The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it

Claire was in bad shape. She had been brought to the ward on a stretcher and hoisted on to a bed where she lay curled up in a ball. She was unable to speak, her eyes flat and face expressionless. While she could move her right arm a little, her left arm and both legs were immobile.

Life had changed dramatically for Claire, a mother of three in her late 30s, many months earlier, when she collapsed while on a night out with friends. A weakness in an artery at the base of her brain had ruptured, spilling blood around her frontal lobe. She was taken to hospital, where surgeons removed two side plate-sized pieces of bone from her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She spent months in intensive care.

Chilling comments by Reform figures can’t be dismissed when you consider the overwhelming power of the UK’s centralised state

Britain is much closer to tyranny than you think. Consider a recent social post by Zia Yusuf, one of Reform UK’s leading figures. “Recent events demonstrate why I view the Tory and Labour politicians who created the burning injustice of modern Britain as traitors to their country,” he wrote. “A reckoning is coming.”

He didn’t define those “recent events”, or what his reckoning would entail, but historically speaking, those deemed “traitors to their country” do not fare well.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Set to be this year’s biggest blockbuster, The Odyssey’s cast has been selected to ‘represent the world’. Fair enough – except that one key country seems to have gone completely unrepresented …

There are the American accents, gleaming body suits and a muddy Dunkirk palette. And then there is Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, a casting choice that recently drew racist attacks from the usual moaners of the internet, including Elon Musk, who complained it wasn’t authentic. Authenticity matters. He’s just focusing entirely in the wrong place. To many Greeks, what concerns us most about the first look at Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey is the whereabouts of Billy Zane.

Zane, like other beloved members of the Greek diaspora in Hollywood, has recently appeared on “Alternative Odyssey” lists on the Greek side of social media, as well as over dinner table debates from Patras to Palmers Green. (Theo James, Jennifer Aniston, Hank Azaria, and Dave Bautista are among the other nominees.) Greek and Greek Cypriot media platforms are writing open letters. It’s a symptom of feeling left out by Hollywood, again and with no explanation, from our foundational mythologies and epics, with a cast list that features not even a token –opoulos, –edes, or –iannou. Not a single Greek.

The outspoken crime novelist talks his provocative new book, his hatred of technology and why the film adaptation of LA Confidential is a ‘turkey’

James Ellroy does not own a computer, his publicist explains, so will a phone interview be OK? When the self-proclaimed “mad dog of American crime fiction” picks up his landline at the appointed hour, it transpires that he has never owned a mobile phone either. Nor sent an email. Nor figured out how to turn on his ex-wife Helen Knode’s TV set.

“Everything is very complex and it’s satanic to me, the dependency that people have on computers,” Ellroy, 78, says cheerfully in a bass baritone drawl from his pad in Denver, Colorado. “I don’t engage in internet chat and I understand there’s all this crazy shit on the internet and people with the most outlandish beliefs on God’s green Earth.”

We’ve had swicy. We’ve had swavoury. Now a new fusion of flavours is flying off the shelves. So what do these South American-inspired drinks and dishes actually taste like?

When the balance of fruit and spicy flavours is right, “I love it,” a fellow customer at a dessert cafe in London tells me as we wait to be served. It’s 26-year-old Hannah’s third time visiting Mango Twist in Seven Sisters, which sells South American-inspired slushies and fruit bowls. She’s here, like me, to order one of its “fricy” (fruity and spicy) offerings: the “Volcano” slushie, which is the cafe’s take on the traditional Mexican chamoyada, a mango and chilli drink.

Hannah has family in the US, so is familiar with the Mexican sweet treats that are commonly available there; as a child she was “obsessed” with the flavours. So when she found out about Mango Twist, “I was like, ‘I need to come here,’” she says.

Taken shortly after a spate of femicides in Peru, this image by the photographer Ana Elisa Sotelo captures a moment of sisterhood and solidarity

This image is from Women of the Water, a project I started in 2022 in Puerto Natales, in southern Patagonia, Chile, when three female swimmers I met asked me to photograph them naked in the place they felt most powerful: the water.

It was winter and the water was probably about zero degrees, but we experienced an incredible sensation of ease and freedom. When I got back to my home city of Lima in Peru, I decided to continue, developing the series through open calls. I have since expanded to Argentina, the US and Barbados.

Reform leader jeered in parliament as he is urged to condemn violence

Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK home affairs spokesperson, told Sky News this morning that he thought the treatment of Henry Nowak did justify his party’s claim that two-tier policing operates in the country. He said:

Having watched that footage [of Nowak’s arrest] … it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is a demonstrable example of structural two-tier policing that is embedded in Hampshire police force and forces across the country.

People can go to Hampshire police’s website and read their race action plan that was brought about under a Tory government.

We understand and appreciate as police officers that we are accountable for our actions. What we ask, however, is that those actions are judged through fair and transparent processes. In this case, that process is already underway with the IOPC conducting their independent investigation.

What we, as a society, cannot accept is the violent scenes we saw in Southampton last night.

I know that since the release of the body-worn video footage from the night of Henry Nowak’s murder, there is a desire for answers and accountability but that must be done in the right way and not used as an excuse to threaten and intimidate my officers and bring violence to our streets causing fear and harm to those living and working in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Starmer says information will be shared as soon as possible as emergency services attend scene in Sourton Down, near Okehampton

A Royal Navy helicopter has crashed into a field in Devon, police have said.

Emergency services are at the scene of the incident at Sourton Down, near Okehampton. Several road closures are in place around the A386 and A30 Sourton Cross slip and services area.

Proposal for 10-12.5% levies, to also include EU, Taiwan and Australia, would allow US president to skirt court-imposed limits

Donald Trump has threatened tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners including the UK, the EU and Australia over alleged forced labour failures, in the latest attempt to revive his signature trade policy.

The EU immediately hit back, saying it expected the US to respect the tariff deal it entered into last July and arguing that stealth tariffs breached the spirit of that agreement.

Clifton George convicted of fatally stabbing charity worker Annabel Rook after she tried to end relationship

A man who fatally stabbed his partner and then set off a gas explosion at their north-east London home last summer has been found guilty of her murder.

Clifton George, 45, had denied murdering Annabel Rook, a 46-year-old charity founder, during an argument at their home in Stoke Newington on 17 June 2025.