Almost unknown a decade ago, Ninja sold nearly $3bn worth of products last year – and a good chunk of them were to me. Are we getting value for money?

I have a problem. It has spanned many years, cost me hundreds of pounds and earned the derision – and concern – of friends and family. Don’t worry: it isn’t anything sordid but it does give me an absurd number of ways to cook chicken or use up a bag of potatoes.

My poison is Ninja appliances. Anyone who walks into my tiny kitchen is taken aback by my extensive collection. My prized trio are the Foodi, the Foodi Max Health Grill and Air Fryer and the Creami, which collectively give me the ability to air-fry, grill, sear, roast, pressure-cook, slow-cook, steam or even dehydrate my dinner, and transform a frozen mishmash of protein powder, yoghurt and sweeteners into an ice-cream-like dessert.

After a string of flops, Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps showed signs of life in the superhero genre once again. But what’s next?

Maybe it’s true what they say about real life-or-death stakes not applying to superheroes. The past couple of years have looked pretty deadly for the once-ubiquitous American superhero movie, with just two such films placing on the list of 2024’s top-grossing movies in the US, and three in 2023. (2022 had as many as both of those years combined on its own list, and the top four of 2021 were all superhero-led.) More than the lack of hits – Deadpool & Wolverine certainly made enough on its own to encourage another decade of team-ups – the genre has been threatened by a growing number of flops. Sequels to blockbusters like Joker and Aquaman nosedived from their predecessors. Would-be franchise starters like The Flash, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter failed to spark any interest. Even a Marvel movie literally called The Marvels underperformed.

2025 seemed to follow this trend line, with Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts both underwhelming at the box office. Even reviews, so often prone to giving MCU entries a pass and conferring upon them a sense of unearned prestige, didn’t seem to move the needle much: Thunderbolts got much better notices, and that plus a plum summer-kickoff release date were good for ... well, slightly less money than the terrible Captain America sequel. But this July, things have been looking up. Specifically, up in the sky: DC kicked off their new cinematic universe with a Superman movie, just as it did in 2013 with Man of Steel, only this time, audiences and critics seem to actually like it as their signature hero flies past $500m worldwide in less than 20 days. Meanwhile, another reboot of the cursed-seeming Fantastic Four didn’t seem like a sure thing. But Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is hitting numbers similar to Superman. It will likely pass both of its corporate siblings within a couple of weeks.

The current hand-wringing by Keir Starmer and other western politicians is empty bluster. They knew what was happening all along

What have we done? As the UN-backed monitor declares that “the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip”, this should have been the question ricocheting between the walls as Keir Starmer met Donald Trump this week. Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza is, after all, a crime confessed to, designed and implemented in plain sight. Starmer has said the UK will recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution, but don’t be beguiled: Palestinian national self-determination is an inalienable right, not a bargaining chip, and it’s the most symbolic action he could take rather than, say, imposing sweeping sanctions and ending all arms sales. The hand-wringing of western politicians and media outlets will not feed Gaza’s emaciated children, any more than it will absolve them of guilt.

Israel’s leaders have said, explicitly, repeatedly, from the very beginning, that they are deliberately starving Gaza’s people. “Man-made famine is not something that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Martin Griffiths, the UN’s former humanitarian chief, tells me. On 9 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced “a complete siege on [Gaza]: no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel”, justified on the grounds: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”. The next day, the Israeli general charged with humanitarian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank – Ghassan Alian – declared that the “citizens of Gaza” were “human beasts” who would suffer “a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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DJ Mehdi perished in a tragic accident aged 34. A new documentary, Made in France, restores his pivotal role in the electronic music revolution that grew out of 00s Paris

The late DJ Mehdi had a talent for bridging divides. At the height of the musician’s fame, Mehdi’s cousin Myriam Essadi recalls in a new documentary, he had to jet straight from a nightclub in Ibiza to his grandfather’s funeral in Tunisia. “He was wearing red glasses, white jeans and a jacket with a cross. In Tunisia! For our grandfather’s funeral!” Essadi laughs. “We didn’t get it. And in Tunisia you don’t mess with religion.”

DJ Mehdi: Made in France, a six-part documentary now available with English subtitles on Franco-German broadcaster Arte, revisits the life and tragic death of one of the most fascinating, influential and misunderstood French musicians of his generation.

