Christine Dawood found herself trapped on the ship, waiting for signs that the Titan submersible carrying her family would surface. She talks in detail for the first time about those harrowing four days

Walking into Christine Dawood’s kitchen, it’s impossible not to be drawn to the model Titanic in the centre of the room. Sitting in its own glass-fronted cabinet, the Lego ship is almost 1.5 metres long, constructed of 9,090 of the iconic plastic bricks. Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman spent almost two weeks building it. “People are always a bit shocked to see it,” she admits. “But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He’d been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to a huge exhibition when we lived in Singapore.“

I went to that same exhibition when it came to London, and remember marvelling at the china dinner plates that had survived intact; the unused lifejackets that had failed to save someone; the sheet music belonging to the orchestra who had supposedly bravely played even as the ship went down. Instead of a ticket, you were given a replica boarding pass with a real passenger’s name on it. At the end, you could find out who survived and who didn’t.

To celebrate the release of the film Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, in which a fashion designer creates a comeback dress for a pop star, we weigh up the best performative looks

“Dressed like a fabulously turned-out carrion crow,” is how our reviewer described the gothic, avian-like get-up PJ Harvey wore to perform her journalistic and theatrical ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in Brixton, south London, in 2016. The dress was the work of Harvey’s longtime friend, the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester, and epitomises the more dramatic stage looks – melodramatic but pared-back – that Harvey turned to for her later, darker albums. As she said of the clothes: “For me, it’s about the ability to meet the world. And it is a second skin, isn’t it? It’s protection, as well. It’s a very big part of clothing, the feeling of protection, particularly in Ann’s clothes.” Who would have thought that someone who earlier in their career took to the stage in Spice Girls co-ords and hot-pink catsuits would wind up in such serious Belgian high-fashion? Ellie Violet Bramley

In February 2025, a cheap Russian drone tore through Chornobyl’s confinement shelter. Workers warn the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is not safe yet

The dosimeter clipped to your chest ticks faster the moment you step off the designated path inside the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Step back, and it slows again – an invisible line between clean ground and contamination.

Above rises the “new safe confinement” (NSC) – the largest, movable steel structure ever built, taller than the Statue of Liberty, wider than the Colosseum, its arch curving overhead like an aircraft hangar built for giant planes.

For all his sins, Johnson didn’t sacrifice others to save himself. That’s not leadership – and Starmer may learn that all too soon

• Simon Hart was government chief whip from 2022 to 2024

Sitting at the back of the public gallery watching Olly Robbins give his evidence to the foreign affairs select committee hearing on Tuesday felt horribly like the summer of 2022 all over again. Back then, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, had seen off numerous attacks on his integrity – most of them from Keir Starmer, for what it’s worth – mainly on the back of Partygate, but with the final blow being struck by the resignation of the little-known deputy chief whip after allegations of sexual misconduct.

The similarities are not lost on anyone like me who has witnessed all of this from relatively close quarters. In Johnson’s case, the main plank of his defence was either that he had been told nothing at all, or that what he was told (by officials or advisers) was selective at best. The trouble was that no one really believed him. He was PM and with that came the expectation that irrespective of the whys and wherefores, the buck had only one place to stop.

Simon Hart was government chief whip from 2022 to 2024, and is author of Ungovernable

Name the deadliest of sins – cruelty, deceit, avarice – and Trump will both exhibit them and celebrate them

It’s no accident that the figure emerging as the global challenger to the might of Donald Trump is a priest in white, known as Pope Leo XIV. In recent weeks, the pope has issued a string of barely coded denunciations of the US president, unfazed by the insults that have come his way in return. It’s no longer fanciful to imagine that what an eastern European pontiff, John Paul II, did by confronting the Soviet empire in the 1980s, an American-born pope may do in the 2020s by daring to speak truth to the would-be emperor in the White House.

Of course, several heads of government have stood up to Trump too. Canada’s Mark Carney has done it most explicitly, while his European counterparts have taken a stand by refusing to join the president’s reckless, wrong-headed war on Iran. But none has the global reach of the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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From cooking at too high temperatures to consuming too little fat, what and how we eat can have a big impact on the way we age. Here’s what you might be doing wrong – and how to fix it

One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours.

Internal email proposes US should reassess support for UK claim to islands because of lack of support for Iran war

• UK politics live – latest updates

Downing Street has been forced to insist that Britain will not yield sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, after a leaked Pentagon email proposed the US should reassess its support for the UK’s claim on the islands because of a lack of British support over Iran.

The memo reflected ways in which the Trump administration could punish Britain for failing to follow the US lead in bombing Iran, and comes before a potentially fraught three-day state visit to the US by King Charles.

Iranian foreign minister has landed in Islamabad but his ministry says there will be no direct negotiations with the US envoy

A US-Kuwaiti journalist who was detained in Kuwait for online posts related to the Iran war has been released and has left the Gulf nation, after being acquitted of “spreading false information”.

A US state department official said on Friday that Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, 41, had left Kuwait.

Wendy Duffy died at Pegasos clinic in Basel as assisted dying bill in England and Wales fails to pass

A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.

Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.

Home secretary indicates Whitehall talks about returns programme, a move that would shock humanitarian groups

Shabana Mahmood has refused to rule out sending rejected Afghan asylum seekers back to the Taliban-controlled country.

The home secretary said she is “monitoring very closely” talks between Kabul and EU countries about a returns programme for refused claimants. She also indicated that “additional conversations” about Afghan returns were happening inside Whitehall.