Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

A Guardian correspondent’s sobering account of the US betrayal of Ukraine – and the possible reasons behind it

American presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin. When George W Bush met him in 2001, he reported that he had “looked the man in the eye”, got a “sense of his soul” and found him “trustworthy”. Barack Obama thought Putin was making a mistake with his interventions in Ukraine and Syria, but didn’t do much about it. Joe Biden backed Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion, yet his fear that Putin would reach for the nuclear button if backed into a corner made him risk averse. He worried about the impact of the sort of long-range strikes against Russian territory that Kyiv is now launching on a daily basis.

This caution frustrated Ukrainians to the point that they looked forward to Donald Trump shaking things up after he won re-election. Be careful what you wish for: the returning president thought his rapport with Putin would be enough to get Russia to sign up to an immediate ceasefire. In Trump’s head it was President Zelenskyy, fighting a war he was bound to lose, who was the problem.

The newspaper often uses the word to describe elections with progressive contenders, implying a previous whole destroyed by the left

“El-Sayed and Stevens Project Party Unity After Divisive Race,” announced the New York Times on 5 August, the day the democratic socialist Abdul El-Sayed beat out his centrist Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in the Michigan senatorial primary. “Divisive” is now the Times’s favorite attack word, deployed repeatedly to disparage and try to undermine the astonishing recent advances by self-identified democratic socialists and other progressive candidates.

Four days after that first story, the Times again landed “divisive” under “Obama and El-Sayed Discuss Unity After Ugly Michigan Primary.” El-Sayed, it asserted, had “narrowly prevailed in a divisive primary after campaigning on a progressive and anti-establishment platform”.

‘The show’s hardly an advert for Yorkshire. Sets would have a burnt-out car and maybe an upturned shopping trolley. Locals would say, “Can’t you put a nice floral arrangement there instead?”’

I’d been writing screenplays with Michael Winterbottom and in 2006, his producer Andrew Eaton said: “There’s this quartet of novels by David Peace. Are you interested in adapting them?” I read the first, 1974, and was drawn to it and repelled at the same time. It was strong meat, full of anger and injustice. It’s anchored in reality, especially the Peter Sutcliffe and Stefan Kiszko cases, but heightened and stylised. “Fiction torn from the facts,” David called it.

The road to Konstyantynivka in Donetsk, Ukraine, is a perilous journey for the Khyzhak brigade – a mobile unit tasked with shooting down Russian drones to cover soldiers’ rotations or moving armoured vehicles

“Holy yeah! Yeaaaah! Done!”

Booooooom.

Dzhango firing to shoot down a Russian FPV-drone.

Manchester United’s under-powered attack, Brentford’s £39m bargain and Dewsbury-Hall delivers for Everton

Arsenal’s treatment of Gabriel Martinelli has been questioned by Ian Wright after the Brazil forward was left out of their squad for Friday’s opening game against Coventry. Martinelli turned down a move to Galatasaray last week after Arsenal had agreed a fee with the Turkish club and the former striker Wright revealed on Sky Sports after the Coventry game that no one at the club has spoken to the 25-year-old to discuss his future. “I know they might want him out, and a lot of people might say: ‘Yeah, it’s time for him to move him on.’ But there’s ways of doing that and it should suit him as well, how he wants to leave,” said Wright. “He’s done enough with this squad to be treated with a little bit more respect than he’s being treated with at the moment.” Ed Aarons

Match report: Arsenal 3-0 Coventry

Match report: Brighton 4-0 Aston Villa

UK PM hits back at Kremlin comment that sharing long-range missile blueprints will ‘add fuel to fire’ by asking ‘who started the fire?’

Here’s the full quote from Kremlin’s Peskov, via AFP:

“Britain is methodically and regularly throwing oil on the fire and methodically and regularly plotting schemes to prevent even the slightest progress in the peace process.”

Nine men and three women aged between 19 and 61 arrested as part of investigation into events leading to deadly collision

Twelve people have been arrested on suspicion of offences including being involved with organised crime as part of the investigation into events leading to a crash on the A66 that killed two police officers and five others.

Cleveland police confirmed that nine men and three women were detained by officers investigating the events that led up to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough dying when a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way on the A66 near Middlesbrough collided with their marked armed response vehicle. All five men who were in the second car, aged between 17 and 23, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Test of US rhetoric will rest on whether nations such as India, China and Russia view economic threats as credible

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against any country that cooperates with the US attempt to impose fresh sanctions against Iran in what the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has billed as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”.

In advance of the US announcement, the United Arab Emirates, Iran’s single biggest trading partner in the Middle East, announced it was ending all trade with Iran, a move Tehran believes was coordinated between Washington and the UAE.

NGO criticises ‘human cost’ of UK-funded crackdown on attempts to set off from French beaches in small boats

People trying to cross the Channel to the UK have reported an increase in French police use of violence on beaches to prevent them from getting into dinghies, according to a French NGO.

Utopia 56, which works on beaches from where migrants attempt Channel crossings, says so far this year 2,720 people have reported being victims of French police violence, compared with 1,954 over the same period last year, when crossings overall were much higher.