The myth of the American west meets the energy of riot grrrl in Justine Kurland’s photographs of free-spirited teenage girls

In 1997, Justine Kurland, then a fine arts student at Yale University, went in search of teenage girls to photograph. At a time of increasing conformity and commercialised ideas of beauty, the girls she had in mind were free-spirited and wild-haired; making dens and hanging out in woods, messing about in rivers, smoking in parking lots, lost in languid afternoons, careless not only of the male gaze but any onlookers at all.

Kurland started out on her quest in New Haven’s semi-industrial hinterland before travelling further afield over the next five years on a mazy road trip; if the girls were on the margins, then she would be too. She loosely choreographed the groups of teenagers that she found, but mostly invited the girls into a promising setting and let them do their thing. She took this photograph of four girls in an abandoned car in the millennium year, and called it Shipwrecked. The girls she chose invariably understood the idea of the pictures. “I can always spot people,” she has said. “It’s, like, really one of my superpowers. I can always tell which teenage girls would love living in the woods with their friends.”

When Rhys Graham first picked up his camera in lockdown, he assumed he would take a few portraits of friends. Now, weeks in, it has turned into a sprawling project documenting Australia’s new domesticity

In these strange, suspended times, a camera and lens can be an emotional bridge from one person to the next.

As a film-maker you become reliant on the manic energy of shooting and the warmth of your community – crews, actors, colleagues or subjects – to keep you buoyant.

After facing the existential threat of testing positive for Covid-19, these Australians describe the reactions of their communities

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When they emerged from isolation, one felt like an escapee, another saw friends turn on their heels and some questioned if they had really recovered. Though their symptoms varied, all the accounts from these people who have recovered from coronavirus echo the same sentiment: recovery came at a price. Weeks after getting better, strangers and loved ones still scrabble to create distance, afraid of contagion.

At the time of writing, 5,984 Australians had recovered from the 6,875 confirmed cases. While the emerging consensus is that recovery induces, at least, short-term immunity, the World Health Organization urges caution, and researchers and health authorities are racing to determine how long this defence lasts.

Jaston Khosa was one of 600,000 men from African countries who fought for Britain. He was quietly buried on VE Day after a life of abject poverty

In a crowded, Zambian slum on VE Day, a family gathered to bury one of the last veterans of Britain’s colonial army. Jaston Khosa of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment was laid to rest on the day the world commemorated the end of the war in which he fought.

The 95-year-old great-grandfather was among 600,000 Africans who fought for the British during World War Two, on battlefields across their own continent as well as Asia and the Middle East. Although their service has largely been forgotten, the mobilisation of this huge army from Britain’s colonies triggered the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade.

Victor Grayson was briefly the most famous socialist in Edwardian England. But in 1920 he disappeared. His fate remains one of the most compelling mysteries in British political history

“Oh mad, foolish Grayson!”
Editorial in the socialist magazine The Clarion, August 1907

In the aftermath of the general election of February 1974, the mood in Marsden socialist club in west Yorkshire was grim. David Clark, the young Labour MP for Colne Valley, in which the former mill town of Marsden sits, had lost his seat. Clark gamely attempted to lift his activists’ spirits with a rousing speech. But one elderly stalwart remained unmoved: “Old Harry was sitting at the bar nursing a pint,” recalls Clark, who is now 80 and a Labour peer. “He said: ‘All due respect to master Dave, but we’ve only ever had one true socialist MP around here. And that was Victor Grayson.’”

Try a dark matt lipstick, but don’t be scary

Unless you are into goth, you wouldn’t look to The Addams Family for beauty inspiration. However, there’s a modern way to go there without alarming anyone on Zoom, and the fresh take at the Max Mara SS20 show makes the case. If you find the requisite black lips intimidating, replace with a less macabre deep burgundy or aubergine. Swap matt alabaster skin for something a little less lifeless – a decent tinted moisturiser will warm things up. Finish with a pastel wash of colour across the eyes. Immediately, everything looks less intense. Morticia would be mortified.

