Me hearties, yo ho.

Posted by Tom Ambrose (now); Amy Sedghi, Adam Fulton, Robert Mackey, Lucy Campbell, and Marina Dunbar (earlier)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jul/02/donald-trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-republicans-us-politics-live-news-updates

Only four Republicans need to side with Democrats to block legislation

• What’s in Trump’s major tax bill?

• Republican voters on Trump legislation: ‘This bill is a no-brainer!’

Donald Trump on Tuesday toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience.

The president was chaperoned by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who hailed the tented camp on mosquito-infested land 50 miles west of Miami as an example for other states that supported Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jul/02/donald-trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-republicans-us-politics-live-news-updates

Posted by David Smith in Washington

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/03/back-to-the-future-at-40

The time travel comedy was a surprise smash in 1985 and remains a Hollywood touchpoint and as it reaches a major anniversary, those who made it share their memories

The actor Lea Thompson has had a distinguished screen career but hesitated to share it with her daughters when they were growing up. “I did not show them most of my stuff because I end up kissing people all the time and it was traumatic to my children,” she recalls. “Even when they were little the headline was, ‘Mom is kissing someone that’s not Dad and it’s making me cry!’”

Thompson’s most celebrated role would be especially hard to explain. As Lorraine Baines in Back to the Future, she falls in lust with her own son, Marty McFly, a teenage time traveller from 1985 who plunges into 1955 at the wheel of a DeLorean car.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/03/back-to-the-future-at-40

Posted by Jakub Krupa

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jul/03/europe-heatwave-live-news-latest-updates-crete-wildfire

Wildfires have been reported in Greece, Turkey, Spain and Germany as Europe’s heatwave continues

Portuguese prime minister Luís Montenegro reacted to the news of Jota’s death, expressing his condolences to his family.

The news of the death of Diogo Jota, an athlete who greatly honored Portugal’s name, and his brother is unexpected and tragic. I extend my deepest condolences to their family. It is a sad day for football and for national and international sports.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jul/03/europe-heatwave-live-news-latest-updates-crete-wildfire

Posted by Chloë Hamilton

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/03/the-secrets-of-self-optimisers-why-microefficiencies-are-on-the-rise

Whether brushing their teeth in the shower or wearing slip-on shoes to save time, people are finding all sorts of ways to fine-tune their routines. Are these fun life hacks or symptoms of a snowed-under society?

As you read this, there will probably be a cup of tea going cold on Veronica Pullen’s kitchen counter. Every time she wants a cup, Pullen makes two, one milkier than the other. She drinks the milkier one (she likes her tea lukewarm) immediately. She lets the other one sit for 40 minutes before drinking it once it has reached optimum temperature. It is an efficiency – albeit a tiny one – that she has been perfecting for two years. A copywriter and online trainer, Pullen, who is 54 and lives on the Isle of Wight with her husband and their chihuahua, says it takes her five minutes to boil a kettle, so she saves five minutes with every other cup. Over 24 hours, that adds up to 20 minutes saved. Across two years? She has clawed back slightly more than 10 full days.

Pullen is just one of many people incorporating microefficiencies into their daily lives. There are people who brush their teeth in the shower; lay out their clothes the night before to save time in the morning; boil hot water for the day first thing and keep it to hand in a flask. But are these small, savvy streamlinings that shave minutes (sometimes, just seconds) off a task merely fun life hacks? Are they a symptom of a snowed-under society? Or are they indicative of an obsession with productivity?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/03/the-secrets-of-self-optimisers-why-microefficiencies-are-on-the-rise

Posted by Chris Moss

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/jul/03/where-tourists-seldom-tread-part-17-ipswich-ramsey-lancaster

From Ipswich’s medieval treasures to Ramsey’s seaside charm and Lancaster’s chilling legacy of witches and slavery

• Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-16

The place names are tiny poems: Silent Street, where sound was deadened with straw out of respect for convalescing soldiers during the Anglo-Dutch wars of the late 17th century; Smart Street, named after a benevolent merchant and library builder, William Smarte; Star Lane for Stella Maris, Our Lady of the Sea; Franciscan Way, leading to Grey Friars Road, evokes monkish times. Thirteen medieval churches rise above the old town, some in disrepair. Others are renascent: St Mary-le-Tower was recently redesignated as a minster in recognition of its value to the community and its 1,000 years of existence. That’s not so long ago in a town settled very early – perhaps as early as the fifth century, and established by the seventh – by the Anglo-Saxons.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/jul/03/where-tourists-seldom-tread-part-17-ipswich-ramsey-lancaster