If the monarch thought his sniffy letter would put Harry and Meghan at a disadvantage, he doesn’t understand how the celebrity world works

Once again, it has been a lively week for the Real Housewives of Windsor franchise, with Harry and Meghan back in the UK for precisely 12 days before the king fired out a letter via the lord chamberlain on Monday, reminding viewers that the Sussexes are “private citizens” and not to treat them as working royals. You have to say the producers on this unscripted reality show are truly at the top of their game with these targeted provocations. Harry and Meghan duly took the bait and issued an intemperately hurt rejoinder – but we’ll get to that in a bit.

First, let’s deal with King Charles’s missive to “relevant senior stakeholders across government, the military and Lord Lieutenancies”. Ugh. Not to be too aesthetically sensitive, but I think we can all live without the sovereign being reduced to the ghastly language of “relevant senior stakeholders”. What next? Seeking “buy-in” for ribbon-cutting events and referring to posies as “high levels of audience engagement”? It does all rather reinforce the idea that the Windsors’ cringe-makingly self-styled “the firm” really is some dreary mid-range company with a wan Meet Our Team page on its website, in which Prince William – carefully photographed without a tie – explains that he “enjoys long walks with the dog and is a passionate Aston Villa supporter”.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

From Shropshire to Hamburg, depleting reserves and spiralling costs are spawning a continent-wide energy crisis

Bridgnorth Aluminium has faced down Brexit, Covid and repeated energy shocks in recent years. But this winter is bringing extra “stress and pressure”, says its head of sales, Adrian Musgrave.

Musgrave’s company makes rolled aluminium, used in packaging, construction and the manufacture of items such as cars and batteries. Like many stretched industrial businesses across Europe, Bridgnorth Aluminium faces a looming threat of soaring energy bills, which Musgrave describes as “just worry upon worry”.

AI agents have hacked databases and taken on a life of their own – now is the time to pause risky research before it is too late

Another day, another horseman of the apocalypse galloping over the horizon. Lately we have heard from so many AI doomers – tech whistleblowers popping up to warn that their work is probably going to kill us – that we’re becoming almost blase about it. Humanity wiped out within a decade? Well, only if another world war or the climate crisis doesn’t get us first. Since it’s never clear whether the tech threat is real, or just a twisted form of hype from an industry that drums up investment by making their products sound more powerful than they really are, most of us settle for trying not to think about it too hard.

But something about the AI researcher Jacob Coxon’s very public resignation from the cutting-edge American lab Anthropic, via a post on X arguing that he can’t keep working for companies “gambling with our lives”, has cut through where bigger names have not. Most chillingly, he claimed that colleagues still at Anthropic aren’t staying because they think he’s wrong about the dangers of pursuing self-improving super intelligence – the holy grail of machines that are not just smarter than humans but capable of building their own even more powerful successors, evolving independently of humans – but because they’re afraid of ceding the field to people with fewer scruples. His colleagues, Coxon said, talk routinely about the “endgame” or the “crunch time”, meaning that what they do in the next year or two will decide the fate of humanity. Whether that’s true or simply self-aggrandising techbro delusion, what he describes is an industry now practically begging to be saved from itself.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Whether it’s soft serve or sorbet, gelato or fro-yo, the Ninja Creami Scoop and Swirl is a faff-free way of making all your favourite frozen treats

• The best ice-cream makers for your home

For me, ice-cream isn’t only for summer. It’s my dessert of choice all year round, and a good ice-cream maker ensures it’s always readily available. When I put more than a dozen models through their paces earlier this year, one thing became clear: the most important feature in any machine is ease of use.

On that front, the Ninja Creami really scored highly for me. I’ve used the original NC300 model for a few years, and I like its simplicity and that it’s easy to clean. Nowadays, though, we expect our appliances to do a little more – and when it comes to ice-cream, the current craze is soft serve.

