There are 27% fewer art teachers in England today than there were in 2011, and the proportion of students taking arts subjects has plummeted. Here’s what it’s like to work in a job that is essential and often perilously undervalued

When 64-year-old Sue Cabourn began her career in the late 90s, the next generation of artists including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Gillian Wearing were dominating the cultural agenda. All of them were state-educated but, had they attended school now, things might have panned out differently.

There has been an exodus of art teachers (a 27% drop in the number working in English state-secondary schools from 2011 to 2024), lower uptake (48% fewer students have taken on arts subjects at GCSE since 2010), and a reformed system that critics say has stifled creativity and prioritised Stem (science and technology) subjects over arts and humanities.

The draft plan, reportedly developed by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine

In the last hour, Ukraine said it had received from Russia the remains of 1,000 people that Moscow said were killed Ukrainian soldiers, in the latest repatriation – a rare area of cooperation between the warring sides, AFP reported.

“Today, repatriation measures took place. 1000 bodies, claimed by the Russian side to belong to Ukrainian servicemen, were returned to Ukraine,” Kyiv’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on social media.

• Live updates as the draw is made in Switzerland

• Who has qualified | European tables | Mail Luke

Here is some reading on how Republic of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland made it into the playoffs. Plus a bonus Scotland match report after they sealed the place at the World Cup in dramatic style.

“As an ROI supporter, I hope we get a home match against a theoretically weaker side,” writes Martin. “I dream of beating Spain in the final. I fear it’s all going to end in tears, starting about an hour from now.”

Samira Asghari, the International Olympic Committee’s youngest member, says negotiation with Taliban is only way to help Afghan girls access sport

“My message for all Afghan women who play is that if there is any small opportunity, do it,” Samira Asghari says. “My solid message is never, ever give up. Afghanistan was always a war-torn country, unfortunately. We have grown up in a war country. And we believe in a future Afghanistan, and the future of Afghanistan is the people.”

Asghari is 31, the youngest member of the International Olympic Committee and an exile from her home. Resident in Europe, her role requires her to try to bring an end to current restrictions which prevent Afghan women and girls from taking part in sport. In this, the people she must negotiate with are the Taliban.

It’s a climate-vulnerable nation, while also being the world’s sixth-largest greenhouse-gas emitter. Global investment in climate action is vital

Staffordshire students say signs material was AI-generated included suspicious file names and rogue voiceover accent

Students at the University of Staffordshire have said they feel “robbed of knowledge and enjoyment” after a course they hoped would launch their digital careers turned out to be taught in large part by AI.

James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers.

Convicted serial offender given further life sentence for crimes against 12-year-old girl in 1980s and former partner

Former police officer and convicted sex offender David Carrick has been sentenced at the Old Bailey to life with a minimum of 30 years for molesting a 12-year-old girl and raping a former partner.

Carrick, 50, who served as an armed officer in the Metropolitan police, sexually assaulted the child in the late 1980s, his trial heard. More than 20 years later, he repeatedly raped a woman and subjected her to “degrading and humiliating” abuse during the course of a toxic relationship.

Mrs Justice McGowan sentenced Carrick for the fresh convictions on Thursday after he was found guilty of two charges of rape, one of sexual assault and coercive and controlling behaviour towards the woman between 2014 and 2019, and five counts of indecent assault relating to the girl in the late 1980s.

Carrick’s offences came to light after he pleaded guilty in 2022 and 2023 to 71 sexual offences, including 48 rapes, against 12 other women over 17 years. He was handed 36 life sentences in 2023 for these crimes with a minimum term of 32 years.

Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog

• UK politics live – latest updates

Criminals will be stopped from “gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing, the courts minister has said, promising to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election.

Drug dealers and career criminals were “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial, Sarah Sackman told the Guardian, saying inaction would be a road to “chaos and ruin”.

Senior officials indicated favorability toward Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery

Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, comes as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after it announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.

It’s a radical but simple notion: ditch the dead weight of your worldly goods and get out there and live your best life

I spend a lot of time worrying about stuff, as in physical, you know, stuff. Things I use, things I no longer use, things I’ve never used and never will, things I’d happily give away if anyone wanted them, things which will surely end up in landfill, dumped there by me or my children, or my children’s children. To misquote Larkin: Man hands on stuff to man, or in my case women. They’ll not thank me for it.

