The Norwegian government has given a permit to a mining company to release waste into Førde fjord despite a 17-year battle by campaigners and a supreme court ruling against it

Shortly after the Norwegian stock market closed on 17 June 2026, a few dozen local people from the small west coast town of Vevring crowded around a laptop in a school. Surrounded by children’s drawings and windows looking out over Førde fjord, they listened as news arrived from Oslo. Norway’s supreme court had ruled against its government: a permit to release mining waste directly into the fjord two miles upstream was illegal, the court said.

The moment marked the end of a 17-year fight, one of Norway’s most protracted environmental battles in living memory. In Oslo, Ingvild Fonn Asmervik, the project leader for Naturvernforbundet (Friends of the Earth Norway), compared the joy she felt to giving birth to her child. For Anne-Line Thingnes Førsund, a third-generation fisher living on the banks of the fjord in Vevring and a volunteer for the charity’s local branch, it was more of a relief. Like a mountain lifting off her shoulders, she said.

It used to be quite normal to pop next door for a coffee or invite friends over for dinner. But not any more. What’s behind this change – and just how damaging is it?

‘I really loved hosting at home years ago, before I had kids, when my house wasn’t filled with toys and I had lots of time to plan and shop,” says Rehanna, 41, from Birmingham. Now, if she’s catching up with friends, she would rather go out. “I can’t host and cook at the same time, so if I have people over it will usually be a cold buffet I have made earlier. There are so many really nice restaurants where I live that I’d prefer to go out and try something new than make an old favourite at home.”

Personally, I’d never say no to a cold buffet – but Rehanna’s story is not unusual. In the US, the number of people who regularly host friends or family fell from 42% in 1975 to 12% in 2026 – a 70% drop over the last 50 years. In the UK, the numbers are not much better: last year, a poll of 2,000 adults found that more than four in 10 British people avoid hosting at home due to the clean-up it requires. And while chef Nigella Lawson is back on TV screens demonstrating her culinary prowess on The Great British Bake Off, it wasn’t long ago that the self-proclaimed domestic goddess revealed even she had “got out of the habit” of hosting formal dinner parties.

Peeing in the sink he shared with Derek Jacobi, making a badger video with Brian May, climbing Everest with Alan Hinkes … as the great actor blasts into his 90s, stars celebrate his ‘loudness and madness’

Emma Thompson

In Bolotana, 70 miles from island’s original blue zone, 13% of women who reach 70 will live on to a century

The secret to longevity is being a woman – specifically, a woman in one part of Sardinia. At least, that is the conclusion of a study on centenarians in a tiny mountain village on the Italian island.

Sardinia became known as a haven for longevity, especially for long-lived men, in 1999 when a cluster of remote villages nestled in the slopes of its central and eastern provinces were classified among the world’s five “blue zones” – geographic areas with high concentrations of centenarians.

The Tory leader is now too big for the party to allow her to fail, so everything she does is acclaimed a work of genius

Where’s AI slop when you need it? It could all have been so much simpler. Just ask ChatGPT to write me a leader’s speech in the style of Kemi Badenoch. Make it an hour and 10 minutes long, so plenty of room for padding. Go heavy on the slogans, cliches and the obligatory crap politician jokes. Ones we’ve all heard many times before. Not least at this conference.

Make the usual digs at Labour and put the boot in to Reform. The main aim of the speech is to try to reposition a party that is tanking in third place on 20% in the polls as the main opposition to the government.

From Carrie’s bullies to Cathy Ames, sympathetic backstories have made villains boring. It’s time to bring back truly awful villains – in all their deliciously sinful glory

The new Netflix adaptation of East of Eden largely sticks to the plot of the John Steinbeck novel. There are tweaks – the introduction of a wedding photograph, for example, which becomes a significant item – but otherwise, it is faithful to the book. That is, in terms of the plot. There has already been some discussion about what it has done to Cathy Ames, played with considerable ferocity by Florence Pugh. Cathy, who later changes her name to Kate, kills her parents by burning down the family house. She shoots her husband, Adam, and leaves her baby sons wailing and alone. She slowly poisons the brothel madam Faye, a woman who acts as a mentor to her and treats her as a daughter, while simultaneously tricking her into leaving her everything in her will. In the book, Steinbeck lets Kate reflect on killing Faye. She finds that she has “no feeling” about it at all.

She is a brilliant, brutal character, but on television, she becomes something else: complicated. Her cruelty remains intact, but Pugh and showrunner Zoe Kazan have fleshed her out and given reasons for her fury. They invent a scene that implies Cathy was abused as a child by two men in the woods, and when she takes her final bow, the series returns to this moment in flashback, suggesting that her campaign of destruction has been shaped by a life of trauma and pain. In Steinbeck’s hands, Cathy is cold and unfeeling. In the 2020s, Cathy is more sympathetic and less of a brute.

Overhaul of special education in England could unravel, thinktank finds, because of ‘use it before you lose it’ dynamic

Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found.

The Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank says the government’s plans to largely replace education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in England with more widespread support in mainstream schools may be too optimistic and take longer to complete than its 2030 timeline.

TaxWatch contradicts claims about David Reuben’s departure and questions stories of super-rich exodus

• Apparent exodus of super-rich suggests UK is no longer billionaires’ playground

When the Sunday Times broke the news that David Reuben, one of the richest men in the UK, had apparently fled to the tax haven of Monaco, there was much pearl clutching. Reuben had moved from his Holland Park house in London to live full-time in the principality.

Labour’s tax regime was blamed and there were said to be fears there would be a cascading effect across the economy, with wealth draining from the UK. It was reported that he had probably left because of potential taxes on wealth in the upcoming budget.

Four native species selected after consultation, but which one adorns which note is yet to be decided

Bees, barn owls, puffins and hedgehogs have been picked to feature on the next generation of banknotes, the Bank of England has announced.

The quartet of creatures were selected after a large-scale consultation settled on wild animals as the theme, with members of the public then asked to pick their favourites out of 18 options divided into three categories.

Operation on 19-year-old who had no sperm after chemotherapy offers hope of preserving children’s fertility after cancer treatment

Surgeons have performed the first testicular tissue transplant on a teenager in the UK, offering hope that boys left infertile by chemotherapy could one day have biological children.

The 19-year-old had his tissue removed and frozen three years ago before undergoing treatment for a serious blood disorder. He said he was “incredibly grateful” to the medical team behind the pioneering procedure, which represents a potential breakthrough for male fertility preservation.