The Tory leader thinks she has masterminded the PM’s series of crises. You could put her on a fairground ride and she would still think she was in control of where she was going

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To have one Labour peer with a close association to a child sex offender may be regarded as a misfortune: to have two looks like carelessness. This was never going to be an easy prime minister’s question for Keir Starmer.

The opposition was spoilt for choice. The peers in question – Peter Mandelson and Matthew Doyle – as well as the topics of Morgan McSweeney, Tim Allan, Wes Streeting … These were just some of the crisis points of the past seven days. Even by the political psychodramas of the past 10 years, it’s fair to say Starmer has had the week from hell. Just one damn thing after another.

In the 1980s, spearheaded by Channel 4, British TV stopped telling Black and Asian people how to assimilate and gave them a voice. A golden age of dissent, activism and culture ensued – but have we since gone backwards?

One afternoon in 1984, Farrukh Dhondy went for lunch, not realising he was about to become part of British television history. The Indian-born writer was working for Channel 4 at the time on breakout multi-ethnic shows such as No Problem!, a sitcom about a family of Jamaican heritage in London, and Tandoori Nights, a comedy about an Indian restaurant. When Dhondy arrived at the Ivy, Jeremy Isaacs, the burgeoning broadcaster’s founding chief executive, ordered an £84 bottle of wine.

“I thought, ‘What the hell is this all about?’” Dhondy says. It turned out Isaacs wanted him to be the next commissioning editor for Channel 4. “For God’s sake, I’m not an office job man,” he said. “I’m a writer.” But after a brief conversation with the Trinidadian activist-scholar CLR James, who was living with him while going through a divorce, Dhondy changed his mind.

The pedal is pressed hard to the metal for this very stylish high-stakes armed robbery thriller starring Chris Hemsworth

Bart Layton is the British film-maker who previously gave us American Animals, a true-crime docudrama about the theft of rare books. That film’s title would also have applied perfectly well to this new one, an LA crime thriller adapted from a novella by Don Winslow. It is a little in the style of Michael Mann, though without the military hardware and the overhead shots of SUVs moving in swift convoy that would make it a full Mann homage.

Layton does without the distinctive indirect mannerisms and meta-commentaries of his earlier movies, but he applies his pedal to the metal for what is an enjoyable and very stylish high-stakes armed robbery film about a thief who is highly controlled, super-cool, super-groomed, and naturally looking for the “walkaway money” of the time-honoured one last job.

Gen Z fell in love with him on the small screen, but with the release of Emerald Fennell’s steamy new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the Aussie actor’s star is set to shine even brighter

Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff. The 28-year-old Australian actor has scarcely been out of the headlines since his controversial casting in Emerald Fennell’s imminent adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Now, in the week of the film’s release, he’s being hailed as “the hottest man on the planet”, tipped as a future Oscar winner and household name. Not even mixed early reviews seem to be slowing the momentum.

Truly, these heights must seem wuthering to the boy from Brisbane who fell in love with acting after being cast as The Cat in The Hat. “As soon as I was singing and dancing with the big hat on, I knew that that was what I wanted to do,” Elordi said last December. But who is he, and what’s behind his rapid rise?

In interviews with community leaders, lawyers, security specialists and bereaved relatives, the Guardian pieces together how an operation targeting a criminal gang left 122 people dead last October

• Warning: contains graphic images

• Visual investigation: how Rio’s deadliest police raid unfolded

• The Long Wave newsletter: ‘It doesn’t shock that it’s Black people getting killed’

Juliana Conceição startled awake as the first shots of an infamous day were fired in the Complexo da Penha, the labyrinthine Rio favela where she was born and raised.

It was 4.30am on 28 October. Thousands of police had surrounded the community’s barricaded entrances and were preparing to swarm up its streets on foot and in black armoured personnel carriers with firing ports and bullet-cracked ballistic windows.

Our expert shares saucy gifts for every experience level and relationship status – from feather ticklers to Fairtrade massage bars

• The best vibrators, tested

I won’t beat around the bush (although I will suggest some devices that can do that for you very efficiently): Valentine’s Day is coming up, so you may well be looking for some saucy gift suggestions for your other half.

As an award-winning expert who’s worked in the sexual wellbeing and pleasure sector for more than two decades, I’ve trialled thousands of vibrators and stimulators, lotions and potions, and a whole A-Z of BDSM bits and bobs. In fact, I have an entire loft room in my house dedicated to storing all my X-rated testers, samples and prototypes. I’m a trustworthy source when it comes to sauciness, so here are my top Valentine’s gift suggestions, whether mild or wild – all tried and tested. From a turmeric latte massage bar to a crotchless teddy, let’s get stuck in.

Harriet Harman leads calls for an appointment that would ‘turbocharge’ a ‘complete culture change’ at No 10

Female Labour MPs have demanded that Keir Starmer appoint a senior woman as his de facto deputy to oversee a “complete culture change” in Downing Street after a series of scandals that they say have exposed a No 10 “boy’s club”.

Harriet Harman, one of the party’s most senior figures, urged Starmer to revive the role of first secretary of state on Wednesday, a post occupied by Peter Mandelson under Gordon Brown.

Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware

The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.

Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.

Chancellor says stronger alignment with Europe is ‘biggest prize’ for trade and economic growth

Rachel Reeves has insisted Labour can win the political argument for a closer relationship with the EU, calling it the “biggest prize” for UK economic growth.

Some Labour strategists have been wary of making the case for stronger alignment with the EU, believing it could alienate pro-Brexit voters.

Actor who also starred in Varsity Blues and Rules of Attraction revealed in 2024 he had been diagnosed with cancer

James Van Der Beek, the actor best known for playing the lead in hit 90s teen drama Dawson’s Creek, has died.

“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace,” reads a statement shared on Van Der Beek’s official Instagram page on Wednesday.