‘She gave me reports on last night’s date with Paul Simon’

Woody Allen, writer, director, co-star, Annie Hall (1977)

We cast Shelley Duvall as the Rolling Stone reporter in Annie Hall because it’s a flaky character and we wanted someone with a little strangeness, not someone who’d have been better playing a quiet schoolteacher or an accountant. She was odd, charming, wonderful-looking in her way and a very good actress with unique screen charisma.

On set, she did pretty much everything on her own. I had no direction to give her. We’d just start the scene and she would come to it with that natural quirky personality. She said the “Kafkaesque” line just like an average person would. When she spoke, with that voice and intonation and look, she made something happen.

I realised she was exactly what we wanted as soon as we began shooting. Before then, you never know what’s going to resonate. Then, when you see the dailies, you realise how good the actor or actress is. With Shelley, it was clear she was giving that character – only words on the page – a real life.

I never saw her socially, or had any conversations with her other than when she’d tell me what a nice time she had with Paul Simon the night before. They began their relationship on the set, so every day just before we shot she would say: “Oh, last night Paul and I stayed up till dawn talking. He’s so great and he’s so charming and he’s so wonderful.”

I didn’t set them up: I just cast them and then got the report every morning. I guess if a film director could have performed a marriage I’d have married them. I was certainly very happy for them, as they were both terrific, gifted people. I was very proud they met on my movie. As told to Catherine Shoard

‘Full of enchantment’

Daryl Hannah, co-star, Roxanne (1987)

While making Roxanne, I had the great fortune to spend quite a bit of quality time with Shelley Duvall. I had long been an admirer of hers since all of her wonderfully quirky Altman films.

Being around Shelley was like being around a magical being – full of creative ideas and enchantment.

‘We were sprayed by the Epping Forest fire brigade’

Michael Palin, co-star, Time Bandits (1981)

I was very sad to hear the news of Shelley Duvall’s death. I worked with her, briefly, when we played the star-crossed lovers in Time Bandits. We spent some time tied to a tree in Epping Forest being sprayed to within an inch of our lives by the local fire brigade.

She was amazingly patient, and very good company. Her soft voice belied strong beliefs and opinions.

She had a great sense of humour and an innate warmth that made her the sort of person you wanted to stay in touch with. Which we did for a while. So sorry that we’ll not be able to laugh and share memories again.

Scientists are calling on the public to help track how British butterflies are moving north as the climate heats up.

Examining 50 years of data, researchers from the wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation, which runs the annual Big Butterfly Count, have identified a clear northerly shift among many species, including the familiar garden favourites the comma, peacock and holly blue.

This is the result of climate breakdown creating warmer habitats, letting certain breeds grow substantially. The migratory red admiral is one example; typically found in southern England in the summer before migrating to Europe for winter, these winged creatures now reside year-round in the UK. Their populations have also increased threefold.

Meanwhile, the holly blue has been spotted in Scotland. Their numbers have expanded by 34%, reflecting the northerly spread. Distribution has also increased by 36% for the peacock, and 53% for the speckled wood.

Echoing this trend further is the Jersey tiger. Previously only seen in the south-west of England, the day-flying moth was first spotted as far north as London during the 2021 Big Butterfly Count.

Dr Zoë Randle, the senior surveys officer at Butterfly Conservation, said: “We’re also seeing other species which have previously suffered severe declines, such as the comma, recovering, with a huge increase of 94% in where it is found. These highly adaptable species are all able to move into new places as the climate warms, but for habitat-specific species, these trends raise serious red flags.”

For the scotch argus, a butterfly found in damp grasslands in the mountainous regions of Scotland, options are more limited. Since 1979, its distribution has decreased by 20%.

“This butterfly used to be found in northern England,” said Randle. “As our environment has warmed, it has shifted northwards to follow the cooler climates. But how far north can the scotch argus go?”

With a 42% decline since 1979, the gatekeeper is another butterfly that has suffered from habitat loss and global heating. The meadow brown has also dropped 22% in distribution, while green-veined white numbers have reduced by 11%.

For Randle, these figures are concerning: “Food plants can’t move like the butterflies do. Species that rely on particular habitats aren’t able to move as freely. This means that if climate change continues, they could become trapped in isolated fragments of remaining habitat, facing the very real threat of extinction.

“A lot of the time we see these patterns of change in isolation, but we have to remember that all creatures in the habitat are linked, including us humans.”

Butterflies form an integral part of our planet’s ecosystem. They serve as pollinators and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. With up to 80% of Britain’s butterflies already showing signs of depletion in either population number or distribution, observing their patterns and preserving habitats is imperative.

