As part of our series AI for the People, our resident AI skeptic Rhik Samadder agreed to put his life in AI’s hands. This week: therapy

It’s Sunday morning, and I type my feelings into the chatbox, too wound-up to stop.

“I’ve become a carer to my 82-year-old mother,” I write. “Every day brings new problems. I help with hospital appointments, finances, gardening, shopping, home repairs, the council, insurance companies, letters, emails, endless IT problems …”

Ahead of World Book Day on Thursday, Guardian music writers pick out the musicians whose literary references illuminated them – from Adam Ant on Joe Orton to the National on Grace Paley

I first heard the Cure’s Charlotte Sometimes as a teenager, and it was like waking up from a dream. With dissonant guitar chiming like church bells and opaque lyrics about preparing for bed, it unburied a childhood memory of reading Penelope Farmer’s ghostly 1969 book of the same name. As a child I’d found it fantastical: on Charlotte’s first night at boarding school, she wakes to find herself 40 years in the past, in the body of someone else, with an unfamiliar moon in the sky. But as a teen, re-reading the story on Robert Smith’s recommendation, it held a mirror to my increasingly uncertain sense of self. To hear Charlotte’s disorientation play out through uneasy bass and Smith’s dizzying, doubled-up vocals was strangely comforting; confirmation that growing up has always felt like time-travelling. Learning that the band recorded it exactly 10 years, to the day, before I was born was further proof: my own cosmic link to a past life. Katie Hawthorne

Amid a cost of living crisis, pricey patisserie is all the rage – and not just in London. Our reporter goes on a crawl to find out if a tart can really be worth £45

There was a time when you could get a stuffed vanilla cream slice or a neon-pink Tottenham cake for about £1 on the leafy, residential corner of Hackney, east London, where I stand today. But the branch of Percy Ingle bakery that was here for nearly 50 years is gone. In its place sits Fika, a cafe where a cinnamon bun costs £4.20 and a pistachio croissant will set you back nearly £5.

In comparison with other bakeries, however, Fika’s pastries are a bargain. At Copains, a Parisian favourite that opened its first UK branch in central London late last year, a large babka (about the same size as a supermarket chocolate twist) will set you back £12.50, while an eclair costs £11.90. In Harrods’ food hall, a stuffed, savoury croissant topped with gold leaf is £12. At Cedric Grolet, located inside the luxury Berkeley hotel, a hazelnut cookie will leave you £25 out of pocket. Yes, the age of the £10-plus pastry has arrived.

The PM’s in-tray is overflowing. But he can’t afford to neglect the real issue that is distorting our politics and the way we live

At home and abroad, Labour and its leader are under siege. Though the Gorton and Denton result is history now, the repercussions roil his party and underpin the fight for its future.

Abroad, the policy rift within the Labour tribe is just as bad, with the fear that the party will be dragged backwards into the wreckage of another illegal war in the Middle East. Yet again Labour and Starmer are damned both ways, with much of the party raging at its leader and a “very disappointed” Donald Trump angry, not appeased.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, ahead of May elections join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from the Greens and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

In book Dream Facades, Jack Balderrama Morley examines houses from shows including Keeping Up with the Kardashians to see what we can learn

Houses have always been at the center of reality TV. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous set the domestic stage in the 1980s with its quasi-documentary look into the real lives of the ultra-wealthy. It walked so MTV Cribs could run, and in September 2000, Cribs became what critic Sam Jacob called “the most popular architectural media ever”. Known for its unhinged (and sometimes fake) house tours by the celebrity owners themselves, the hit show’s Ozzy Osbourne episode spun off in 2002 into The Osbournes, which Kris Jenner used for the basis of her pitch for Keeping up with the Kardashians. The rest is history.

In the book Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV, author Jack Balderrama Morley reflects on residential settings and takes us through these histories, reflecting on how homes and design in reality shows are at once aspirational escapism, sinister characters, extensions of our own desires, and artifacts of American urban history. “I’m interested in what reality TV show homes represent, and why so many of us love getting lost in them,” Morley said. “On screen, they become appendages of our own homes.”

Her first album was a huge hit – then she faced the sudden tragedy of her husband’s early death. She describes the rupture of grief, her return to music and the harsh reality of fame as a woman in the 00s

Twenty years ago, Corinne Bailey Rae had her first huge hit single, and her only one. Put Your Records On was one of the great feelgood anthems of 2006. A warm, breezy hymn to authenticity, its key message was keep playing those songs you love, and don’t give a toss about what others tell you is cool. The single was accompanied by her first self-titled album, which topped the charts in the UK and reached number four in the US.

If there was one thing Bailey Rae seemed assured of, it was longevity. She wrote or co-wrote her own songs, had a voice that was compared to that of Billie Holiday and Minnie Riperton, there was a timelessness to her music and she was super smart (four As at A-level, if you must know). Then she was hit by a tragedy that derailed her. In 2008, her husband of seven years and fellow musician Jason Rae died of an accidental drug overdose.

Nearly 150 reported missing and 32 people from the 180-crew frigate Iris Dena

• Analysis: Trump administration still not settled on reasons for war

• Tell us: how have you been affected by the conflict?

Lebanese state media said that four people were killed and six more were wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday.

“The initial toll is four killed and six wounded, and work is underway to rescue families from under the rubble,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

PM says the US use of British bases and UK jets shooting down drones shows the links between the two nations

Starmer begins PMQs by telling the Commons that his thoughts are with Sarah Everard “on this very painful anniversary” of her death.

He says the government is working hard to prevent boys and men from becoming abusers.

Choice of anti-western candidate would give signal that senior figures will not seek accommodation with US

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• What we know on day five of the Iran war

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ali Khamenei, is being heavily tipped to succeed his father as supreme leader of Iran, which would pitch a hardliner into the task of steering the Islamic republic through the most turbulent period in its 48-year history and offer a powerful signal that, for now, it has no intention of changing course.

No official confirmation has been given and the announcement may be delayed until after the funeral of Ali Khamenei, which was on Wednesday postponed.

Administration offers shifting explanations as it acts without congressional approval or legal premise

The Trump administration is waging an illegal war on Iran, one that defies both the US constitution and international armed conflict laws, according to several legal scholars and bipartisan lawmakers.

The Senate will vote Wednesday on whether to halt Donald Trump’s military offensive, which he launched on 28 February. Hundreds of people, including six US personnel, have been killed in a conflict that has now expanded to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Israel and the Persian Gulf.