One in three UK postcodes now has more dogs than children. Meet the Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog). Plus Tim Dowling’s guide to the best breeds for Dinkwads

Bryan Bell was at home when his one-year-old Patti collapsed, shaking like a leaf in a gale-force tornado. She was having a fit. Bell’s husband, John, was out of the house and he didn’t know what to do. “It was quite a traumatic experience because I didn’t know what was happening,” the 40-year-old PR recalls. Eventually, Patti’s fit subsided and the couple soon found a diagnosis from her doctor: their miniature dachshund had epilepsy. “She’s all medicated now, so it’s under control. But when it happens, you feel like: ‘Is this going to be the fit that’s too much for her little head?’”

Medical scares, behaviour issues and a tendency to eat you out of house and home – many dog owners will tell you that getting a four-legged friend bears more than a few similarities to having a young child. But as birthrates plummet across the world, a curious inverse trend has emerged: couples are getting dogs. Lots and lots of couples, in fact. They’re called Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog) and their numbers are growing. With one in three postcodes in England home to more dogs than children, you are now more likely to hear the howl of a basset hound than the sound of kids playing. If you counted up all the estimated 13 million dogs in the UK, from pint-sized chihuahuas to lolloping great danes, you’d only be two million short of the total number of children. And unlike the human birthrate – which in Britain hit a record low in 2024 – the number of dogs only looks set to increase.

The Reform UK leader has belatedly clocked that most British people really don’t like the US president on whose coat-tails he has spent the past decade riding

At last, the culture has thrown up a split more nauseatingly up itself than Gwyneth Paltrow’s from Chris Martin. It is Nigel Farage’s attempt to consciously uncouple from Donald Trump, a man up whose backside he’s spent the past decade most firmly lodged. Nigel’s made such a massive, self-satisfied show of his real estate in the presidential large intestine for 10 years now that I actually don’t think non-surgical extraction is possible at this stage. He doesn’t just get to walk away whistling. The only way out is a full Faragectomy. I’ll give the president a piece of drone fuselage to bite down on.

Anyway: conscious uncoupling. Back in the day, you’ll remember, Gwyneth and the Coldplay singer deployed this particular phrase when announcing their marital split. Did the public love it? They did not. The general vibe – as with so much of Her Vajesty’s output – was that she would do even marriage failure more smugly and unachievably than mere plebs could ever. The pivot from gushing about her perfect marriage to gushing about her perfect divorce felt like mere days.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Transformative 999-year deal is a massive moment in the history of the club and the violent cultural push-pull of London

I have in my hand several hundred pieces of paper. Dog-eared, scribbled with rewrites, and stained with sweat and ancient Bermondsey vinegar. But a wodge of paper that may just guarantee, finally, what passes for peace around here.

There was a moment at the Den on Saturday afternoon that carried its own strictly localised sense of history. An hour before kick-off in Millwall’s Premier League playoff-push game against Portsmouth, the key personnel gathered in a wedding-style lineup around the centre circle.

A powerful new fact-based drama depicts Huw Edwards’s fall from being the BBC’s top news anchor to a conviction for making indecent images of children. The Doc Martin star talks about secrecy, off-the-record research – and why his ears needed to be stuck down

Huw Edwards has not sat at a newsreader’s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC following a report in the Sun that he had paid a teenager £35,000 for intimate images and conversations. A year later – when new BBC News at Ten anchor Clive Myrie announced that his predecessor had been convicted of possessing indecent images of children – the Welsh broadcaster’s career effectively ended.

But on Tuesday the night of 24 March Edwards is back on screen, reading the news in the late-night slot he occupied for decades. He is played by the actor Martin Clunes and his BBC desk has been recreated in the London canalside news studio at Channel 5 by the producers of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

At a time when Britain has never felt more divided, we should draw on Christian values to reject hate and focus on what unites us

When you think about the unedifying political furore about the open iftar held in Trafalgar Square, try to bear in mind that every year on Remembrance Day – a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square – the bishop of London leads a public Christian act of lamentation in the open air. It is an act of religious observance which happens in cities, towns and villages across the country. Alongside the hymns sung, there are readings from the Bible and prayers made in the name of Jesus Christ, and a blessing invoking the holy trinity. In Leeds, where I have the honour of leading the service alongside the Roman Catholic dean of Leeds, I am accompanied by leaders from other faiths: Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. We join together in this public, open-air, unmistakably Christian service.

Over years of attending and conducting such services – and others like it such as those held in memory of Queen Elizabeth II – I have never heard a complaint from those of other faiths that such services represented a “domination of the public sphere” or that such services in our civic spaces were “an expression of power and intimidation”.

Arun Arora is bishop of Kirkstall in the diocese of Leeds

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Causes of meningitis, what the public health response has been, and how the situation differs from Covid

The deadly outbreak of meningitis in Kent has fuelled concerns about how far the disease will spread and seen the return of people wearing masks and queueing for vaccines. The scenes are reminiscent of the Covid crisis, but meningitis is very different. Here we look at how the outbreak has unfolded.

US president says ‘Nato is a paper tiger’, as officials tell Reuters news agency that more troops will be heading to the Gulf

Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.

Firefighters responded immediately, with several units shut down as a precaution to ensure workers’ safety.

Arab states have so far only acted defensively, but there is growing fear war is entering new, more dangerous phase

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The boom reverberated so loudly over Dubai marina that the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers and exclusive hotels gave a loud, disconcerting rattle.

“That sounded close, do you think a missile has hit something?” said a young man to his friend as they sipped coffees. Moments earlier, all mobile phones in the vicinity had sounded off with a shrill alarm, the new normal for those living in the Gulf, warning of missile and drone strikes in the area. Customers barely looked up.

Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions

For the first time since 1967, al-Aqsa mosque – Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site – was closed at the end of Ramadan on Friday, with tensions rising among Palestinians as Israeli authorities keep the complex shut, forcing worshippers to hold Eid prayers as close as they could to the sealed site.

On Friday morning, hundreds of worshippers were forced to pray outside the Old City, as Israeli police barricaded the entrances to the site.

Exclusive: Chris Bryant says policy agreements are being done in bits and pieces but a greater vision is needed by both sides

It was all smiles and warm handshakes when the two men in charge of renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU met in Brussels this week.

Maroš Šefčovič and the UK minister for EU relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, sharing a stage on the third floor of the vast European parliament building, were at pains to show the cross-Channel relationship was in a good place after years of rancour.