The actor’s martial arts skills saw him rise to fame in the 70s, but he found his groove – and legions of fans – destroying furniture, revving muscle cars and firing heavy artillery in the 80s

• Chuck Norris, prolific action star and martial arts champion, dies aged 86
• Chuck Norris – a life in pictures

When Chuck Norris fought Bruce Lee in The Way of the Dragon in 1972, it looked like the clash of two mythic archetypes. For all his power, Lee appeared boyish and almost slight, his body as smooth as marble and clenched with defined muscle like an anatomical illustration – the ascetic young master of Asian fighting philosophies. Norris was bigger, bulkier, shaggier and hairier, and basically more American; he was just as fast as Bruce (or almost), a master of taekwondo and jiujitsu and his own discipline of Chun Kuk Do, but with a body that looked as if an ounce or two of old-fashioned fat – the byproduct of the odd porterhouse steak – would be neither here nor there (although in later years Norris dialled down the red meat).

Norris was a rip-roaring action hero in the stacked form also popularised by Sly, Arnie and later Jason Statham; he was basically in the tradition of occidental action, a western-style fighting man who had also absorbed the eastern arcana of unarmed combat into a persona that was also confident with heavy weaponry. The combination made him a lead like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name (and in fact his 1985 actioner Code of Silence, about a cop on the edge, was originally developed as a Dirty Harry vehicle). But Norris had something rangier and less enigmatic: you could call him the master of his own kind of whitesploitation ass-kicking spectacular.

The Reform UK leader has belatedly clocked that most British people really don’t like the US president on whose coat-tails he has spent the past decade riding

At last, the culture has thrown up a split more nauseatingly up itself than Gwyneth Paltrow’s from Chris Martin. It is Nigel Farage’s attempt to consciously uncouple from Donald Trump, a man up whose backside he’s spent the past decade most firmly lodged. Nigel’s made such a massive, self-satisfied show of his real estate in the presidential large intestine for 10 years now that I actually don’t think non-surgical extraction is possible at this stage. He doesn’t just get to walk away whistling. The only way out is a full Faragectomy. I’ll give the president a piece of drone fuselage to bite down on.

Anyway: conscious uncoupling. Back in the day, you’ll remember, Gwyneth and the Coldplay singer deployed this particular phrase when announcing their marital split. Did the public love it? They did not. The general vibe – as with so much of Her Vajesty’s output – was that she would do even marriage failure more smugly and unachievably than mere plebs could ever. The pivot from gushing about her perfect marriage to gushing about her perfect divorce felt like mere days.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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One in three UK postcodes now has more dogs than children. Meet the Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog). Plus Tim Dowling’s guide to the best breeds for Dinkwads

Bryan Bell was at home when his one-year-old Patti collapsed, shaking like a leaf in a gale-force tornado. She was having a fit. Bell’s husband, John, was out of the house and he didn’t know what to do. “It was quite a traumatic experience because I didn’t know what was happening,” the 40-year-old PR recalls. Eventually, Patti’s fit subsided and the couple soon found a diagnosis from her doctor: their miniature dachshund had epilepsy. “She’s all medicated now, so it’s under control. But when it happens, you feel like: ‘Is this going to be the fit that’s too much for her little head?’”

Medical scares, behaviour issues and a tendency to eat you out of house and home – many dog owners will tell you that getting a four-legged friend bears more than a few similarities to having a young child. But as birthrates plummet across the world, a curious inverse trend has emerged: couples are getting dogs. Lots and lots of couples, in fact. They’re called Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog) and their numbers are growing. With one in three postcodes in England home to more dogs than children, you are now more likely to hear the howl of a basset hound than the sound of kids playing. If you counted up all the estimated 13 million dogs in the UK, from pint-sized chihuahuas to lolloping great danes, you’d only be two million short of the total number of children. And unlike the human birthrate – which in Britain hit a record low in 2024 – the number of dogs only looks set to increase.

Too many want to cast acts of violence and antisemitism as blows against Israel’s government. But the fear and terror land on real people, thousands of miles away

Let us begin with a brief exchange on GB News, confirmed this week as the TV arm of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Following an attack on a synagogue last week in Michigan, in which a gunman drove a car packed with explosives through the entrance to the building before opening fire, a pundit on the channel sought to clarify what the attacker actually meant by his actions. “This was an Israeli temple,” she explained. “It was aligned with Israel.”