1. Jimmy Choo Seduction Lipstick in Purple Night £50, harrods.com
2. Huda Beauty Pastel Obsessions £27, selfridges.com
3. Laura Mercier Caviar Mascara £22, spacenk.com
4. Smashbox Always On Liquid Lips in Disorderly £19, smashbox.co.uk
5. Glossier Skywash Eyeshadow £15, glossier.com

Sales from online dealers has shot up during the lockdown. Here’s your chance to find some great deals and also to try some new bottles and grapes

Shaw and Smith Sauvignon Blanc, Adelaide Hills, Australia 2019 (£14.95, slurp.co.uk) With most of us living out most of our lives in the virtual world at the moment, it’s not surprising that a lot of wine buying has migrated online, too. Depending on which statistical data gatherer you believe, sales of alcohol online were up by as much as 50% in the first weeks of the crisis v “normal” times. A lot of those sales went through the virtual tills of the supermarkets, of course. But the online wine specialists have been benefiting, too. If you’re looking to dip a toe into online wine buying for the first time, many retailers are offering discounted mixed cases to get you started. Slurp.co.uk, for example, has a 10-bottle “Indulge in Isolation” case, which at £120 works out as a £50 discount. There are some nice wines in there, although, personally, I’d rather go à la carte on slurp’s extensive list, filling a case with bottles such as Shaw and Smith’s superbly zingy, pristine sauvignon.

De Martino Viejas Tinajas Cinsault, Itata, Chile 2018 (£14.95, virginwines.co.uk) One mixed case that I do like the look of is Virgin Wine’s selection of contemporary German bottles, which, includes pinot blanc and pinot noir as well as a scintillating example of the country’s most famous grape variety, Gunderloch Fritz’s Riesling, Rheinhessen 2017 (a bottle of which is £14.99 on its own; The Best of Modern Germany case of 12 bottles is £140). You could also include any of those Germans in a mixed case with a wine such as the gorgeously light, rosehippy-red fruited, clay amphora-made Viejas Tinajas from Chile. Meanwhile, the UK’s oldest wine retailer, and one of the first to make a success of online, Berry Bros & Rudd, has a tempting 12 for £200 mix and match offer of 30 smart bottles, which is pretty good value for wines from the likes of De Martino, the Loire’s Vincent Carême, Beaujolais’ Julien Sunier and the Douro’s Quinta de la Rosa.

A loving touch will get seedlings ready to plant

As spring turns to summer, gardeners everywhere will be itching to plant the seedlings and cuttings they’ve been raising indoors out in the garden. However, particularly for newbies, the effects of this transition from the cosseted conditions of a warm windowsill to the great outdoors can be a significant hurdle.

The reason why this switch is tricky is that plants have the amazing ability to adapt their anatomy to shield themselves from environmental threats, however they are only triggered to do so when stimulated by the threat itself. Indoors, plants enjoy stable temperatures, limited air movement and much lower light levels (as window glass filters out UVB rays). This means they tend to direct most of their energies into growing, instead of investing in these defences.

And they’re off! The baby peas and beans are out on their own. But will they survive?

Sleep restless, anxiety dreams, and if there wasn’t enough to be concerned about I am worrying about our baby beans and peas.

It is often like this in spring. The responsibility, it comes with the shorter nights and longer light, maybe I have more time on my hands. I have saved two hours a day on travelling and I only work a few miles’ walk from home. This extra time has now become a trip to the plot, or perhaps pottering on the terrace. A more intimate gardening relationship cemented in the spring mornings. Deepened, more dependent.

Author Dan Richards, who has travelled to the ‘ends of the earth’, says he is now applying similar coping skills to being alone and indoors for weeks

You join me overlooking an empty Edinburgh crossroads, an indoorsman considering my new neck of the woods. Near-empty buses roll down Dundas Street and shush across the junction in the haar (fog). In this brave moot world – a month of Christmas mornings so far – I watch lone joggers and mothers with children, and wave at good dogs. I write to my friends. I check in by phone. “Yes,” I say, several times a week, “Edinburgh’s very nice. Quiet.”

Two years ago, I spent several months travelling for a book, seeking out solitude and remote locations – strange to think now. I visited wild places on the edge – frozen Soviet ghost towns, Mars missions in the Utah desert, shrines perched high on Japanese mountains – as well as spartan structures whose wildness emanated from within, such as Simon Starling’s metamorphic installation Shedboatshed, the writing “Wendy houses” of Roald Dahl and Tove Jansson, and Roger Deakin’s Suffolk shepherd’s hut.

