Home Office minister to respond to UQ from Chris Philp about the China spy case before question on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans

There will be two urgent questions in the Commons this afternoon, followed by a statement. Here is the running order.

3.30pm: A Home Office minister will respond to a UQ from Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, about the China spy case.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, whose life was destroyed, are angry and aghast. The public across these isles are angry and aghast and they both deserve to know that some MPs share their outrage.

So I won’t sit silent. If an act of parliament is required to strip the likes of Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew of their titles then there can be no justification from this Labour government as to why that is not immediately happening.

Public funds, police protection and royal privilege have long buffered Prince Andrew from the consequences of his actions. And we’ve paid for all this.

I will support any efforts to hold royals to the same standards and laws as everyone else – parliament must have the power to remove privileges from abusers of position.

As the 86-year-old music legend prepares to release a new album, she will take on your questions

At the age of 86, Mavis Staples is still pressing ahead with exciting new music – indeed, one of the most star-studded and resonant albums of her career is coming up. As she prepares to release it, she’ll be answering your questions.

That new album, Sad and Beautiful World – released on 7 November – includes a small galaxy of music legends orbiting around Staples at the centre. As well as covers of songs by Curtis Mayfield, Gillian Welch, Frank Ocean, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Porter Wagoner, plus US alt heroes Mark “Sparklehorse” Linkous and Kevin Morby, there are new songs, including one written for and about Staples by Hozier and Allison Russell.

Even if it ends up another multiversal tangle of familiar faces and recycled heartstrings, a film with the old Spider-Men might be Sony’s best hope of a box office hit

In many ways the entirety of geek culture – certainly as far as the movies are concerned – is built on giving the people what they want. The Flash exhumed Michael Keaton’s Batman, but left him drifting through the end-of-days haze of a dying cinematic universe. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine returned for one last hurrah in Deadpool & Wolverine, even though we already had his last hurrah in Logan. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness brought back Patrick Stewart’s Professor X for the umpteenth time, then promptly shredded him into psychic confetti.

And then there was Spider-Man: No Way Home, a movie that mainly seemed to exist to remind us that the original Sony Spidey films were really rather good in places. Has there ever been a better cinematic Spider-Man villain than Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin? Did any of the Marvel films give us an antagonist with the same startling blend of pathos and menace as that delivered by Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc? And what about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, the two wall-crawlers we never thought we’d see again, who somehow turned a fan-service cameo into an elegy for the superhero genre itself?

It originated in a rap song, then featured in South Park, and is now the bane of schoolteachers in the US and UK as pupils shout it out at random. How did it become such a thing?

Name: Six-seven.

Age: Less than a year old.

King Charles cannot have been unaware that the future king would not relish having to deal with his uncle

The Prince of Wales, whom Buckingham Palace has said was “consulted” before Prince Andrew’s dramatic statement, must have felt some relief at his uncle agreeing to relinquish use of his titles and honours.

At some point William will become king. His uncle, 12 years younger than King Charles, may well be watching when he takes his coronation oath. The indications are, however, Andrew may be watching from afar.

The arrival of AI is a chance to remind kids that the joy of creativity is not in what you made, but in the process of making it

Somewhere in the middle of the last school holidays, as I was attempting to work from home, the kids came bounding down the stairs armed with a new song they had written. The lyrics were nonsensical (as you’d expect from a pair of preteens), but there was a surprising crispness to the rhyming structure.

“We got ChatGPT to write it,” the eldest said. This was neither a confession nor a boast. Every 12-year-old knows the AI shortcut. Two minutes earlier, they didn’t have a song. Now they had something ready to perform. Admittedly the improvised melody could best be described as “indeterminate”, but the right prompt could have fixed that.

When Nolan’s space epic was released in 2014, critics picked at the plot holes and scientists picked at the science – now, 11 years later, it’s the internet’s favourite film. Was it just ahead of its time?

Every Saturday, for the last 18 months, Shane Short has watched the same film: Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space epic Interstellar. He’s not even sure how many times he’s seen it now, though he does know he saw it 31 times in cinemas when it was briefly rereleased for its 10th anniversary in 2024. This year he has flown from his home in Hawaii to Melbourne to watch Interstellar projected on 1570 film at the city’s Imax – twice – where the regular screenings of Interstellar, even those held midweek and during the day, can reliably sell out in minutes.

Set in a future not that far from us now, Interstellar follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former Nasa test pilot turned farmer who leaves his children Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy) behind on a climate-ravaged Earth to search space for a new home for mankind. Murph is furious with grief at Cooper for picking a future for humanity over a life spent with her; as the decades pass, Tom (played as an adult by Casey Affleck) settles into embittered detachment, while Murph (Jessica Chastain) becomes a scientist and works closely with Prof John Brand (Michael Caine), the Nasa scientist who sent her father away on his mission with his own daughter, Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway).

Victory for Lucy Powell or Bridget Phillipson, the rivals at the centre of the race, could be reckoning for the party

When Lucy Powell got a phone call from a withheld number in her constituency office in Manchester on the day Angela Rayner resigned, Powell told her staff: “This is me getting the sack.” Never would the former Commons leader have believed less than two months later that she might be on the brink of returning as Labour’s deputy leader.

Her rival, Bridget Phillipson, also never expected to be in this position. Hurt by some of the internal briefing against her position as education secretary, she debated for more than a day whether to join the race at all. Being cast as the favoured candidate has not been comfortable.

President has previously posted deepfake videos and AI-generated images like this one, which JD Vance called ‘funny’

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump reposted an AI-generated video of him flying a fighter plane emblazoned with the words “King Trump” and dumping brown sludge onto protestors, in what appears to be a retort to the widespread No Kings protests that took place Saturday against his second presidency.

In the video, which the president posted Saturday night, a sharply orange Trump is seen donning a gold crown and manning a plane monikered “King Trump”. The video zooms away from Trump and shows the plane dumping bursts of brown matter on an AI-generated cityscape. A protestor, taking a selfie video, captures the crowd being covered in the brown liquid. The last shot of the 19-second video is of protestors in what appears to be Times Square getting dumped on.

‘My label said a four-minute single with lyrics about Jesus would never get played on radio. But, in 1969, the song sold two million copies. It’s now been No 1 in three different decades’

Spirit in the Sky started as an old blues riff I’d been playing since my college days in Boston, but I didn’t know what to do with it. After I moved to LA, a guy I knew came up with a way of putting a fuzzbox inside my Fender Telecaster, which created the distinctive sound on Spirit in the Sky.

• Klopp has current roles with Red Bull and German league

• Former manager commemorated Diogo Jota in podcast

Jurgen Klopp says it is “theoretically possible” that he could one day return as Liverpool manager. The 58-year-old walked away from Anfield in 2024, ending a transformative nine-year spell at the club that included a Champions League success and the Reds’ first league title in 30 years. He has taken on roles as head of global soccer with the Red Bull group and in an advisory capacity with the German Football League.

Liverpool won the Premier League last season under Arne Slot but many fans who revere Klopp would welcome the notion that he may eventually return. In a wide-ranging interview on The Diary of a CEO podcast, he told Steven Bartlett: “I said I will never coach another team, a different team, in England. So that means if then it’s Liverpool...yeah. Theoretically it’s possible.”

Magnum partners with Aperture for its square print sale titled Youth. Capturing the electric charge of growing up, from Dennis Stock’s portrait of James Dean, and Danny Clinch’s shot of Bruce Springsteen, to Philippe Halsman’s image of Brigitte Bardot, Martin Parr’s Friday nighters, Robert Capa’s teenagers on a film set, and Raymond Depardon’s bubble-gum blowers

• Proceeds from the sale, in part, directly benefit the artists and support Aperture’s non-profit publishing and educational programming

• Over 100 signed or estate-stamped, museum-quality 6x6 prints available online from $110/£110/€120 until Sunday 26 October, 11.59 pm EDT

Volunteers defy their government and public opinion in China to risk their lives for an adversary of Beijing’s main geopolitical partner

In a war that has been characterised by merciless attacks on civilians, one of the worst took place on 8 July 2024. Russia missile strikes killed at least 43 people in cities across Ukraine in one of the deadliest days of the war last year. One of the most shocking blows was to the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in central Kyiv, which reduced the country’s largest paediatric clinic to rubble.

Tim, 43, was delivering aid on the outskirts of Kyiv when he heard a missile fly overhead. A short while later, he saw the news on his phone that the children’s hospital had been hit. Along with a British friend, the Chinese national, who asked to be referred to by just his English name, rushed to the scene to help with the recovery efforts. “Seeing the severed limbs, some of them belonging to children, I started crying,” the father-of-two said, tears in his eyes at the memory. “I thought about the kind of anger that Chinese people have. Once it’s ignited … It’s intense. I decided to join the army.”

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Borussia Dortmund belatedly sprung into life … only for their English youngster to suffer a moment of misfortune

Every league needs its flagship, its clásico, classique or derby. An event which rouses the senses regardless of current form or fortune. Bayern Munich appeared ready for the moment and Borussia Dortmund perhaps less so. Despite itself, Der Klassiker eventually sparked into life – and we were left with a sense of what could have been.

The cliche describes a game of two halves; this was more like a game of one half. We had 45 minutes of an attack-v-defence training session, followed by the real match, the one that we came for. By then, perhaps, it was a little too late for the blue touchpaper to be lit. We were more in the realm of sparklers than catherine wheels.

When the war breaks out in Ukraine, Alisa is thrown into a life she wasn’t expecting. Working as a translator for foreign journalists she meets British war photographer Anastasia, who chooses not to rush towards the front, instead observing quiet moments of everyday resilience - birthdays, picnics, weddings. A unique friendship forms as the two women strive to collapse the emotional distance between “us” and “them”. Their bond deepens as war wounds them both —transforming this into a poetic meditation on closeness, distance, and what happens when war stops being a story about others.

Read more about Alisa and Anastasia’s unique bond here.

