Half of the most important buildings in the UK are churches and, even when congregations fall away, they are vital community hubs. But many, including beloved St Tyfrydog’s in Wales, which closed in 2020, are decaying. Can they be saved?

There is a sign on the gate leading through the circular stone wall that surrounds St Tyfrydog’s church on Anglesey (Ynys Môn). Services, in Welsh and English, are held on the first and third Sunday of the month, at 2.15pm, it says. But this is no longer the case: the last service was held here on 22 November 2020.

There was a decent turnout that day, to say goodbye to this little medieval church, parts of which date from about 1400 (there has been a church on the site since 450). The problem was that, before then, apart from on big occasions such as Christmas and the harvest festival, the congregation was tiny; five or six people, sometimes just three.

In her new book, New York Times investigative journalist Jodi Kantor has set her mind to helping young people find their life’s work. What should they, or anyone else who feels lost and overwhelmed right now, do to get started?

Early last year, the investigative journalist Jodi Kantor was asked to give the commencement address to students at Columbia University in New York. The place was in chaos – amid continuing pro-Palestinian protests students were expelled, or arrested and detained by immigration officials, while President Trump had ordered a $400m withdrawal of federal funding (which was later reinstated as part of a settlement with the administration). Kantor was “horrified” to see what had happened at Columbia – her alma mater, where she was sacked from her first journalism job at the student paper– “a place and campus I loved, a place that stands for discussion and ideas and progress. I said: ‘I’ll do it if I can speak to the students first.’”

She spoke to several. They didn’t want to talk about Israel or Gaza, or Trump, or what was happening at the university and its implications for free speech. “They said: ‘Our class, despite all of its political differences, is united in anxiety over one question. When everything feels so broken, how do we start? How do we find our life’s work in this environment?’”

Lawrence Bishnoi has been in high-security custody for more than a decade. During that time, he has been linked to multiple high-profile killings, both in India and as far afield as Canada. What explains his seemingly undimmed power?

The border that separates India from Pakistan is lined with 50,000 towering poles that hold 150,000 floodlights, which at night create a glare that is visible from outer space. Passing through the towns on the Indian side of the border, it can be difficult to tell, even in daylight, where one ends and the other begins. Curving along the rolling fields of wheat are nameless dirt roads where men sit on rope benches, whiling away their afternoons, staring as you pass by.

Dutarawali, right by the highway, is slightly different: here, the houses are big, with spacious courtyards. One of the houses – three storeys, painted white with red accents – has a 7ft boundary wall topped with barbed wire and four CCTV cameras overlooking the unpaved street. The symbol of Om is curled on its brown iron door, which has no nameplate. It is the house of Lawrence Bishnoi, who is today, at the age of 33, India’s most notorious gangster.

We’re being sold a world where there’s no room for reflection or spontaneity. This is the Black Mirror stage of capitalism

How fast do you have to strike a match to get it to light? Not the chemistry of the ignition, but the actual speed, in metres per second, that the little piece of wood and its bulbous head have to move to spark the chain reaction behind the flame.

It was a question born of insomnia. And there, in the dark, I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, if your goal is to fall back asleep: I opened my phone. Before I knew it, 3am had become 5am. I learned about the composition of the friction strip (red phosphorus, pulverized glass), and of the match head (potassium chlorate, antimony trisulphide, wax), and that a safety match struck against anything else will not light. I found slow-motion videos of a match strike captured at 3,500 frames per second. But nothing about the speed.

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now

Art festivals can fill abandoned buildings with new life – or clear a path for property developers. Coimbra’s Anozero is trying out a more confrontational approach

If you decide to spend a night at Coimbra’s Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova in the near future, do bear in mind that the place is almost certainly haunted. Disembodied children’s voices echo around the first floor of the 17th century convent perched atop a hill in the Portuguese university city, overlooking the medieval centre from across the Mondego river.

In the garages, dry foliage has been arranged in geometric shapes, as if in preparation for a wicca ritual. You need the nerves of a ghost-hunter to walk through the pitch-black ground-floor corridor of the dormitory wing, lit only by a neon strip at either end, where tortured wails ambush you from the monkish cells. Sung in Albanian, Chinese, Kurdish, Kyrgyz and Turkish, these laments are part of an installation by US artist Taryn Simon, but they feel like spectral reminders of the nuns who lived in these quarters for two centuries.

Savitha Prakash, a first-generation immigrant running in local elections in Harrow, says Reform UK aims to ‘put Britain first’

Savitha Prakash, an NHS doctor living in the London borough of Harrow, believes there are similarities between the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “He’s [Modi] one of those people, like Nigel, he walks the talk. He made [a] difference to the country,” said Prakash, who chairs Reform UK’s branch in Harrow.

In particular, the 47-year-old said Farage and Modi – who have each been accused by their critics of scapegoating marginalised communities – were focused on putting the needs of the majority first.

Permanent secretary Cat Little tells MPs that she sought legal advice before sharing the vetting information with the prime minister

Little says in March she had a meeting when she asked to see the Foreign Office’s documentation about the decision to grant Mandelson vetting. She said she was asking because this was documentation covered by the humble address. She said was told that “that information would not be forthcoming”.

In the middle of March, I have a meeting with Sir Olly and a senior member of his team, and this is after the point that I’ve been told that this summary document exists.

I specifically ask to see this document and any decision-making audit trail around those judgments at the time. It was made clear to me that that information would not be forthcoming.

I took the very unusual judgment that I should directly request the information from UK Security Vetting.

And I did that because I go back to my responsibilities, to discharge the humble address, which is a responsibility that is unique to me and I take very seriously.

Leaked assessment says clearing mines could take half a year; US navy secretary leaves office ‘immediately’

• ‘Impossible’ to reopen strait of Hormuz amid ‘flagrant’ ceasefire breaches, Iran says

The Pentagon abruptly announced that the secretary of the US navy, John Phelan, would be leaving his job yesterday. No reason was given for the unexpected departure of the navy’s top civilian official, who had addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the navy’s annual conference in Washington just a day before the announcement.

People familiar with the dynamics at the Pentagon told the Guardian Phelan was fired. Phelan had an increasingly rocky relationship with the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other senior staff.

Exclusive: Labour MP calls on DVLA to take action, saying speeding, hit and runs and other crimes are going unpunished

More than 18,000 vehicles are being used in the UK without proper records of where their owners live, it has emerged, part of what a Labour MP has called an increasing problem of “ghost owners” who cannot be held accountable for their driving.

According to a freedom of information request to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, 18,260 vehicles were listed in its records as being registered to the DVLA’s own address, meaning the owner’s location was not known.

Campaign is said to be first time Labour-affiliated Unison is lobbying en masse against a key party policy

Migrant workers and the UK’s largest union will carry out a mass leafleting campaign in Shabana Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy.

The Labour-affiliated Unison union says the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.