We may be spending less by not travelling to work, but with an uncertain future it’s time to take stock of personal finances

With gyms shut, taps turned off in pubs and the prospect of a holiday a distant dream, many people are finding their outgoings have dropped since lockdown. But the shadow of a looming recession and concern about whether jobs will even exist when offices reopen, means many are looking at their finances even more closely.

So what are the best ways to improve them amid extraordinary times and an uncertain future?

He gave McCartney tips on how to scream in tune and paved the way for everyone from Otis Redding to Prince. Richard Penniman showed the world how rock’n’roll could be a manifesto for personal liberation

Little Richard’s Rip It Up entered the UK top 30, right at the bottom, in December 1956. It looked up at a chart that included Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, but was mostly filled with light opera gloop such as Malcolm Vaughan’s St Therese of the Roses, three different versions of the cod-calypso of Cindy, Oh Cindy, and toddler-friendly novelties including Dickie Valentine’s Christmas Island and Mitchell Torok’s When Mexico Gave Up the Rhumba, while the spirit of the blitz lived on with Vera Lynn’s A House With Love in It. Play any of these records either side of Rip It Up and the effects are guaranteed goosebumps, an involuntary laugh and real surprise. With the sheer volume of Richard’s raw-throated scream – ebullient, gleeful, quite filthy – the shock of the new can still be felt. Rip It Up – that title alone!

Think of Bowie. Think of Prince. Little Richard was doing the same thing – with greater extravagance – decades earlier

The Observer’s critics recommend the best new arts shows to enjoy on TV, on the radio and online

Barber Shop Chronicles
A never-before-broadcast recording of Inua Ellams’s 2017 hit play splicing stories and banter with barbs and laughter. Available to stream for seven days from 7pm Thursday on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel. Clare Brennan

Author David McKee reveals why, 40 years on, his cautionary tale of the perils of ignoring children is still relevant

For the past 40 years it has been a warning to parents about the monstrous consequences of ignoring their children. Now new illustrations of the classic picture book Not Now, Bernard have been created to better reflect the daily life of families in the age of smartphones and tablets.

The former EastEnders actor talks about shooting a pilot on a deadly virus, telling British stories with a difference – and how playing a bit part as a pigeon changed his career

The so-called “curse of EastEnders” – the struggle for soap actors to transition into more prestigious dramatic roles after leaving the show – always weighed heavily on the mind of Himesh Patel.

So when he decided to leave the soap in 2016, after nine years playing Tamwar Masood, he knew whichever role he chose next would be critical in breaking typecast, perhaps even defining the rest of his career. He went to a friend whose theatre company, withWings, took inventive musical adaptations to the Edinburgh fringe. That year they were doing Le Bossu, a retelling of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Patel mentioned that he wanted to get out of his comfort zone and do some theatre. “He came back to me and said, ‘Cool, well, I can offer you the role of a pigeon.’”

Prosecutor rejects Australia’s argument International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction because Palestine is ‘not a state’

The Australian government has told the International Criminal Court it should not investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine because Palestine is “not a state”, arguing the court prosecutor’s investigation into alleged attacks on civilians, torture, attacks on hospitals, and the use of human shields, should be halted on jurisdictional grounds.

Australia was lobbied to make the submission to the court by Israel, which is not a party to the court. But the office of the prosecutor has rejected Australia’s argument, saying it had not formally challenged Palestine’s right to be a party to the court before.

Rise of spy chief to premier comes as Iran struggles to maintain momentum months after killing of powerful general

In late February, six weeks after the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was killed by a US drone, a candidate for Iraq’s vacant premiership was nervously preparing for an interview that would secure him the role.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s rise from intelligence chief to the seat of national power had been unorthodox, as was the journey he had just made – from Baghdad, where high-stakes appointments like his had mostly been made over the past decade.

Transport secretary announces £2bn package to get UK walking and cycling instead

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The enormity of the challenge of getting the UK back to work was laid bare on Saturday, as the government acknowledged that the capacity of Britain’s transport network will be reduced by 90%.

The transport minister, Grant Shapps, said at the daily Downing Street press briefing that even if a full public transport service is restored, the government’s two-metre physical distancing rule will mean 10% of the usual number of passengers will be able to travel.

At the go-getting estate agency’s AGM this week, all minds will be focused on getting out of a tricky situation

When a Foxtons employee looks in the mirror, the estate agent can discern a reflection that others cannot.

