Cycling legend on living with a stage 4 diagnosis, fundraising with Miguel Induráin and why Andy Burnham could be key to his ambition of helping others

Sir Chris Hoy arrives a couple of minutes late and the apologies roll from him. I don’t have a chance to tell the six‑time Olympic sprint cycling champion that waiting an hour for a star interviewee is more common. Hoy is already deep into a story about how he and his wife, Sarra, were walking here when an unknown man stopped him on the street in Glasgow.

The stranger had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer and he wanted to share what had happened to him and, I suspect, find new strength by talking to a compassionate public figure. Hoy has lived a full life with stage 4 cancer for nearly three years. He has also worked tirelessly to highlight the fact that prostate cancer kills more people in this country than any other disease while, at the same time, to offer a tangible sense of hope when there is horror for men, and their families, after a terminal diagnosis.

It’s easy to lose your cool when you’re crammed into a train, bus or plane with a bunch of strangers and one of them is playing music without headphones or fighting you for the armrest. Here are the rules everyone should be following

Public transport can be a hot, noisy, cramped and stressful environment – and that’s before you add in people with pungent food, questionable hygiene and giant backpacks. Most of us know the general rules – though we don’t all follow them – about letting people off first, not putting bags on seats, where to stand on escalators and offering your seat to others. But what about the vaguer conventions? How can you avoid chatty passengers? Or manspreaders? Is it sometimes OK to put your feet on the seats? (Spoiler: it’s not.) Here, three etiquette experts show us the way to public transport propriety.

Soon after my first visit to Ukraine four years ago, I began language lessons. It taught me more than I ever expected

Almost as soon as I returned from my first reporting trip to Ukraine, in October 2022, I decided to start Ukrainian lessons. Not as an act of solidarity, exactly, but as a marker that I was committed to returning. I wanted to know some Ukrainian in order to feel less helpless, to edge towards a better understanding of what I was reporting, and to be more courteous to those whom I encountered. And I hoped, in time, to be able to pull myself through a piece of poetry in the original.

I began meeting Olha, my teacher, by weekly video call later that autumn. She was in Ivano-Frankivsk, her home town in the far west of Ukraine, I was in London. With endless patience and humour, she led me by the hand through the unfamiliar letters of her language, those elegant, sensuous shapes of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Forget cheesy acts, these days cruise ships boast the cutting edge tech to stage hip West End productions and Olivier award-winning musicals – and young people are loving it

The phrase “cruise ship entertainment” conjures vivid images, even to those who have never set foot on an oceangoing vessel. Starry backcloths, sequined frocks, tunes and croons from yesteryear, the lite-ent values of the 1970s preserved in aspic. Perhaps those stereotypes held water way back when the singer Jane McDonald ruled the reality TV waves. But – lazy thinking ahoy! – do they still?

Look at the shows currently a-sail on the high seas, from the Olivier award-winning 9/11 musical Come from Away, to hip theatre-maker Emma Rice’s acclaimed Brief Encounter. And look at the onboard production values, which “way surpass what you see in London theatres”, says Susannah Daley of Peel Entertainment, which provides shows for the Ambassador cruise line. “These ships are now being built with theatre in mind, to a really high spec, to hold between 600 and 1,000 people. What can be produced in them is pretty phenomenal.” Producer David Pugh, a veteran of the West End who has collaborated with Cunard cruises, says: “These are probably the most technical theatres, in terms of lighting and sound, that you’ve ever seen outside of the best theatres in the world.”

Both left and right have it in for Britain’s capital. But is London a stabby wasteland, a den of faceless bureaucrats, or just a mess of overprivileged wokerati?

‘I’ve seen no evidence of Andy being anti-London,” the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, told the Evening Standard last week, which is quaint and adorable: evidence is so 2009. This is all about feels. Some feel that the prime minister disfavours the capital because he frequently mentions that neoliberalism hasn’t delivered a fair deal for the north of England; tacitly, then, someone’s deal has been unfair in the other direction, and that would be the south, which must be London. Where else would Burnham mean – Hastings? The institution of No 10 North gestures audibly towards there being some problem with the OG Downing Street, and the use of the words “Whitehall” and “Westminster” as anything but geographical denominations – connoting “faceless” or “out of touch” or “rigid” or “having contempt for the ordinary person” – gives strong anti-London vibes, since Whitehall and Westminster are, indisputably, in London.

You could group all that as leftwing shorthand. For those moments when you want to describe a shallow, mammon-worshipping society, lurching blindly from one shiny, meaningless prize to the next, empty of proper feeling for others or for nature, “London” pretty well covers it.

Whether it’s budget barbecues or clever travel pillows, here are the favourites defining your summer

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July’s hitlist paints a picture of a month well spent. A barbecue and nifty wine cooler sleeve suggest alfresco evenings, while a bargain tent and cool box point to camping trips. Sensible but stylish walking shoes and a trusty water bottle also suggest time spent in the great outdoors.

All in all – despite the climate crisis-charged heatwaves and hosepipe bans – it sounds like you’re making the most of the summer. From a cooling mattress topper to a cheap-and-cheerful mascara, here are your favourite things from last month.

Andy Burnham will also delay release of thousands of prisoners across England and Wales a month, until October

Rapists, child sexual abusers and groomers will be excluded from early release plans to ease critical prison overcrowding in a major intervention by Andy Burnham.

The prime minister said on Tuesday that he would delay the planned early release of thousands of prisoners across England and Wales by a month until October.

Exclusive: Environment Agency is considering whether to prosecute Huntsman Polyurethanes over emissions of carcinogenic benzene

A plastic manufacturer in the north of England is facing potential legal action over emissions of benzene, a carcinogenic chemical with no safe level, the Guardian can reveal.

The Environment Agency (EA) is considering taking legal action against Huntsman Polyurethanes in Teesside for a potential breach of licence, which is a criminal offence.

Juan Jesús Vivas says influx seen as ‘at least encouraged or permitted’ by Rabat, as Spain demands EU solidarity

• Explainer: why is Ceuta a migration flashpoint?

A growing chorus of voices has accused Morocco of helping to fuel the crisis in Ceuta, with the leader of the Spanish enclave describing last week’s border crossings as an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity that was seen as being “if not orchestrated, at least encouraged or permitted by Morocco”.

Spanish officials ⁠said on Monday that an estimated 69,500 people who had arrived late last week in Ceuta, a tiny Spanish territory in north Africa, had returned to Morocco in recent days. About 2,500 people who had made the crossing were believed to still be in Ceuta.

Findings prompt calls for review of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence criteria

Young women in England who later develop breast cancer are not being referred for early tests or preventive treatment because current guidelines used by GPs miss 95% of patients, research suggests.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) criteria used to decide who should be referred by family doctors for further breast cancer risk assessment and specialist care is failing to spot the vast majority of women under 50 who will go on to develop the disease in the next 10 years, according to the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR).