I’ll never tire of witnessing many ‘firsts’ for my second-born, but this is a luxury that should be afforded to everyone, not just those who can pay for it

When I told people I was taking more than eight months of parental leave, the main reactions I got were: “What are you going to do with all that time?” and “won’t you get bored?” These questions came from every direction – including health professionals involved in my wife’s pregnancy and the arrival of our second child.

More than halfway through my leave, I’ve been reflecting on what good parental leave looks like: leave that allows families to take the time to adjust to the new rhythms of family life. Thanks to a new policy at my work that gives parents six months of paid parental leave, in addition to annual leave, I will be returning to work not when our newborn is still tiny, our toddler is adjusting to a sibling and their mum is recovering from birth, but when our son is eight months old. This is markedly different to when our first baby was born two years ago, after which I was able to take only three weeks of paternity leave – while my partner chose to take the full period of maternity leave and not to return to work.

Ilyas Nagdee is an author and researcher working in the areas of racial justice and human rights

It may feel like a redemption tour, but the star’s epic jolly across seven continents is consistently funny, moving and quite frankly breathtaking

Hollywood stars – they’re just like us! Except that when we want to go on a massive jolly/rehabilitative journey for ourselves and/or our careers, we have to pay for it. And we generally cannot go on a 100-day adventure across seven continents, with experts on hand to introduce us to their indigenous inhabitants, talk us through world-changing research being done in the most isolated regions on Earth, show us new and fascinating species that can be found there that may hold the cure to all known diseases, and guide us through the breathtaking landscapes that make you want to throw yourself to the ground and weep at the beauty laid out before humanity’s largely uncaring eyes.

Not so for Willard Carroll Smith II, the Academy award, Bafta and Grammy-winning actor and rapper who enjoyed an uninterruptedly stellar career from the late 80s until 2022, when he put a crimp in things by lamping the Oscars’ host Chris Rock for insulting Smith’s wife. This was followed by a tour violinist suing him for alleged predatory behaviour, unlawful termination and retaliation, which is working its way through the California legal system now. Smith has categorically denied all allegations. He is getting away from it all in the meantime by doing all the adventuring noted above – a septet of episodes of Pole to Pole With Will Smith (the name by which of course he is known to us) in honour of his late mentor Dr Allen Counter. Counter was a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, the inaugural director of the university’s Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and – in his spare time, I guess? – a noted explorer. I cannot help but feel a biopic must be in the works, and I hope it comes soon.

Family trauma shapes a student’s affair with her teacher in this bleak and funny fiction debut from the American memoirist

When it was published in 2022, Jennette McCurdy’s memoir lit a touchpaper to a nascent cultural conversation. I’m Glad My Mom Died introduced her mother Debra’s narcissistic personality disorder into a world eager to discuss adult child and parent estrangement. McCurdy had also suffered sexual abuse, and claimed her mother had contributed to her developing an eating disorder. The memoir was a bestseller, walking readers through the realities of generational trauma; a step change for the former Disney child star who had been “the funny one” on obnoxious Nickelodeon kids’ shows.

In her debut work of fiction, Half His Age, McCurdy continues to shake open a Pandora’s box, shedding light on blurred parent-child boundaries and loss of identity due to over-enmeshment, with solid one-liners that feel straight out of a sitcom writers’ room.

Despite some interesting visuals, not even Tony Cook and Jonny Weldon can lift this poorly produced tale of a pair of dodgy lads hiding in Greece from a gangster

Here is an odd film about a couple of dodgy lads who get on the wrong side of a bona fide gangster and have to hide out in Greece. It’s not thoughtless per se; rather, it lacks the resources to bring its vision successfully to screen. Its quirks are sometimes appealing and sometimes amateurish and, while a mixture of influences swirl about, from Bond to Kingsman to Guy Ritchie and even Mission: Impossible, the film-makers don’t have the necessary budget, meaning that it feels at times like a TikTok parody of more expensive films.

