The artist’s latest swerve sees her creating an alien inflatable landscape for New York’s Balloon Museum

Oversized inflatable blades of grass graze my face as I wind a path through the glowing white gallery space. Little papery squares of snow blow, some sticking to my hair. The path through the room curves so that only what is right in front of me is visible: initially, it seemed like I would reach the far side of the room in mere seconds but still my journey, magically, continues. I am at Snowy/Windy/Spring on Planet Z, the latest installation by the performance artist Marina Abramović. It opened earlier this month at New York’s newly opened Balloon Museum, which bills itself as “the first permanent home for inflatable art”.

“I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” a smiling Abramović said, speaking on Zoom from her Manhattan apartment. “But if you give me an assignment then I’ll try to see what I can do with it.” As she began researching balloon art her first thought was that it was “so kitschy – basically for kids and games”. However, the more she contemplated the balloon, the more she saw its resonance with her own practice. “You put air in it, and at some point the air comes out. Or you pinch it and it disappears. The temporality of this is very close to what I’m doing: performance art.”

The Reform leader claims vindication from the people, and it’s too early to write him off. But the problems he now faces may be more than he can bear

Nigel Farage is a rattled, embattled politician. Perhaps he feels buoyed up by securing slightly more votes in a byelection boycotted by all the main parties than he did in the general election two years ago. That was despite 10,000 fewer people turning out to vote. But there was never any question that he was going to win a byelection he called purely to deflect scrutiny of his undeclared £5m personal gift from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire and donations from a convicted fraudster.

Farage chose Clacton as his parliamentary launchpad for a reason. It was here that his previous outfit, Ukip, secured its breakthrough in the byelection of 2014. It is one of the most pro-leave seats in Britain, while Electoral Calculus estimates that almost no other constituency is this rightwing.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Readers describe how Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster has ignited or reawakened their interest in classical literature

“I’m having a classics summer this year,” says Tommy Maddinson, 26, from London. He’s been inspired by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey to delve into the subject, which has involved cinema trips, visits to the British Museum, and reading Homer’s epic before the film’s release. “I managed to finish it the day before. Since then I’ve been reading a few other classical texts and commentaries …”

Maddinson is not alone. Thanks to the popularity of Nolan’s film, poetry sales in the UK are on course to reach a record high this year after surpassing £8m during the first 30 weeks of 2026 – an increase of 13.3% on the same period last year, according to the market researchers NielsenIQ.

Weather forecasts once gave Britons something safe to chat about. Not any more, and that’s a problem for the experts – indeed, for all of us

In this fragmented but supposedly mild country, watching and talking about the weather forecast is meant to be a reassuring, unifying activity. Collectively, we have created and maintained a national climate narrative of small disappointments and pleasures. The first weather forecaster to appear on British TV, George Cowling, made his debut on the BBC in January 1954, predicting that “tomorrow would be rather windy”, but “a good day to hang out the washing”. For most of the 72 years since, such brief, carefully calibrated broadcasts have provided people from Aberdeen to Penzance with practical information, small talk and minor grumbles about essentially the same situation: living in a country where the weather is constantly changing, in a paradoxically unchanging way.

Yet like the traditional British climate, that common weather culture may now be evaporating. “Met Office considers issuing red ‘extreme heat warning’ across Britain while nation enjoys ‘incredible summer’,” said the headline above the forecast on the GB News website on Monday, caught between terror and delight at the latest heatwave. As the climate crisis has affected this country in more and more unmistakable but uneven ways, TV weather forecasters have increasingly struggled to find the right language to describe this transformation’s daily consequences. Their struggle influences and exemplifies that of many Britons to understand, and work out what we think about, the apparent end of the weather patterns we expected to shape our whole lives.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

On their new album, Smith is subverting their singer-songwriter roots to tell a queer love story. They talk about their shifting fanbase, the nasty undercurrents of fame – and finding sanctuary in New York City

Sam Smith logs on to our video call with the username “Lily of the Valley”, the May-born singer’s birth flower. It sets a serene tone. They’re in Guadalajara, Mexico, for the latest stop of a residency tour, titled To Be Free, in support of their fifth studio album. Instead of Smith’s usual jet-lagged arena itinerary, this lower-key excursion stops at smaller venues in only six cities and sheds the ostentatious theatricality of their last outing.

On stage on their last tour, “I was flailing around on a massive gold bum and had, like, seven costume changes,” Smith says with a chuckle. It’s intimacy they’re after now, the ability to satisfy their “craving to look at people again”, which matches the romantic feeling of their fifth album, Hazel Eyes. But for Smith, whose genre-shifting stardom has been accompanied by harsh controversies, it’s also a chance to observe who’s still in their corner: “There’s some wonderful people that have stayed, but it’s a completely different room than it was with In the Lonely Hour,” their 2014 debut.

The joy, disbelief and shock of discovering I had a brother the same age as me came with a million questions. How were we separated and why?

In 1975, my parents saw an advert in their local Australian newspaper. With the Vietnam war coming to an end, thousands of orphaned children were being evacuated. As part of the American-led Operation Babylift, the Australian government was looking for families who would adopt them. My parents decided to do it.

I arrived in Adelaide in April in a shoebox. I was so tiny that my umbilical cord was still attached. My parents knew that the document they were given, with a January birthday and the name Le Thi Ha, couldn’t be mine. But with the chaos of the evacuation there was no way to find out more.

Reform UK leader’s return to Clacton restarts inquiry into £5m gift from crypto-billionaire and support from fraudster

• UK politics live – latest updates

The suspended parliamentary standards investigation into Nigel Farage over accusations he failed to declare gifts and donations has resumed after the Reform UK leader’s re-election as the MP for Clacton.

The twofold investigation by Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, was paused after Farage resigned from his seat and called a byelection in protest at what he said was unfair scrutiny of his finances.

A total of 54 people were treated by paramedics after West Midlands fire as blazes continue across Europe amid extreme heat

• People taken to hospital and homes damaged in West Midlands fires

England has received just 4mm of rain so far in August, or 6% of the long-term average for the month, the Environment Agency said on Friday, as reported by PA.

It follows the driest July on record for the country, when only 7mm of rain was measured, or 10% of the average.

Israeli PM criticised by political rival for attacking an international ally and overseeing ‘horrific diplomatic failure’

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon”.

His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population.

Steven Sansom and Adam Watson accused of trying to kill Urfan Sharif, who murdered his daughter, in Belmarsh prison

Two men have been charged with attempted murder after the father of the murdered schoolgirl Sara Sharif was attacked in prison.

Steven Sansom, 47, and Adam Watson, 39, are accused of trying to kill Urfan Sharif at HMP Belmarsh on New Year’s Day last year.