Is chocolate better served chilled? Do bananas go mushy? And won’t someone think of the avocados? Here is the final word on the fridge or cupboard conflict

If every summer has a trending drink, then 2026 promises to be the season of the chilled red. In news that our European neighbours, who have long been doing this, will roll their eyes at, Britons have discovered the delights of a cold glass of red wine. No more serving at room temperature, or warming it by the fire (or radiator) as if you’re the host of a country house gathering: this year if your pinot noir isn’t in an ice bucket, consider it social death. The Times reports that gen Z drinkers are driving the trend, with Ocado finding that 56% had drunk chilled red wine, or wine served over ice, in summer compared with 35% of the wider population.

“We tend to serve wine way too warm in this country, and red wine particularly,” says the wine expert Tom Gilbey. “It accentuates the alcohol and makes it taste like soup. Actually almost every wine is better served slightly cooler than we normally drink it, and some red wines are beautiful when they’re really quite cool.” The optimum temperature is around 10C (50F). “So 20 minutes in the fridge, or 10 to 15 minutes in an ice bucket. You don’t want to serve any wine too, too cold, but it’s really refreshing.

The right is obsessed with ‘two-tier policing’. This is indeed a two-tier government – but the real victims are progressives

“If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin,” the Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, asked last week, “how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery.” It is. But there is another way of describing the actions of the rioters burning people out of their homes in Belfast, though ministers somehow cannot bring themselves to say it. Terrorism.

The violence there clearly meets the government’s definition: “the use or threat” of actions designed to “intimidate the public” for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Among these actions are “serious violence against a person” and “serious damage to property”. I happen to believe that the property clause blurs the issue. But either way, in what possible world do the Belfast attacks not fit the definition?

Striker will lead England against Croatia at the home of the Dallas Cowboys, seeking to right the wrongs of Qatar 2022

There has long been something about the mentality of US sports stars that has appealed to Harry Kane. The England captain sees it as something specific to them: a unique brand of never-say-die spirit. It leans into a broader notion – that anyone can achieve success if they want it badly enough, if they pursue it with all their heart. It is known as the American dream.

Kane was introduced to it all in 2011 at the start of his professional career, when the path was anything but smooth at his boyhood club, Tottenham. He had started to become interested in the NFL and there was something about the New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, that transfixed him.

From Noël Coward to Martine McCutcheon, the famed institution has been hothousing talent for more than a century. Our writer finds there’s a softer approach these days – and a food bank

When I walk into renowned stage school Italia Conti, in the smart building in Woking that has been its home since 2022, the first thing that hits me is the quiet. Where are the students dancing on tables? Rehearsing scenes in the hallways? Some are offsite, it turns out, rehearsing for a show, but those I see are busy on their phones in the corridors, like any other young adults.

Life has changed at Italia Conti since its earliest days. The school celebrates its 115th anniversary this year. It was founded in London in 1911 by English actor Italia Conti to teach a group of children appearing in the play Where the Rainbow Ends at the Savoy theatre. Noël Coward was among the young performers. By the 1930s the school was advertising lessons in elocution, acting, singing, fencing and dance (ballroom, “operatic, Greek and stage dancing”).

Female activists are working in the shadows to find and support vulnerable women they fear are being failed by authorities

Last summer, Xiaocao, a softly spoken woman in her 40s, received a tip-off that in Lüliang, a small city in China’s Shanxi province, vulnerable women were being forced into marriages. Along with another volunteer, she wanted to investigate.

After leaving Beijing, the two volunteers travelled south for hours, on trains and in rental cars. A few villages turned out to be dead ends. But on the final day of their trip, the women stopped in a county where they’d heard about a woman with learning disabilities who was “married” to two brothers. Soon, they found her.

London Tree Ring project aims to create corridors of plant and animal life around the city to strengthen its biodiversity

Harry Ewing is heaping branches and foliage from the forest floor on to a dead hedge, reinforcing the protective circle around his newly planted trees in Hadley Wood, north London. He is in a glade created by a fallen oak that was previously overrun with thick bramble.

“I feel very happy – the trees are growing already. It’s really nice seeing it when it starts,” says Ewing.

Former health secretary Wes Streeting also threatened to launch a leadership contest if the prime minister did not set out a timetable to step down

Warning shots fired by a Russian warship sailing across the Channel on Tuesday morning were “deeply concerning and reckless”, Keir Starmer said this morning. Alexandra Topping and Dan Sabbagh have the story.

Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit, Keir Starmer said it would be wrong for Labour to hold a leadership challenge ahead of a likely election to replace Andy Burnham as mayor of Greater Manchester.

First and foremost, I want Andy Burnham to win, and that’s why I’ve encouraged activists and members to go up there during the course of the campaign, and they’ll be up there tomorrow helping to get the vote out.

Then what happens is we’re immediately tipped into a Manchester mayoral contest byelection, one of the biggest byelections that we’ve ever fought, because of the scale of it.

If there is a challenge, then I intend to fight.

I’m not going to walk away from that, and I’ve been clear and consistent about that.

Exclusive: Cain has been lauded by corporation for his appeal to young men despite history of abusive and misogynistic remarks

• Warning: this article contains sexually explicit, offensive language

A BBC presenter lauded by the corporation for his appeal to young male audiences has a history of making abusive and misogynistic remarks about women, whom he has variously called “slags”, “sluts”, “psychos” and “bitches”, the Guardian can reveal.

Ashley Cain is the presenter of the BBC Three documentary series Ashley Cain: Into the Danger Zone, which was filmed on location earlier this year after the BBC commissioned a second series.

PM says firing of warning shots at yacht was reckless and UK is dealing with proxy attacks from Russia ‘every day’

Warning shots fired by a Russian warship sailing across the Channel on Tuesday morning were “deeply concerning and reckless”, Keir Starmer said from the G7 summit on Wednesday as he warned that the UK was dealing with proxy attacks from Russia “every single day”.

The prime minister said the Ministry of Defence had assessed that the Russian vessel was drifting and fired the shots within a few hundred metres of a British pleasure yacht.

Abbas Araghchi says war ‘not fully come to an end’ without Israeli forces leaving territories occupied during present conflict

Iran’s top diplomat has said a peace deal with the US would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, as concern grows that Israel could undermine diplomatic efforts to finally end the Middle East war, with Donald Trump even criticising his ally and war partner as irresponsible.

“Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end,” said the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.