It is a shame, because there are some interesting visual ideas that go beyond route one filming. Example: a goon beating a man tied to a chair on a crispy manicured lawn is filmed in a lovely wide shot, with a guy in the far distance calmly clipping the hedge. But it’s the post-production that is the biggest letdown: the sound mix is poor, and it’s a real shame that the final image before the credits roll, which should be genuinely nasty, is derailed by risible FX.

I had my first teaching job lined up and a mortgage application in process. Now it looked like I would have to return to Germany and start training again from scratch. There were just 72 hours to save my dream of living in the UK

In the early hours of Friday 24 June 2016, the result glowed on my phone: 52%. Barely a majority, but nonetheless a verdict. I lay in my rented bedroom in Devon, still in pyjamas, watching everything I’d planned dissolve. When I saw the headline “UK votes to leave EU”, my first thought wasn’t political. It was: “What does this mean for me?”

It was the final day of my second school placement, the culmination of my teacher training for a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). I’d moved from Germany the year before to train as a Religious Education teacher, convinced I’d found a profession and a place to call home. In Germany, RE meant teaching Protestant children Protestantism or Catholic children Catholicism – separate lessons, separate truths. Here, I could teach all major faiths side by side, invite discussion and let curiosity lead the lesson. In a world pulling itself apart along religious and cultural lines, that felt like the better approach.

Crane was working on a high-speed rail project when it collapsed and hit the passing train, causing it to derail and briefly catch fire

At least 22 people in Thailand have been killed and scores injured after a crane collapsed onto a passenger train, derailing it on Wednesday, officials said.

Footage from the scene verified by Agence France-Presse showed the crane’s broken structure resting on giant concrete pillars, with smoke rising from the wreckage of the train below.

Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja is a small community of about 135 families – and the only one remaining in this part of the Jordan valley

Five decades in the south Jordan valley were ending in a day, and Mahmoud Eshaq struggled to hold back his tears. The 55-year-old had not cried since he was a boy, but as he dismantled the family home and prepared to flee the village where his whole life had played out, he was overwhelmed by grief.

While Eshaq’s children loaded mattresses, a fridge, sacks of flour and suitcases of clothes into a truck, masked soldiers escorted a teenage Israeli shepherd down the main village road, where he posed for photos on his donkey, flashing a V sign.

South East Water blames bad weather as pubs are forced to close, toilets overflow and people go without showers

As the residents of Tunbridge Wells trudged down their sodden high street in the pouring rain, the idea that they had run out of water – for the second time in just a few weeks – seemed farcical.

At the end of November the local water treatment centre, which had been flagged as at risk by the regulator in 2024, was forced to shut down, leaving 24,000 households without water for two weeks. The Drinking Water Inspectorate later said this outage was foreseen and was due to a lack of maintenance at the site.

Exclusive: Refugee status granted despite attempt by former home secretary James Cleverly to block 26-year-old’s claim

A Palestinian citizen of Israel has been granted asylum in the UK on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution” despite a former home secretary’s attempt to block the claim.

Hasan (not his real name) is believed to be the first Palestinian with an Israeli passport to be given refugee status in the UK. But the decision came only after two about-turns by the Home Office and a protracted legal battle.

An economic recovery could still change the parties’ fortunes. But the days when only two parties were licensed to supply Britain with prime ministers are gone

Unpopular politicians take consolation in the thought that opinion polls are sometimes wrong and often describe the wrong thing. They capture the moment but don’t predict the future. A midterm poll measures how much voters like the government. A general election asks whether the opposition is trusted to take over. It isn’t the same question.

Labour’s hopes for recovery rest on that distinction. The plan is that economic growth and governing competence will boost general wellbeing in the coming years. That will dial up the risks associated with other parties, especially for Reform UK. Voters who lack enthusiasm for the prime minister may be persuaded to stick with him if the alternative is Nigel Farage.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

An incredible smoked haddock paste for toast, crackers or crudités, and a moreish and indulgent multi-mushroom-topped pastry

Two key elements at the heart of Portuguese eating culture are couvert and pastry. A couvert, comprising bread, butter, pickled or garlic carrots, cheese and fish paté (often sardine), comes as standard at every Portuguese restaurant and family dinner table alike, as it does at our restaurant Luso, where our fish paste is an ode to this way of dining. The mushroom tart, meanwhile, celebrates the Portuguese love of pastry and is a take on a traditional savoury tart. While such tarts are unlikely to feature solely mushrooms (they’re much more likely to be mixed vegetable tarts), we like to focus on the incredible varietals of this single ingredient.

Research finds minor changes in physical activity could hugely reduce number of premature deaths

Just five extra minutes of exercise and half an hour less sitting time each day could help millions of people live longer, according to research highlighting the potentially huge population benefits of making even tiny lifestyle changes.

Until now, evidence about reducing the number of premature deaths assumed that everyone must meet specific targets, overlooking the positives of even minor increases in physical activity.

Erfan Soltani, 26, is reportedly facing imminent execution, as rights groups fear for more than 18,000 people detained in the crackdown

• Iran protests: live blog updates

• Hundreds of gunshot eye injuries found in one Iranian hospital

• Iran protests: what we know so far about the anti-government demonstrations

Donald Trump has threatened to “take very strong action” if Iranian authorities begin executing anti-government protesters this week, as the reported death toll from the crisis surged past 2,500.

“If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, hours before the US president was due to be briefed on the scale of casualties inside Iran.

How do you retain a space of democracy in a world that is reverting to violent conquest? By building a protective moat of federalism around it

‘He keeps encouraging me … to choose between Europe and the US. That would be a strategic mistake for our country,” Keir Starmer said in response to Ed Davey’s question in the House of Commons last week, about whether a US move against Greenland would mean the end of Nato.

What about Europe, though? As Danish and Greenlandic ministers prepared to face JD Vance in the White House, the question was would Europe finally choose between Europe and the US? Will its leaders have the courage to tell the full truth – that the US isn’t simply abandoning its allies and destroying the international order but is now in the position of active and hostile predation by force – and more importantly, to act on it? To offer Denmark moral and material backing, and Greenland a future of self-determination and membership, rather than subservience to US resource plunder?

Donald Trump has already set the tone by saying the US will seize Greenland “one way or the other”, and no part of the triumvirate around him is trying to hide their imperial intentions any more. Not the nepotists and grifters amassing ever greater private fortunes. Not the white supremacist ideologues drawing inspiration from Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer! to post “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”, via official US government social media accounts. Not the techno-nihilists salivating to mine every bit of Greenland’s mineral resources and rule their own neofeudal city states on its coast.

When Trump says that the only constraint on his exercise of power is “my own morality”, that means there is no constraint. Like Vladimir Putin, he will keep grabbing until someone imposes a limit on him.

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir, Generation Desperation, is published this month

After a 21-year-old employee was raped and killed by her supervisor in 2021, campaigners ensured conditions at the factory were overhauled. But its order book never recovered

Ask the women working at Natchi Apparels in the historic city of Dindigul in Tamil Nadu and many will describe the turnaround in their working conditions in the garment factory over the past five years as extraordinary.

On 5 January 2021 the decomposing body of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 21-year-old Dalit woman who was an employee of Natchi, then an H&M Group supplier, was found on a strip of farmland a few miles from her village after she failed to return home following a shift on New Year’s Day.

Sam Nelson is ready to beat some more bad guys – and this time he’s on the Berlin metro. Shenanigans will ensue!

Do you remember the lazy, hazy days of summer 2023, when Idris Elba got on a plane and it was hijacked? It was in a programme called Hijack. For seven effortlessly bingeable hours supposedly showing the adventure in real time, our man on the pressurised inside deduced complex situations from misplaced washbags, sent coded messages via fruit cartons and dying men’s phones, saved lives, averted disasters, and got Kingdom Flight 29 landed safely by Holly Aird so that he could return to his family, even though viewers agreed the scenes with them in between the plane bits were very boring indeed.