Customers seeking greens at one Berlin outlet are dealing with some very local supply chains indeed

Walking into the Felix Thomas REWE supermarket in Lankwitz, Berlin, customers are immediately presented with a choice of greens: romaine, rocket, iceberg. But last month, a new option joined the selection: Lankwitz loose-leaf lettuce. A combination of head lettuce, romaine lettuce, Lollo Rosso, and dark green easy leaf lettuce, its yellow packaging makes it stand out in a row of green. But it’s not just the flashy packaging that makes it distinct. Unlike its neighbouring lettuces, which come from regional farms or all the way from Italy, these greens were grown just a few metres away – or rather, a few metres up. “Frisch Vom REWE Dach” or “Fresh from the REWE roof”, the bags read.

Rooftop farms are nothing new: in cities such as Paris, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and New York, similar farms supply food to adjacent food retailers or even restaurants. This model has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation (and its associated costs), minimise the urban heat effect, make use of dead space and perhaps even improve the relationship between buyers and their food.

Nigel Farage said demonstrators in balaclavas were ‘horrible’, but others in the party defend them as ‘brave, passionate patriots’

Nigel Farage’s condemnation of the masked men whose blockade of Dover stole headlines on the final day of his party’s annual conference was swift, describing their actions as “horrible”.

Yet less than a week on from the public debut of the black-clad members of Patriot Platform, Reform is gripped with internal friction over the activists. There has been unease among some members and councillors about Farage’s criticism and some outright praise for the group as “patriots”.

Bill would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives, after the approval of a panel of experts

While the debate continues, we have a comment from Sam Royston, executive director of research and policy at Marie Curie. He said the government must address the crisis in palliative care regardless of what happens with assisted dying, calling for a new framework and funding to ensure everyone has access to compassionate end-of-life care.

He said:

Whatever happens with assisted dying, the UK government must fix the crisis in palliative care.

It is devastating that nearly one in three people die without the help they need. Too many spend their final days in pain or on busy, chaotic hospital wards, while families are left fighting for help instead of spending time with the people they love.

I think it’s absolutely right that, for instance, the prime minister and the government have said that improving palliative care must be a priority for him and his government. I think that’s something that we can all support.

I think everybody should have access to good quality palliative and hospice end-of-life care at their final moment.”

Party leader, who will contest Starmer’s former seat of Holborn and St Pancras, says gas drilling has come up on doorstep

• UK politics live – latest updates

Zack Polanski has said a vote for him in the upcoming Holborn and St Pancras byelection is a vote against the government’s reported plans to greenlight a North Sea gasfield.

The leader of the Green party in England and Wales, who was selected on Friday to contest the London seat, also said he was considering building a stockpile for the extreme weather predicted with the arrival of the biggest El Niño in 1,000 years, a meteorological phenomenon that supercharges floods and droughts.

Rampant Yemeni fighters take control of island in narrow point of Bab al-Mandab strait, which Saudi is relying on for oil exports

• Violence in Yemen: why it matters and how it is linked to the US-Iran war

Yemen’s rampant Houthi forces have captured a strategic island in the Bab al-Mandab strait, expanding their control of the narrow waterway, one of the ​world’s vital shipping routes.

The Iran-aligned Houthis took control of the volcanic island after forces allied to the UN-backed, Aden-based government left in the latest of a dramatic series of reverses along Yemen’s west coast in recent days, including the loss of the port city of Mocha on Thursday.

Victims of those killed in September 11 attacks honored at memorials across the US

On 11 September, 25 years ago, Osama bin Laden drove with a small number of al-Qaida retainers and aides to a remote location in eastern Afghanistan. His convoy of SUVs was accompanied by a minivan converted into a makeshift communications centre.

The van’s rudimentary equipment did not allow Bin Laden to watch the 19 men he had started sending to the US more than a year before fly planes into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon near Washington DC, killing about 3,000 people. But he listened as shocked radio announcers broke the news.