To them, the figure smiling back is a dashingly attired young tycoon – confident that their sharp wits are about to land them another tasty commission. But many of those attempting to buy a home in London might interpret that same image as – how shall we put this? – slightly less heroic.

Modest changes expected to include relaxing exercise rules and reopening garden centres

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Boris Johnson’s plans to ease the UK lockdown are likely to be in line with Wales, which would result in only modest changes such as the reopening of garden centres and libraries, and a relaxation of exercise rules, the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said on Saturday.

Drakeford said the prime minister’s announcement for England would be in line with the very smallest easing granted in Wales.

The museums of Europe have begun reopening their doors to art lovers desperate to see old favourites and new works

I am cursing my bad luck not to be stuck in lockdown in the Prado. A friend wishes she had stowed away in a closet before they bolted the doors of the National Gallery. Others would give anything for a week in the Rijksmuseum, a day in the Uffizi, an hour with Rembrandt or Vermeer, even just a few minutes with a Samuel Palmer moonscape in the Ashmolean or a Turner sunrise at Tate Britain. Museums are places of the heart.

We see art in time and place; we cannot see it otherwise. Of course there are other whereabouts of the works we most long to set eyes on again, during this evil pandemic: the cave paintings at Chaumet in France, Fra Angelico’s Annunciation in a Florentine monastery, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty coiled in the glistening waters of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. These were all chosen in an unofficial and entirely self-selecting Twitter survey (mine), along with Leonardo’s The Last Supper and James Turrell’s Deer Shelter Skyspace, framing the blue heavens above Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The highest rates of Covid-19 casualties are in countries run by know-nothing populists

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All of a sudden, and after years of bluffing, conservatives are warning of the dangers of jumping to hasty conclusions. Before I go any further, I must therefore say our newly scrupulous masters have a point. The league tables of national Covid-19 death figures are not the last word on the crisis, and may look different in a few weeks. That’s that done, then. Everybody happy? Good. Let’s get on with it.

In the world as it is, rather than as it may be, a shameful fact is undeniable. The highest Covid-19 casualties are in the US and the UK, where the mendacities of the populist right have deformed society. It turns out that being governed by Anglo-Saxon conservatives is a threat to the health of nations. Their rule kills the old and blights the futures of the young. To understand their ineptitude, think of how conservatism turned into a know-nothing culture in the past decade, and ask what Donald Trump and Boris Johnson would be doing in an alternative universe where they never came close to power.

The rights of the most vulnerable, including those with dementia, should not be violated

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Last week, driving to the shops, I passed a care home and saw a figure standing at an upstairs window: an old woman looking out at a world she could not enter. She looked like a prisoner. And in a way, that’s probably what she was.

Let’s talk about old people. Let’s talk about people in care homes, about people living with dementia and dying with dementia, out of sight and out of mind, and what the lockdown means for them. Let’s talk about what we are not talking about enough, not thinking about enough, not caring about enough.

Sincerity is an increasingly rare commodity among our leaders, but sombre addresses by the Queen and Germany’s president had it in spades

Public suspicion is often aroused by the neat use of rhetoric, or by hearing a clever trick of speech. It is understandable that a stylish phrase or a persuasive analogy from the mouth of an authority figure should be met with caution.

Many are now also wary of the comparisons with the Second World War that are lobbed at the population each week by politicians, for the globe is not waging a military campaign or fighting a battle, there is no violent human enemy to defeat. Instead, we are all engaged in a unique and sustained mass experiment in protection and survival.

Research finds that both male and female judges are more likely to employ female clerks if they have worked with women

Discrimination over jobs is bad. Bad for those discriminated against, and bad for society, as talent is wasted and divisions sown.

Women reaching senior leadership positions in organisations is generally a sign of success for gender equality – but it can also lead to increased equality elsewhere. That is the important finding from new research on the (not famously diverse) world of judges. The study looks at the hiring of law clerks by senior judges in the US.

• Sarries players urged to focus on international future
• ‘I’m quite confident that they will make good decisions’

Maro Itoje and Mako Vunipola have been urged to make “good decisions” for their international careers by the England defence coach, John Mitchell, with both players yet to commit to Saracens next season.

Itoje had hoped to receive dispensation to continue his England career while spending next season on loan in France at Racing 92 rather than in the Championship with relegated Saracens. However, that move was blocked by the other Premiership clubs since it did not meet “exceptional circumstances”, the loophole that allows England’s head coach, Eddie Jones, to select overseas-based players in the event of an injury crisis.

