1. Prisoner number 804: the plot to erase Imran Khan
double quotation markNo Pakistani has straddled as many spheres, or for as long. Imran was the country’s biggest cricket star when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. When the Berlin Wall fell, he was wearing tuxes and surrounded by women – like a Pakistani James Bond, without the spying and killing. By 9/11 he was a politician. When Covid hit, he was prime minister.
Now, Imran Khan is the sole occupant of a cell in Pakistan’s most notorious jail. Osman Samiuddin explored how the most powerful forces in Pakistan have conspired to try and erase their most famous citizen from public life.
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2. Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
Photograph: Jussi Puikkonen/The Guardian
One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his new “friend” was sentient and would make him a fortune. As Anna Moore reported, he’s just one of many people who have lost control after an AI encounter.
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3. The ‘self-deportee’ hounded out of the US to Mexico: ‘There are days when I feel literally insane’
Photograph: Isabel Castro/The Guardian
double quotation markAbel Ortiz quit the US on 4 August 2025. By then he had grown unnerved by the pervasive presence in Los Angeles of national guard troops, helicopters whirring overhead, and ICE agents ready to pounce in unmarked Fords and Chevys.
Ortiz had lived in LA since he was a newborn. Ed Pilkington and the Guardian’s video team caught up with him in Mexico City, where they found him fired up and grieving in his new life.
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4. We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool
Photograph: Ilka & Franz/The Guardian
double quotation markPut down your negroni, hang up your Prada handbag and pick up a paperback. Next time someone whips out their phone to take your picture, grab your reading specs, not your lipstick. Smart is the new hot.
So wrote Jess Cartner-Morley as she examined why, at the very moment Trump’s rambling speeches and meme–fied inanity threaten to overwhelm us, fashion, music and film are moving in the opposite direction.
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5. Come at the king … HBO changed TV for ever, but is its crown under threat in the age of streaming and Trump?
Composite: hbo; warrick paige/hbo; art streiber/AP; photo 12/alamy; reuters
It gave us Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and The Wire. But as HBO Max comes to the UK and with new ownership imminent, the network that reinvented television is fighting to stay itself, as Phil Harrison reported.
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6. Shoplifting, sex shows and sheepdog-breeding: great artists and the side-hustles they did to get by
Photograph: Publifoto/Shutterstock
John Cage appeared on an Italian quizshow. Jean Genet stole rare books. Emily Carr reared bobtails. And Kathy Acker did X-rated acts with her boyfriend … Mason Currey explored the unlikely sidelines of struggling artists.
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