The Big Butterfly Count asks people to spend 15 minutes in a sunny spot this summer and record the number and type of butterflies witnessed. Last year, more than 135,000 counts were conducted across the UK, with volunteers spending a combined time of nearly four years counting butterflies. The information helps scientists understand how the creatures are faring, informs conservation efforts and can shape government policy.

Should I stay or should I go? If I stay there will be trouble … This wasn’t so much a press conference, more a job interview conducted in front of an audience of millions. One where almost everyone had already made up their mind that they would rather almost anyone else got the nod.

This was politics as a bloodsport. Painful to watch. Like intruding on a personal grief. Because there could be no winner here. Were Joe Biden to be word perfect and razor sharp, the doubts would remain about his cognitive abilities. The US president cannot erase his recent past. The gaffes come with ever increasing frequency. The obvious confusion. The long silences. The middle-distance stares.

The tipping point was last month’s presidential debate with Donald Trump. Biden tried to pass it off as one bad moment. The reality was that it was an excruciating 90 minutes. A complete meltdown no pretence or artifice could cover up. You would be embarrassed if this was an elderly relative. No one should be allowed to humiliate themselves in this way. But this was the most powerful man in the western world.

There was no coming back. Senior Democrats have become increasingly vocal about calling for him to step down. Nancy Pelosi has been notably careful in what she says. Congressmen have spoken out. George Clooney – reportedly with the implicit support of Barack Obama – has said it’s time for Biden to go.

But Joe is the only person who can’t read the room. He could step down with dignity. He could point to his record over the last four years and say that at 81 he has had enough. That it’s time for someone else to take over. Yet Biden has dug his heels in and so this can only end one way. With him being dethroned. Either by losing the presidency to Trump or being forced out by increasingly desperate members of his own party.

It’s like a TV show. Imagine a world where Donald Trump – no stranger to getting things wrong and inventing his own reality – is considered to be the model of cognitive competence. But we are where we are. To the rest of the world it’s a sick joke, only one where there are no longer any laughs. We’re way beyond that point now. It’s a theatre of cruelty where the stakes are unbelievably high.

The post-Nato press conference was the first opportunity for the world to see Biden in the raw since the debate. Biden unplugged. Biden unscripted. Sure he could read his opening statement off the autocue but then he would have to take questions from the media. A test of whether he could hold it together for nearly an hour. That’s how low the presidency has sunk. We’re obliged to give a president a free pass on the basis of limited information.

Things didn’t get off to the best of starts. Ninety minutes before he gave his solo press conference he hosted the Ukraine Compact in front of dozens of world leaders. Making the introductions he referred to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as President Putin. And this was off an autocue. He tried to brush it off as a slip of the tongue. A joke even. But the damage was already done. Do that sort of thing once and you can get away with it. Do it repeatedly and people aren’t so forgiving. Especially when most people are primarily listening out for the mistakes.

You could see the awkwardness on everyone’s face. Not long after, Keir Starmer was asked at his own press conference if this was yet another sign of Biden’s mental decline. The prime minister was a model of diplomacy. He had spent much of the conference telling the British media how on the ball the US president had been throughout and he insisted Biden be judged on his performance over the whole two days. He carefully avoided any reference to this latest mistake. But it’s not a good look when world leaders have to cover up.

Just before 7.30pm in Washington, Biden went out to face a hostile media, all of whom were looking for any weakness. The president was no more than a global lab rat. He deserves better than that. He deserves respect for his achievements. But respect cuts both ways. His family should have enough respect for him not to put him through such an ordeal. A quiet word that enough is enough.

We had been warned that he might only take four questions but he went on to take 10. He was on a mission to prove there was nothing wrong with him. That he could take on all comers. Except he couldn’t. There was no coming back from the Zelenskiy/Putin debacle.

The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.

But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene.

And of course there were the inevitable gaffes. Mistaking Europe for Asia barely rated a mention. Calling Kamala Harris “vice-president Trump” certainly did. That sent shockwaves through the nation. You just can’t go on making those sorts of mistakes and pretend that nothing is the matter. A decline on this scale should never have to be this public.

“I’m ready now and I will be ready three years from now to deal with Putin,” he insisted. Only he didn’t sound like it. Nor did he look like it. It’s as if Biden is waiting on a miracle. To reset his campaign to a Day Zero when none of this has ever happened. Where all mistakes are forgotten. Only it doesn’t work like this. We’ve gone way too far for that.