Two players and a photographer remember what it was like to face Castilla at an empty Upton Park in 1980

At half-time West Ham’s former chairman Len Cearns was sent on a futile mission by his fellow directors. They wanted him to go down to the home dressing room to ask John Lyall if there was any way his team could possibly remember that the foul language being used in the heat of battle was floating away from the pitch, rattling around the empty terraces and causing some discomfort for the people sitting in the posh seats.

“There was a lot of swearing going on in the game,” Alvin Martin says as he recalls West Ham hosting a European tie behind closed doors in the autumn of 1980. “You don’t realise it. You’re communicating in a factory way.”

Elite clubs will prey on desperate ones in the hunt for bargains as the game reels from its biggest financial hit since the 1930s

Even at the time – in 2017 – the fee Paris Saint-Germain paid Barcelona for Neymar was extraordinary: £198m was 125% more than the previous record, set a year earlier when Manchester United had signed Paul Pogba from Juventus. Transfer records simply aren’t broken by that amount in the usual run of things. It was a statement signing, a deal designed not only to land the player, but to emphasise PSG’s financial power, to highlight their status as a super-club while inflating the market to a level at which only the mega-rich could compete.

Three years on, with football suspended across the globe and major leagues desperately seeking ways to get games on to stave off financial apocalypse, the world looks very different. A model predicated on constant growth has received an abrupt shock.

Volunteers who help the British Grand Prix run smoothly want to get back trackside but questions remain on safety and testing

“We are like one big family,” says Carolyn Doyle of the bond between the marshals of the British Grand Prix. “We are there because we love it and we want to achieve the same thing – that’s what makes it really special.”

Much as it does bring great pleasure to this selfless collective, the sport knows their presence is invaluable. As Silverstone considers hosting two consecutive races behind closed doors in July, the volunteer marshals are having to consider the new realities imposed on Formula One by the coronavirus crisis.

Marcus Arbery Sr says Ahmaud’s death at the hands of two white men, while he was out for a run, was an act of racism

Marcus Arbery Sr says his son was just like him, fit and athletic.

Related: ‘Every stone will be uncovered’: how Georgia officials failed the Ahmaud Arbery case

The White House press secretary has made a confident start in a notoriously difficult role. Those who know her say the media and opponents underestimate her at their peril

It was a mic drop designed to thrill conservatives and infuriate liberals and the media.

Related: 'You can't ask the virus for a truce': reopening America is Trump's biggest gamble

Acclaimed photographers from around the world share a single image reflecting on their experience of the coronavirus outbreak

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The first rule is, don’t be a complete schmuck...

In the opening chapter of Wine Girl, the hugely entertaining memoir by Victoria James, once America’s youngest sommelier, the author describes a blood-boiling encounter with the kind of customer for whom involuntary euthanasia should be devised. It is a Monday lunch at the glossy Aureole in New York and the host of a testicle-heavy table of four has ordered a $650 bottle of a serious white burgundy (a 2009 Chevalier-Montrachet from Domaine Ramonet).

Having checked at her serving station that the wine isn’t tainted, James returns to the table and pours a small measure for the customer to taste. He declares it corked. “I think she has too much perfume in her nose, this girl…” he says, as if competing for a gold in the misogyny Olympics. There are only two bottles of the wine in the restaurant’s cellar. James does not want to waste a big-bucks bottle when she knows it is perfectly fine. Instead, she presents the unopened second bottle, takes it away, then returns and gets him to taste the original bottle again. And between racist epithets, he declares it perfect, with a fat top note of triumph in his voice. Witness: small penis energy.

The Labour MP and A&E doctor on her run-in with the health secretary and her shifts on the hospital frontline

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When Rosena Allin-Khan stood up in the House of Commons last Tuesday to address the health secretary, Matt Hancock, she anticipated being stonewalled. She didn’t expect to become the story.

In her other life, the MP for Tooting is an A&E doctor and intensive care specialist and has been working 12-hour hospital shifts throughout the pandemic. Allin-Khan reported that the government’s failures were contributing to a greater loss of life and she wanted answers on its testing strategy. The health secretary awkwardly responded by suggesting that Allin-Khan’s testimony was untrue and moreover, that she “might do well to take a leaf out of the shadow secretary of state’s book in terms of tone”.

