The Grammy-winning Puerto Rican megastar delivered a powerful, detail-packed performance that paid tribute to his history and teased more greatness for his future

When the NFL announced in September that Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl half-time show, the immediate expectation was that Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio would Make a Statement.

There was, of course, backlash from the people who think a performance in Spanish is un-American (all while Puerto Rico remains a US territory). But there was also criticism from those who argued that, post-Kaepernick, there is no performance on an NFL stage that could meaningfully challenge the power whose invitation into its center of capital and nationalism these artists accepted. And as we’ve reached peak Bad Bunny this week, Puerto Ricans have pointed out that many fans’ investment in the island ends with the artist.

She was just 14 when she was groomed by the R&B star, and filmed in an explicit video. She tells the extraordinary story of how she survived

Picture Reshona Landfair in 1996 at 12 years old, when she met the R&B superstar R Kelly (real name Robert Kelly). Her world, she says, seemed like “a buffet” spread out before her. She was a popular girl, a seriously talented basketball player and the youngest member – in her words, “the pint-sized girl rapper” – of 4 The Cause, the singing group she had formed with three cousins. They’d been signed to a record label, made the Top 10 in eight countries and toured much of Europe. Her large extended family from the West Side of Chicago was tight-knit. Life was filled with music, sport, church, Sunday lunch at Grandma’s, family road trips and everybody knowing everybody’s business. “That was a beautiful time,” she says. “I had love and good people all around me. I was living in my true light of who I wanted to become. I felt like I was on my way.”

Fast forward to Landfair at 26 years old, when she finally left Kelly’s orbit. By then, half her family weren’t speaking to the other half, and the relationships that survived were charged with guilt, unasked questions and terrible past mistakes. She had no friends left, as Kelly hadn’t allowed it. Her hopes of a musical career were also long gone – Kelly had made her leave 4 The Cause when she was just 15. She had no qualifications beyond high school and no idea what she wanted to do because, for more than a decade, she’d relied on Kelly to tell her. She couldn’t imagine a healthy relationship; she’d learned sex, she says, “through the lens of a paedophile”. Every element of her 12-year-old life, everything on that “buffet table”, had been destroyed by Kelly. Yet she is still told regularly by total strangers that she must be a “gold digger”, that she “rode the gravy train” and took Kelly for all she could get.

We’re often told the PM is a ‘decent’ man. But in appointing Peter Mandelson he chose political convenience over doing right by trafficked women and girls

Contempt everywhere. From Jeffrey Epstein’s email exchanges to the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s appointment, contempt radiates. Contempt for women and girls, for the law, for the public. A continuum of disdain runs from Epstein on the one end to our political establishment on the other. The other thing that joins them is a restless pursuit of power.

Contempt is not a byproduct of that power, it is the point of it. Procuring, trading, objectifying and violating women and girls is the summit of potency for those who already have everything else: money, status, respect. To subordinate another human being to your urges, to reduce her in all ways, is to be initiated into a club of super-predators who are above the law. The Epstein emails are a demonstration of how misogyny – there really should be a stronger word for it in this context – is a currency, lavishly spent to show how much power you have. The gut-twisting way that casual references to body parts would come up in correspondence is part of a whole language of signalling. Referring to women as “pussy” – or just “P” – is to flash your exclusive club membership card.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

He has been jailed, tracked and threatened by China’s government. What was it like pay a visit home? As he publishes a polemic about surveillance and state control, he relives a momentous trip to see his mother

Ai Weiwei is talking me through the decision-making process before his first visit to China in over a decade. The artist, known around the world as the most famous critic of the Chinese communist regime, had to do some fraught arithmetic before deciding to head back home.

Before boarding a flight with his son, who had never met the artist’s elderly mother, Ai thought back to his time in detention when his captors told him he would spend the next 13 years in custody on bogus charges: “They said, ‘When you come out, your son won’t recognise you.’ That was very heavy and really the only moment that touched me.”

People in Niscemi struggle to comprehend loss of homes and businesses and feel disaster could have been avoided

For days, the 25,000 residents of the Sicilian town of Niscemi have been living on the edge of a 25-metre abyss. On 25 January, after torrential rain brought by Cyclone Harry, a devastating landslide ripped away an entire slope of the town, creating a 4km-long chasm. Roads collapsed, cars were swallowed, and whole sections of the urban fabric plunged into the valley below.

Dozens of houses hang precariously over the edge of the landslide, while vehicles and fragments of roadway continue to give way, hour by hour, under the strain of unstable ground.

Liverpool rue costly mistakes, Viktor Gyökeres builds up a head of steam and Rayan gets the hype train chugging

• Premier League top scorers: the latest standings

Arne Slot was close to landing a coup against Pep Guardiola, the coach he admires most. Then came more of the individual errors that have ruined Liverpool’s title defence. Aching weaknesses within Slot’s squad were exposed again. Dominik Szoboszlai playing Bernardo Silva onside for Manchester City’s equaliser was an error midfielders playing full-back will make. Szoboszlai’s late red card was, though, foolish. Alisson’s foul on Matheus Nunes for Erling Haaland’s decisive penalty was another rush of blood. Liverpool’s huge summer spend was motivated by their executives’ belief in buying the best individuals to unlock the Premier League’s tactical cages. City’s key individuals showed such a policy can pay off, with Silva inspirational, Gianluigi Donnarumma making the save that sparked the game’s chaotic final scenes, Marc Guéhi looking an astute defensive signing and Haaland supplying Silva’s goal. City had been unconvincing but their mentality held, allowing them to eventually profit from Hugo Ekitiké’s misses and the waning of Mohamed Salah. John Brewin

Match report: Liverpool 1-2 Manchester City

Match report: Brighton 0-1 Crystal Palace

Match report: Arsenal 3-0 Sunderland

Match report: Newcastle 2-3 Brentford

Director of communications at Downing St steps down a day after resignation of prime minister’s chief of staff

Tim Allan said he was standing down to allow Keir Starmer the opportunity to build a new team.

In a statement, he said:

I have decided to stand down to allow a new No 10 team to be built.

I wish the PM and his team every success.

Exclusive: Home Office ruling means thousands more Hongkongers will be eligible to come to the UK over next five years

Ministers have opened up visas to thousands more people from Hong Kong in the wake of the 20-year prison sentence handed down to the pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.

Adult children of British national (overseas) status holders who were under 18 at the time of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China will be eligible to apply for the route independently of their parents, a Home Office spokesperson told the Guardian on Monday.

Exclusive: Multimillion-pound contract raises concerns about controls designed to prevent firms unwittingly aiding destruction of Ukraine

The government has been urged to re-examine a British company’s contract to export hi-tech machinery to Armenia, after the Guardian uncovered links to the supply chain for Russia’s war machine.

Sanctions experts and the chair of the House of Commons business committee questioned the government’s decision to award an export licence to Cygnet Texkimp.

Exclusive: António Guterres says world’s accounting systems should place true value on the environment

• Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?

The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.