Nor is it enough merely to respond with the counter-factual of imagining how Donald Trump might have answered any of these questions. The bar shouldn’t have to be this low. The Democrats deserve better. America deserves better. The world deserves better.

California’s wildfire season is off to a ferocious start, with the state’s top wildfire official saying that fires have already burned through five times the average amount of land for this time of year.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Joe Tyler, the director of the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire), said the state has responded to more than 3,500 wildfires so far this year. Together, those fires have scorched nearly 220,000 acres – more than five times above what is typical for mid-July, which is considered fairly early in the state’s wildfire season.

“We are not just in a fire season, we are in a fire year,” Tyler said at the news conference. “Our winds and the recent heatwave have exacerbated the issue, consuming thousands of acres. So we need to be extra cautious.”

Authorities across the US west have warned of the rising risk of wildfires amid a protracted heatwave that has dried out the landscape and smashed temperatures records from California to Oregon to Nevada.

“Climate change is real,” said California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, on Wednesday. “Those extremes are here present every day in the great state of California.”

An abundantly wet winter has left landscapes across California coated in grasses that quickly dried as the weather warmed, creating abundant fuel for fast-burning brush fires.

California crews were working in scorching temperatures to battle numerous wildfires on Thursday, including a stubborn 34,000-acre blaze known as the Lake fire, which prompted evacuation orders for about 200 homes in the mountains of Santa Barbara county, north-west of Los Angeles.

In Oregon on Thursday, crews were battling the Larch Creek fire, which has grown to more than 11,000 acres since Tuesday. Lower temperatures and calming winds were helping the crews’ efforts, but the local fire danger level remained extreme. One firefighter was treated for heat-related injuries.

In Hawaii, Haleakala national park on Maui was closed as firefighters battled a blaze on the slopes of a mountain. Visitors in more than 150 vehicles that had gone up on Wednesday for the famous sunset views were not able to descend until about 4am on Thursday because the narrow roads were blocked by fire crews.

More than 63 million people in the US remained under heat alerts on Thursday, as forecasters predicted some relief from the heat was due by the weekend.

Las Vegas set a new record on Wednesday when it saw its record fifth consecutive day of temperatures sizzling at 115F (46.1C) or greater. Already, Nevada’s largest city has broken 16 heat records since 1 June “and we’re not even halfway through July yet”, a National Weather Service meteorologist, Morgan Stessman, said on Wednesday.

That includes an all-time high of 120F set on Sunday, which beat the previous 117F record.

The heat has been suspected in deaths across multiple states. In California, officials in the Silicon Valley county of Santa Clara are investigating 19 potential heat-related deaths, including three homeless individuals, the county’s medical examiner-coroner’s office said in a statement on Thursday. And in Oregon, the number of potentially heat-related deaths has risen to 10, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

Heat was blamed for a motorcyclist’s death last weekend in Death Valley national park and the National Park Service is investigating the third death of a Grand Canyon hiker in recent weeks. Arizona authorities are investigating deaths of a two-year-old and a baby in separate incidents, and in Nebraska, Omaha police say a boy died after being left in an SUV.

Read more on wildfires and heat in the US

Joe Biden has accidentally introduced the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin” in a gaffe that will fuel further concerns about his mental acuity that have threatened to scuttle his presidential campaign.

Biden made the mistake while flanked by Nato leaders during a signing ceremony alongside Zelenskiy on the final day of the Nato summit in Washington. It came just an hour before a rare press conference by Biden that has been called “make-or-break” for his campaign, as a growing number of political allies and donors have been calling for him to drop out of the race.

Concluding his opening remarks, Biden handed over to Zelenskiy with the words: “Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination.”

He said: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin!”

A number of European leaders began clapping hesitantly. German chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni turned their heads in surprise as Biden mentioned the Russian leader, while other European leaders broke into an awkward smattering of applause.

Realising his mistake, Biden caught himself and said: “President Putin! We’re going to beat President Putin. President Zelenskiy. I’m so focused on beating Putin. We’ve got to worry about it. Anyway, Mr President.”

“I’m better,” Zelenskiy said, shaking Biden’s hand.

“You are a hell of a lot better,” Biden responded in concluding his remarks.

The remark elicited gasps in a press centre, where hundreds of journalists were watching the remarks live on an internal television feed. A number of people in the room shouted out “Zelenskiy” to correct Biden’s mistake, after which he returned to the podium.

Zelenskiy had been due to give a press conference at the end of the Nato summit an hour later. But journalists who were waiting were told at short notice that the event was cancelled – meaning he didn’t have to respond to questions about Biden’s gaffe.