When lockdown has ended, we must continue to live simpler lives to benefit both us and the planet, says Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I know we’re in the middle of a global pandemic with the economy knackered and the free world led by a man like Trump. I know our freedom has been temporarily taken away from us. But I’m dreading the end of lockdown.

For years I’ve craved a slower pace of life. Lockdown has allowed me to spend time with my family – and not on the relentless promise of success in my career. It has allowed me to play and learn with my child, rather than rush to drop-off or pick-up at wraparound care. It has allowed me to walk in woodland rather than standing on a crowded commuter train. In many ways it has been idyllic.

State forbids preaching to under-18s without parents’ permission

The Israeli government is threatening to take off air a Christian television channel that launched in the country to preach to Jews, warning that it will be barred if it breaks strict rules around proselytising.

GOD TV, an evangelical media network that broadcasts across the world, signed a seven-year deal with a major Israeli cable television provider, HOT, to host its new Hebrew-language channel that began airing last month.

A recently discovered document sheds new light on the wartime leader’s ‘iron curtain’ address

It was a speech that electrified the world, one that coined a phrase that was to characterise the political era that followed the second world war. But its content could have been very different, reveals a document freshly unearthed by a historian researching the life of Winston Churchill.

On 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, before a huge crowd which included the US president, Harry Truman, Britain’s wartime leader issued a famous description of the political division that was opening across Europe between the Soviet-dominated Communist east and the western democracies. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill declared, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

Campaigners call for return of 1930s wording to Twentieth Century Fox Film Co former offices

Disney, titan of the media and entertainment world, has enraged a group of Londoners attempting to preserve one of Soho’s best-known squares. And the battle is over one word: “Fox”.

In the south-west corner of Soho Square stands Twentieth Century House, a grand emblem of the American film industry’s key role in this part of the city since 1937. It is now in the hands of Disney.

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn ‘uplifted’ after meeting with shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy

The family of Harry Dunn have urged the shadow foreign secretary to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of their son’s death.

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn said they felt “uplifted” and believed Lisa Nandy would “take things forward on our and the nation’s behalf” after a virtual meeting with her on Friday.

Caracas has accused Colombia and US of plotting to overthrow president Maduro; says military found abandoned vessels in Orinoco river

Venezuela’s military says it has seized three abandoned Colombian light combat vessels that soldiers found while patrolling the Orinoco river on Saturday, several days after the government accused its neighbour of aiding a failed invasion plot.

In a statement, the defence ministry said the boats were equipped with machine guns and ammunition, but had no crew, adding they were discovered as part of a nationwide operation to guarantee Venezuela’s “freedom and sovereignty”.

Tatiana Akhmedova wants high court to have access to son’s papers in her fight for £453m – but he says her claim is unlawful

It is proving to be a very modern divorce. Armies of lawyers and advisers; hundreds of millions of pounds at stake; priceless art; a superyacht; a key lieutenant switching sides; the son dragged into the proceedings by his mother. No wonder some involved have likened it to The War of the Roses, the dark Hollywood comedy about a feuding couple starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.

But now attempts to secure the assets awarded following Britain’s biggest, bitterest marital breakup may hinge on how the high court views an arcane financial practice dating back to feudal times.

London and Manchester already have measures to restrict traffic, encourage walking and cycling, and cut air pollution

Roads are to be temporarily closed near schools when parents drop off and pick up their children, in order to deter people from driving on the school run – and to encourage more walking, cycling and scooting.

The plans to shut off roads at school rush hours, using barriers, cones and other measures, are already far advanced in London and Manchester and are expected to be followed in other cities and towns.

We might have to watch the rest of Europe return to the beaches while we’re still stuck at home

In the past month some mundane words seem to have regained their old mystery. “Travel” is one. In my dutiful daily hour on the rusting exercise bike in the garden I’ve been listening to favourite audiobooks of the remarkable far away: Jan Morris in Venice, Peter Matthiesson in the Himalayas, Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia. In the absence of the possibility of any kind of abroad the great descriptive passages seem doubly evocative.

Follow the science, they say… So here are 12 new ‘observations’ about life in a post-pandemic world

Apologies in advance: this column will be distressing to scientists (including those in my own family, but thankfully none of them read what I write).

