Cortisol is bad. Testosterone makes you aggressive. Melatonin helps you sleep. Experts bust common hormone myths

False The main puberty hormones are oestrogen and progesterone for girls and testosterone for boys. “They are active in the womb during foetal development and in infancy in a phase called mini-puberty,” says Sasha Howard, clinical reader and honorary consultant in paediatric endocrinology at Queen Mary, University of London and Barts Health NHS trust.

On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weakness

America’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House.

Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start, confidence in a bright, exceptional US future was combined with foreboding and doubt. At the close of the 1787 constitutional convention, a woman approached one of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, to ask if the delegates had established a monarchy or a republic. Franklin’s answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Avoiding traditional questions and stilted broadcast clips, PM-in-waiting has evolved his style of media management

He is due to become prime minister in just over a fortnight as parliament begins its six-week summer break. But at a marquee speech this week, he took precisely zero questions. So is Andy Burnham, as the opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, claims, dodging scrutiny? His allies say no: he is simply going about it in his own way.

The former Greater Manchester mayor is very obviously a different type of communicator from Keir Starmer, and therefore always likely to convey his message in methods beyond Starmer’s traditional questions after a speech and the occasional stilted broadcast clip.

From serums to hand soap, fragrances to hair stylers, here are the beauty buys that justify the price tag and the ones you can happily get on a budget

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Walk down any beauty aisle, and you’ll be told every product is essential, transformative and worth hocking a kidney for. For every £300 miracle cream that claims to somehow change your entire facial structure, however, there’s someone – usually on social media – insisting you can buy a perfect dupe of a cult luxury fragrance. It can feel bewildering.

After more than 15 years working in the industry – and testing hundreds of products a year – I can confirm that beauty is rarely as simple as luxury v high street. But there are a few insider realities about how beauty products are made, priced and marketed that are worth knowing before you decide which are worth the spend – and which ones aren’t.

Thomas Tuchel’s side have problems aside from the altitude: defeat in a Mexican haze would be no embarrassment

It’s a warm June afternoon in 2009. The teams look uneven. At 30, I am the second-oldest player in our lineup. Lloyd, Nathan and Ben are early 20s – they can all play. Micky the German isn’t in top condition, and at 34 is past his peak. But at a conservative estimate every member of the opposition has two more decades in their legs. A couple of them might be pushing 70. We’re in kit. They are in jeans. We have trainers. They’re in boots – working boots, not “cleats”. And yet after an hour we have been beaten to a pulp. The final score evades my memory, but it might be the only six-a-side I’ve ever played in where “next goal wins” wasn’t a vaguely justifiable way to end things.

How had this team of old men beaten us? A word you may have heard more often than usual in the last three days: altitude. In a village somewhere near Lake Titicaca, just shy of 4,000m above sea level, a motley selection of Bolivian farmers had toyed with us. As someone who lets the ball do the work, even a five-yard burst left me breathless. It was not a neutral venue.

The death of a Thai girl has highlighted the dangers of the country’s illegal but ‘normalised’ sex tourism trade

Sky Kanyarat was playing pool in the early hours of the morning in one of Thailand’s most famous red light districts when a middle-aged foreigner with a heavy gait approached her.

She had often seen him walking past the bar where she worked in Pattaya, a city about a two-hour drive from Bangkok. But this was the first time Kanyarat had seen him come in.

Zoe Watts and Amanda Stanhope launched network after being repeatedly assaulted by partners while unconscious

Two women who were drugged and raped by their partners while they were unconscious have said hundreds of people – including about 80 in the UK – have come forward to an international support group for victims of the crime.

Zoe Watts and Amanda Stanhope, who were both repeatedly assaulted by their partners while unconscious, are calling for tighter laws to stop men sharing images and videos of sexual assaults and rape online.

Party had justified plan to hang flags in Nottinghamshire on basis that local businesses would foot £75,000 bill

A £75,000 scheme by a Reform-led council to hang union flags at sites across the county, which the party said would “not cost the taxpayer a single penny” as it would be sponsored by local businesses, has failed to attract a single sponsor, it has emerged.

The plan to attach the flags to brackets on about 180 lamp-posts and other places was agreed in the autumn by Nottinghamshire’s council, won by Nigel Farage’s party in last year’s May elections.

Judge says evidence indicates attack on Pouria Zeraati outside home was carried out on behalf of Tehran regime

Two Romanians who took part in a “targeted” knife attack on a television journalist in London “on behalf of the Iranian state” have been jailed.

Pouria Zeraati, who worked for the Persian-language channel Iran International, which is critical of the Tehran regime, was left bleeding in the street after being stabbed three times outside his home in Wimbledon.

Exclusive: Shabir Ahmed, jailed in 2012 for rape, abuse and trafficking of girls, was deemed three years ago to present ‘high risk of sexual offending’

The leader of the Rochdale grooming gang was deemed to pose a “very high risk of serious harm” towards children just three years ago, the Guardian can reveal.

Shabir Ahmed, 73, was freed from HMP Leeds on Thursday despite three failed attempts to secure parole, the most recent of which was in October 2024. One document, relating to a previous review in 2023, shows Ahmed was seen to present a “high risk of sexual offending”.