Too costly for most, too large for UK car parks, and wheels bigger than a warlord’s pickup truck. But it does come in ‘London red’

• Jaguar targets young Americans with Type 01 EV

The cutting-edge car du jour, even while very few will ever buy one, is a good index of what the world’s coming to. It’s a dress-for-the-job-you-want principle, on wheels: drive for the world you want to inhabit.

That’s why when Tesla launched the Model X with a bioweapon defence mode (2016!), we should have been much more worried than we were, and it’s why the Jaguar Type 01 Grand Tourer EV has a lot to say.

Guardian reporters Jonathan Watts and Gabrielle Canon are online answering your questions on climate and extreme weather from what to expect this winter in the UK to the increasing risk of natural disasters.

funkymentalist asks: Unrelated to El Niño, what is the likelihood of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) shutting down?

Jon says: I don’t think these two things are unrelated. Everything is affected by climate breakdown. And both El Niño and the slowdown of AMOC are related to the staggeringly huge amounts (see this article on zettajoules which I also referred to above) of extra energy that the oceans are being forced to absorb as a result of greenhouse gas burning.

Quick refresher for any readers who are unfamiliar with this topic: “Amoc, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics.”

Gaby says: The name “El Niño” actually harkens back to long before forecasters used the phenomenon to track global weather patterns. Fishermen off the coast of South America began to track unusually warm water that would show up every few years right around Christmas - thus “The Little Boy” referring to the Christ child in Spanish. Scientists adopted the name, and added “La Niña” as its counterpart (when sea surface temperatures cool), and together they became ENSO - the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This year, though, feel free to call it “El Monstruo Gordo!” It’s going to be a big one.

The Tory leader is now too big for the party to allow her to fail, so everything she does is acclaimed a work of genius

Where’s AI slop when you need it? It could all have been so much simpler. Just ask ChatGPT to write me a leader’s speech in the style of Kemi Badenoch. Make it an hour and 10 minutes long, so plenty of room for padding. Go heavy on the slogans, cliches and the obligatory crap politician jokes. Ones we’ve all heard many times before. Not least at this conference.

Make the usual digs at Labour and put the boot in to Reform. The main aim of the speech is to try to reposition a party that is tanking in third place on 20% in the polls as the main opposition to the government.

Jeremy Strong’s slow-talking Facebook founder turns into a cameo, background to a thriller about a whistleblower that somehow never mentions Trump

Here is a film for all those people who solemnly deplore social media in conversation but haven’t quite got round to deleting their accounts. Sixteen years have gone by since The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher; this was the addictive, obsessive-compulsive movie about the birth of Facebook in Harvard’s macho-competitive cauldron of student sexism and nerdy self-pity, starring Jesse Eisenberg as the fast-talking, arrogant, not-necessarily-evil genius Mark Zuckerberg. Now Sorkin is back with a sequel of sorts, directing his own script – and now Zuckerberg is basically evil, but also weirdly slow talking, as if all the zinging, smart-alecky Sorkinesque dialogue energy of the first film has been siphoned away in early middle age and dispersed among the insurgents in the new cast.

Sorkin’s jittery, funny, syncopated style is unmistakable, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet, although he has one joke about “spatula” being a Yiddish word that he has borrowed from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It is the story of how in 2021, Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire was challenged by courageous whistleblower-employee Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, who were on a mission to tell the world how Zuckerberg, scared by falling revenue, changed the algorithm so that engagement was supercharged by rage bait and hate speech, malice and envy. Facebook, moreover, didn’t factcheck political ads, thus driving a huge, nationwide surge in extremist groups and teen bullying and becoming a major player in the Capitol riots. (Having said that, this film does not say aloud the word “Trump” and rather cravenly declines to specify Maga activity.)

From a breathless tango to a kiss that sent fans wild, the pair crafted a sensational seven-year TV crush. The real-life best friends talk first impressions, Casablanca moments – and having hot husbands

• Lesley Manville and Peter Mullan on their heart-melting TV romance

“Dr Crane, your glockenspiel has sprung to life!”

It was a crush. An unexpected one. The psychiatrist Niles Crane (snooty, conflict-avoidant, married to a high-society wife with a fear of buffets) fell for his father’s physio, Daphne Moon (working class, Mancunian, reckons she’s a bit psychic) the moment he met her in his brother’s Seattle apartment.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
With a WWE-style wrestling match, playful eroticism and a fine cast including Hamilton’s Jonathan Groff, this is an exquisite production

‘To liberty, and not to banishment,” exclaims Celia to Rosalind, the exile who finds freedom in her disguise as a man. It is a key statement in Shakespeare’s transformative, gender-bending pastoral comedy, just before the usurping Duke Frederick’s court is replaced by the romance of the Forest of Arden. That big reveal brought a prolonged technical difficulty on the opening night of director Daniel Evans’ all-male production, which was paused for well over an hour so it could be fixed. The technical hitch aside, it is a ravishing staging, with stunning visual effects.

There is little comedy or light in the severe court, which contains an intimidating physicality to reflect Duke Frederick’s thuggery, with slaps, shoves and a magnificently constructed WWE-style wrestling match, complete with bunny girls keeping score. It is replaced by Arden’s verdant hills on Anisha Fields’ exquisite set, so beautiful they verge on the voluptuous. The black Elizabethan gowns of the court, Puritan-like but flecked with ornament, and designed by Colin Richmond, are stunning too, as is the chequered shadow-play of the early scenes, in Ryan Day’s lighting design. The breathtaking contrast of the switch between worlds is inevitably lost, following the long wait of the technical problem, but is nonetheless beautifully envisioned.

TaxWatch contradicts claims about David Reuben’s departure and questions stories of super-rich exodus

• Apparent exodus of super-rich suggests UK is no longer billionaires’ playground

When the Sunday Times broke the news that David Reuben, one of the richest men in the UK, had apparently fled to the tax haven of Monaco, there was much pearl clutching. Reuben had moved from his Holland Park house in London to live full-time in the principality.

Labour’s tax regime was blamed and there were said to be fears there would be a cascading effect across the economy, with wealth draining from the UK. It was reported that he had probably left because of potential taxes on wealth in the upcoming budget.

Party hopes to win over affluent middle-class voters as leader rejects calls to ‘unite the right’ in conference speech

Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Conservatives would abolish inheritance tax on family homes if elected, prompting criticism that she is prioritising cutting taxes for the rich.

The Tory leader also said couples would be able to leave an additional tax-free sum of £1m to their families as the party attempts to shore up its traditional base in southern England.

Sean Peers admits offence against woman who was drugged and attacked for more than two decades

A man has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, whose husband had drugged her and invited other men to abuse her.

Sean Peers, 38, had been due to stand trial alongside 11 other men, but admitted one count of assault by penetration on 15 September 2024 when he appeared at Manchester Minshull Street crown court.

Energy and housing costs threaten biggest decline in modern times unless bold action taken, says thinktank

Soaring energy and housing costs mean Labour is on course to preside over the worst parliament for living standards in modern times, a stark analysis warns.

Three weeks ahead of John Healey’s budget, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said Britain faces a “dire” outlook unless the government takes “bold policy action”.