The news about the mistake quickly filtered into other press conferences with heads of government, rehashing questions about Biden’s mental state that have loomed over the conference since it began.

Keir Starmer, asked about President Biden’s gaffe, insisted that the Nato summit had made breakthroughs that were welcomed by President Zelenskiy and had left Nato in a stronger position.

Pressed by reporters on whether the US president was capable of serving another four years in office, he said: “Look, I was with him last night. We spent the best part of an hour together. We covered a lot of ground.

“We’ve been through two days of this council and come to a very good outcome. He’s led through all, spoken at every session, pulled people together, and we got a good outcome and I think he should give credit for that.”

French president Emanuel Macron in his press conference said: “Slips of the tongue happen, it’s happened to me.”

Scholz was asked, in English, about Biden’s gaffe in a press conference a few minutes later. He sidestepped the question, and said he hoped that Biden would continue to strongly support Ukraine.

Donald Trump’s running mate will be introduced at the Republican national convention next Wednesday by his eldest son, according to people familiar with the matter, raising speculation that Senator JD Vance will be named the vice-presidential pick after being endorsed by Don Jr.

The fact that Don Jr will speak immediately before the running mate delivers remarks, earlier reported by Axios, is seen as notable inside the Trump campaign because of Don Jr’s close ties to Vance.

Still, a person directly familiar with the matter cautioned that the speaking schedule was decided three to four weeks ago and they were uncertain how instructive Don Jr’s involvement was.

Trump has said he wants his running mate to be revealed at the convention next week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but due to convention rules that require the ticket to be nominated by the first day, the former president has been forced to make a decision before Wednesday.

For months, Trump has presided over a characteristically theatrical selection process in which he made dramatic pronouncements at rallies in an effort to drive media speculation before narrowing the list to a final three: the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, Senator Marco Rubio and Vance.

The leading contenders have run through an emotionally draining fight to be Trump’s running mate, defending the former president in cable news interviews, mingling with members at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, coalescing support from Trump allies and trying to appeal to Trump’s core Maga voters at rallies.

The Guardian has previously reported that Trump has told allies he wants a running mate who would be a “fighter” – someone who is media-savvy and will defend him on adversarial TV networks – and loyal to the extent that they would be “everything Mike Pence wasn’t”.

Trump’s former vice-president was a valuable asset during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns because of his Christian conservative credentials that shored up support among Republicans who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star.

But Pence’s refusal to do one final favor and comply with Trump’s demand to block the certification of the 2020 election results in Congress led to a falling-out, and made Pence the target of the January 6 Capitol attack rioters.

For his 2024 campaign, Trump is seeking a “Goldilocks” running mate: strong but loyal, in tune with Maga but not over-rehearsed, telegenic but not likely to outshine him. His choice will go up against Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice-president.

Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, has increasingly fit that profile.

On Sunday, Vance said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he supported Trump’s vow to appoint a special counsel to prosecute Joe Biden, making apparent references to the House oversight committee’s search for evidence of impeachable conduct by Biden, which it has not found.

Vance also suggested it was reasonable for Trump to prosecute Biden on the grounds that Biden had supposedly weaponized the legal system against him, although there is no evidence Biden has been involved in prosecutorial decisions at the justice department or elsewhere.

The NBC anchor Kristen Welker pressed Vance on his support for a special counsel: “If it’s not OK for Joe Biden to weaponize the justice department – as you say, which there’s no evidence of that – why is it OK for Donald Trump to do that?” she asked.

Vance repeated the common complaint among Republicans that one former justice department official took a job as a prosecutor in the New York criminal case in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election with a hush-money scheme.

“If Donald Trump’s attorney general had his No 2 or his No 3 jump ship to a local prosecutor’s office in Ohio or Wisconsin, and that person then went after Donald Trump’s political opposition, that’s a different conversation,” he said, though the prosecutor at issue was not as senior as the hypothetical.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to prosecute his political enemies, sharing posts on his Truth Social website that advocated jailing top Democrats and Republicans who criticized him, including one that said the former House Republican Liz Cheney should face “televised military tribunals”.

A “sauna” treatment for frogs has been used by researchers in Australia to successfully fight a deadly fungal disease that has devastated amphibians around the world, according to a new study.

Scientists created refuges for the animals using painted masonry bricks inside greenhouses that they called “frog saunas”. They found that endangered Australian green and golden bell frogs were able to clear infections from the deadly Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus, in the warmer conditions of the greenhouses, when they would otherwise have died. Many of the frogs that recovered in the refuges were then resistant to infection.

