Almost all of the sandy stretches on the country’s 8,000km of coastline are run for profit. Now ‘free beach’ campaigners are fighting back against the mafia, the military and those profiteering from sun loungers and cocktails

Walking along Italian beaches is like strolling through a rainbow. The sand will be subdivided into colours: for 50 metres or so the perfectly spaced parasols and deck chairs will be all red, then they become orange, then yellow, green and so on.

These are the country’s famous bagni (lidos), formally known as concessioni balneari (bathing concessions). They’re simple but stylish. The sand is raked at dawn. The bar plays ambient music and serves negronis or fried squid. There will probably be a table-tennis table, or a beach volleyball area. Some have swimming pools.

You hear the word ‘empathy’ a lot when people talk about our next prime minister. I can see why

My contribution to this summer’s modest avalanche of Andy Burnham stories extends to only two. One is about Glastonbury, and the time that he and his wife, Marie-France, came for a three-day stay at the festival, which included his appearance on the Left Field stage, organised by the songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. I help with the bookings and chair some of the debate sessions: Burnham’s was titled State of the Nation: Politics in Crisis.

It was the summer of 2022 – the prologue to Liz Truss’s five minutes in power and (somewhat amazingly) Burnham’s first visit to Glasto. As well as seeing bands – the Irish funsters Fontaines DC were among his favourites – and wandering around the perfumed fields, he had come to make the case for a lot of the stuff he has been talking about in the buildup to him entering Downing Street on Monday: “rewiring” the UK by changing our systems of politics and authority, collaborating on that task with other parties, and taking away as much power as possible from Westminster. Open, self-questioning and a talker rather than a shouter, in front of 1,000 mostly hungover people in a giant tent, he passed with honours; he was even nice to the obligatory disruptive Trotskyists.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

The soul-rockers achieved worldwide success before surprising everyone by deciding to quit while they were ahead. Now they’re back with a new album railing against the state of contemporary America

In the autumn of 2024, Alabama Shakes showed no sign of ending their indefinite hiatus – and nobody was asking them to. Seven years had passed since the blues-soul-rock band, who exploded out of Athens, Alabama in 2009, had last shared a stage. Their transatlantic Top 10 2012 debut Boys & Girls announced them; the million-selling 2015 follow-up Sound & Color went to No 1 in the US and won them four Grammys. Their fanbase included Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant and Barack Obama. But by 2017 they were physically and creatively spent, and they stopped. Then, in December 2024, with almost no warning, they played their first show in more than seven years.

“We had a friend in Tuscaloosa who had a brewery, but it wasn’t doing so well after Covid,” explains singer Brittany Howard. “He called me and said he was going to do a fundraiser and asked if I’d like to perform. I said, ‘For sure.’” But then she started reminiscing, remembering how that particular friend had been a huge help to the band, not just her personally. She felt the band owed him something, collectively. “So I called the fellas,” she smiles. “‘Do y’all wanna perform at this thing – like, all of us, together?’ And they instantly said yes.”

She was the young girl in that infamous photograph with Prince Andrew, and the best-known survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. As Virginia’s explosive posthumous memoir continues to reverberate, her brother Sky Roberts and his wife, Amanda, talk about her final tragic months

A British prince was arrested at 8am and was stripped of his title; ambassadors, politicians and numerous other high-profile men lost their prestigious jobs; millions of files relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released and a US president remains under scrutiny. So much has happened since the death of Virginia Roberts Giuffre in April last year, and the posthumous publication of her memoir Nobody’s Girl six months later, detailing for the first time the full story of her abuse by Epstein and his associates. “This year has been extraordinary,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s younger brother. “I just wish Virginia was here to see it.”

He is determined that there will be many more advances to come. Giuffre had become one of the most recognisable survivors of Epstein; in the midst of grief, Sky and his wife, Amanda, have become accidental advocates. “She paved the way, and we want to keep paving that road forward for other survivors out there,” says Sky.

From Nevada to Manchester, developers are trialling innovative solutions to clean energy’s biggest challenge

In the deserts of the United Arab Emirates a sprawling clean energy project, stretching across an area roughly the size of 12,600 football fields, will play host to a breakthrough allowing solar energy to power the equivalent of half a million homes through the night.

The Gulf state has been steadily combining 5.2GW of solar power capacity with 19GWh of battery storage to create the largest battery scheme in the world.

The fatal shootings of two men, both killed in their vehicles by ICE agents, have rekindled anger over the US’s militarized deportation push

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was driving to work with his brother and two other passengers in Houston, Texas, when immigration agents began tailing his car. They pulled him over and fired a fatal shot through the open passenger-side window.

Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, was driving around his neighborhood when agents stopped him at an intersection – right outside the laundromat where he’d often go with his three-year-old daughter – and shot him dead.

Reform leader says support from fraudster before last election is ‘totally undeclarable in every single way’

Nigel Farage has admitted his close friend the fraudster George Cottrell let him use one of his London homes and paid for social media filming before the last election but insisted it was “totally undeclarable in every single way”.

The Reform UK leader spoke in depth for the first time about his support from Cottrell and the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne in an interview with the anti-woke Triggernometry podcast.

Where to start with this rollercoaster of a match? Thomas Tuchel had promised a reaction but he could not have imagined the manner of the response from England, albeit against a France team firmly on their sunloungers during an incredible first half in which they conceded four times.

Yet with Kylian Mbappé on the hunt for his second successive Golden Boot in Didier Deschamps’ last match in charge of Les Bleus, even that lead courtesy of goals from Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka almost wasn’t enough. Mbappé began the comeback straight after half-time before adding his second after Bradley Barcola’s strike. The 27-year-old has become the first male player to reach double figures at a World Cup since Gerd Müller in 1970. Over to you, Lionel.

Incoming PM will reallocate unspecified resources from unpopular plan to helping with cost of living

Andy Burnham is expected to scrap Keir Starmer’s plans for digital ID cards in a “reset of priorities” when he enters Downing Street on Monday.

The new Labour leader plans to redirect the resources earmarked for the scheme towards tackling the cost of living, his team indicated on Saturday.

Britain to seek extradition over alleged sexual exploitation, ‘extreme pornography’, assault and indecent images of a child

The social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate have been arrested in Miami on UK charges by federal authorities, the US Marshals Service has said.

The brothers were arrested on Saturday on an extradition request from British authorities, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss the case.