By way of evidence, she cited the name of the synagogue – Temple Israel – apparently unaware that Jews have referred to themselves as “the people of Israel” for millennia, long before there was a state of that name, and that there are, for that reason, countless synagogues in the US called Temple Israel. No, for her, the Michigan house of worship, with its on-site school where more than a hundred children were in lessons that day, was a de facto embassy of the Israeli state and therefore an understandable, if not legitimate, target. Hold that episode in your mind.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Evidence suggests saunas can boost heart health, but their real power may lie in bringing people together in an increasingly digital world

From fields to floating pontoons, in horseboxes, barrels and beach huts, saunas are springing up across Britain. The British Sauna Society now lists about 640 saunas – up from 540 at the start of the year – while a recent report predicted that the UK could become the world’s largest sauna market by 2033, outpacing even Finland and Germany.

“The continuing growth suggests that the peak has still yet to come – if there is one,” said Gabrielle Reason, the society’s director. But are saunas a tonic for the nation’s health – or a wellness fad with hidden risks?

The actor was Marlon Brando’s PA, and received career advice from Al Pacino. But it’s for the catchphrase-strewn classic that he’ll be best remembered. He talks about the film’s legacy, and its director Reiner, who he will ‘miss terribly’

In 1988, the actor Cary Elwes’s career had taken a nosedive. His latest film, a fantasy in which he played a farm boy turned swashbuckling hero, had bombed at the box office and the actor had been out of work for a year. One day he was in a New York restaurant when he spotted Al Pacino, so he went over and introduced himself. “He asked me if I was working and I said no,” Elwes recalls. “He said: ‘You need to exercise your [acting] muscles,’ and told me to go back to school and train.” Pacino put him in touch with the Lee Strasberg Institute, where he had studied with his friend and mentor Charlie Laughton. “I auditioned, I got in and ended up working with Al’s mentor, and it changed my life.”

The meeting with Pacino wasn’t the only life-changing event for Elwes that year, however. The “dud” movie in which he played the handsome farmhand, Westley? That was The Princess Bride, a fairytale spoof that was also an adventure story aimed at adults and children alike, and that its director Rob Reiner later said was a nightmare to market. A year after its theatrical release, it came out on VHS and suddenly took on a life of its own.

Anger grows within cabinet over impact of war begun by Donald Trump, who branded Nato allies ‘cowards’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has branded the UK and other Nato allies “cowards” but anger is growing among cabinet ministers that his war in Iran could jeopardise Britain’s fragile finances.

Senior members of the government are in despair about the potential effects on the economy, with experts warning of higher energy prices and mortgage and borrowing costs.

From restaurant closures in the Philippines and petrol rationing in Sri Lanka, to Asian food production crises due to fertiliser shortages, the effects of the US-Israeli war on Iran reverberate around the world

From the Philippines cutting down to a four-day week to save electricity, to restaurants in India taking gas-intensive dishes off the menu, and rents being frozen in Spain, the economic fallout of the US-Israeli war on Iran has reverberated around the world.

Facing an existential threat, Tehran has retaliated by closing the vital Hormuz shipping lane and bombing its oil and gas-rich neighbours, compounding a deepening crisis abroad for businesses and families.

Forces have been stripped back since the cold war but political stasis is dangerous in the face of growing global threats

• Middle East crisis – live updates

It will have been more than three weeks since the US and Israel first attacked Iran when the first British warship finally arrives off the coast of Cyprus, a belated defensive deployment that has highlighted the lack of military capacity available to the UK.

Nominally, HMS Dragon was one of three destroyers available out of six. In reality the warship has had to be hauled out of dry dock, prepared and then, after launch, tested for several days in the Channel. Its arrival date is still unconfirmed.

Arab states have so far only acted defensively, but there is growing fear war is entering new, more dangerous phase

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The boom reverberated so loudly over Dubai marina that the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers and exclusive hotels gave a loud, disconcerting rattle.

“That sounded close, do you think a missile has hit something?” said a young man to his friend as they sipped coffees. Moments earlier, all mobile phones in the vicinity had sounded off with a shrill alarm, the new normal for those living in the Gulf, warning of missile and drone strikes in the area. Customers barely looked up.