Jacob Wulfson’s fellow airmen decided his fate after a court martial at RAF Lakenheath – a distressing week for Sarah Steele, the academic he assaulted

• Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts to try its military over crimes in the UK

When Sarah Steele woke up on the morning of 2 December 2023, she found herself in a pool of cold water in a bathtub. She was naked and in the apartment of an American fighter pilot she had met in person for the first time the night before. She was confused. Her head hurt, and so did her neck.

This was the account Steele, a British academic, provided to prosecutors. They later accused the pilot, Capt Jacob Wulfson, of drugging and strangling Steele in his apartment in the east of England, and penetrating her vagina with his penis without her consent.

Our lovable yet unruly boxer Dusty forced me to wonder: if a dog has no morals, how do you teach it to be ‘good’?

When I carried my beautiful two-month-old puppy into our home for the first time, I couldn’t have imagined the scene six months later, as I led her through my local park experiencing such a toxic cocktail of emotions – guilt, regret, powerlessness – that I had tears in my eyes. It was a walk that many dog owners will recognise as having “gone badly”. My exuberant dog, Dusty, had approached another dog that did not wish to play with her. This shouldn’t have happened. I should have been able to call her back. Maybe I should have just kept her on the lead. Maybe I shouldn’t have got a dog in the first place.

Dusty started barking, jumping and circling the owner and her dog at high speed. “Do you want to have a dogfight?” the owner asked curtly, while I lunged around on the ground, all dignity jettisoned. “My dog just wants to play with yours,” I protested. “But mine doesn’t want to play,” she replied. “If you just let yours off the lead for a moment,” I countered, “I think mine would calm down. I promise you, she’s not aggressive.” Her reply: “So what do you call this?” Checkmate. As the seconds and then minutes passed, with Dusty still evading my reach, I began to wonder how long this might go on. Would the police have to be called?

Cornwall's housing crisis is forcing young people to live in vans. As second homes and short-term holiday lets drive up house prices, a growing number are turning to van life to stay in the place they love. The Guardian meets young people who say their van brings them freedom but also uncertainty, as they struggle to find water, safe places to park and secure a future

• ​’It can flip quickly from being idyllic’: the reality of life in Cornwall for young van dwellers priced out of the housing market

Some details in this film have been changed for safety reasons

To stay popular with the public – and his backbenchers – he’ll need to make big changes fast. That means changing the way the government borrows

A Labour leader arrives, shirt and smile ironed into place, in his hands a big idea. He has polished one slogan, prepped three anecdotes, memorised eight bullet points. He wants more cash for vital services, or workers to have a stake in their employers, or to take some utility into public control. Not so big an idea, really, but, right on cue, the attacks come from almost every side – breathless lobby reporters, sententious columnists, zombie Blairites. And they all agree on one fatal thing: the bond markets will never wear it.

The death sentence having been pronounced, all that remains for the politician’s proposal is a pauper’s funeral.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?

Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.

Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”

From global loanwords and garbled Italian, the slang of the children of millennials doesn’t just share elements with Minionese – it may have absorbed it

I was four years old when Despicable Me was released in cinemas and the banana-coloured, overall-clad Minions took the world by storm. By the time I was seven, my siblings and I were using The Official Minion Manual to teach ourselves Minionese.

Minionese is, of course, the made-up language spoken by Kevin, Stuart, Bob and company, which consists of a combination of melodic gibberish and variations on genuine vocabulary from a diverse array of world languages. When the Minions shout “kanpai” (“cheers” in Japanese) or “para tú!” (a variation on the Spanish “para ti”), it might remind you of how gen Alpha slang, which primarily consists of nonsensical words such as “cap” and “mogging”, also draws on world languages. Consider the Bulgarian scat origins of “skibidi”, for example.

Delcy Rodríguez says rescuers from others countries arriving in Venezuela over coming hours after two powerful quakes hit capital

• Venezuela earthquakes: back-to-back quakes collapse buildings in capital Caracas

Volunteers, medics and relatives of victims have raced to the Altamira area in Caracas hoping to help save survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings there.

“I live far away [but] ... I came here riding my motorbike as fast as I could,” said José Morillo, as he arrived outside a block of flats called Residencias Obelisco.

UK June heat record could be broken for the second consecutive day

Meanwhile, France experienced its hottest night from Wednesday to Thursday since measurements began in 1947, the national weather agency said, breaking a record set, erm, earlier in the week.

The national temperature indicator – an average of daytime and night-time temperatures across 30 stations – reached 22C, Météo-France said, citing provisional data, coming days after a record 21.6C was measured Monday to Tuesday.

Fears of long-lasting energy crunch ‘slinking away’ as vessel traffic doubled in 24 hours to highest level since late February

• Business live – latest updates

Oil prices have fallen below levels last seen before the Iran war started in late February as more oil tankers exited the strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell to a low of $72.24 a barrel on Thursday, slightly lower than the day before the US and Israel launched missile attacks on Tehran on 28 February. Prices have fallen more than 20% this month.

Transcript of congressional testimony shows Microsoft founder spoke of ‘veiled’ threats made by late sex offender

The Microsoft founder Bill Gates told US members of Congress that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had sought to “blackmail” him over his extramarital affairs, according to a transcript of the testimony.

The tech pioneer testified behind closed doors before the House oversight committee on 10 June regarding his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.