Today it’s a silly sports betting ad, but I can’t see anything she’s done that’s worth this ire. She’s in her twenties: she does dumb things. Enjoy!

Would it be insanely unfashionable to defend Sydney Sweeney? You may or may not have heard that the Euphoria star has done an ad for a sports betting site. Sorry, I think we still have to call them “sports prediction markets” in the United States, which only recently popped its legalised sports betting cherry, and is behaving like a complete teenage boy about the whole thing. Anyway, among other poses, the ad features a naked Sydney holding a couple of American footballs over her breasts, which are – and I feel she would want us to acknowledge this – seriously among the very best in Hollywood. Maybe THE best. Listen, it is what it is. Life would be very boring if we couldn’t say so with a twinkle.

Forgive me. Life is, in fact, very, very boring, because yet another Sydney Sweeney-advertising-centred firestorm has been ignited by this ad. (Last year, some lunatic genuinely suggested her “good jeans” American Eagle ad was something to do with white supremacy and eugenics.) Her latest product endorsement has drawn the ire of a cascade of female athletes, who have described it variously as demeaning women’s sport, sexualised representation of athletes, and “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, [and] every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is – teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity”.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Tory and Whig MPs were central to funding trafficking of enslaved people and many opposed abolition of the slave trade

There is a British culture of celebrating the abolition of slavery without acknowledging that the country enslaved and trafficked millions of African people for centuries.

The newly published Register of British Slave Traders, which documents the thousands of investors in Britain’s near 250-year trafficking of more than 3 million enslaved African people, shows that it was a state-backed operation, fully supported by both major political parties at the time, the Tories and Whigs – the forerunners of today’s Conservatives and Liberal Democrats respectively.

The star of Widow’s Bay is that rarest of talents – someone who can do whatever he wants and make it utterly believable. No wonder he just made TV history

On Monday night, Matthew Rhys made history. He is now officially the first actor ever to win Emmy awards for lead roles in all three categories: drama, comedy and limited series. To make things even more extraordinary, he won two of those awards in a single night.

In the comedy category, Rhys won best lead for Widow’s Bay, the superlative Apple comedy horror where he stars as an indecisive mayor whose island suddenly plays host to a supernatural haunting. He also won best lead actor in a limited series or anthology for The Beast in Me, the Netflix drama about a property developer who may (or may not, no spoilers) have murdered his wife. Add this to his 2018 win for The Americans and the trifecta is complete. In other words, the entire world belongs to Matthew Rhys, and we’re all just living in it.

Capacity has been overwhelmed by heatwaves that have pushed white goods to breaking point

“In Oxfordshire, recycling centres are filling almost three articulated lorries with discarded fridges every week,” says Simon Perry of W&S Waste Management, which runs a recycling centre in Ardley.

Together, those fridges would cover an area just under half the size of a football pitch. But the space to store them – in Oxfordshire and beyond – has become a growing problem after the Local Government Association (LGA) warned that a mountain of broken fridges was rising in waste centres across England and Wales, as this year’s heatwaves push more white goods to breaking point, and a trend for second/backup refrigeration products keeps growing.

As a teenager, Edmonds had a three-year residency at the Royal Opera House. Her eclectic career – creating NFTs, adverts and films as well as for the stage – reveals a precarious industry moving in new directions

At the age of 18, Charlotte Edmonds was such a promising choreographer (“astonishing”, in the words of the Observer) that the Royal Ballet invented a whole new job for her. As the company’s “young choreographer”, she spent three years learning everything she could at one of the world’s biggest dance institutions. “It’s mad to think that happened,” she says, a decade on.

With that kind of start, you’d expect Edmonds’ career to have followed a predictable narrative, choreographing for the big ballet brands, maybe setting up her own company. But that’s not exactly how it’s gone. Her eclectic portfolio reflects how the dance industry has changed and become ever more precarious, but also expanded in uncharted directions. She has indeed made short works for a number of European ballet companies, but she’s spent more time recently making films, music videos and adverts for the likes of Budweiser and Nike, as well as advocating for artists with dyslexia and launching her own video series, Cameo, in which she interviews female and non-binary choreographers to counter a lack of representation.

Chirag Bahri was working on board a tanker when six men seized it. For almost eight months, he and his colleagues were held captive, an experience that would change his life for ever

It was at noon on 8 May 2010 when the pirates came. Chirag Bahri remembers the exact time and date because it marked the start of the seven months and 20 days he was held hostage by a gang of Somali pirates. Bahri was 28 at the time, and working as second engineer on a chemical tanker, Marida Marguerite. It was his 12th journey through the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean. It had been a good job for a young man from landlocked Uttar Pradesh in India, and Bahri was about to be promoted. “But then, piracy,” he says.

The ship had been 120 miles off the coast of Oman, partway through a run taking benzene – a raw material used in petrochemicals – from Kandla Port in India to Antwerp in Belgium. The piracy problem in the Indian Ocean was well known; Somalis armed with AK-47s were setting out in fast skiffs and taking ships hostage. Yet commercial vessels, including the Marida Marguerite, remained undefended.

Some arguments used to challenge convictions are inconsistent with ‘available evidence, science and established physiology’, say two scientists

Two leading experts have withdrawn from Lucy Letby’s defence team over concerns about the “scientific credibility” of some of its evidence.

Separately a public inquiry into the murders will publish its findings on Tuesday. The review, led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, is expected to highlight a number of missed opportunities for bosses to intervene after doctors raised the alarm about a spate of unexplained deaths on the neonatal unit in 2015 and 2016. A criminal investigation is ongoing into potential corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter at the Countess of Chester hospital.

Minister says discussions are ongoing on how to strengthen the alliance’s eastern flank after security incidents intensify across Europe, including in Denmark and Poland

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha responded to the incident in Denmark, declaring Kyiv’s “full support” after “unacceptable actions targeting a Danish helicopter.”

“Moscow continues its attempts to destabilise Europe, not just Denmark. Joint and decisive action is required and Ukraine is ready to contribute to all efforts aimed at strengthening the protection of Europe from Russian threats,” he said.

Bosses call union funding ‘cleanest money in politics’ as they stop short of backing cap after Reform UK given £72m

• UK politics live – latest updates

Trade unions have stopped short of backing a cap on political donations but called for further action on big money in politics, in a joint emergency statement after Reform UK was given an unprecedented £72m from two donors.

General secretaries have been split on a call for unions to back a specific cap on individual donors to political parties while protecting trade union donations, which the TUC said were the “cleanest money in politics” because it came from workers’ subscriptions.

Economists urge John Healey to press Bank to change policy that is costing the exchequer billions of pounds

Economists have urged the chancellor, John Healey, to press the Bank of England to slow down its bond-selling programme that has already cost the exchequer billions of pounds.

The Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) meets this week to not only decide the level of interest rates but also whether they should freeze or slow the sale of government bonds, known as gilts, bought as part of the rescue operation after the 2008 banking crash.