Latest wave of displaced citizens curse ‘imperial ambition’ that has led to an estimated one million Russian casualties

It was last year when Valentyn Velykyi noticed Russia’s war with Ukraine was getting closer. In early summer, it arrived on his doorstep. “You could hear explosions day and night. Recently missiles started flying over my house. There’s a rumbling sound. You can see a trail in the sky,” the 72-year-old pensioner recalled.

Velykyi’s home is at No 18 Petrenko Street, in the small agricultural village of Maliyivka. It is located on the administrative border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk provinces in central-eastern Ukraine. Once Russian troops were far away. Latterly, they have crept nearer, besieging the city of Pokrovsk and capturing one grassy meadow after another.

Immigration, Kneecap and gay rights in Muslim-majority nations were the hot topics for an English examiner and an electrician from Leeds. So, did sparks fly?

Andrew, 49, Leeds

Occupation Electrician

Hendricks’ killer was a violent six-year-old who grew into a violent teenager. She was also the victim of brutality and neglect. As they mourn their son, Hendricks’ parents wish more had been done to help her

In October 2020, Nimroy Hendricks was struggling to manage a situation that was spiralling out of control. He was 24, his girlfriend was 32, and her daughter, Rhianna (not her real name), was a violent and troubled 14-year-old. At the start of that year, Rhianna had stabbed her mother and set fire to a room in their home, been briefly detained, then returned to live with her. Now she was again threatening to stab her mum. Hendricks was desperate to protect his girlfriend, who he had been with for six months.

“I knew it was getting really bad for Nim,” says his father, also called Nimroy Hendricks. “He couldn’t handle the situation but he felt he couldn’t leave his girlfriend because he was worried Rhianna might kill her. The mother was afraid of her daughter. She had reported her daughter’s threats to police and social services, but Rhianna remained living with her.

Like so many others, I moved from London to Portugal’s capital for the sun, lifestyle – and the tax break. But as tensions rise with struggling locals, many of us are beginning to wonder whether we’re doing more harm than good …

For the past five years, I’ve lived in a flat in a four-storey apartment building standing atop a hill in the pastel-hued district of Lapa, Lisbon. I work from my desk at home, with a view of palm fronds outside the window as I dial into Zooms with London advertising agencies, for which I’m paid in pounds into a UK bank account. Upstairs, one of my neighbours makes money from France, and downstairs another offers financial coaching to a range of international clients.

In the flat just across the hallway, three Scandinavian digital creatives work remotely for clients in their own home countries. All the school-age children attend international private schools. The building, clad in weathered Portuguese tiles, is owned by a single Portuguese family. The remote workers live among four siblings, aged 60-plus, who each live on one of the floors. The building tells a typical story of the demographic of the local area: Portuguese who have benefited from inherited wealth and foreigners earning foreign incomes.

Performing at these festivals can be ruinously expensive – but can you at least attend one for free? Our writer ditches his wallet to find out, and meets the comedians doing their best on an ever-tightening budget

Fringe festivals have always been cash guzzlers, not only for punters but for the performers, whose show costs far outstrip their earnings – and that’s not including the money needed to eat, drink and find somewhere to crash. This is just how fringe festivals work. The performers have to pay to book their own venues, and rely on ticket sales to claw back their investment, all in a highly competitive market, with tickets for hundreds of shows a night going on sale.

Spiralling costs certainly make performing at fringe festivals seem elitist. But are they really only vanity projects for middle-class comedians bankrolled by their savings, or worse still, the bank of Mum and Dad? Or is living on a diet of Pot Noodles and top-and-tailing with a total stranger all part of the charm?

After struggles with mental health and addiction, Max Wallis launched a poetry magazine – and it has transformed his life

One morning in February last year, I received an urgent call from the journalist Paul Burston, alerting me to alarming recent social media posts by a mutual friend, the poet and former model Max Wallis.

It seemed he had left his London flat in deep distress and was headed to a bridge. Our best guess was the Millennium footbridge by St Paul’s Cathedral. Then we heard that Max might have taken refuge inside the cathedral. While I scanned gaggles of tourists in the nave, he was intercepted and removed by ambulance. I was relieved to get a message later that evening that he was safe.

Exclusive: Investigation finds one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities benefited from transatlantic slavery and was haven for white supremacist theories

The University of Edinburgh, one of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious educational institutions, played an “outsized” role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery, a landmark inquiry into its history has found.

The university raised the equivalent of at least £30m from former students and donors who had links to the enslavement of African peoples, the plantation economy and exploitative wealth-gathering throughout the British empire, according to the findings of an official investigation seen by the Guardian.

The university had explicitly sought donations from graduates linked to transatlantic slavery to help build two of its most famous buildings, Old College on South Bridge in the 1790s and the old medical school near Bristo Square in the 1870s.

The donations were equivalent to approximately £30m in today’s prices, or the higher figure of £202m based on the growth of wages since they were received, and as much as £845m based on economic growth since then.

The university had at least 15 endowments derived from African enslavement and 12 linked to British colonialism in India, Singapore and South Africa, and 10 of those were still active and had a minimum value today of £9.4m.

The university holds nearly 300 skulls gathered in the 1800s from enslaved and dispossessed people by phrenologists in Edinburgh who wrongly believed skull shape determined a person’s character and morals.

Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students were Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh’s status as a global institution.

Military says it will halt activity in Muwasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City from 10am to 8pm local time every day until further notice

At least 13 Palestinians, including two children, have been killed this morning after Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza, medical sources have told Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.

Wafa reports that six civilians were killed near an aid distribution centre to the southwest of Khan Younis, six more Palestinians were killed near an aid distribution center on the outskirts of Rafah and one other person was killed in a similar attack in central Gaza. We have not yet been able to indepdnently verifiy this information.

Intelligence team could track social media and flag early signs of civil unrest in response to renewed demonstrations

A national police unit will monitor social media for signs of anti-migrant disorder amid fears of a repeat of last summer’s riots across England.

Detectives from across the country will flag up the early signs of civil unrest under a beefed-up National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in Westminster.

Thousands of properties going up without access to playgrounds, community infrastructure and even doctors

Thousands of homes across England are being built without urgently needed community infrastructure, say councillors and campaigners, leaving families without access to playgrounds, schools, shops, and even doctors.

Even where provision is built, it can take years to come into use, the Guardian has been told.