Felicity Cloake is the writer of the Guardian’s How to cook the perfect … and Masterclass cookery columns. If you’ve eaten it … she’s cooked it. Discuss her work or ask her a question below the line now. She’ll be online at 3pm BST to answer them

Ask a question: log in or sign up here

Join us at 3pm (BST) on Friday 7 August, as Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake answers your questions.

Felicity is the author of five cookbooks, two food travelogues and writer of the Guardian’s How to cook the perfect … and Masterclass cookery columns. She’s tried thousands by the world’s top chefs and food writers, to create the ultimate version - delicious and failsafe, every time.

After his breakthrough in The Holdovers in 2023, Sessa has gone back to the 70s again for Tony, the biopic of bad-boy chef and Kitchen Confidential author Bourdain. And, he says, a big part of him would like to stay there

Despite being just 23, Dominic Sessa is perhaps as intimately acquainted with the 1970s as those who grew up then. Although the New Jersey-born actor has only starred in five films, two of them are marinated in the fashions, sounds and mores of the decade. In his new movie, Tony, he plays the 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, future bad-boy celebrity chef, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and host of its hit TV spin-off. Tony restricts itself to one summer in 1975, when Bourdain bummed around the coastal resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts, falling in love, scrubbing pans in a seafood joint and catching the cooking bug. “For a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations,” he wrote, “it was the perfect getaway.”

A 70s retro vibe also hung over Sessa’s debut film. In Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning 2023 comedy-drama The Holdovers, he played Angus Tully, a surly student forced to board at school over Christmas with only his classics teacher and the cook for company. That picture wasn’t merely set in 1970; it seemed, with its faded palette and fake crackles on the print, to have been made then.

My party has seen difficult times – but with a few canny moves the leader is finally cutting through, and there are clear signs of recovery

Something is afoot. The bookies can feel it. “Badenoch overtakes Farage as favourite to be next prime minister,” was the word from betting website William Hill this week.

Let me tell you what is happening. This is a challenging political time. Even today, there is controversy for Kemi Badenoch to deal with. But as a Conservative it seems to me that in the past few tumultuous weeks, she has shown many of the qualities necessary in a party leader: to appear easy-going and humorous; to craft a style that teases her opponents rather than being snide or unkind; and to do this all confidently enough to leave sceptics thinking that she really could be the next prime minister.

Simon Hart was Conservative government chief whip from 2022 to 2024, and is the author of Ungovernable, the political diaries of a chief whip

An investigation into 231 femicide cases highlights the dire situation in Afghanistan, where men are empowered to murder and face no punishment while their crimes are covered up by the state

In a voice message recorded weeks before she died, Liza Shams, 33, asks a relative to pray for her. “There’s no end to my days of misfortune,” she says. “Pray that God shames Hasib [her husband, Hasibullah Sarwari] in front of the whole world for what he has done to me.” In a second recording, she describes being beaten by Sarwari while pregnant, then kept isolated for days, injured to the point she couldn’t eat or speak. “I’m a woman, fine, I should not talk about what happens in my home,” she says. “But I can’t do this any more.”

On the afternoon of 1 February, Liza’s neighbours heard screaming and alerted the police. A short while earlier, Liza’s father, Shamsuddin Shams, had received a video call from his daughter. Her injuries were shocking: “Her jaw was broken and she could hardly talk,” he says, but she had managed to pass the message that her husband had beaten her again. Shamsuddin immediately called his two other daughters who lived close by, who arrived at the house and took her to Rahmat hospital in Kabul. About an hour after arrival, Liza died.

The former UK minister discovers how apprenticeships and support networks helped slash Ireland’s Neet rate

• English primary schools to be told to identify children at risk of future unemployment

Alan Milburn is guiding a metal loop along the serpentine wire of an electrical buzzer game as he explains the challenge of Britain’s youth jobs crisis. “We have got more than a million young people not in education, employment or training (Neet). Crisis is an over-used word – but this is a crisis.”

On a fact-finding trip to Dublin, the former UK cabinet minister is being shown around an Irish Rail training facility. He tells the apprentices who rigged up the game that, while things are bad in Britain, Ireland is on the right track.

Our rivers may be running low at the moment, but they still offer an abundance of adventure and nature to explore. Here are your favourites, from the Tees to the Shannon

• Tell us about a favourite holiday in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Last summer, I enjoyed a six-mile walk along the fast-flowing River Wharfe from Ilkley to Bolton Abbey, with calming vistas of the Yorkshire Dales every step of the way. I set out at Ilkley’s Riverside Gardens on the south bank, near the remains of a Roman fort. Trace the path to the ancient stone bridge and along to the picturesque village of Addingham with its Low Mill weir and views of late bronze age or early iron age Castleberg fort. Simply carry on hugging the riverbank to the splendid remains of 12th-century monastery of Bolton Abbey, situated in wonderful woods and parkland.
Helen

Exclusive: Neet crisis review to call for teachers to be asked to spot those at risk of leaving education jobless at 16

• What can Dublin teach us? Milburn goes on quest to learn

Primary schools in England should be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job, a government review is to recommend.

Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into Britain’s crisis in youth worklessness, said he would call for sweeping changes in education policy alongside a shake-up of the benefits system to address the problem.

Suspect and at least seven dead, and 15 others injured after shooting at a school in the Nonthaburi province

Here are some of the latest images being sent to us from the scene following the deadly school shooting in the Bang Kruai district of Thailand’s Nonthaburi province:

The leader of the People’s Party, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, has said that while the motive for the school shooting remains unclear it serves “as another wake-up call to Thai society”.

Disruption after power failure at regional signalling centre likely to continue until noon with many crews and trains in wrong locations

• Business live – latest updates

Rail passengers are facing a second day of travel disruption across parts of north-west England, after a power failure hit the signalling centre controlling the railway in the region.

The power failure, which occurred shortly before 2pm on Thursday, triggered widespread cancellations and delays to services including CrossCountry and London Northwestern Railway.

Trade unions say UK prime minister must begin by revoking permission for US to use RAF bases for airstrikes in Gulf

Trade unions have called on Andy Burnham to tackle the cost of living crisis at its source by pressuring Donald Trump to bring the conflict in the Middle East swiftly to an end.

Leaders from 10 unions, including Unison, the UK’s largest, urged the prime minister to oppose further fighting in the Gulf to help bring down energy and fuel costs.