With Abdul El-Sayed’s win, the party’s leftwing insurgency had breached the walls of a midwestern swing state, forcing a reckoning about Democrats’ direction and leadership

Standing before The Spirit of Detroit, a landmark bronze statue in the city’s downtown, in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Abdul El-Sayed channelled boxing great Muhammad Ali. “We shook up the world,” he declared.

The 41-year-old former public health official had just delivered a knockout blow to the Democratic establishment, defeating the US congresswoman Haley Stevens to claim the party’s nomination for the Senate in swing state Michigan.

Beyond the white noise lies a vibrant world of possibility, so take your headphones off and listen to your surroundings. It may even save your life

Er, excuse me. Hello? I’m sorry, but would you mind taking your … I SAID, WOULD YOU MIND TAKING THOSE EARPHONES OUT FOR A SECOND, PLEASE?

I try, in the main, to be a live-and-let-live kind of person. Patient. Considerate. But this patience is being tested to breaking point by the proliferation, the epidemic, of almost-ubiquitous earphones.

Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management and the former director of the High Pay Centre. His latest book is Fair or Foul: The Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition

When, where and how to get the optimal view of the first solar eclipse to be visible across the country this century

For the first time this century, people across the UK will be able to see an almost total solar eclipse in the evening sky on Wednesday.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the sun and the Earth, blocking the sun’s light either partly or fully. This year, people in the UK and Ireland will see 90-96% of the sun covered by the moon for the first time since 1999 – and it’s their last chance until 2081.

As the survivalist takes the cast of the Christian drama out in the wild to discuss faith, it’s surprisingly moving to find two very confident men so comfortable in their gentleness

Judas Iscariot is so nice! That’s a surprise. Just goes to show – you betray ONE messiah, the scroll-media gets to work and people forget everything else.

I’m joshing, of course. I’m having a little religious joke because The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls has put me in such a good mood. The Judas Iscariot in question is actually Luke Dimyan, the actor who plays him in The Chosen: the multi-season series about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Chosen is a venture by evangelical Christian film-maker Dallas Jenkins that began as a crowdfunded project in 2017 and is now watched by an estimated 280 million people worldwide. Bear Grylls is a fan and a Christian – what could be more natural than him taking members of the cast for survivalist adventures in the Utah desert, to talk to them about faith in between ziplining across chasms, filtering water through socks and rappelling down cliffs?

From the source to the sea, our writers share their favourite ways to immerse themselves in nature by paddleboarding, canoeing, camping, walking and fishing

It’s early afternoon on an unusually hot and sunny Yorkshire day. I’m standing on my paddleboard on the tidal section of the River Esk, near Whitby’s New Bridge, as cars stream across. The 28-mile-long Esk is special, as it is the only major river in Yorkshire that flows directly into the North Sea.

Ever the strategist, the Chinese leader is taking the offensive, both abroad and at home. That’s bad news for global order, and minorities in his country

Imagine what would happen if a British prime minister in London told the Scots they could not have their own parliament, national football team or fly the saltire. Or if the Welsh were told their language and poetry were banned and must no longer be taught in schools. The ensuing uproar would probably destroy the United Kingdom. Yet that’s exactly what Xi Jinping, China’s communist emperor, is telling the roughly 125 million members of the 55 ethnic and religious minorities who together comprise about 9% of the country’s (majority Han Chinese) population.

Xi claims his sinicisation policy, embodied in a new “ethnic unity” law, will boost national identity and integration and, by expanding compulsory use of the Mandarin language, improve life and work prospects. Minorities should “hug tightly like pomegranate seeds” to build a strong, united China, he says. But Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs and others who value their separate language and customs fiercely object to what they see as forced assimilation into a conformist, intolerant monoculture dominated by the Communist party’s tunnel vision. For them, it’s ethnic cleansing by another name.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Exclusive: Lack of funds left British museums unable pay eight-figure sum for collection, which went to Abu Dhabi institution

• Britain’s Jurassic gold rush: the fossil hunters chasing fortunes on Dorset’s beaches

One of the most important collections of UK Jurassic fossils ever compiled has been sold to a museum in Abu Dhabi, the Guardian can reveal, in what British experts have described as a loss for the nation.

The collection, which was amassed by a private fossil collector, consisted of 318 specimens, including ichthyosaurs, fish and crustaceans among other creatures, some of which could be new species.

Tehran urges US to ‘correct its behaviour’ as UAE says one of its ships targeted by Iranian missile

Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, while the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the strategic waterway remained out of reach on Saturday.

Iran’s politburo-like body known as the supreme national security council said the strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behaviour”, and its state broadcaster published a statement from the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

• Fifa backs ‘democratically-elected’ president

• Thinly-veiled attack aimed on Uefa as crisis roars on

Fifa last night issued a thinly-veiled attack on Uefa and other leading figures in European football in a statement which alleged there is a “concerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine Fifa and its president,” as football’s civil war escalated further.

Uefa has made it clear they regard Infantino’s continued leadership of world football as untenable following his role in the World Cup sell-off plans, while the Guardian revealed on Friday the Norwegian Football Federation has publicly called on him to resign, with Fifa responding by accusing them of attempting to subvert the organisation’s democratic processes.

Researchers find microplastics can persist in compost, leaching into agricultural soils

Plastic contamination should be a central concern in efforts to deal with food waste, which campaigners call one of the most overlooked problems of the climate crisis, researchers have said.

This is despite the fact that, as the chef, author and activist Max La Manna puts it, food waste management is “one of the few climate problems where everyone wins”.