Fandom memes, influencers and TikTok deal helped secure industry’s holy grail: gen Z loyalty

There are not many plaudits left for The Celebrity Traitors, which has delivered tension, crowd-pleasing ineptitude and the most famous fart in television history.

Yet for all the show’s achievements, one in particular – a feat that TV executives across the globe have been desperate to deliver – may stand out as the most impressive: it has got gen Z watching live TV.

A newspaper report about a missing girl, the memory of a midwinter emergency … Susan Choi, Andrew Miller, David Szalay and others on what inspired their shortlisted books

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Ruth was 14 years old and being treated for an eating disorder when she died after being detained under the Mental Health Act. She wasn’t allowed to see her family for more than a few hours a week. How did the system we trusted – and I worked for as a GP – fail us so tragically?

I remember so clearly the moment it dawned on me that the mental health ward where my teenage daughter was being treated felt like little more than a prison. Ruth had been so trusting. So had we. That all changed the day she was moved from our local hospital to Thames Ward at Huntercombe hospital in Berkshire. When we left, she walked so easily down to the hospital transport with me and the play therapist – who hugged her tight and waved goodbye. When the van door opened at the other end, the stark building loomed over us. We were met and escorted up a flight of stairs and through the double, air-locked, doors, one slamming closed behind us, the person with the keys waiting for the first lock to click before opening the next. This was a sealed unit, devoid of natural light, my eyes aching already from the harsh glare overhead. We were taken to an inner room, lined with windows. The goldfish bowl, they called it.

Ruth’s hand slipped into mine, head down as they told me it was time for me to go. “But I haven’t settled her into her room or met any of the staff yet,” was met with: “Parents aren’t allowed on the ward.” I asked again, and they conceded I could see her room, just once, but then I had to leave immediately. It was hospital policy.

Two midweek matches in England had a backdrop of war and geopolitics, but only one drew large protests

How would you feel if the owner of the football club you support was implicated, even as those implications are repeatedly denied, in famine, ethnic cleansing and the deaths of 1,500 men, women and children?

Compare this with the more familiar list of bad things football club owners do, the real sack‑the‑board stuff. Failure to buy a striker. Inadequate Showing Of Ambition. The hiring and/or firing of David Moyes. Mike Ashley was pretty annoying. He had shops full of quilted coats hung really high up close to the ceiling.

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing

Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.

We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.

Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook

Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month’s climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from “near-term emissions goals” towards climate “adaptation” and spending on poverty and disease.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Endocrinologists warn taking testosterone unnecessarily can suppress natural hormone production

Social media misinformation is driving men to NHS clinics in search of testosterone therapy they don’t need, adding pressure to already stretched waiting lists, doctors have said.

Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is a prescription-only treatment recommended under national guidelines for men with a clinically proven deficiency, confirmed by symptoms and repeated blood tests.

Shabana Mahmood’s proposals draw scorn from some Labour MPs, while others want government to go further

Shabana Mahmood is to announce changes to the UK’s immigration rules modelled on the Danish system, largely seen as among the most stringent in Europe, the Guardian understands.

Last month, the home secretary dispatched officials to Denmark to study its border control and asylum policies. Denmark’s tighter rules on family reunions and restricting some refugees to a temporary stay are among the policies being looked at.

Comments by Karoline Leavitt follow allegations that Panorama documentary misled viewers with its editing of a Trump speech

Donald Trump’s press secretary has described the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine” in an outspoken interview that comes after allegations of bias at the broadcaster.

Karoline Leavitt, a senior White House official in the Trump administration, said watching BBC bulletins while on trips to the UK “ruins” her day, saying taxpayers were being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine”.

Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.

The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.