The rules of the physical world seem to be abandoning us. The virus acts like no other pathogen. Two metres is entirely subjective now, expanding and contracting to meet our needs. Time is non-Newtonian, like the cornflour you’ve probably resorted to if you have small children to entertain, stiff and fluid at once. Numbers are basically meaningless: in pandemic maths, a figure such as 413 deaths – the one released on the day I am writing, an unthinkable catastrophe at another time – is encouraging, a cause for some optimism.

Ministers’ shambolic briefings expose a terrifying lack of competence

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‘In spite of the sunny bank holiday, it is vitally important that we continue to abide by the current restrictions: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.” That was the message delivered by the environment secretary, George Eustice, at Friday afternoon’s press conference. Yet just the day before, most newspapers were emblazoned with excited headlines foretelling a significant relaxation of social distancing restrictions, based on briefing from government sources: “Lockdown freedom beckons”, “First steps to freedom from Monday” and “Stay home advice to be scrapped”.

Despite the critical importance of clear public messaging to any public health strategy, the government’s communications have been marred by mixed messages throughout this deadly pandemic. Its core message, asking the public to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives, has been very effective, but this has consistently been undermined by ministers and advisers inaccurately briefing the press that there is about to be a shift in policy. Before the Easter weekend, reports appeared that ministers thought that the public had been too obedient in following the lockdown, and that a relaxation was imminent. The same happened before this bank holiday weekend, forcing the government to clarify that there was no change in restrictions and that people must continue to abide by the law.

Taking Britain safely out of lockdown will necessitate unpopular policies of more spending and surveillance

A commonplace criticism of political parties is that they have drifted “into their comfort zone”, which mostly means that Labour talks a lot about raising spending, while the Conservatives talk about cutting taxes. But politicians have comfort zones that are operational as well as ideological: ways of working that they find more attractive than others.

In late 2014, one ambitious young shadow cabinet minister asked his aides to draw up a 14-point plan to help him become leader of the Labour party. Step two involved an itemised list of Labour MPs, each of whom, he was told, he needed to wine and dine if he was to have any hope of making a successful bid at the job. The frontbencher in question contemplated evening after evening spent in conversation with his colleagues versus time spent with his wife and children. Surely, he reasoned, he could achieve the same end by writing thoughtful columns in the newspapers and delivering wide-ranging speeches? His leadership bid never recovered.

State reports 73 cases of children falling severely ill with toxic shock-like reaction that has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease

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The deaths of three children in New York of inflammatory complications possibly linked to Covid-19 has prompted Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, to warn of “an entirely different chapter” of a disease that had been believed to cause only mild symptoms in children.

The governor reported the first death, of a five-year old boy, on Friday. At his morning press conference on Saturday, Cuomo raised the number of fatalities to three, after the death of a seven-year-old and a teenager.

Twenty-six of the new coronavirus cases were domestically transmitted, including 14 in Seoul

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South Korea has reported 34 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily number in a month, after a small outbreak emerged around a slew of nightclubs that a confirmed patient had visited.

Of the new cases announced on Sunday, 26 were domestically transmitted infections and eight were imported cases, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.

Still resilient after taking tough and early action, Greece can now look forward to a summer tourist season beginning in July

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When Pavlos Pandelides realised the coronavirus pandemic was moving west, he bought a plane ticket and flew from Athens to London. He then drove north to Nottingham to collect his daughter, a student at the city’s university, before returning with her the next day to Greece. An ardent admirer of all things British, the businessman had absolutely no doubt that what he was doing was right. “The British are fighters but I could see they were underestimating this,” he said.

While Covid-19 was tearing through northern Italy, Boris Johnson was still faltering, with his government showing worrying signs of complacency. There was, said Pandelides, no time to waste. “It was more than a protective father thing. It was clear they were about to really mess up.”

One boss, Dale Vince of the green energy firm Ecotricity, explains how he will get his 700 staff back to work

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Almost all the desks at Ecotricity’s headquarters in Stroud are empty. Pot plants, cards and personal photos are the only signs of the hundreds of employees at the green-energy firm who used to file in and out of the building in the Cotswold town every day.

Like most office-based employers, the firm’s founder, Dale Vince, sent virtually all of his 700-strong workforce home at the start of the lockdown in March. Now he is considering how to bring some of them back in anticipation of government guidance for reopening non-essential businesses.