Knowledge learned over more than a century in Australia is being tested by worsening fires. It’s a familiar narrative around the world

The violent hot red flames of deadly wildfires across the UK and Europe and scenes of panicked communities fleeing homes could not, at least geographically, be further away for Jan Harris.

But sitting in her new home at Reedy Swamp in rural New South Wales in Australia, the 67-year-old has found herself in tears.

A Grammy nom at 17, a US No 1 ... then silence. With new album Oh Yeah? finally out after four years away, the genre-hopping artist explains the trauma and heartbreak that informed it

Since Steve Lacy became a Grammy-winning artist with a No 1 hit in the US, little has changed for him. His single Bad Habit was one of the biggest songs of 2022, leading to a sold-out tour across North America, Europe and Australia. But off-stage? He bought a new home in Los Angeles, but he hasn’t made any new famous friends. He doesn’t get hounded in public, because he’s a natural homebody. Besides, he’s not really that famous, is he?

“I think my name is bigger than my face, which is great,” he says, smiling mischievously. Sitting in a private room in a London hotel, wearing a Serge Gainsbourg T-shirt and jeans so ripped that they might as well be shorts, Lacy says he thinks he has pulled off the greatest trick of modern pop stardom: being one of the most celebrated musicians of his generation while remaining almost unrecognisable.

Dehumanising politicians is the first step towards justifying their elimination. It matters more than ever to keep putting the person back into the picture

Ann Widdecombe was never one to hide from an argument. And she wasn’t afraid for her safety either. She scoffed at friends’ suggestions that she should get electric gates, as an elderly woman with a public profile living alone on Dartmoor, just as she dismissed concerns about her health at 78.

Having lost friends in the Brighton hotel bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher, she wasn’t naive about security. But she was forged in a different era: one before Jo Cox was murdered, when the greatest risk was to politicians identified as symbols of the state, rather than as the embodiment of an idea. She posed happily for press photographs inside her retirement bungalow, including one available to anyone casually Googling that included the house’s distinctive name: Widdecombe’s Rest. She would have been so easy to find, had anyone gone looking. Perhaps she never really believed that anyone would.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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In the second part of a two-part profile, Josh Halliday charts PM-in-waiting’s journey northward, where as mayor he revelled in his Covid-era popularity – and changed his approach to politics

• Part one: From Cambridge ‘impostor’ to New Labour star

Andy Burnham was a broken man. In a pub a short walk from parliament, which he had taken to calling “the madhouse”, he plotted his escape over beers with three trusted colleagues.

It was late March in 2016. Burnham, the MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, had been in Westminster for 15 years but here, in a politico-free pub on Horseferry Road, his mood was dark.

The 2018 final against Germany went to penalties – we thrashed them and won gold

I was 12 years old when I first played foosball – table football – in the summer of 1975 in Beirut. My home city was under siege, split by civil war. School was cancelled and roads were closed. We couldn’t get to the beach and the only place to go was the amusement arcade. Luckily for me, it was across the road.

Alongside billiard tables and games machines were a couple of foosball tables. I watched older kids play for hours, mesmerised by a game where you could outsmart an opponent two feet away, then celebrate in their face. You needed 20 pence, or qurush in Lebanese money, to play: 10 pence for the table and 10 pence for the winner. Money was scarce, so I made a deal with the guy who owned the place – if I cleaned the tables, I could play for free. With machine guns rattling on the nearby green line, which divided the east and west of the city, I’d stuff a towel inside the goal and practise until I was confident enough to play. I got really good. By the following summer, I was winning 10 games in a row.

From a boat tour in Northern Ireland to a farm with great ice-cream in Surrey, you share your top tips for day trips

The MV Kestrel has been taking boat tours out from Enniskillen on Lower Lough Erne for as long I can remember. We were brought out as primary schoolchildren on a geography field trip and I was recently a passenger for a civilised stag party. It’s popular for a reason: the tour (adults £15, under-12s £11) passes the old alma mater of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett (Portora Royal School), and stops at the sixth-century monastic settlement on Devenish island. The silence out here has to be heard (or rather not heard) to be believed. The lough is beautiful regardless of the weather – and with this being Fermanagh, if you don’t like the weather just give it 10 minutes.
Tom

Burnham, who is set to take the job on Friday, will promise to give back control to communities and spread growth

Andy Burnham will pledge he has the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected” in his first speech as Labour leader.

Burnham, who is set to be announced in the job at a special conference on Friday, will promise to give back control to communities and spread growth across the country.

Boarding of M/T Wen Yao in Gulf of Oman comes as expanded airstrike campaign hits five bridges in southern Iran

American forces boarded a ship in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday as part of the renewed blockade of Iran’s ports that began earlier this week, the US military said.

US Marines boarded the M/T Wen Yao “to ensure full compliance with the ongoing US naval blockade,” US Central Command (Centcom) said in a post on X.

Opponents warn president’s address about 2020 election loss is a bid to sow confusion ahead of midterms that could deliver big losses for Republicans

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, while vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

British domestic holidays are being pushed to their highest levels since Covid

The start of the peak summer season is set to bring millions of drivers on to British roads, with concerns of traffic chaos as the port of Dover faces its biggest test yet of new EU border controls.

The semi-functioning entry-exit system (EES) is credited, along with the heatwaves and fears about flights after the war in Iran, with helping push British domestic holidays to its highest levels since Covid halted international travel.