The United States’ quest to get Folarin Balogun’s red card overturned may have opened a Pandora’s box – one specifically designed to contain the national team’s worst nightmares.

With a country on the verge of falling in love with this team, and tens of millions eager for a reason to embrace the glory and pride this sport can provide, there were instead questions of fairness and propriety. A star striker, who made an honest, unintentional mistake – and said and did all the right things – became a talking point. And a day later, on an otherwise beautiful Monday evening in the Pacific north-west, the United States’ World Cup dream ended with a thud.

The collision was catastrophic. Jane Ouartsi suffered a fractured collarbone, two spinal fractures, a broken femur that took three operations to fix, and she had to learn to walk again like a baby. Why has no one taken responsibility for her life-changing injuries?

As Jane Ouartsi walked across a pedestrianised square in central London, on a Friday evening in early August three years ago, she linked arms with her partner, Dave Mathias, and told him how much she had enjoyed the afternoon they had spent together, eating pizza in Soho and visiting an art installation. It was the last time she can remember feeling properly happy and relaxed.

“We were walking quite slowly, talking about the art. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I think I was saying what a lovely lunch, and then all of a sudden there was a horrific impact,” she says. “I felt my spine and body split and I thought my life was over.”

The formidable actor talks about the challenge of finding meaty characters, tough times in the US – and co-starring with her dad’s hero Kenneth Branagh in The Cherry Orchard

It’s lunchtime in Stratford-upon-Avon and Helen Hunt has 30 minutes to spare. She’s preparing for her Royal Shakespeare Company debut and is taking time out to speak to me via Zoom, just her head and shoulders, with what looks like a sleek-surfaced kitchen in the backdrop. Hunt is all sleek surfaces herself: polite smiles, even tones and an inscrutability so strained it makes me wonder what might be bubbling underneath.

Hunt is starring alongside Kenneth Branagh and Bill Pullman in a new version of The Cherry Orchard. She plays Madame Ranevskaya, the Russian aristocrat and matriarch who returns home to find her family estate in jeopardy. The play, like so many of Chekhov’s, is about the apathy of the elite class in the dying days of the Russian empire. So why this play, for her, and why now?

This isn’t an argument against vaginal birth, and caesareans aren’t without risk. But in the context of failing maternity services, it gives me the greatest sense of calm

• Sharon Gaffka is a reality TV star and political activist

One thing nobody really prepares you for when you’re pregnant is how interested everyone suddenly becomes in your body. People ask if you’re planning on breastfeeding. Whether you’ll have an epidural. If you’re hoping for a water birth. Whether you’ll “try naturally”.

I’ve chosen to have a caesarean, and now that I’m getting closer to my due date, the question I get asked most is: “why?” The answer is because I want to.

Sharon Gaffka is a reality TV star and political activist

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I joined Marilyn Monroe, Walter White, Ozzy Osbourne and other tribute artists on a cruise where imitation is its own art form

INT. DECK 7, LE CABARET ROUGE, 11.37pm

Frank Sinatra, palming a can of Sprite in one hand and the fist of his beautiful red-headed wife in the other, sat in a dark corner across from Jeff Bezos, who looked like he was waiting for him to say something. But Sinatra said nothing. He’d been mostly quiet all evening, and now in this cabaret he seemed even more distant, staring out past fog and strobe and Bezos’s strong bald head and into the large room where at least half a dozen men had basically shattered a bistro table trying to get a better look at Marilyn Monroe. Sinatra’s wife knew, as did Roy Orbison and Austin Powers, who stood nearby, that it was only minutes before he was supposed to go onstage, and that forcing any sort of conversation on him in this mood of focus would be extremely stupid.

The scientific consensus is that burning fossil fuels drives the climate crisis, yet the world’s biggest oil companies are planning to increase production

As the world swelters in ever more dangerous heat, why are oil companies being allowed to turn up the gas instead of paying for the consequences of their greed?

That ought to be the question on everyone’s minds amid baking heat domes over much of the northern hemisphere, temperature records being smashed day after day, children dying in locked cars, hospitals filling with heatstroke victims and emergency services tackling wildfires.

Hannes Marschalek, who allegedly exposed his penis to four other women in Cambridgeshire, tried via US court martial

A US airman who allegedly exposed himself to a 16-year-old girl and four young women in England was able to avoid the British justice system after the US military was permitted to take control of the case, the Guardian can reveal.

Cambridgeshire police received complaints that the airman, Hannes Marschalek, had indecently exposed himself to the women as they walked past his home in Littleport, a small town in Cambridgeshire, in 2022.

Meeting of 32 member states comes at crucial time for alliance after tensions with US over Iran and Greenland

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has landed in Ankara, too.

In a post on X, he said “important work lies ahead” in the Turkish capital, as he hoped for “a strong and productive Nato summit.”

“Decisions are needed now that will provide greater protection for our people, more capabilities for our defence, and even stronger security cooperation between Ukraine, Europe, and the United States.”

Parliamentary authorities are already looking into a £5m donation to the Reform Uk leader from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne

Q: Do you think the parliamentary commissioner for standards should investigate Nigel Farage’s gifts from George Cottrell?

Badenoch said that was a matter for the commissioner.

[Farage is] hinting at press regulation. For all of the criticism and the attacks, and I would even say abuse that I’ve got from the press, I’ve never once recommended curbing our free press. I think this is one of the amazing things about this country.

I would be very worried about a Reform government using government power to control the press. I don’t think that that would be right.

Couple ‘devastated’ after DNA tests for children’s British citizenship showed no biological connection to them

A British-based couple who had twins through an overseas surrogacy agency later discovered they had no biological connection to the children after the agency mistakenly used donor sperm.

The couple, referred to as PP and QQ in court documents, were “devastated” after making the discovery via DNA tests while applying for British citizenship for the children.