In scenes echoed across southern Europe, Spain’s Canary Islands are suffering from a crisis of too many tourists – 18 million are projected to visit in 2025. On Tenerife, where tourism accounts for 35% of the economy and which draws the largest number of mostly British holidaymakers, it is tourists, not immigrants, who are seen as a threat to local identity. As protests across the Mediterranean continue, local people vent their anger at an exploitative, extractive and unsustainable tourism model. But is it still possible to change course, and are political leaders listening?

US president appears unconcerned about speaking to parliamentarians during September trip to UK

Donald Trump said in his BBC interview that he regards the US’s relationship with Britain as special because he thinks Britain would fight with America if it came to a war. Whether or not other countries would, he does not seem so sure.

The comments are interesting because they help to explain why he has reservations about Nato – and why, even though he has repeatedly said in public he supports Nato’s article 5 commitment to collective defence (saying that if one member is attacked, all Nato countries should come to their defence), some Nato leaders are not 100% confident he means it.

I think Nato is now becoming, the opposite of that. I do think it was [in the] past and it was very unfair because the United States paid for almost 100% of it.

But now they’re paying their own bills. And I think that’s much better.

I do yeah, I think collective defense is fine.

I do. I think one of the problems with Nato is, we have to fight for them, but will they actually fight for us if we had a war? And I’m not sure I can say it.

But I will say this; I believe that the UK would fight with us.

I made a deal with them, and I haven’t made … I’ve made some other deals but, for the most part, in terms of your competitors and in terms of the European Union, I haven’t made a deal.

But the UK is very special, and it’s been there for a long time.

I think let them go and have a good time [ie, let MPs have their recess]. I don’t want that to …

I think just, I want to have a good time and respect King Charles, because he’s a great gentleman.

London’s blue-chip index has risen 10% in 2025 helped by investor flight from US stocks amid Trump’s trade policies

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Britain’s blue-chip stock index has risen through the 9,000-point mark to touch a new record high.

The FTSE 100 share index hit 9,016.98 points in early trading on Tuesday, taking its gains during 2025 to more than 10%.

Comments come after Oval Office meeting with Nato’s Mark Rutte signalled a shift in tone on conflict

Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen also talked to reporters on his arrival at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels.

He said he wasn’t sure about getting a political agreement on the 18th package of sanctions today, “but if it’s not today, then I hope it will be tomorrow.”

“I have long been advocating for a more transatlantic approach. We should push the Russian economy much more so I think one of the key element in the sanction package is the lowering of the oil price gap.”

An Austrian trainer goes to Dubai to work with three teenage sisters, and realises they are trapped. But there is no hero-saviour narrative in Kurdwin Ayub’s film

This claustrophobic drama-thriller sticks two fingers up at white saviour narratives with its story about a mixed martial arts fighter hired by a super-rich Jordanian to train his teenage sisters. It’s directed by Iraq-born Austrian film-maker Kurdwin Ayub, her script inspired perhaps by Princess Haya, wife of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed and half-sister of the Jordanian king, who fled to London in 2019. It’s anchored by a fierce, physical performance by choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger.

She plays Sarah, an Austrian fighter whose career in the cage is over. The obvious next move is to become a trainer, but Sarah’s people skills aren’t really up to it: she’s blunt and hopeless at small talk. Then comes the offer to work for wealthy Jordanian Abdul (Omar AlMajali), training his sisters. First Sarah must sign an NDA; “Anything you see inside the house stays inside the house,” smiles Abdul pleasantly. None of the girls seem that interested in training, though worryingly one says she wants to learn self-defence – “what to do if someone tries to hit me or choke me”. The three sisters are under constant surveillance, home-schooled and not allowed on wifi.

This ambitious tale of solidarity and sisterhood in Florida has moments of poetic clarity, but falls short of the author’s dazzling debut

Writers sometimes talk of giving birth to their books, but probably very few are also working as doulas. It’s an experience that clearly informs Leila Mottley’s new novel, The Girls Who Grew Big, in which the struggles of pregnancy and motherhood loom large. Mottley’s work as a doula comes in addition to writing a bestselling debut novel, Nightcrawling, and featuring on Oprah’s Book Club; she was also youth poet laureate of Oakland, California, in 2018. But not much seems beyond the reach of the youngest ever writer to be longlisted for the Booker prize, back in 2022. The pity is that her considerable energy hasn’t translated into a more satisfying second book.

The Girls Who Grew Big tells the story of a gang of teenage mothers and the impromptu community they form in the humid disarray and general dysfunction of Padua, a fictional small town in the Florida panhandle. Led by their de facto leader, Simone, the Girls are a scrappy, ostracised handful of outsiders, variously rejected by their families and harshly judged by locals. Down on their luck and often abandoned by the adults in their lives, they resourcefully become a collective, based in the back of Simone’s truck.