In his international dash for cash, Johnson appears to have repeatedly broken ethics rules as he tried to trade on relationships made in No 10

Boris Johnson started the day with a jog. He had the kind of schedule that would be familiar to any occupant of Downing Street. From 8.44am, he talked with his aides, then chaired cabinet, ate lunch, prepped for prime minister’s questions, took a briefing on security threats, and got ready for an interview with one of Rupert Murdoch’s reporters.

The entry for 5.48pm in the official log for Tuesday 26 April 2022 contains one of several privileged interactions that he would later seek to exploit for financial gain. Johnson was in his office, the log notes, “alone texting MBS”.

The singer’s kitchen discos and that Saltburn scene have given her the mother of all career resurgences. So how is she capitalising on this midlife moment? With an album about the perimenopause

Sophie Ellis-Bextor swoops into the restaurant looking so Sophie Ellis-Bextor, so disco diva, that it almost makes me laugh. She is wearing a gold‑trimmed, blusher-pink, kaftan-style caped dress and has a wide smudge of neon-blue eyeshadow streaked across her eyelids. She could have freshly twirled off the dancefloor at Studio 54. It is a strong look for a late afternoon chat in a quiet hotel, but then I remember that she has been at a photoshoot all day, and assume she must still be wearing one of the outfits. “These are my own clothes,” she says, as if that should have been perfectly obvious.

To be fair, Ellis-Bextor is throwing a party later, so she has made an effort. She’s hosting a playback of her new album Perimenopop, which is also very disco, so much so that Chic’s Nile Rodgers is on one of the tracks. During the Covid lockdowns in 2020, the pop star hosted a weekly Kitchen Disco, broadcast live on Instagram from her family home, with her husband, the musician Richard Jones, and with occasional cameos from her five sons. People must think she’s pretty good at throwing a party. “Well, I am capable,” she says, drily. There will be a photo booth. Aptly, the bar already has a giant glitter ball hanging from the ceiling.

Putin and Netanyahu are creating chaos in the vacuum left by a weak US president. But there are still ways to foil them

It is too easy to blame Donald Trump for everything that goes wrong in the world. The ability of any US president to fundamentally change or control the behaviour of other major powers is frequently overestimated. Yet by posing as a sort of uncrowned global monarch and grand arbiter of war and peace, Trump perpetuates fantasies of US hegemony, omnipotence and divine right. Intoxicated by such ego-inflating delusions, he pledged before taking office to swiftly end the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Perhaps, in his vanity and hubris, he truly believed he could.

Eight months on, the exact opposite is happening. Both crises are expanding and escalating. The bubble has burst, his bluff has been called, the emperor has no clothes – and there is no denying that Trump, by alternately appeasing, excusing and encouraging the two foremost villains of these twin tragedies, is greatly to blame. Last week’s multiple Russian drone incursions into Nato member Poland – which Polish officials are right to call deliberate – risk transforming the Ukraine war into a Europe-wide conflagration. Likewise, the reckless, illegal Israeli airstrike in Qatar, which blew up the Gaza peace process, physically and metaphorically, has supercharged regional tensions.

An embrace of private equity and publicity missteps have diluted the craft beer company’s original rebel ethos

There comes a time in every punk’s life when they are no longer the snarling face of the avant garde.

In the UK beer community, opinion is divided about exactly when that sobering moment arrived for BrewDog, the self-styled “punk” brewery founded in Scotland in 2007 whose once-fizzing sales are now turning flat.

Dry herbs, sow green manure, catch the rain: garden professionals share the simple jobs that will make all the difference come next spring

• The best garden tools to make light work of autumn jobs

The nights are drawing in, TV programming is kicking back into gear and there are ominous warnings about “party season”. However, that doesn’t mean we should ascribe to horticultural tradition and “put our gardens to bed”.

There’s still plenty you can do in the garden to make the most of those crisp, bright autumnal afternoons and relish the offerings of the season to come. Whether squeezing some more joy out of the garden before it dies back for another winter or doing jobs your future spring self will thank you for, these are the things that define the season.

With £125m Alexander Isak’s Liverpool debut near, we look back at five record-breakers that flew – and five who flopped

Southampton to Blackburn, £3.6m
Shearer’s move to Blackburn was a pivotal moment in the Premier League’s inaugural season, backed by the ambition of their new owner Jack Walker. After an injury-hit first campaign where he scored 16 goals, Shearer exploded in the 1993-94 season with 31 goals from 40 games. The following season, he formed a formidable strike partnership with Chris Sutton and his 34 goals were crucial to Blackburn’s title win, the only major honour of his career. He broke the British and world-record fee again in 1996 after his £15m move to Newcastle.

Exclusive: Ministers have vowed to fix benefit after Guardian revealed thousands had been plunged into debt for accidentally breaking rules

The government is considering compensation payouts for unpaid carers who have been unfairly hit with huge financial repayments in recent years after inadvertently falling foul of harsh carer’s allowance benefit rules.

Ministers vowed to fix problems with the benefit after a Guardian investigation revealed how draconian penalties coupled with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) administrative failures had plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt.

More than 110,000 people join Tommy Robinson-organised protest featuring racist conspiracy theories and hate speech

More than 110,000 people have taken part in a far-right street protest organised by the activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, in what is thought to be the largest nationalist event in decades.

Marchers travelled to London by train and coach for a demonstration, which was billed as a “festival of free speech”, but by its conclusion had amplified racist conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim hate speech across Whitehall.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says drone incursions are ‘an obvious expansion of the war by Russia’ as neighbouring countries deploy air defences

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Romania became the latest Nato member state to report a drone incursion into its airspace , with Poland scrambling aircraft in response to fresh Russian drone strikes just over the border in Ukraine.

Romania’s defence ministry said on Saturday its airspace had been breached by a drone during a Russian attack on infrastructure in neighbouring Ukraine. Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets late on Saturday to monitor the situation after the strikes, the ministry said in statement.

Suspect’s background and politics are being pored over in aftermath of killing of far-right influencer

Though the suspect in the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was revealed by authorities on Friday, questions surrounding his identity and motivations have exacerbated intense US political debates in the aftermath of the shooting.

Authorities revealed Kirk’s suspected killer to be Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old man who grew up in Washington, Utah, along the state’s south-western border.