And he wasn’t even a policeman like Bruce Willis in Die Hard or a counter-terrorist federal agent like Kiefer Sutherland in 24! Or a pilot, which might also have been useful. He was Sam Nelson, a business negotiator. He had extreme business negotiating skills and he beat the bad guys. Who turned out not to be terrorists but a crime syndicate that wanted to short shares in the airline. Which was a bit weird, but never mind. And one of the bad guys escaped, but the point is Sam was a hero and Elba was the only man who could have played him and made it work. He was a mighty, implacable force. The rock on which this fragile, teetering edifice of nonsense was built.

Society should only eject fellows for fraud or other defects in their research, says Paul Nurse

The president of the Royal Society has reignited a row over Elon Musk’s association with the body by arguing that fellows should only be ejected for fraud or other defects in their research.

In an interview with the Guardian, Paul Nurse defended the academy’s decision not to take action against Musk – who was elected a fellow in 2008 – despite claims the tech billionaire had violated its code of conduct, including by his role in slashing US research funding as part of the US “department of government efficiency”.

He had threatened her, locked her up and absconded with one of their daughters. Palmer knew she and her girls needed to escape – but it would involve huge risk and total reinvention

In the summer of 1989, Karen Palmer bought a used car for cash, filled it with belongings – some clothes, toys, one pot, one pan and a shoebox of photos – and “disappeared” with her new husband and two young daughters. She didn’t tell her mother, her friends or her neighbours where she was going. She gave no notice to her employers and landlord, leaving items out on her apartment balcony as a sign she still lived there.

“I have such a clear memory of the day we left Los Angeles,” says Palmer. “It was this weird combination of fear and exhilaration, heart pounding, driving into the unknown.” Palmer was fleeing her ex-husband, Gil, the man she feared, and the father of her two daughters, Erin and Amy, then seven and three.

On the anniversary of his death aged 69, stars from Sigourney Weaver to Sharleen Spiteri, Tom Felton to Harriet Walter, remember the wit, charm and endless generosity of one of Britain’s best-loved actors

Ruby Wax

Results for 2025 risk further unsettling economies about China’s trade practices and overcapacity, and their own over-reliance on Chinese products

China has reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record trillion-dollar surplus, as its producers brace for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the manufacturing powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets.

Beijing’s resilience to renewed tariff tensions since Donald Trump returned to the US presidency last January has emboldened Chinese firms to shift their focus to south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset US duties.

South Korean president Lee Jae Myung had his work cut out, picking up his drumsticks alongside Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi, a former heavy metal drummer

If international diplomacy is as much about tone as substance, the leaders of South Korea and Japan seem to have nailed it.

In a scene few anticipated, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung and Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi spent the last moments of a crucial summit seated behind matching drum kits in matching blue uniforms as they bashed out hit song Golden from Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters and BTS’s Dynamite.

President speaks to CBS News about killing of woman by ICE agent and defends immigration crackdown

Donald Trump has defended his administration’s increasingly violent immigration crackdown, describing the 37-year-old woman killed by federal agents as likely a “wonderful person” whose “tough” actions justified a lethal response.

Trump’s comments, made during an interview with CBS News after touring a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, came as tensions continue to rise in Minneapolis days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good at the wheel of her SUV on a residential street last week.

Colvin refused to give up seat to white woman in Alabama in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ act of defiance

US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin, arrested at age 15 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks’ similar but more famous act of defiance, died on Tuesday at age 86.

Although she remained a largely unsung figure in the civil rights movement for decades, Colvin’s 1955 act of rebellion inspired Parks and others and helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation.

Protests began over the fall in value of the currency have grown into wider demonstrations and calls for the fall of Iran’s clerical establishment

• Iran protests live updates

• Trump promises ‘help is on its way’ and tells Iranians to ‘keep protesting’