Her shocking performances and stunning images made Mendieta the talk of the art world in the 1970s and 80s. Then she fell from a New York apartment block in 1985 – and her husband was charged with murder. As a major exhibition comes to London, her friends discuss her genius and their search for answers

In the summer of 1985, Ana Mendieta was playing with gunpowder and a chainsaw. Just 5ft tall, the Cuban American artist worked outside her studio in Rome, trying to figure out the scale of a new commission for MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. Her idea was to cut up trees and burn the gunpowder directly into them, creating a totem “grove” inspired by her recent trips to neolithic sites. It was a breakthrough of sorts – permanent, monumental work that built on her performance art – and in a photograph of her standing next to a test piece, Mendieta looks proud, excited.

She had arrived in Italy two years earlier, after winning the prestigious Prix de Rome and a residency at its American Academy. She alienated half the staff, but fell in love with the city, driving like a local (right hand on the wheel, left middle finger out the window). Mendieta admired Roman women, mailing her friend, the film critic B Ruby Rich, a newspaper clipping of a pro-choice demonstration. “She said, ‘Look, they’re not like American women,’” remembers Rich. “‘They’re showing women butchered and dead from botched abortions. Look how much fiercer they are.’”

Birds of War is an award-winning docudrama in which its own directors fall in love while reporting the horrors in Syria. They explain why they needed a psychotherapist to complete it

The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles. Children scream and sirens blare as activist and videographer Abd Alkader Habak rushes to help the injured after the bombing of an evacuee convoy in Aleppo at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble pops up on Habak’s phone screen. “My bird are you OK?” says BBC journalist Janay Boulos. “Get away from there, run.”

For more than a year, Habak and Boulos have been working to document Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities against his own people, their connection deepening all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange represents the moment the pair’s relationship shifts from colleagues to something more. “I don’t want footage,” Boulos says, fear clearly detectable in her voice as she tries to follow things from her desk in London. “I don’t want anything, just please take care. I am here whenever you want to talk.”

Track record of Welsh Water shows public ownership is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector

Good news for Andy Burnham: one of the original 10 water privatisations from the Thatcher-era has returned to public ownership already. Thanks to a complicated turn-of-the-century corporate saga, Welsh Water, serving 3 million people, converted to not-for-profit status in 2001. It has no shareholders. Financial surpluses go “straight back into keeping bills down and looking after your water and beautiful environment”, as the website blurb puts it.

How’s it going? After a quarter of a century without dividend-hungry shareholders to feed, has the model proved its superiority? Not exactly. Welsh Water usually has high scores on customer trust metrics but its performance on bills and spills tends to be middle of the pack.

I thought I knew what it was to be a good citizen. But after seeing him scramble up a ditch, beaming with pride at his rubbish-filled bag, I realised what it actually involves

I’ve always thought of myself as a good person: a good citizen and a good member of my community – at least in the ethical sense of the word. I presumed being good required refraining from harming the world and the people within it. An example of this being that I never litter.

However, when I moved home to Staffordshire after graduating in the summer of 2025, my understanding of what it means to be a good citizen – what it means to be “good” altogether – changed significantly.

Japan has ambitious targets to increase overseas visitor numbers, but there are growing concerns about overtourism. One possible answer is two-tier pricing

Perched dramatically on a hilltop in western Japan, Himeji castle’s striking white-plastered, tiered roofs earned it the moniker “white heron castle”. The sweeping 17th-century complex is regarded as the finest existing samurai fortress, and attracts more than one and a half million visitors a year.

But as Japan seeks to manage greater numbers of foreign tourists, Himeji is one of the attractions raising admission prices for non-residents. The World Heritage site increased its admission fee to 2,500 yen ($15.50) on 1 March, but left the price for those who live in Himeji city at 1,000 yen ($6.20).

They were held up by an electric storm but, after the skies had cleared, Mexico kept the lightning bolts coming. This was a climactic night that utterly engulfed the senses and its ramifications will be far reaching. El Tri have broken a hex that had nagged and gnawed at the nation’s football psyche across four decades, winning a World Cup knockout game for the first time since 1986, and the head turner will be the manner in which it happened. Javier Aguirre’s players cut Ecuador apart in a stunning first-half performance and, on this evidence, woe betide whoever runs into them next.

As it happens that will be England if they overcome the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The last-16 tie will take place on Sunday; it will be the last of this summer’s matches to take place in Mexico, whose co-hosting has felt dwarfed by the behemoth further north. So what a thrill that the Azteca, with all its majesty and mystery, delivered an occasion of genuinely epic quality here. The atmosphere roared, rocked and pulsated throughout. It was an evening that should, for a few days at least, shift the tournament’s focus to a hotbed that sits apart from the self-imposed sterility elsewhere.

Robert Jenrick and Hamish Falconer, MPs for Newark and Lincoln, among those whose constituencies now face cuts

The Labour minister Hamish Falconer and the Reform MP Robert Jenrick have voiced anger at the cancellation or delay of key transport infrastructure projects to fund the defence investment plan.

Falconer, the MP for Lincoln and Middle East minister, and Jenrick, the MP for Newark, were among those who have had cuts to road improvements in their constituencies, with savings contributing towards the increase in defence spending. Two roads in the East Midlands are among those where investment cuts have been made to fund a £15bn uplift in defence.

European scientists warn of consequences for weather patterns, the global climate and marine life

Temperatures on the ocean surface have hit a record high, raising fears of another burst of extreme heat this summer.

On 21 June, temperatures outside the polar regions exceeded the extraordinary highs observed at the same time in 2023 and 2024, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.

• Coach accepts expectation that his side must win last-32 tie

• Spence set to start at right-back in place of injured Quansah

Thomas Tuchel has warned that England will reach the glamorous part of the World Cup only if they remember not to panic when they face the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the last 32.

Although the German knows his side are heavy favourites to go through in Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, he is wary of the threat posed by the DRC. England will be under pressure to break down a low block for the third time in four games and Tuchel is keen not to let anyone think a successful group stage is cause for celebration.

President’s crypto ventures have eclipsed in revenue much of his property portfolio that took decades to accumulate

Donald Trump raked in more than $1bn from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released on Tuesday shows, giving a substantial boost to his annual income.

In his second term, the president and his family have heavily invested in digital money and various crypto businesses with Trump announcing at the start of 2025 that he wanted the US to be the “crypto capital of the world”. Trump’s crypto earnings are in addition to profit from his legal settlements, real estate and royalty deals.