Deborah has an interesting take on this, almost as an aside in a radio interview – she’d featured in the Guardian the week before – about how, at the age of 65, she’s renting a room in a house she’s sharing with three people whose ages, she says, barely add up to more than hers. She does so by choice, having no appetite for the upkeep of a house big enough to accommodate visiting grandchildren. Renting, she at least knows how much money is going out, and her children aren’t expecting to inherit much. She says they’re agreed that “money isn’t something you collect, it’s something that allows you to do things”. And what she’s got, after she’s paid the rent, she intends to spend on enjoying life.

With a platform focused on cost of living, Aftyn Behn wants to turn the US House seat blue for the first time since 1983

Republicans have controlled Tennessee’s seventh congressional district for four decades. The party finished some 21 points ahead of the Democrats when the seat was last contested, alongside Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election last November.

Twelve months on, that lead has narrowed dramatically, according to opinion polls – and a challenger is attempting to build a “coalition of the pissed off” to overturn it altogether.

After Republicans were trounced in this month’s votes, the administration has launched a slapdash, ill-conceived campaign

When running for president last year, Donald Trump wooed and wowed voters by vowing to reduce prices “starting on day one”. But once he was inaugurated, he seemed to pay precious little attention to prices and affordability.

All that changed, however, when inflation-weary voters thrashed Trump and the GOP on election day this month – within days, the Trump administration launched a slapdash effort to focus on affordability. Unfortunately, the campaign is a hot mess: a pile of absurdity, contradictions, magical thinking, scapegoating and good ol’ Trumpian dishonesty, with Trump repeatedly blaring that “prices are down.”

• Coach Steve Tandy hails Ospreys flanker’s ‘amazing story’

• Five changes to side that edged out Japan 24-23

Harri Deaves began his working life as a roofer but on Saturday the Ospreys flanker will run out in the scarlet shirt of Wales against the All Blacks to complete “an amazing story” from club rugby player to international.

The 24-year-old will win his first cap in a Wales side showing five changes from the one that edged out Japan 24-23 with a last-gasp penalty.

Motown star denies allegations, in addition to four existing sets of allegations against him

Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies.

Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a joint lawsuit in May. This week, lawyers for the accusers filed a motion to have two further accusers added to the lawsuit, both anonymously.

The former president’s far-right supporters have discovered a new interest in prison conditions as incarceration looms

He fought the law and the law won.

Two months after receiving a 27-year sentence for trying to “annihilate” Brazil’s democratic institutions, former president Jair Bolsonaro finally looks jail-bound.

At the high-end Metro Private Cinema, a private screening room with a gourmet meal and drinks can reach $200 a person. Will people pay?

On a recent trip to the cinema, I found myself annoyed. The person next to me kept sniffling loudly and, even worse, scrolling Instagram on their phone, dimly visible from the corner of my eye. The former is simply an occupational hazard of being around other people, a thing I usually love to be doing; the latter, though a violation of the theater’s no phone policy, still more preferable to the conflict-averse than confrontation. If only, one sometimes wonders, there was some middle ground between full cinema experience and the privacy of one’s couch.

Enter Metro Private Cinemas, a new upscale theater in Manhattan that caters to cinephiles eager to privatize and glamorize the theatrical experience – for a price. For $50-100 a head, you can book a room at the 20-screen complex in Chelsea for a group sized anywhere between four and 20 people. Pick a film from either current releases or a curated archive, select a drink package for an extra $50 each, choose a 12-13 course gourmet meal off a seasonal menu for another $100 a head, and you have a ritzy night at the movies.

Special report: A leading agent and two Olympians fell out when their talent agency was sold, leading to ‘three years of torture’ which came to a sudden end after the emergence of text messages sent to a phone registered to Barnett

A high-court claim that had pitted the leading sports agent Jonathan Barnett against his former business partners, the Olympic medallists John Regis and Jennifer Stoute, was withdrawn after an extraordinary three-year legal battle.

A partnership of which Barnett was a member, the sports agency Stellar Athletics LLP, pursued a claim against Regis and Stoute for £1.2m after they left the partnership in 2021. It was settled by the parent company, CAA Stellar, in April 2024, shortly after Barnett himself resigned from the company.

