Her first album was a huge hit – then she faced the sudden tragedy of her husband’s early death. She describes the rupture of grief, her return to music and the harsh reality of fame as a woman in the 00s

Twenty years ago, Corinne Bailey Rae had her first huge hit single, and her only one. Put Your Records On was one of the great feelgood anthems of 2006. A warm, breezy hymn to authenticity, its key message was keep playing those songs you love, and don’t give a toss about what others tell you is cool. The single was accompanied by her first self-titled album, which topped the charts in the UK and reached number four in the US.

If there was one thing Bailey Rae seemed assured of, it was longevity. She wrote or co-wrote her own songs, had a voice that was compared to that of Billie Holiday and Minnie Riperton, there was a timelessness to her music and she was super smart (four As at A-level, if you must know). Then she was hit by a tragedy that derailed her. In 2008, her husband of seven years and fellow musician Jason Rae died of an accidental drug overdose.

The PM’s in-tray is overflowing. But he can’t afford to neglect the real issue that is distorting our politics and the way we live

At home and abroad, Labour and its leader are under siege. Though the Gorton and Denton result is history now, the repercussions roil his party and underpin the fight for its future.

Abroad, the policy rift within the Labour tribe is just as bad, with the fear that the party will be dragged backwards into the wreckage of another illegal war in the Middle East. Yet again Labour and Starmer are damned both ways, with much of the party raging at its leader and a “very disappointed” Donald Trump angry, not appeased.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, ahead of May elections join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from the Greens and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

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The music on Styles’s new album is muted, subtle and pleasant – but from the title downwards, he has a real problem with words

Everything about the launch of Harry Styles’s fourth solo album underlines that its author is a very big deal indeed. Record stores in the UK are opening at midnight or first thing in the morning on the day of release, the better for fans to avail themselves of a copy at once. Styles has been announced as curator of this year’s Meltdown festival at London’s Southbank Centre, an honour previously bestowed on Scott Walker, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Ornette Coleman and David Bowie. Last week’s Brit awards featured not merely a beautifully choreographed performance of the album’s lead single, Aperture, but a comedy skit that was, essentially, a two-and-a-half-minute-long advert for Styles’s new album: there was no doubt who the organisers thought the star of the show was. Most striking of all, the accompanying tour largely eschews actual touring in favour of lengthy residencies in one venue per country, or even continent: North America is covered by a staggering 30 dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The expectation seemed to be that Styles’s fans are so devoted, they’ll cross the country to see him, rather than vice versa.

This sense, that people will travel wherever Harry Styles wants them to, attends the album itself. It is devoid of unequivocal pop bangers along the lines of As It Was or Watermelon Sugar. Aperture’s hazy, post-club mood wasn’t a soft launch. Whether it’s dealing in mid-tempo house beats topped with plangent piano chords, as on American Girls, or the acoustic singer-songwriter-isms of Paint By Numbers, a lot of what’s here feels like music made in the small hours, with the curtains drawn against the dawn. It somehow manages to sound understated even on Are You Listening Yet? – which variously features a clattering dance rhythm, a bassline not unlike that of Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move It and a spoken word vocal that inexorably recalls Robbie Williams’s Rock DJ – perhaps because it doesn’t really have a chorus, or rather, the part you assume is going to lead into the chorus turns out to be the chorus itself.

Contradicting images of parties and war-flooded feeds after Iran targeted Gulf states in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks

Mike Babayan was in a hookah lounge when he heard the explosion on Saturday night. Dubai – a gilded playground for the ultra-rich and oligarch class, billed as one of the safest places on Earth – had been attacked by Iranian missiles. Phones lit up with emergency messages urging residents to take shelter. But Dubai is resilient, at least when it comes to partying. “Everyone just went back to their hookah and food a minute later,” said Babayan.

Still, as a precaution, that night Babayan moved from his main home in the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building and the anchor of the Dubai skyline, to a residence further from the city center. There, he could hear the explosions much clearer – one every 20 to 30 minutes, he said. “But everyone is just having coffees, walking around like there’s no care in the world. It’s pretty insane.”

As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is on track to lose $14bn this year. Its market share is collapsing, and its own CEO, Sam Altman, has admitted it “screwed up” an element of the product. All it takes to accelerate that decline is 10 seconds of your time.

A grassroots boycott called QuitGPT has been spreading across the US and beyond, asking people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. More than a million people have answered the call. Mark Ruffalo and Katy Perry have thrown their weight behind it. It is one of the most significant consumer boycotts in recent memory, and I believe it’s time for Europeans to join.

Getting platforms to comply with the restrictions was no small feat. But it’s too early to measure the real-world mental health outcomes

As the UK becomes the latest country to consider following Australia’s lead on a social media ban for teenagers, a question Australians are repeatedly being asked is: how is it going?

“Our data is still minimal,” says Caroline Thain, national clinical adviser with the mental health organisation Headspace. “We’re really waiting for a few more months before we do a deeper dive.”

US-Israeli war on Iran enters fifth day, with Iranian state media reporting explosions in east of Tehran

• Trump administration has still not settled on reasons for war

• Middle East attacks intensify as Trump rejects Iran’s attempt to talk

Lebanese state media said that four people were killed and six more were wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday.

“The initial toll is four killed and six wounded, and work is underway to rescue families from under the rubble,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

US president criticises prime minister for third time 24 hours, describing him as ‘not Churchill’ over initial refusal

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has launched a deeply personal attack on Keir Starmer over his refusal to let the US launch initial strikes on Iran from British bases, telling reporters: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

In his latest extraordinary salvo, the US president said he was not happy with the UK even though the prime minister eventually agreed the US could use Diego Garcia for strikes on Iranian missile facilities.

South Korea’s Kospi leads market sell-off across Asia and Middle East, despite Trump’s suggestion US Navy could protect vessels moving through vital waterway

Global markets tumbled further on Wednesday despite Donald Trump’s offer to have the US navy escort tankers through the strait of Hormuz and the US military’s claim that there is “not a single Iranian ship underway” in the crucial waterway.

The Middle East conflict has crippled the strait, which was in effect closed by Iran after strikes by the US and Israel this weekend, raising fears of a sustained energy supply crisis that reverberated around the world.

Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force.