While the technique had previously been unsuccessful for other frog species, researchers found that the green and golden bell frog – once common in south-eastern Australia – responded well to the treatment, a discovery that offered hope for their future survival. Researchers said the rare amphibians were chosen after careful testing, which found they favoured the bricks as a habitat.

“Why we’re so excited about [the study’] is there just hasn’t been anything that works [to stop the infection],” said Dr Anthony Waddle, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney who led the study. “The last line of defence is bringing the frogs into captivity where you can cure and protect them. We’re slowly watching species blink out.”

In glacial ponds and alpine lakes, rainforests and wetlands, the deadly fungus has been killing off the word’s amphibian populations. At least 90 species are known to have gone extinct and many more are expected to disappear in the coming years. Scientists say it is the greatest recorded loss of biodiversity attributable to a single disease.

The Tanzanian Kihansi spray toad, Honduran Cerro Búfalo streamside frog and Mexican claw-toothed salamander are among the species believed to have been wiped out by the infection in the wild.

Waddle said that while there were caveats to where the steam-room strategy could be used, it was a rare piece of good news for the green and golden bell frogs. “This species is really limited to the coastal area of its former range. Ninety per cent of its populations have gone and more and more go every year. They’re not doing well. They’re not coming back. They’re not showing that clear sign of recovery that some other species have done on their own. So we’re excited,” he said.

The fungus, which is often known as Bd, causes a disease called chytridiomycosis in amphibians. It was formally identified by researchers in 1998 after widespread frog deaths around the world. The infection attacks the amphibians’ skin, causing heart attacks and death. The most deadly strain of the disease appears to be about 100 years old and researchers think it was probably spread by humans.

Andrew Cunningham, the professor of wildlife epidemiology at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology who first identified the fungal disease, said the technique had been tried with other species but there was no evidence it had worked for them.

“We’ve done this both through manipulating their natural environment to increase sun exposure and ground and water temperature, and by the installation of heated ponds (to a temperature above which the fungus cannot survive, but the frogs can). We have continued to have lethal outbreaks of chytridiomycosis and the only way to stop these has been to bring the frogs under human care to treat them with a fungicidal drug,” he said.

“Maybe the technique is species-specific, but unfortunately, I doubt it is a silver bullet for tackling the global threat of amphibian chytridiomycosis,” he added.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

It may be known as snail mail, but researchers are hoping the public will use the postal service to send them a different kind of mollusc: slugs.

A team of scientists and farmers carrying out research into slug-resistant wheat say they need about 1,000 of the creatures to explore how palatable slugs find various crops.

“The ones that we’re specifically looking for are grey field slugs: they’re the ones that are the agricultural pests,” said Tom Allen-Stevens, the founder of the British On-Farm Innovation Network that is leading the work.

The study is asking people to send in slugs by signing up for a “slug scout” pack, which includes containers and postage-paid envelopes. The pack also contains guides on how to create an attractive habitat to catch slugs and how to identify species.

The latter, it seems, is crucial. “There is a slug called the leopard slug,” Allen-Stevens said. “And if you come across that for heaven’s sake don’t send it in, because they eat other slugs.”

The researchers are looking for farmers to become “slug sleuths”, which involves hosting trials such as using traps to monitor slug activity. The research is part of a three-year £2.6m project known as Slimers that began in 2023 and is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

It aims to find new ways to tackle what it calls “arable farming’s biggest pest issue”. Slimers says slugs are responsible for £43.5m worth of crop damage to wheat and oilseed rape every year in the UK.

The chemical metaldehyde, which was commonly used in slug control products in the UK, was banned in 2022, resulting in the increased use of ferric phosphate pellets. However, the industry is keen for alternatives.

“Where we can we want to apply pesticides more precisely and everyone in the industry recognises that’s the right direction to go in,” said Allen-Stevens. “And farmers don’t want to spread slug pellets where they’re not needed.”

Slimers is looking at new ways to control the molluscs, including by identifying and predicting slug hotspots so that available treatments can be applied in a more focused way.

The team is also looking at the potential for slug-resistant crops. It is carrying out trials involving a landrace wheat known as Watkins 788 that slugs seem to spurn and 84 crosses of this crop with modern wheat.

While Allen-Stevens said the postal kits had been approved by Royal Mail, he cautioned against posting molluscs late in the week. “That’s just in case they sit in a post room over the weekend,” he said. “That’s the main thing … Don’t post them before a weekend or a bank holiday.”