Born with cystic fibrosis, Yvonne Hughes was lucky to survive her teens. She definitely didn’t expect to make it into her 50s. The comedian talks about the years she spent struggling to breathe – and the ‘miracle’ drug that turned her life around

Yvonne Hughes was 19, and attending the funeral of a friend with cystic fibrosis, when she realised: “Oh shit, I’m going to die of this.” She had met him during shared hospital stays in childhood, and although Hughes had always known she had CF, she had never understood her illness as terminal until that day in 1992, when she stood at the back of the crowded chapel in Glasgow. For three days afterwards, she couldn’t stop crying. “I had a kind of meltdown. That’s probably the first time I thought that this thing I had was going to kill me.”

Over the next few months, Hughes, who was studying at the University of Glasgow, listened to her mum, dad and older sister chatting during family meals as if she was a ghost at the table. “I pulled back from them. I deliberately didn’t talk or include myself,” she says. “I wanted them to get used to sitting and chatting without me, so that when I died, they wouldn’t notice I wasn’t there.”

This documentary about a porn star who has made millions from ‘barely legal’ videos fails to really take her to task. Its maker is no match for the steel of the interviewee

For those of you pure of heart and internet search history, Bonnie Blue (real name: Tia Billinger) is famous for being one of the most popular and highest-earning content creators to have appeared on more-or-less porn site OnlyFans. To fulfil her ambition of earning £5m a month from subscribers she needed a USP. She found it in pursuing “barely legal” sex – traditionally one of the most searched-for terms in porn – with the twist that instead of men searching for videos of other men having sex with teenage (or teenage-looking, depending on how many internet layers you’re prepared to sift through for your purposes) girls, Billinger offered herself to young men.

She had sex with them for free on condition that they gave permission for her to upload the footage to her OnlyFans account, where her subscribers pay to access her content. “She is a marketing genius,” says one of the team she has gathered round her to help administrate her growing empire. She has, in essence, introduced an entirely new way of doing porn-business. If she were working in any other field – if she had stayed in her previous job as a finance recruiter for the NHS, perhaps – and innovated to the same extent, she would probably be hailed as an extraordinary entrepreneur.

1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story is available on Channel 4.

Hawaii says it is safe to return to previously evacuated areas and alerts downgraded in Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan after 8.8-magnitude earthquake

• Tsunami warnings across Pacific as first waves hit Hawaii after earthquake off Russia

• How have you been affected by the tsunami across the Pacific?

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant that suffered a triple meltdown triggered by the 2011 tsunami, has announced that discharge of treated water contaminated by the disaster has been suspended until today’s tsunami warnings are lifted.

Personnel engaged in the ongoing decommissioning work at the plant have also been temporarily evacuated.

Exclusive: Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns say party could slide into irrelevance if it chooses new leader with ‘polarising’ approach

The Green party risks going into reverse if they elect Zack Polanski as leader, his two opponents have said, arguing that his promised brand of “eco-populism” would prove polarising, divisive and likely to put off more moderate voters.

Speaking to the Guardian before the opening of the month-long leadership vote, which begins on Friday, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns said the party in England and Wales was at “a crossroads”, and could miss the chance to hold the balance of power at the next election.

Son of Lindsay Foreman, held with her husband since January, says British government is neglecting duty of care it owes its citizens

The son of a British woman who has been held in Iran since January on espionage charges along with her husband has called on the UK government to raise their case during talks with Iran reportedly taking place in Istanbul later this week.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were arrested on 3 January in Kervan, southern Iran, while travelling through the country from Armenia to Pakistan on a motorcycle journey to Australia.

Lawyers representing families of hostages say Starmer’s plan to recognise Palestinian state in September risks disincentivising release of captives

Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, was doing a media round this morning. The Conservatives have been strongly critical of Keir Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood (unless Israel meets conditions which would be near impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu to accept) and Patel’s comments in part echoed what the Israeli government has been saying. (See 10.50am.) But the Tories are also claiming that this shows Starmer is too weak to stand up to his own MPs.

Patel told GB News:

We’ve just seen the government just really appease its back benches, saying that they will recognise Palestine, but do so without a plan, and that is why this is a very serious issue.

I think it’s a major problem for the British government and also for Britain’s standing in the world. We’ve seen this terrible situation of humanitarian crisis in Gaza for months upon months now, and Britain simply hasn’t been leveraging its influence.

Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims.

A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW.