One of the best seats in Manchester, if not the entire north

I’m perched on a tall stool at a new Manchester bar, perusing a menu of fishy things and various aquatically adjacent items: Lindisfarne oysters, devilled eggs with brown crab and trout roe, hand-dived razor clams and scallop tartare with elderflower dressing. Bar Shrimp sits on New York Street, which feels weirdly fitting, because this place is much more “quietly sceney” New York than anything remotely “aren’t we edgy?” London. Glass-fronted, with discreet net curtains and a Tracey Emin-esque neon name sign, inside it’s draped, floor-to-ceiling, in red, just like in those red room scenes in Twin Peaks. Expect oversized, monogrammed ice cubes, nine types of mezcal and just as many amaros, as well as a menu featuring the likes of cuttlefish sandwiches and buffalo fried cod with blue cheese dressing.

Bar Shrimp is a dog whistle to 1980s kids such as myself, who grew up seeing New York in the likes of After Hours or Wall Street, or in something with James Spader being up to no good and drinking Japanese whiskey highballs. It’s a bar opened by three friends: chef Joseph Otway, sommelier Daniel Craig Martin and general manager Richard Cossins, who met while they were all working at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York State. (Blue Hill, in case you didn’t know, is catnip to the aloof foodie crowd – its customers wouldn’t be seen dead at Noma because it’s far too accessible). But does Bar Shrimp make a terrific fuss about this hallowed connection? Nope. Are there nods to Saint Dan Barber dotted around the place, or even in Higher Ground, the Bar Shrimp team’s acclaimed neo-bistro next door? Nah. Does Bar Shrimp even mention that it and Higher Ground are supplied by Cinderwood Market Garden, their own working farm in Nantwich, Cheshire, and pretty much in the spirit of Barber’s Blue Hill mantra? Barely. The Shrimp boys are far too cool to namedrop.

Tired, emotional and besieged by fans and enemies alike, by 1966 the Fab Four were ready to quit touring for good. A new collection of images by rock photographer Jim Marshall captures their last gigs

The Beatles played their last official concert on 29 August 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Jim Marshall’s pictures capture the group at a pivotal moment, when they are already feeling nostalgia for what they are leaving behind.

Two months earlier, the Beatles had finished precording Revolver, a glittering collection of pop gems. The next day they boarded a plane to begin a global tour during which they would play nothing from it. They were not being perverse; it was simply that none of the songs lent themselves to live performance. On stage, they were a four-piece band. They could hardly play anything as complex as Eleanor Rigby or Tomorrow Never Knows to tens of thousands of fans.

The New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, briefly stepped away from City Hall to tackle the ultimate soccer challenge: predicting the entire World Cup bracket In the Guardian's exclusive interactive game. From shocking early exits to his definitive pick for the final, see how Mamdani maps out the world’s biggest tournament

• Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory

The US president brags about ending wars but look at Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and Lebanon to see what his casual disregard for diplomacy and obsession with instant results have achieved

There are visionary statesmen and high-minded negotiators, pragmatic mediators and professional diplomats – and then there are meddling fools. As ceasefires implode, vast numbers of civilians die or flee, and wars Donald Trump started, fuelled or pledged to resolve rage unchecked, there’s no doubt which category he belongs to. In baseball parlance, in Ukraine, Iran-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, Trump is “0 for 3”. He boasted he alone could cut deals and bring peace. He’s delivered neither. In striking out, he mostly makes matters worse.

The heroic age of 19th-century diplomacy, typified by Prince Metternich’s great power-balancing “concert of Europe” and Benjamin Disraeli’s Balkan “peace with honour”, is history now. But it’s not that long since Nobel-winning peacemakers such as the UN chief Kofi Annan and the Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, or the US senator George Mitchell, who brokered Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement, were troubleshooting intractable conflicts the world over. Where are the successors to Desmond Tutu, Andrei Sakharov or Yitzhak Rabin when you need them?

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

More and more of our furry friends are getting their own living spaces, complete with soft furnishings and decorations. We asked some of the owners why

Lox is sprawled out on a green sofa, bathed in warm light from a standing lamp, framed art on the wall behind him.

This may sound like a relatively ordinary description of someone in their living room – except that Lox is a cat, not a human, and the “living room” he shares with another cat, Lottie, is a converted cupboard in a New York apartment.

After critics and authors picked their top 100 novels we asked for your favourites. From Uruguay to the Isle of Skye, more than 3,000 readers cast their votes. Here’s your list – topped by a new number 1

• Read about your choices here

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• Joint-chair of relegated club to tackle ‘false allegations’

• ‘I am not the person the media has decided to paint me as’

The former pornography baron David Sullivan has announced his resignation as a joint-chair and director of West Ham with immediate effect.

Sullivan and his legal representatives said in a statement that the 77-year-old billionaire was stepping down to apply his “full energy and attention” to fighting what he described as “false allegations” concerning his personal conduct, due to be aired as part of a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times on Monday.

Technology secretary Liz Kendall says she is ‘very concerned’ about role of social media but will not be ‘bullied off’ X

The government is considering fresh action to halt the spread of misinformation during public crises, Liz Kendall has said, insisting she will not be “bullied off” Elon Musk’s X.

The technology secretary was speaking after rioting broke out in Southampton over the police response to the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, a case about which Musk has repeatedly posted.

The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was in his mother’s arms when soldiers fired on family in Hebron

Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby in the occupied West Bank and injured his parents after opening fire on the family’s car, despite it having complied with an order to stop.

Soldiers opened fire on Friday on a car carrying the infant and his parents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was critically injured, evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died.

Widow of French ex-president Jacques Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator known for her charity work

Bernadette Chirac, the formidable widow of the former French president Jacques Chirac and a driving force behind his political rise, has died at the age of 93.

As France’s first lady for 12 years, Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator in support of her husband, who served twice as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and two terms as president.