Mark described abusing his daughter in a chatroom. Then it turned out nothing he had posted was true – and he walked free. With ‘fantasy abuse’ on the rise, can Emily and her mother win their fight to make it illegal?

For the first 20 years of her life, Emily had what she thought was a “completely normal” relationship with her dad, Mark. “He was an ordinary man,” she says. “A good dad. We were really close.” Then one morning, police officers arrived at her family home to arrest him for sexually abusing her. Emily wasn’t there. “I had just moved out to live with friends and start my first proper job,” she explains, “but the police didn’t know that. They were trying to protect me.” Emily is telling this story two years on, with her mum, Fiona, by her side. They are close, supporting each other during this difficult conversation, finishing each other’s sentences.

When Fiona heard the door go at 7am, she had just got up. “I wasn’t even fully dressed,” she says. “It sounds stupid but I had just got on an exercise bike so I was in a T-shirt and pants. I looked out of the bedroom window and saw eight people on the doorstep. They weren’t in uniform but they looked official. They had lanyards on and a dog with them.

The cost of living is putting pressure on relationships – and preventing some couples from properly splitting up

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The separate sleeping arrangement started seven years before the marriage finished. When Mary-Ann’s* hot flushes turned the bed into a furnace, her husband, Bill, moved into another bedroom. For the next two years there was some travel between the bedrooms for the purposes of intimacy. Then that stopped too.

The distance grew after each argument; they took separate holidays and, when Bill inherited money, he separated it from their pooled finances. Mary-Ann says it was clear Bill’s mind was no longer in the marriage – he was what is termed “quiet quitting”. But she acknowledges she was drifting away too, focused on a demanding new job.

The H5N1 virus has now reached every continent on the planet. What does it mean for some of the world’s unique species?

• This article contains images of dead wildlife. Reader discretion is advised

It was a rough five-day sail from the Falkland Islands and, as the science expedition approached the South Georgia coast, they found fur seal carcasses floating on the water. “There were these moments when it would hit us,” says Dr Jane Younger, remembering the expedition to the British subantarctic territory six months ago.

Younger, an ecologist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, was with scientists from the United States, France, South Africa and the Falklands to check on the spread of the H5N1 variant of bird flu.

There are glimpses of the Curb star at his razor-like best here – but they are desperately few. It’s mainly worth watching for the immaculate Obama intro

It is always an emotional blow to see former US president Barack Obama pop up on one’s screen. The Instagram algorithm sends me a lot of him, because it knows I always click on him being charming with babies, statesmanlike in speeches, cool at rallies, articulate and witty at anything, endlessly composed, compassionate, intelligent, handsome, thoughtful – a fully functioning adult human, if you want the short version. The algorithm does not know that I jack-knife in pain before I click and weep softly at how far we – the US sneezed, but the UK has surely caught a cold – have fallen.

And then he turns up at the beginning of Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America (one of the offspring of his and Michelle’s TV company, Higher Ground Productions) to remind us that on top of all that he also has immaculate comic timing. As he walks through what I assume is the new Barack Obama Presidential Center, he modulates his performance so beautifully that I almost began to softly weep again. If I’d known what a shambles was to follow after this masterclass, I would have sobbed.

The putative PM-to-be explained how one of Tony Harrison’s poems gave him a new outlook – one that the country is sorely in need of

Two weeks before Josh Simons stood down as the Makerfield MP for his benefit, Andy Burnham was at Salts Mill in Shipley celebrating the life and work of the poet Tony Harrison. It was a small gathering, with actors, directors, writers and family members paying homage. Burnham wasn’t the only politician to speak; Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, is another fan (in 2020 he put down an early day motion in parliament that recognised how Harrison had “always written, and spoken, for the people”). But Burnham’s was the most incisive illustration of how literature in general and poetry in particular can change lives.

Burnham was introduced to Harrison’s poetry as a sixth-former. An English teacher at his school put him on to V, Harrison’s long poem, set in a Leeds graveyard, which became infamous after Richard Eyre dramatised it for Channel 4. The Conservative MP Gerald Howarth attempted to get the broadcast (and broadside) banned for its use of four-letter words, which the Daily Mail described as a “torrent of filth”. V recounts the poet’s confrontation with a skinhead who has sprayed graffiti on headstones, a young man with whom he turns out to have quite a lot in common.

Blake Morrison is emeritus professor at Goldsmiths, University of London and the author of the poetry collection Afterburn

Leader of local authority in Oxfordshire faces backlash over injunction ‘to maintain neutral, safe space for residents’

While Londoners scurried from building to building seeking shade on another baking hot day this week, one man paused in the shadow of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The leader of Oxfordshire county council, Tim Bearder, was not only happy in the shade of the court’s gothic towers. He had just won a landmark legal victory.

Flare-up in tensions comes as Washington and Tehran have been negotiating a memorandum of understanding to end an unpopular war

The US military has launched further strikes on multiple targets in Iran, a day after it struck Iran in retaliation for a drone attack on a cargo ship in the strait of Hormuz.

US Central Command (Centcom) said its strikes were in “direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and that it had targeted Iran’s “military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities” in response.

England are not going to win the World Cup playing like this. They will not get very far in the knockout rounds unless they can sharpen up. But at least they have made it into them, the dream still alive, after they secured top spot in Group L on a slow-burn occasion when the result meant everything.

Thomas Tuchel needed to restore momentum after the bore draw against Ghana in game two, to rekindle the excitement from the opening game against Croatia, which England won 4-2. The manager wanted to prove a point. It did not really happen and for the opening 45 minutes it was even possible to fear the worst. Were England going to fail to prise apart another obdurate opponent?

Draft resolution seeks to shield board members and security forces from potential prosecution for work in Gaza

The UN-sanctioned Board of Peace announced by Donald Trump earlier this year to rule Gaza is planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself, according to a draft of the resolution obtained by the Guardian. The draft language would also let the organization obtain public property in Gaza “free of charge”.

The four-page resolution, labeled “sensitive but unclassified”, extends broad protections to every member of the Board of Peace and its administrative affiliate, the office of the high representative (OHR), as well as to the Palestinian technocrats, international military forces and nonresident contractors lined up to perform work in Gaza. It defines legal processes from which they would have immunity as “any arrest, detention or legal proceedings in the courts or other entities in Gaza”.

Search for survivors continues with nearly 70,000 people reported unaccounted for by their family members

The ⁠death toll ⁠in ⁠the twin ​earthquakes that struck ⁠Venezuela earlier ⁠this ​week ‌has ‌risen to ‌1,430, according to one of the country’s top politicians Jorge Rodríguez.

Another 3,200 ​people were injured ⁠and 3,100 ​left homeless ​by the ​disaster, ​the National Assembly president added, speaking ​on ​state television.