Four women speak out about their underage experiences with the movie star and musician. Are the floodgates finally about to open?

Jared Leto has long been a person with something of a reputational issue. The public-facing side of this was bad enough – while playing The Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad, he reportedly sent rats, dead pigs and used condoms to his cast mates – but for years there have been upsetting rumours about what he does in private. After a lengthy investigation, the BBC documentary Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret has finally brought at least some of them to light.

This is, as you might imagine, not a fun thing to watch. The film documents allegations of what are said to be decades of systematic criminal misconduct against teenage girls. The women interviewed here allege sexual assault, threatened sexual assault, sexualised grooming and statutory rape. They are backed up by anonymous male former co-workers who claim to have witnessed the machinery that Leto set up to procure underage girls from concerts.

Every time I get my hair done, I find myself confronted with rising costs, and dizzyingly long maintenance regimes

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This week, I tried to book in for some knotless braids at the last minute. I knew I was going to be writing about how the simple pleasure of getting a head of box braids is starting to feel increasingly complicated, and thought that it would be good to get some pictures of the process. Then, I found myself getting wound up as the subject of this newsletter began to play out on a sort of meta-level.

When I decided to get my hair done for this piece, I knew that booking a next-day braiding slot would prove to be a kafkaesque task. My usual place asks that you schedule around a month in advance. My second option says that we’d need a “private room” to bring a photographer, bumping the bill up to £600. While trying to write an immersive report on the difficulties that come with getting braids, I suddenly realise that I am living the report.

Finally a grownup is in charge who speaks to voters as fellow adults. If he fixes this, he’ll achieve more than most other PMs

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It feels like the UK has a prime minister again. Not the Maybot paralysed with indecision. Not the clown-like Boris Johnson who crumbled under the weight of his own narcissism. Not the ridiculous Liz Truss. Not the steamrollered Rishi Sunak for whom everything was impossible. Not the automaton-like Keir Starmer who was never entirely sure what he wanted to do.

But a prime minister who is emotionally intelligent. Who understands the country and can connect with it. Who is prepared to expend political capital to get the things done that other politicians were too weak to go near. You can almost feel the sense of relief in a UK that has become almost accepting of decline and failure. It’s the return of hope over grievance. Where once more we have an adult prime minister prepared to speak to voters as fellow adults. It could catch on.

Laughter, disbelief and outrage over video appearing to show Saltburn player tricking umpire into giving batters out

At the Saltburn over-60s ukulele club there was a unanimous reaction to news that the town’s cricket club were being compared to the Argentina football team: laughter. Then a spirited rendition of I Love to Boogie.

On the seafront, a litter-picking volunteer was looking forward to the Wednesday night quiz just to get the gossip. But she had her own view. “All I would say is it’s just not cricket, is it?”

Dominic Sessa stars as a conceited yet vulnerable young chef alongside Antonio Banderas – but the feelgood factor is compromised by what we know of the author

For all the drugs and punch-ups, this is an unexpectedly sentimental coming-of-age story – or maybe origin myth – about the formative youthful kitchen experiences of legendary badass chef Anthony Bourdain. It is taken from the opening chapters in his bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential; Canadian film-maker Matt Johnson directs and Dominic Sessa (the callow kid from Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers) plays the conceited, smug yet lonely and vulnerable young college student Tony. “Anthony” is in the future.

It is the mid-1970s and Tony effectively runs away from home after failing to get a residential summer writing scholarship that he had assured everyone was in the bag. He shows up nearly penniless in the seaside vacation resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts – a place that is pretty similar to Amity Island in Jaws, which is showing at every drive-in. The reason is that he has a desperate crush on Nancy (Emilia Jones) who is there for the summer too and whom he desperately wants to impress with his smouldering intellectualism.

Five years ago, I wrote an open letter asking climate scientists to speak out against fossil fuels. Now governments are in retreat, it is surely time to act

• France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins

Such is the astonishing scale of the wildfires burning at the gates of Bordeaux and Madrid, that if they had happened 20 – even 10 – years back, they may well have shocked the world into taking action on the climate crisis. But like the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water, we have become inured; not only to the ever more devastating impacts of climate breakdown, but increasingly to the actions needed to bring global heating to heel.

Even as more than 35,000 wildfires rage across the surface of our world, and as we continue to rewind our planet’s climate so it resembles hotter episodes from its distant past, governments and trading blocs are very deliberately turning away from climate action.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and author of The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis

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Environment Agency names seven regions affected by unusually hot and dry weather and shortage of water

Half of England is officially in drought, with July set to be the driest on record after winter floods, the Environment Agency has said.

The “flash drought” developed quickly because of unusually low rainfall and high temperatures.

Introducing the legislation would be ‘very challenging’ until care system improved, PM says

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Andy Burnham has said the assisted dying debate needs to wait until palliative care and social care are fixed, as he set out his path to resolving one of the most intractable problems in British politics.

The prime minister said he was not opposed to having the debate on assisted dying, but told reporters it would be “very challenging” to introduce the controversial legislation until the care system was in a better place.

Riyadh’s decision to join US in strikes on Iran-backed militia further complicates widening and ‘unpredictable’ war

US-Saudi strikes on Iran-backed militia in Iraq on Wednesday have pushed the region into “uncharted territory”, analysts have warned.

Amid stark warnings of a widening and increasingly “unpredictable” conflict, Riyadh’s decision to publicly join the US in striking sites associated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), killing at least 20 fighters, has added another complicating dimension to the war.

James Desborough, who also strangled cellmate to death for snoring while awaiting trial, hid body fragments in Cornwall woods

A triple killer who murdered and dismembered the bodies of two of his friends before strangling a third man to death in prison while awaiting trial has been told he will spent the rest of his life behind bars.

Mr Justice Saini, who sentenced James Desborough, 40, at Winchester crown court, said the circumstances of the case were unique.