As ordinary people feel the effects of divisive rhetoric, a local group is taking action to empower the community

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Selina Ullah said, when asked what she thought of Matt Goodwin, the GB News presenter running for Reform in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary byelection.

She would rather talk about the hope she took from the national reaction to the murder of her brother, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah – and the memorial campaign afterwards – in the same Greater Manchester constituency in 1986.

By failing to remove John Davidson’s tic from the broadcast, editors let down both black and disabled people

I attended the Bafta awards on Sunday. And I arrived early enough to hear the Tourette syndrome (TS) campaigner John Davidson, on whom the biographical film I Swear is based, be introduced. He stood up to wave and take in the applause, and we were told that due to his TS, we might expect to hear involuntary vocal outbursts, known as tics, and that we should understand that the Baftas are an inclusive space in which all people are welcome.

Perhaps half the people were listening, others would have been on their phones or engaged in mild chatter. But the tics were instantly audible. When the host, Alan Cumming, was on stage we heard “boring” and there was laughter. When the outgoing chair of Bafta, Sara Putt, was speaking, we heard “shut the fuck up” and there was a mix of knowing silence and confusion. But, as you all now know, it was when Sinners actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented an award that the tics transmuted from things that would be read as benignly antisocial to more outright offensive, as we heard the N-word. There were gasps and whispers of “did he just say … ?”

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

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He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 years

Stewart Brand thinks big and long. He thinks on a planetary scale – as suggested by the title of his celebrated Whole Earth Catalog – and on the longest of timeframes, as with his Long Now Foundation, which looks forward to the next 10,000 years of human civilisation. He has had a lifelong fascination with the future, and anything that could get us there faster, from space travel to psychedelic drugs to computing. In fact, he was arguably the bridge between the San Francisco counterculture of the 60s and present-day Silicon Valley: in his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs eulogised the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand’s philosophy, and echoed its farewell mantra: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

You could say that Brand has also lived big and long. He is now 87 years old, in the final chapters of an eventful and adventurous life that has crossed paths with some of the most consequential events and figures of his era. He has been a writer, an editor, a publisher, a soldier, a photojournalist, an LSD evangelist, an events organiser, a future-planning consultant, even a government adviser (to the California governor Jerry Brown in the late 70s). “There was a time when people asked me, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I find things and I found things,’” says Brand, as in he is a founder. He is speaking from a library where he likes to work in Petaluma, California, not far from his houseboat in Sausalito. “I’m always searching for good stuff to recommend, and good people.”

It makes rejection, teasing or criticism feel unbearable, often prompting a strong physical reaction. Sufferers describe life with a condition that is only just starting to be understood

Jenna Turnbull’s chest is tightening. The 36-year-old civil servant, who lives in Cardiff, can picture herself as she speaks: an 11-year-old in her PE kit waiting with the other kids for her lesson to start. “We were outside by the courts waiting to play netball,” she says. “Somebody commented that I had hairy arms, one of the boys.” Her voice wobbles. The incident was clearly juvenile; rationally, she knows that. Yet 25 years on, her embarrassment is still visceral, with the power to cause instant physical discomfort.

She searches for another example of her acute reaction to teasing and recalls a trip to the pub with her friends six years ago. Amid the loud conversation and laughter, a quip was made in the group about her being untidy at home. Or that’s how she perceived it. “About me not keeping on top of the house,” she recalls. The person “was having a laugh. It was just something that was said off the cuff.” Yet while the memory and detail is hazy, the shame she feels about it is not. “That comment still haunts me,” she says. After that pub outing, she started cleaning her house obsessively – to such an extreme that it became one of the symptoms leading to her diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). “I’ve been known to spend four or five hours cleaning my bathroom,” she says.

Tate Modern, London
Forget the sex and drugs of the 90s. This wildly emotional exhibition shows that Emin’s life’s work has been turning suffering into sculpture, insults into poetry – and agony into art

It feels as if you’re intruding. Walking into Tate Modern’s huge Tracey Emin retrospective is like walking in on her crying, naked, sobbing and snotty, as if you have stumbled into something painfully private.

That’s not an easy thing to pull off in the cavernous spaces of our leading contemporary art institution, but that’s what makes Tracey – it doesn’t feel right calling her Emin, she pulls you so close it’s like you know her, it’s Tracey isn’t it? – such a special, important, era-defining artist.

Brown is said to be driven by moral anger but insiders suggest he may feel guilty for bringing Peter Mandelson back into government

Before Gordon Brown sent a draft of his 6 February comment piece on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal to the Guardian for publication, he asked friends whether he had gone too far.

The former prime minister had written that he found it “hard to find words to express my revulsion at what has been uncovered about Epstein and his impact on our politics” and the “time is overdue to let in the light”.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle said he told police he had heard that former US ambassador was planning to leave the country

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published figures showing that local authorities in England dealt with 1.26m flytipping incidents in 2024/25 – 9% increase on the previous year.

And there was an 11% increase in incidents involving a “tipper lorry load” amount of rubbish. There were 52,000 of these, up from 47,000 in 2023/24. Defra said these alone cost councils £19.3m.

These figures show the equivalent of 142 monster landfills a day took place, confirming what communities across the country know all too well – our beautiful countryside is being used by criminal gangs as their personal landfill.

For far too long, waste gangs have pocketed millions in illegal earning, poisoning our environment and our health without consequence. The Liberal Democrats are demanding an end to this environmental vandalism.

Ofgem cap drops by 7% to £1,641 a year for consumers’ average gas and electricity costs

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Annual energy bills will fall by £117 for millions of households from April after Rachel Reeves’s plan to cut £150 a year from bills was partly foiled by rising costs.

The energy regulator Ofgem’s quarterly cap will fall by 7% a year for the three months from April to £1,641 for the average combined gas and electricity bill in Great Britain, from £1,758 under the current January-March cap.

Opposition campaigners claim top figures in regime use state wealth to fund lifestyles counter to those they preach

Members of Iran’s ruling elite have been accused of brazen hypocrisy by allegedly using the state’s wealth to help to fund their adult children’s lives in the west while presiding over growing economic misery and repression at home.

Opposition campaigners made the accusation against some of the clerical regime’s most powerful figures as a military confrontation with the US appears increasingly likely. Donald Trump has deployed a vast armada in the Middle East and confirmed he is considering strikes.

High court judge accepts material distributed without legally required imprint due to inadvertent printing mistake

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Matt Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, will not face a sanction for leaflets that omitted the party’s imprint, after a high court judge accepted this was due to an inadvertent printing error.

Reform admitted that it sent about 81,000 leaflets to the constituency’s voters from a “concerned neighbour”, which did not state they had been funded and distributed by the party.