Having fled the strictures of her Mennonite upbringing, the Canadian author searches for meaning in her older sister’s death: ‘She taught me how to stay alive’

Long before she became one of Canada’s most celebrated authors, Miriam Toews was an 18-year-old with a restless streak, set on fleeing the strictures of her conservative Mennonite community. Toews’s family descended from Russian Mennonites and spoke Plautdietsch, an unwritten language. They grew up in a world with little privacy, many unofficial rules and the threat of excommunication. Toews and a boyfriend had planned a bike trip across Europe, one in which they would sit on the grave of John Keats and smoke too many cigarettes.

Before she left, her older sister Marj asked a favor: would Toews write letters to her while she was away? Marj, then 24, had recently moved back home and was in a period of deep depression. She had stopped talking, but she would still write. “She was so sick,” says Toews, sitting across from me at a picnic table in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods park.

The president’s assault on US museums, education and memory is a critical dimension of his fascist aims

In a letter sent to Smithsonian secretary, Lonnie G Bunch III, on 12 August, the Trump administration announced its plan to replace all Smithsonian exhibits deemed as “divisive” or “ideological” with descriptions deemed as “historical” and “constructive”. On 21 August, just nine days later, the White House published a list of said offending fixtures – the majority of which include exhibits, programming and artwork that highlight the Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ perspectives on the American project. Included in his bill of particulars was an exhibit that rightly depicts Benjamin Franklin as an enslaver, an art installation that acknowledges race as a social construct and a display that highlights racist voter suppression measures, among others.

The assault on the Smithsonian comes wrapped, as it were, as part of a broader attack on democracy, scenes of which we see playing out every day. The federal occupation of Washington DC, the crackdown on free speech on campus, the targeting of Trump’s political opponents, the gerrymandering of democracy – these are interwoven elements of the same structural assault. So with many fires burning across the nation, concerned citizens who are answering the call to fight the destruction of democracy may regard his attack on history and memory as a mere skirmish, a distraction from the herculean struggle against fascism unfolding in the US. But this is a mistake. Trump’s attack on American museums, education and memory, along with his weaponization of racialized resentment to package his authoritarian sympathies as mere patriotism, is a critical dimension of his fascist aims. The fight for democracy cannot avoid it, nor its racial conditions of possibility.

Mar-a-Lago face is suddenly everywhere – and there is a version for both men and women

A group of chimpanzees in Zambia have been very busy putting grass in their ears and sticks up their bum for fashion purposes. Scientists studying the behaviour think that one influential chimp started the trend and, instead of the rest of the gang going, “mate, you look like an idiot”, they all just followed suit.

Clearly we haven’t evolved from apes that much because a similar phenomenon is at play with the billionaire and Make America Great Again (Maga) set, who are spending enormous sums of money acquiring identical plastic faces. The trend is so widespread that it’s even got a name: Mar-a-Lago face. Among women the look is characterised by huge lips that look as if they could suck up a small child whole, frozen facial expressions, and cheeks so bulbous you could hide a gerbil underneath them. Men also have the slick frozen faces, but instead of bigger lips they’re pairing them with bigger jaws. In recent years, surgeons have reported a large increase of male clients demanding stronger jawlines.

Leisurewear firm cuts prices online amid tough market, especially in footwear for women and children

JD Sports has revealed a slump in UK sales, amid mounting concern that brittle consumer confidence will damage retailers.

Revenues in established UK shops fell 6.6% as the leisurewear company struggled to beat strong trading last year, when it received a boost from the men’s Euro 2024 football tournament and women’s growing taste for sports footwear such as Adidas’s Samba and Gazelle.

The Essex wicketkeeper-batter, currently dazzling in the Hundred, has the self-belief he can put past setbacks behind him

Jordan Cox’s timing has been off. Not with the bat – it’s pinged off the middle for some time. The 24-year-old averages more than 60 in the County Championship since joining Essex from Kent two years ago, and he has serious white-ball pedigree. He meets the Spin at the Oval four days after his unbeaten 29-ball 86 in the Hundred on this ground. “It’s the best place in the world to play cricket,” he says.

No, the luck hasn’t gone his way with England. Cox was readying himself for a Test debut in New Zealand last November, penned in as the keeper-bat while Jamie Smith took paternity leave for the three-match series. But days out from the first Test, the stand-in broke his thumb while batting in the nets. It was a moment on which careers can turn. In came Jacob Bethell as Ollie Pope moved down the order, the former establishing himself as English cricket’s Next Big Thing. Cox had to wrestle with a dream snatched at the last, heal up and make his case once again.