a news editor and writer for the Guardian

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The president made $2.2bn last year, with plenty of help from his own political decisions. This is called corruption, folks

• People in the US: share your views on Trump’s earnings in his second term

In financial disclosures released on Tuesday, Trump reported earning more than $1bn last year from his several cryptocurrency ventures.

All told – including other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets – Trump made at least $2.2bn last year, as opposed to the roughly $622m his businesses raked in in 2024, before he returned to the presidency.

The outrage following the 11-year-old girl’s killing is justified. But the case reveals a deeper systemic neglect of child protection

When the body of an 11-year-old girl was found in a disused grain silo on a farm in the Gers region of south-west France last month, the news sent shockwaves across the country. Lyhanna had been missing for nearly a week. Members of the public had been out combing the area. Suspicion quickly focused on Jérôme Barella, the 41-year-old father of one of Lyhanna’s classmates, in whose car Lyhanna had last been seen alive.

Barella was charged in connection with the case, but denies any wrongdoing or involvement in the killing. But shock turned to public outrage after a local prosecutor revealed that the suspect had been the subject of several accusations of sexual violence against young girls before Lyhanna’s disappearance, yet until then had never been questioned by police.

Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, writer, film-maker and activist

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The Blue Sharks will become the smallest nation in history to play a knockout match at the World Cup when they face Argentina on Friday

The Festival da Gamboa is the largest music festival on Santiago Island, Cape Verde. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the small stretch of beach, nestled at the foot of the plateau of Praia, has been transformed for a weekend from the home of a dozen or so fishing boats to one of the country’s biggest shindigs, attracting thousands of partygoers.

It has staged some of Cape Verde’s greatest musicians playing the rhythms of mornas, funaná, coladeira, batuque and tabanca. But last Friday, on opening night of the three-day event, it staged Cabo Verde’s newest and most popular act, the Tubarões Azuis, the Blue Sharks.

Egypt face Australia in a historic World Cup game on Friday and the manager has been keen to highlight president Al-Sisi’s role in the achievement

After Egypt’s 3-1 victory over New Zealand at the World Cup, the national team coach, Hossam Hassan, issued a statement of gratitude to the country’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

Al-Sisi had sent a congratulatory message to the team and, for Hassan, that almost seemed like a bigger event than the result. The president’s message, he said, was “a medal on his chest,” adding that it has the “effect of magic” before praising the “unprecedented development” of Egyptian sport under al-Sisi’s leadership.