TV’s best entertainment show is back – with an unbelievably star-stuffed lineup. But who will be the faithful and who will head straight for the tower?

What can we assume from the line-up? Some quick predictions.

1) King Kenny will be first out, because traditional celebrities will always reject YouTubers at the first opportunity.

2) All the comedians with podcasts will merge together into a single pulsating entity of limbs and teeth like the thing at the end of The Substance.

Brexit was a disastrous act of national self-harm. Britain needs EU membership to bring growth and security in an increasingly volatile world

Hope again. That was the prime minister’s message to the country this week. A national social care system, greater public control of water and energy, help for first-time buyers and a crackdown on rogue landlords and empty homes. With clarity and conviction, Andy Burnham set out a bold plan to put Britain on a new path, steeped in Labour values.

It felt like a conference speech that would be remembered for years to come, marking a decisive break with a broken political model that has let British people down for decades. And perhaps most encouraging of all was the prime minister’s promise to rethink Britain’s relationship with the EU.

Sadiq Khan is mayor of London

When she got serious, she got very serious. The TV host boosted organ donations, closed down a school for abuse, founded two revolutionary helplines – and put assisted dying on the agenda for years to come

• From Childline to changing TV for ever: Esther Rantzen’s revolutionary life
• Esther Rantzen: from That’s Life! to Childline – in pictures

By no means should That’s Life! have ever worked as a television programme. For more than 20 years it functioned as an absurd grab bag of features that at times seemed specifically designed to induce tonal whiplash in its viewers.

To demonstrate this point, That’s Life! was the show that introduced the nation to Prince, a talking dog who could say the word“sausages”, but it was also the show that put pressure on the government to introduce mandatory seatbelt use for children. This was the show that invented a new animal as an April fool’s joke, only for coachloads of tourists to arrive at London Zoo to try to spot it. It was also the show that embarked on a vigorous three-month investigation into allegations of widespread sexual abuse by teachers at a boys’ boarding school, resulting in the school’s closure less than two weeks after the feature aired.

No spoilers here – TV’s grand illusionist meets his match when he moves in with Theranos founder and her family

For anyone remotely near the worlds of documentary, comedy or medical fraud, there has been one thing on the mind for weeks now: a single-minute clip of Nathan Fielder, the absurdist comedian whose boundary-pushing HBO series The Rehearsal cemented his status as docu-reality’s premier auteur, staring into the deep blue eyes of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos. Unblinking, faces inches apart, the famously dry purveyor of harebrained business schemes and the convicted fraudster appeared locked in a battle of wills. “Are you being real right now?” Fielder asked her, in a classically meta bit – could Fielder really have spent years filming a secret documentary with one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious pariahs?

The prospect of TV’s grand illusionist versus emblematic girl-boss scammer seemed potentially too good to be true; buzz for You Can See Everything, Fielder’s furtive documentary co-directed with wunderkind du jour Lance Oppenheim (whose narrative feature debut, the Robert Pattinson-starring Primetime, premiered last month) was such that access to the film’s New York film festival premiere on Wednesday became this fall’s hottest ticket.

Every day, trillions of dollars, oil and gas and 99% of the world’s web traffic move through undersea pipelines that bear no state’s protection. With superpowers and corporations vying for control, should we be worried about this new wild west?

On Christmas Day 2024, six weeks before Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were due to disconnect themselves from Russia’s power grid, a Finnish engineer was just about to sit down to lunch when his phone rang. He was responsible for the Finnish side of the undersea cables that keep Finland and the Baltic states supplied with electricity, and one was malfunctioning. Within a couple of hours, authorities knew that a Cook Islands-registered tanker called the Eagle S, part of the shadow fleet carrying sanctioned Russian oil, in this case to Egypt, had sailed over the cable at the moment and location at which it had stopped working. The coastguard hailed the Eagle S. Were their anchors up? Yes, they replied – though they did not seem to check – and sailed on.

Three hours later the ship hit another four cables in quick succession, nearly hobbling internet provision in Finland and Estonia – and was minutes away from a major electricity cable and the Balticconnector, which supplies the two countries with gas. Finland scrambled the border guard, which pulled up alongside the tanker and demanded the crew take up its anchor. But the Eagle S was not in Finnish territorial waters: the authorities could not force the captain to comply, and they did not know who or what might come to his aid.

Book clubs can be fun, fulfilling and interesting – but many members have seen a meeting or group go down in flames

For four years, Laura has been in a book club with other young mothers from her church. You might be picturing a docile scene of women drinking sweet tea – they live in the US south – and discussing a life-affirming family novel or chaste romance.

But you probably didn’t account for werewolf smut.

Counter-terrorism police arrest 27-year-old in Westminster, while second man questioned under caution

Detectives have arrested a dual UK-Iranian national on suspicion of terrorism offences as part of an investigation into a suspected plot near RAF Fairford.

Counter-terrorism police said the 27-year-old man was arrested on Thursday in Westminster on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.

About 900 demonstrations, blockades and related incidents under way outside high schools around the country

A fast-growing protest by high-school students over long hours, teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government has warned, as it said many schools would switch to online classes to protect teachers and pupils.

The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, called a crisis cabinet meeting on Thursday and told ministers to cancel travel plans to deal with the demonstrations, which erupted in the Paris region last week but have snowballed across the country.

Reform UK leader tells supporters PM’s move has ‘opened up a huge flank to us’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has claimed that Andy Burnham has given him “the biggest boost in my career” by reviving the Brexit debate, which the Reform UK leader said had reopened a “huge flank” to his party.

The prime minister’s pledges to the Labour conference and admission on Wednesday that rejoining the EU was among options the government would look at had put “put me back into the debate”, he said.

Alleged flydubai attacker interrogated by Saudi security services as investigation into apparent crash attempt opens

The Omani co-pilot who stabbed his captain in an apparent attempt to crash an Israel-bound flight from Dubai had previously undergone radical Islamist indoctrination and was suicidal, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has claimed.

Israeli passengers intervened to stop the attack on Wednesday, restraining the co-pilot, while a reserve crew in the plane was able to stabilise the plummeting plane and ultimately land it safely in Saudi Arabia.