Just seeing the first Brazil team to reach a Rugby World Cup was enough for fans as South Africa roared to 66-6 win

In certain other sports, Brazil’s absence from any World Cup tournament would be regarded as downright bizarre. It’s not quite like that in rugby, and their women’s 15s team created history simply by running on to the turf.

The first Brazil team to qualify for a men’s or women’s Rugby World Cup had played only 16 times before this, winning five matches, including a playoff against Colombia that secured qualification. Their prize, if you can call it that, was an intimidating opener against the famously powerful South Africa.

• British No 1 dispatches qualifier 6-1- 6-2

• Victory is first in grand slam under new coach

Four years since her three life-changing weeks in New York, Emma Raducanu overcame a significant mental hurdle as she earned her first victory at the US Open since her 2021 title run in impressive fashion, dismantling the qualifier Ena Shibahara 6-1, 6-2 to finally return to the second round.

After painful first-round defeats against Alizé Cornet and Sofia Kenin, plus a withdrawal in 2023 during her recovery from three surgeries, Raducanu showed her growth and newfound self-assurance by putting together a solid, clean performance against an inferior opponent.

Labour is hoping that big investors will build more homes. But there’s no guarantee they will be genuinely affordable

To an outside eye, English cities might seem deliberately designed to foment a housing crisis. Unconstrained by craggy topography or fortified ramparts, their Victorian developers built endless streets of low-rise terraces. Cities that expanded during the Industrial Revolution are less dense than their European equivalents and have far fewer flats. Their private rental sectors are fragmented, dominated by small-time landlords for whom property ownership is often a second career.

In recent years, large investors have begun bankrolling high-rise apartment blocks that promise to create the type of housing that English cities need. These “build-to-rent” developments are transforming the skylines of Manchester and London, and have added about 14,000 new homes each year since 2020. For a Labour government that hopes to build 1.5m homes, the sector’s growth looks like a blessing. Clive Betts, the Labour MP who chairs a build-to-rent taskforce, has described such developments as “good-quality housing with a real future”.

Disenchantment with city life, as well as improved infrastructure nationwide, has made the villages look more attractive

“People gone; buildings empty: this is the fact of daily life in the countryside,” lamented the author Liang Hong in her bestselling account China in One Village. It was a grim portrait of her home town – its vitality ebbing as the forces of modern life drained it of young people, polluted its water, exploited its resources and even turned the local school into a pigsty. Its quarter of a million sales reflected not just her distinctive writing, but the familiarity of the story. As urban China prospered with the Communist party’s turn to the market, 350 million villagers migrated to the cities, leaving behind increasingly desolate settlements.

Now Beijing is promoting “rural revitalisation”. State media run a steady stream of articles lauding city dwellers who have returned to their home towns to set up cafes or run home-stays. The expansion of transport and telecommunications infrastructure has allowed rural inhabitants to expand their horizons. First came the “Taobao villages”, where at least a 10th of households were using Alibaba’s e-commerce platform. More recently, farmers have taken to livestreaming – selling fruit or flowers direct to urbanites.

Space vehicle, due to lift off from Texas, is crucial to Elon Musk’s plans to reach the moon and take humans to Mars

The latest iteration of Elon Musk’s gargantuan Starship space rocket is poised to launch into the skies above Texas on Sunday for the first time in three months, with the billionaire entrepreneur’s ambitious timetable for reaching the moon and conquering Mars hinging on the success of the pivotal mission.

Skywatchers are eager to see which version of the world’s most powerful rocket will be produced for its 10th launch attempt. Of its nine previous uncrewed outings, dating to April 2023, failures have outnumbered the successes. All three test flights this year ended in huge explosions and debris raining down on Caribbean islands from the Bahamas to the Turks and Caicos in January and March, and the Indian Ocean in May.