Study finds rising seas could flood facilities handling waste, sewage, and oil and gas – and coastal states most at risk

More than 5,500 toxic sites nationwide could face coastal flooding by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to new research.

The study, published on Thursday in Nature Communications and led by scientists at the University of California, warns that if heat-trapping pollution continues unabated, rising seas will flood a wide range of hazardous facilities including those handling sewage, toxic waste, oil and gas, as well as other industrial pollutants.

Researchers in British Columbia catch sea wolves in the act after placing camera to solve mystery of damaged traps

The clues read like something from mystery novel: crab traps, suspiciously hauled ashore by unseen hands, had been damaged by baffling teeth marks. The bait inside was missing.

The question for researchers in the remote corner of British Columbia was: whodunnit? As with many crimes of opportunity in the modern era, the culprit was unmasked by a remote camera.

Investors cheer forecast-beating results from chipmaker, as attention turns to delayed US employment report

The Chinese ministry of commerce has said the dispute over the supply of chips from Nexperia, the Dutch-based Chinese-owed company, is still not fully resolved.

“There is still a gap to completely solve the problem,” the Chinese ministry of commerce (MOFCOM) said on Thursday.

“Minister Karremans justified his actions by accusing Nexperia’s CEO of various acts of alleged mismanagement. Wingtech strongly rejects these accusations and points out that, to date, no proof has been provided,”

The minimum is no additional cost for business. Every time costs go up, you’re making the case against investing in the UK.

In the UK cost of energy is too high versus almost anywhere in the world.

Roles as EM Forster and a young, gay American dying of Aids in the 2018 play allowed an opportunity for deep personal and social reflection

In 2018 I had recently lost my mother, so I was looking for connections with the spirit. The Inheritance allowed me to talk about matters of the heart.

It was the world premiere at the Young Vic in London, so we were making something brand new, which is always thrilling. They’d already done a week’s rehearsal with another actor who had pulled out of what became my role. I stayed up all night reading Matthew López’s script before my audition. It was so gripping. I was nervous of Stephen Daldry going into the audition, as he has an enormous status and he’s very front-footed in the rehearsal room. I like to be in the background and find my way, so his working methods frightened me a little bit. But I put all of that aside to serve this story.

Organisers look at other UK venues amid concerns over costs and industry’s lack of working-class voices

For almost 50 years, the great and the good of British broadcasting have descended on Edinburgh each summer to discuss the trials and tribulations of the TV world. David Attenborough, Tina Fey, Emily Maitlis and Rupert Murdoch are among those to have previously given speeches at the city’s TV festival.

Yet amid concerns about the industry’s lack of working-class voices and the high cost of a hotel room in the city, the event’s organisers are thinking the unthinkable: the Edinburgh TV festival could be leaving Edinburgh.

We’d like to hear all about your Secret Santa disasters

It’s that time of year again… Whether it’s with family, colleagues or friends, many of us will be asked to take part in a Secret Santa as the festive period approaches. You know the drill: a fixed budget, a random name draw, and a high risk of ending up with something a bit naff. But hey, that’s Christmas, right?

Maybe you’ve been lucky, and have done well out of Secret Santas over the years. But we’re looking for stories of when it’s gone really, really wrong. Have you received a gift that had clearly been bought that morning from the office’s nearest corner shop? Or have you given a gift that was intended as a joke, but which didn’t land with the recipient? We want to hear from you!

Only our current tech hellscape could create a comedy so insidiously inoffensive. Prepare to be pummelled into submission as your time is siphoned off by OK entertainment

This is a cosy, lighthearted whodunnit about a retired professor who gets a second wind as a private eye. It’s also a bingo card for just about everything that makes streamer-era TV so patronising, uninspiring and mind-numbingly dull.

On the surface, A Man on the Inside’s crimes might seem negligible: it’s a little schmaltzy, a little too pleased with itself in that wisecrack-stuffed American comedy way. Yet it’s exactly that inoffensiveness that makes this strain of television so insidious. When the New York Times critic James Poniewozik coined the term “mid TV” to describe the current “profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence” that has come to dominate our screens, it wasn’t so much a vicious takedown as a shrug at the blah-ness of it all. The tech giants have pummelled us into submission by siphoning off our time via OK entertainment.