Every day he broadcasts a marathon Twitch stream, airing his views to his three million subscribers. It has led to fame – and some fear – in a country ever more politically divided

Hasan Piker calls it the bus driver test: “You get on a bus and you have 30 seconds to explain whatever online phenomena took place to the bus driver without them looking at you and going, ‘Get off the fucking bus.’” Most online discourse, no matter how heated, fails the test, he says – not least an incident last weekend, when someone on a Dublin street asked to take a picture with Piker, then held up a picture of his dog and shouted “Free Kaya!” Never mind the bus driver; trying to explain the significance of this particular event might well take the rest of this article, but the wider point is that there is a jarring overlap, or more often disconnect, between the online and offline worlds.

Piker finds himself in this in-between space more and more these days. Until fairly recently, the 34-year-old was familiar only to the very online, especially Americans in their 20s and 30s, largely thanks to his presence on the streaming channel Twitch, where he has three million subscribers. But since Donald Trump’s election, Piker has become an in-demand voice in “the real world” for his views on the beleaguered political left, and especially that inordinately fretted-over demographic, young men.

The Free Birth Society was selling pregnant women a simple message. They could exit the medical system and take back their power. By free birthing. But Nicole Garrison believes FBS ideology nearly cost her her life. This is episode one of a year-long investigation by Guardian journalists Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne

Marielle says being recorded is part of being her friend, but Beth is fed up of being a muse. Who should reel it in?

• Get a disagreement settled or become a YBTJ juror

Sometimes she films me while I’m eating. I’ll see myself on her Instagram – it’s like a jumpscare

I want Beth to see that the content we make together can get us a foot in the door

Unfettered love for late photographer in France and elsewhere stands in contrast to occasional reservations in UK

The death of Martin Parr, the photographer whose work chronicled the rituals and customs of British life, was front-page news in France and his life and work were celebrated as far afield as the US and Japan.

If his native England had to shake off concerns about the role of class in Parr’s satirical gaze before it could fully embrace him, countries like France have long revered the Epsom-born artist “like a rock or a movie star”, said the curator Quentin Bajac.

Crowborough on edge as unconfirmed plan to house asylum seekers in training camp spurs street patrols and pre-emptive protests

Among the crowded shelves of Sacred Heart hardware store in Crowborough, there is a gap on the wall where the kitchen knives used to be displayed.

As the local rumour of recent days goes, that space is linked to the news story of the moment in the East Sussex town: the imminent arrival of hundreds of asylum seekers at a nearby military training camp.

Among the many people I met, there was a pervasive feeling of hopelessness and a sense that resistance is slowly becoming a memory

In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.”

Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now.

Footage uploaded to X by US attorney general shows its forces landing on the tanker in major escalation of Trump’s pressure campaign

• US politics live: latest news updates

US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, whose government called the seizure “an act of international piracy”.

Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying: “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.”

Human rights official says politicians are playing into the hands of the populist right as they seek to tackle migration

Keir Starmer and Europe’s hardline governments risk creating a “hierarchy of people” as they seek to address migration by curbing fundamental rights, Europe’s most senior human rights official has said.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said that “middle-of-the-road politicians” are playing into the hands of the populist right.

Exclusive: Use of toxic plastic beads in treatment works is unnecessary and outdated say conservationists after hundreds of millions wash up on beach

The use of tiny, toxic plastic beads at sewage works should be banned nationwide, an MP and wildlife experts have said after a devastating spill at an internationally important nature reserve.

Hundreds of millions of “biobeads” washed up on Camber Sands beach in East Sussex last month, after a failure at a Southern Water sewage treatment works caused a catastrophic spill. This caused distress and alarm for local residents and conservationists, as not only are the beads unsightly, but they pose a deadly threat to wildlife.

María Corina Machado climbs over barriers to meet chanting supporters gathered outside the Grand Hotel in early hours of Thursday

Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, has made a dramatic appearance in Norway after slipping out of her authoritarian homeland by boat.

The Venezuelan politician and pro-democracy activist stepped out on to the balcony of Oslo’s iconic Grand Hotel at just before 2.30am local time, after spending the past 11 months in hiding in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.