Sports and nationwide music festival affected, with temperatures for some expected to reach 42C from Monday

Authorities in France have placed more than a third of the country under a red heat alert, cancelled some outdoor sports events and restricted alcohol consumption at the nationwide Fête de la Musique event amid a brutal heatwave forecast to push temperatures above 40C.

Level one or two heat alerts were issued on Sunday for about 53 million people, or 76% of the population. A record 35 of the country’s 96 mainland departments were put on danger-to-life red alert, with another 45 under an orange warning.

The standup and Big Boys creator on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

It’s a short step from laughing in the line for artisan pastries to grimly waiting to buy a loaf of sliced white. Are we just rehearsing for food shortages?

It’s hot – fancy a frozen yoghurt? Probably not, given that ice-cream exists, but a New York Times reporter recently queued for an hour to experience the city’s fro-yo craze with 74 other patient souls, long enough, she wrote, to “feel affection for my cluster of line, the kind of camaraderie you develop with fellow passengers on a delayed flight”. The yoghurt, while fine, was emphatically not worth the wait. That’s surely also true of the UK’s current slew of viral bakeries, pizza joints and, improbably, baked potato spots. Can carbs really be that good? Maybe, but I’ll never find out: reaching the head of an interminable queue only for the person in front of you to take the last treat is psychological violence I won’t put myself through, and queueing at a mayonnaise vending machine – another real NYC phenomenon – is my idea of hell.

But queues are everywhere now. Even in my hometown of York, where formerly the only people queueing were tourists waiting to enjoy the stench of rotting herring and latrine at the Jorvik Viking Centre (or to patronise our sui generis tearoom, Bettys), locals line up at brunch spots and bakeries. How and why have queues, previously an occasional annoyance, become ubiquitous?

Mauricio Pochettino’s players have got off to a scorching start to the tournament. Going all the way will require the team reaching a whole new level though

The United States can win the World Cup. The US players say so. So does Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Because you are a smart Guardian reader, you know that, theoretically, any team who are not yet eliminated can win the World Cup. And you know that this US team have won their opening two World Cup games convincingly, securing top spot in Group D and a place in the knockout round with a game to spare. Making the World Cup final, and winning it, is in the realm of possibility.

But will they? Within the team, there has been belief they can go all the way for some time. US head coach Mauricio Pochettino laid down the marker in his opening press conference, and has stuck to his belief. His players have followed suit. But now, even famous pundits with outsized egos are saying the US can shock the world and capture the men’s World Cup for the first time on home soil.

UN’s Word Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happens

Adugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

Je hoort ze niet veel, ze hebben immers al een hele poos geen gewelddadige fratsen met treinen meer uitgehaald en hun wijken zijn reeds homeopathisch verdund, maar je hebt in Nederland dus een heleboel Molukkers. Die vochten ooit aan onze zijde in Indië en daarna zei Nederland 'joh, kom zolang ff hierheen, dan regelen we dat eigen stukje grond voor jullie later wel', waarna het hele zooitje in voormalige doorvoerkampen werd gezet, niet mocht werken en ondertussen nooit meer iets van Nederland hoorde over een eigen vrije staat. Dat vond de Nederlandse regering prima zo, maar later weer lullig (in 1986 kwam al een erepenning, later collectieve erkenningsprojecten en subsidieregelingen) en nu vindt premier Jetten het dermate lullig dat hij het hele Nederlandse leger naar Ambon stuurt voor een bevrijdingsoperatie "SORRY" ZEGT. We hadden het niet zo bedoeld. Of wel. Maar nu achteraf toch niet. Mena muria!