Local Communist party secretary says there were ‘gaps’ in city’s readiness for extreme weather after at least 40 killed

A Beijing city official has issued a rare public acknowledgment of official failings in the authorities’ response to the severe flooding that hit China’s capital this week.

Yu Weiguo, a Communist party secretary for Miyun, the northern district worst affected by this week’s extreme weather, said in a press conference on Thursday that there were “gaps” in the city’s readiness for the deadly floods.

• Dane scored in 4-1 win over Bournemouth

• United linked with move for Benjamin Sesko

Striker Rasmus Højlund impressed Ruben Amorim with a timely goal in a 4-1 win over Bournemouth but the Manchester United head coach did not offer the 22-year-old any reassurance over his future.

Højlund has struggled since his £72million move from Atalanta two years ago but on the day reports claimed United had made their first move for RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko, the Denmark international responded with the opener in Chicago. Patrick Dorgu and Amad Diallo extended their lead before 19-year-old academy graduate Ethan Williams scored his first senior goal two minutes after coming on as a 70th-minute substitute.

“I’m really happy with Rasmus, but I don’t know what is going to happen until the end of the market,” Amorim told reporters at a press conference. “The important thing is that Rasmus is scoring goals. He’s connecting really well with the team. He’s improving. Again, I don’t know what is going to happen until the market is closed. We suffered a lot because of the lack of goals last season.”

Matheus Cunha did not play due to fatigue while fellow new signing Bryan Mbeumo is scheduled to make his first appearance against Everton in Atlanta on Sunday. Harry Maguire was replaced by Matthijs de Ligt, who scored an 88th-minute own goal, at half-time as United continue to treat the centre-back with caution.

“He had an issue during the holidays, during training. He’s a little bit late (in his training schedule) so we have to be careful with him,” Amorim added. “It’s just a little bit fatigue with the training so we are trying to control everything and saving all the players, to give the exact minutes they need.”

Left-back Dorgu, who joined for £25m from Lecce in February, provided the assist for Hojlund before getting on the scoresheet himself and he was another player who caught Amorim’s eye. “He looks more and more like he belongs in Manchester United, and that is hard to do it at 20 years old so I’m really impressed with Patrick,” added the United boss, who was equally happy with Williams’ goal. “I celebrate that goal. It’s not usual, even during the season, but I celebrate that goal because I really like to see the kids that work really well.”

Amorim believes the work done in pre-season, something he was not able to do having arrived in November, is paying dividends. “I’m really happy with the players that we had last season. They are improving. We look like a different team today. Let’s continue with that,” he said. “But again, it’s a pre-season game. The pressure is going to be so much different during the season. It’s important for them to understand that the same players can play a different game.”

Shares hit record high on news that underlying operating profits climbed to £1.7bn in first half of 2025

Rolls-Royce has reported a 50% rise in half-year profits, as strong demand for its jet engines and power generators for AI datacentres solidified its turnaround efforts.

The British jet-engine maker said underlying operating profits climbed to £1.7bn in the first six months of 2025, up from £1.1bn during the same period last year, in an earnings update that helped push the company’s shares to a fresh all-time high.

The US exit from the cultural heritage organization is no surprise. But it’s not too late to fight back

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States a second time from what is essentially the beacon of global culture and heritage – Unesco – is depressing but unsurprising given the administration’s lack of respect for art and culture that celebrates the diversity of humanity in all of its fullness. But it is still a grave error of moral leadership that harms the United States’ global standing on free expression, human rights and democracy.

Earlier this year, he initiated a takeover of the Kennedy Center’s programming and content, and linked National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants to highly partisan ideological conditions. Meanwhile , the government’s attempts at censorship in schools are all but rewriting American history.

You’ve woken up with an amazing story to tell, but everyone’s eyes are already glazing over. Here’s the fix

As everyone knows – or ought to know – there is nothing as boring as listening to someone tell you about a dream they have had. This is a shame, as there is some good, out‑there content going begging. There could be gold in there, if only the dreamer knew how to deliver it. This is the problem: not the dreams themselves, but how bad we are at sharing them.

Keenly aware of the wondrous magic in some of my own dreams, and anxious for no one to miss out on hearing about them, I have been working on my dream-telling technique. And I’ve come up with some guidelines.

A group of parents in Maine were wary of buying smartphones for their 10-year-olds – and took a drastic step

Among the many useless but consoling facts I’ve hung on to at the expense of real knowledge is the telephone number of my best friend from high school. I can say it in my head – 612505 – and, like a combination lock, it throws open the door to a memory of me sitting on the stairs after school, yakking to the person I’d just said goodbye to on the bus. Given it’s more than 30 years since I used that number, I have to assume it will stay with me – along with the lyrics to the Cadbury’s Roses ad from 1983, the name of the fictional head teacher of Summer Bay High (Mr Fisher) and my own telephone number from that era (623492) – until the day I die.

I hadn’t given much thought to landlines or the teenage experience of sitting on them after school every day, until a recent piece in the Atlantic shared the results of a small, highly localised experiment: in Portland, Maine, a parent nervous of giving her 10-year-old child a smartphone took the eccentric step of reintroducing a landline , and then persuaded the parents of her child’s friends to do the same. Before she knew it, between 15 and 20 families in the area had reinstalled landlines for their preteens in what the Atlantic called a “retro bubble”. Charming scenes ensued, communications habits changed, and everyone learned a valuable lesson about the advantages of ancient technology.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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After 356 matches and over 15,000 runs, Gloucestershire stalwart Chris Dent has announced his retirement. He passed 1,000 first-class runs in a season four times, most recently in 2019, when he led Gloucestershire to Division One.

“I want to thank Gloucestershire CCC for giving me my opportunity 16 years ago,” he said. “The support and faith you’ve shown me have been a huge part of any success I’ve had over the years.”

Public servants and private contractors with access to sensitive national security information are making it easy for spies, including by posting on LinkedIn, Mike Burgess will say in a speech

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Foreign spies have an unhealthy interest in the Aukus submarine deal and are targeting defence employees working to develop nuclear capability in Australia, the head of the domestic intelligence agency says.

The Asio director general, Mike Burgess , has revealed intelligence operatives have disrupted 24 major espionage and foreign interference operations in the past three years, uncovering spies stealing sensitive government data and a visiting academic who broke into a restricted technology laboratory to film.

Report on 2022 death of five-year-old Yusuf Mahmud Nazir finds parental concerns were not addressed

A mother’s instinct that her child was unwell was “repeatedly not addressed across services”, a report on the death of a five-year-old boy has concluded after he was sent home from A&E.

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died on 23 November 2022, eight days after he was seen at Rotherham hospital and sent home with antibiotics.