California’s Big Sur coastline is often called a slice of heaven. But this year – beset by wildfires, road closures and disruptions to tourist amenities – it has endured a long summer of hell. Now questions are being asked about how many visitors it can sustain in the face of the climate crisis.
For our big story this week, Andrew Gumbel visits Big Sur, where the tourist industry accounts for about 90% of the local economy, to hear why the community fears its ethos is under threat.
The UN has warned that the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”. Environment editor Damien Carrington reports on the latest forecasts, which predict the event is near certain to shatter temperature records.
Then, the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix write about how their cities are learning from each other on responding to the heat crisis. “How do you protect millions of people,” they ask, “when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?”
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Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | ‘It breaks my heart’
Kate Connolly reports from Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where voters are digesting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s state election triumph
Science | Forbidden planet
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate, writes Tim Dowling
Feature | Your lying AIs
LLMs have an alarming tendency to deceive and manipulate their users. As they become ever more embedded in society, the race is on to find out why – and stop them doing it. Snigdha Poonam explains
Opinion | The route to a brighter future
The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, says Simon Tisdall, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Culture | A stitch up
As the Bayeux tapestry goes on show in London, cartoonist Edith Pritchett offers an alternative 21st century take, capturing today’s battles, while art critic Jonathan Jones reviews the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition of the original masterpiece
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What else we’ve been reading
• Richard O’Sullivan, who died last week at the age of 82, was a fixture of 1970s TV as the star of comedies Man About the House and Robin’s Nest. Zoe Williams pays tribute to his long career; from this distance, it’s easy to forget how vividly he personified a new era. Anthony Naughton, assistant editor
I’ve always found art heists fascinating, and this story about thieves stealing two Renoirs from a museum on the French Riviera feels like something straight out of the TV show Lupin. With police arriving just minutes after the alarm went off and two other paintings abandoned in the garden, it has all the ingredients of a Netflix plot, except this one actually happened. Jade Lovitt, senior business manager, magazines
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Other highlights from the Guardian website
• Audio | The great silence: why haven’t we found any aliens yet?
• Video | 25 years after 9/11, is Islamophobia in the US at an all-time high?
• Gallery | Visa pour l’image: Perpignan festival of photojournalism 2026
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