Danny Murphy’s decision to start talking about his deceased cat will haunt the rest of his career while Christina Unkel’s referee analysis was no-nonsense and to the point

The final may be Argentina v Spain, but ardent media watchers in the UK know that in broadcasting terms, a World Cup is always a domestic battle between the BBC and ITV. So who won on these important criteria?

She is shaking up showbiz and redefining the way disability is portrayed on screen. Ahead of her end-times thriller The Rapture, the star talks about being a Doctor Who badass and why her husband finds her job hysterical

The day I met Ruth Madeley in a hotel in central London was the peak of the last heatwave, the buttons on traffic lights almost too hot to touch. Eerily, this is a major theme of The Rapture, the BBC’s new adaptation of Liz Jensen’s 2009 bestseller. It’s set in a children’s secure psychiatric unit, and the 38-year-old actor plays Gabs, a clinical psychologist recently paralysed in a car accident that killed her husband. She becomes transfixed by the inmate Bethany – a surly, biting performance from India Amarteifio – who has been convicted of killing her own mother. Gabs is hard-boiled, as far from gullible as you could imagine, and Bethany’s “visions”, which pour out of her in frenetic drawings of faces, disasters, landscapes, don’t fall on fertile ground. Yet Gabs cannot help but notice when they start to come true.

In the background, the heat is stultifying and climate crisis activists are begging the world to take notice. “Yes, it’s feeling very timely,” she says wryly. This is on-brand; her first major role was in Russell T Davies’s Years and Years, the apocalyptic smash hit that ends with a monkey flu pandemic (sorry, spoiler), “and then a year later we were in lockdown. I told Russell: ‘You’re not allowed to write anything else, my nerves can’t take it.’”

Pete Hegseth wants to win the war on Iran with a secret weapon: testosterone. Meanwhile, JD Vance is worried about how to eat an ice-cream

Are the men of the Trump administration OK? Feels like it’s been a tricky week for some of them. On the one hand, you’ll note the US is already rebooting its Iran war. Clearly, many will feel this latest version of the conflict is coming too soon after the last one, with fans simply not given enough time to miss the IP. A lot like the live-action Moana currently falling off the screen in cinemas. On the other hand, defence secretary Pete Hegseth seems to have moved the defence department beyond even its latter-day renaming as the department of war, posting a video entitled “The High-T Department of War” in which he announced mandatory testosterone screening for US troops aged 30 and over. We’ll get to JD Vance being unintentionally aroused by footage of Joe Biden eating ice-cream in a minute. Or as soon as I can face it.

Even the lower-ranking White House operatives seem to be spinning out. You may remember the UK’s political betting scandal, where various police officers, campaign officials and aides to former prime minister Rishi Sunak were arrested or investigated for putting bets on the last general election date. Everything’s bigger in the US, of course, so in some ways it’s not a surprise to learn that the guy who operates Trump’s teleprompter has allegedly made $100,000 on Kalshi by placing bets on words or topics appearing in Trump’s speeches. He is currently on unpaid administrative leave, according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who yesterday added solemnly, “there are very strict ethical guidelines here at the White House”. A statement so hilarious that I refuse to believe Leavitt herself didn’t say it for a bet. Probably with Hegseth. “Dude, I know I can get it in. I back myself. And if I do say it, you owe me $1,000 and an off-the-books testosterone shot.”

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Almost half of working-age adults in the UK do not save into a pension. Four readers explain why they fear for the future

“I am 35 and have essentially nothing saved for my future, which is a huge concern.” Sarah* works in library services in Oxford – full-time at one library and part-time at another. She has saved £5,000 into her pension.

After finishing her PhD in 2020, she said she had “good intentions of contributing to pension schemes. But because I then had a succession of part-time jobs, I never started. I never thought, this is a job I’ll be doing for long enough.”

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.

How do you follow Oppenheimer? By spending $250m bringing Homer’s epic poem to the big screen in Imax. Today’s most powerful director talks big swings, trauma-bonding and the healing powers of chocolate labrador Charlie

‘I’m in that moment of sheer terror,” says Christopher Nolan, sitting in a suite at the Corinthia hotel in London, in a slightly rumpled suit, next to a pot of tea. Outside, crowds jostle, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the stars within – Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o. It is the day before the world premiere of Nolan’s latest film, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the last day of waiting before audiences decide whether the biggest gamble of Nolan’s career has paid off. The film, which reportedly cost $250m (£185m), doesn’t just need an audience to show up. It needs the entire moviegoing world to do so.

“It never gets any easier, because I make films for audiences and the audience tells me what it likes,” he says. “They finish the film. I don’t have anything to hide behind. I can’t just be like: ‘Oh, people don’t get it.’ Those aren’t the films I make. What does the audience make of it? Do they turn up? Do they like it if they do turn up?

Burnham criticises ‘decades of neoliberalism’ and says he wants to give people ‘hope back’

When Andy Burnham first tried to return to the Commons, by applying to be Labour’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, Labour’s national executive committee blocked him – in part because, they argued, Labour might find it hard to hold the Greater Manchester mayoralty in the byelection caused by his resignation.

When he next applied to be a candidate, for Makerfield, the NEC no longer felt able to say no because the results for Labour in the May elections were so bad that the case for having Burnham in parliament became overwhelming.

Tehran bombs US allies in Middle East and tells Iranians to cut electricity use after attacks on power infrastructure

The US hit bridges, energy facilities and a key Iranian port on Friday, expanding its aerial campaign against Iran, and prompting swift Iranian strikes against US allies in the Middle East.

US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state TV reported. The bridges were a key transit point for Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port. Further US airstrikes brought down a tower in Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, and targeted key electrical infrastructure and Iranshahr airport.

Opponents say president’s address about 2020 election loss is attempt 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, and 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.