London film festival: Gender, sexuality, status and power are all in flux in Julia Jackman’s playful medieval fairytale, adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, also starring Maika Monroe and Charli xcx

Julia Jackman has followed Bonus Track with this queer fantasy-fable that has a streak of earnestness to go with the romantasy energy and gorgeous costumes from designer Susie Coulthard. It’s adapted by Jackman from Isabel Greenberg’s 2016 graphic novel of the same title, and inspired generally by Scheherazade and the One Thousand and One Nights – and also I think by Julie Dash, Peter Greenaway and maybe the theatricality of Agnès Varda’s One Hundred and One Nights. Emma Corrin and Maika Monroe star, with Nicholas Galitzine and Amir El-Masry in support; Charli xcx makes an appearance, and there’s also a tiny intriguing cameo for critic Sophie Monks Kaufman. It adds up to a likable movie, a little fey but unexpectedly subtle – although the meta-level of storytelling sometimes has for me the disconcerting effect of halting and dissipating the all-important narrative energy.

We are in a fairytale medieval world created by the god Birdman (Richard E Grant). Or rather, a world envisioned originally as a gender-coeval utopia by his daughter Kiddo (Safia Oakley-Green), but then spoiled by Birdman in a fit of sexist pique. In this place, women are not allowed to read or write but they are allowed to tell stories, and it is this skill that distinguishes the maidservant Hero (Corrin), who waits upon the shy, melancholy noblewoman Cherry (Monroe), and has become her intimate best friend.

An elegy to the poet’s personal physician is full of vivid detail delivered with infectious warmth

On the Death of Dr Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson

Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blast or slow decline,
Our social comforts drop away.

It’s easy to forget how simple and frugal homemade gnocchi can be, especially when you make them from an already cooked batch of baked spuds – delicious

If I’m going to the effort of making jacket potatoes (and by effort I mean putting them in the oven for an hour), I will almost always pop in a few extra spuds to make gnocchi for a later meal. The difference between shop-bought and homemade gnocchi is vast, especially the vac-packed, long-life kind, which are dense and can be heavy. Freshly made gnocchi, with fluffy baked potatoes, however, are light as air, pillowy and silky. If that sounds intimidating, let me reassure you that this recipe is really forgiving, and much easier than making fresh sheet pasta. I love them served simply, as here, with a slightly nutty sage butter and lots of parmesan. The simple sauce lets those gnocchi sing.

Sight of 84% of people with form of age-related macular degeneration restored after being fitted with device

An electronic eye implant half the thickness of a human hair has helped people with incurable sight loss to see again, opening up a potential “new era” in tackling blindness.

Doctors who implanted the sim card-shaped prosthetic devices say they have helped many of the 38 elderly patients in the trial regain their ability to read letters, numbers and words.

Stuart Ortiz’s convincingly faked crime documentary details the hunt for a Los Angeles serial killer dubbed Mr Shiny

For its first few minutes, this comes on like a standard true crime documentary: establishing shots of the Greater Los Angeles area, talking heads introduce themselves as police officers and friends of the victims, and we zoom in on a handwritten list of names until one particular name fills the screen. All the tricks of the trade are here, and director Stuart Ortiz plays things more or less straight. In fact it’s a mockumentary: not a parody but instead a horror movie that happens to be told using the format of a true crime documentary.

The story, about a masked killer called Mr Shiny (if you think this name strains credibility, don’t forget there are real serial killers nicknamed the Happy Face Killer, the Dating Game Killer and the Doodler), is functional enough. There are lurid details of the killings, and police officers talking about how the crimes were beyond belief; there are taunting notes from the murderer; passages where the trail goes cold; moments when the police nearly catch Mr Shiny, only for him to slip through their fingers.

Court to review federal law that prohibits illegal drugs users from having a gun to determine whether this violates second amendment

The Senate will vote, for the 11th time, on a House-passed funding bill that would reopen the government at 5.30pm today.

As the government shutdown enters its 20th day, there is little end in sight. The lower chamber is still out of session, as both parties continue to trade barbs over the lapse in funding.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s gripping thriller The Secret Agent is set in the 70s but casts light on present-day politics

When the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho was writing his latest movie in 2021, he felt shame about the situation in his homeland as it took “a sharp turn to the right” under the then president, Jair Bolsonaro. “Well-informed friends … would pat you on the back and say ‘I feel for you’,” the film-maker recalls.

Four years later as the film hits big screens, Bolsonaro is out of the picture and Mendonça’s mood has changed. “I am very proud of what is happening in Brazil,” he says after recently seeing the far-right populist receive a 27-year prison sentence for masterminding a failed coup.

A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output suggests views of the topic as too depressing or dull may be changing

Despite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming awfulness, the climate crisis has been oddly underrepresented on stage and screen. Humanity’s greatest challenge has often been deemed too much of a downer, too complex or too dull a topic to spawn shows and movies.

A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output, however, suggests this may be changing. Weather Girl, a one-woman play about the unraveling of a TV meteorologist who can no longer bear to gloss over climate breakdown in California, has just closed in New York City to upbeat reviews.