It’s five years since the TV presenter killed herself after being charged with assaulting her partner. Her mother Christine wants the world to know what the police, crown prosecution service and media got wrong

When Christine Flack was invited by Disney to make a documentary about her daughter Caroline, one that would focus on the last few months before her suicide in 2020, of course she had to think hard. Why put Caroline back under the spotlight, expose her to more scrutiny, when tabloids and talkshows and social media had long since moved on?

“I knew there could be as many bad outcomes as good outcomes,” says Christine. “Certain things will be picked up and stories might come out, including ones that aren’t true. But I’d been trying for four years to understand what happened and I still had so many questions. I’d come to a brick wall so I went ahead.” She pauses for a moment before adding: “And whatever happens next, I always say that no one can do anything worse to me now. Nothing worse can happen than Caroline dying.”

In last week's byelection in the Welsh constituency of Caerphilly, Reform UK were the hot favourites, and the focus of huge attention. But as John Harris and John Domokos saw close-up, a Reform win failed to happen thanks to a story most of the media didn't see: how online fear and loathing were beaten back by community spirit, facts trumping fury, and everyday empathy 

‘When it was screened in America, people hated it so much they wanted to burn the cinema down’

We’d done Kevin and Perry on Harry Enfield and Chums and thought it would be fun to make a Wayne’s World-y thing while we still had the impetus of the TV programme. I went on holiday and Dave Cummings, who’d written for Harry Enfield and Chums, did the first draft. I came back and took over. A month later, it was all happening. It was really quick.

Twenty-five years on from her dazzling debut, and as a new collection of essays comes out, we assess the British author’s best books

How do you follow a smash hit like White Teeth, which, as everyone now knows, sold for a six-figure sum while the author was still at university, and turned Zadie Smith into a literary superstar and poster girl for multi­culturalism at 24? With a novel about a pot-smoking Chinese‑Jewish autograph hunter, the dangers of fame and the shallowness of pop culture, of course.

Lion’s mane mushroom, maca root, collagen concoctions: there’s a menopause gold rush out on social media’s wild frontier

A woman gets to a certain age and all she wants is to be left alone. No chance. Writing in the medical journal Post Reproductive Health, a group of academics warned recently of a “menopause gold rush” leaving women vulnerable to financial exploitation, misinformation and, frankly, a sweat-inducingly gigantic avalanche of advertising. A lot of this activity has been driven by – guess what? – social media. One respondent told the researchers: “Everything I know about the menopause I learned on Instagram from other women.” As gold rushes go, this has got to be the one you’d least like to see dramatised in a Hollywood movie: “Quick, Bianca, activate the algorithmic analysis of the campaign for the vitamin B6 supplement!”

The academics warned of “a rapid expansion in unregulated private companies and individuals providing menopause information and support for profit”. So now, instead of talking about the treatment and management of menopause, we are talking about how to cope with an equally pernicious condition and one that seems to have no cure or end: the ubiquitous commercialisation of menopause.

Viv Groskop is a comedian and author of How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking

Today in Focus talks to protesters in Nepal, Madagascar and Morocco – as well as Chatham House fellow Dr Nayana Prakash – about the gen Z movements toppling governments across the world

All around the world, it seems, gen Z are in revolt.

In the past few months, young protesters have taken to the streets in countries from Nepal to Peru, Madagascar to the Philippines, Morocco to Indonesia.

Exclusive: POA says targeting is ‘unjust’, as chief inspector of prisons blames ‘chaos’ in sector and says mistakes happen ‘all the time’

The prison officers’ union has questioned why a single member of staff at HMP Chelmsford has been “unjustly” targeted after the mistaken release of a refused asylum seeker who had sexually assaulted a teenage girl.

Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the POA, said that the member, a discharging manager, was the only person under suspension when at least two other more senior staff members were involved in freeing Hadush Kebatu.

Research also finds 200 of 231 people notified by MoD of breach reported threats to themselves or families

At least 49 family members and colleagues of Afghans affected by the MoD’s mass data breach have been killed, according to research submitted to a parliamentary committee.

The first on-the-ground research into 350 affected people in Afghanistan, the UK or elsewhere has found that, of the 231 respondents who received notification from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that their data had been leaked, 49 responded that either a colleague or a family member had been killed as a result of the data breach.

Farage repeatedly refuses to call Sarah Pochin’s remarks racist, saying they were ‘ugly, clumsy’ and should be taken in context of ‘DEI madness’

The Guardian would like to hear from parents who have had to live in temporary accommodation with children. There is more about the call-out here, including a form where you can submit a response.

But the Commons home affairs committee’s report is also critical of some aspects of what the Home Office has been doing on asylum hotels since Labour took power. Here are some of the points it makes about Labour’s record on this issue.

The committee expresses concerns about the government’s plan to move asylum seekers out of hotels and place them in “large sites” instead, such as former military bases. (See 9.23am.) It says:

The [Home Office] is considering the use of large sites in its approach to asylum accommodation, having previously said it would move away from their use. In principle, large sites can provide suitable temporary accommodation. However, they have generally proved more costly to deliver than hotel accommodation and will not enable the department to drive down costs in the same way as expanding dispersal accommodation. If the department chooses to pursue large sites, it needs to fully understand and accept this trade off. It must learn the lessons from its previous mistakes in rushing to deliver short-term solutions that later unravel.

It says the government has still not set out a “clear strategy” for asylum accommodation.

The government has committed to reducing the cost of the asylum system and ending the use of hotels by 2029. This is a stated Government priority, but making promises to appeal to popular sentiment without setting out a clear and fully articulated plan for securing alternative accommodation risks under-delivery and consequently undermining public trust still further. The Home Office has failed to share a clear strategy for the long-term delivery of asylum accommodation.

It says the number of asylum seekers in hotels went up during Labour’s first 12 months in office. It says:

The number of asylum seekers in hotels is currently significantly lower than during the peak of hotel use—32,059 people as of June 2025, compared to 56,042 in September 2023—although the number of asylum seekers accommodated in hotels was 8% higher in June 2025 compared to June 2024.

It says it is “extremely disappointing” that the Home Office abandoned a pilot programme giving refugees 56 days to find alternative accommodation if they have to leave Home Office housing (like a hotel) because their asylum application has been accepted. The Home Office has reverted to 28 days’ notice, even though the 56 days’s notice system was said to reduce the number or refugees finding themselves homeless. It says:

Given the high level of support we received for the 56 day move on period in the evidence we received, this decision is extremely disappointing.

RSF says it has seized control of army’s main base in Darfur, home to famine-stricken displacement camp

Fears are growing for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El Fasher, Sudan, after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said it had captured the city, which it has been besieging for more than a year in the country’s civil war.

The group said on Sunday that it had seized control of the army’s main base in the city in Darfur, where famine was declared in a displacement camp last year. It then released a statement saying it had “extended control over the city of El Fasher from the grip of mercenaries and militias”.