From Obama’s chef to a big cat obsessive, the actor has gathered experts from Alaska, the Amazon and beyond for a film about how to heal our besieged planet. He talks about naysayers, elephant tusks – and the wonders of venison

Benedict Cumberbatch is dreading stepping outside. He’s speaking to me from his air-conditioned hotel room in Soho at the peak of the summer heat. Few doubt that climate breakdown was a major cause of those scorchers, with nature, farming and water supplies all placed under huge strain. By midsummer, according to a report co-authored by the Met Office, there were 2,700 excess deaths in England and Wales due to the searing heat.

But for Cumberbatch, in a bittersweet way, the record-breaking temperatures have come at a good time. The actor has been on a tour to promote his new documentary, How to Live on Earth. “The irony is not lost on anyone,” he says. “We’re living in the results of climate breakdown so stepping outside is – literally – a call to action.”

Chirag Bahri was working on board a tanker when six men seized it. For almost eight months, he and his colleagues were held captive, an experience that would change his life for ever

It was at noon on 8 May 2010 when the pirates came. Chirag Bahri remembers the exact time and date because it marked the start of the seven months and 20 days he was held hostage by a gang of Somali pirates. Bahri was 28 at the time, and working as second engineer on a chemical tanker, Marida Marguerite. It was his 12th journey through the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean. It had been a good job for a young man from landlocked Uttar Pradesh in India, and Bahri was about to be promoted. “But then, piracy,” he says.

The ship had been 120 miles off the coast of Oman, partway through a run taking benzene – a raw material used in petrochemicals – from Kandla Port in India to Antwerp in Belgium. The piracy problem in the Indian Ocean was well known; Somalis armed with AK-47s were setting out in fast skiffs and taking ships hostage. Yet commercial vessels, including the Marida Marguerite, remained undefended.

Grievance politics has grown in the east of the country where I was born. But west Germans have hard questions to answer too

The fear that a fascist, far-right movement would rise to power again in Germany has been with me since my youth. On 6 September, the far-right, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt, becoming the biggest party in the state parliament, with a shocking 44% of the vote, on a record turnout. If it finds a way to power it will be the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era.

The night before the vote, I sent a message to a friend, who, like myself, has an East German background. Was she as worried, scared even, about the vote as I was, I asked. I’d fallen into a loop for days, scrolling videos, reels, reports, interviews done on the ground. And I knew these AfD voters. They could have been relatives, friends of my parents, old teachers, former schoolmates. Why were they saying such incoherent stuff?

Dismissed in Taiwan as simply propaganda, the Long Watch, or Jiaofeng, has proved a sensation across the strait with its references to real-life crises

After shaking off the people trailing her through a crowded market and emerging from a bathroom in disguise, the double agent appears to have escaped. But a sip of water on a plane eventually gets her. She is poisoned after Taiwan’s military intelligence service discovers that she has been working secretly for China.

The plot comes from a new Chinese spy drama co-produced by the Ministry of State Security. Since its premiere on 6 September, it has become a TV hit, with a fictionalised take on a subject rarely treated so directly: the modern history of tensions with Taiwan.

With her new, semi-nude advert for sports site Novig, the actor cements her reputation as the anti-woke poster girl. But is it real – or just provocation with a soft porn gaze?

Bear with me here, but I’m beginning to suspect Sydney Sweeney is a very fine actor. It’s a skill she has been recognised for in the past, of course, winning nominations for Emmys for Euphoria and The White Lotus, but I mean it in a deeper sense, related to her work in advertising rather than drama – can she do more than play a role? Can she make you feel what she’s feeling?

In her “controversial” new ad for the sports prediction site Novig (the scare quotes are because, when you’re begging for controversy this hard, you shouldn’t just be handed it on a plate), she adopts the garb of various sports. Her face, body, aspect, gait and mien are all carefully configured to amp up the erotic overtones to the maximum degree, and yet the feeling that beams out of each image is: “This is really going to piss people off, and I couldn’t be more delighted.” Her expression is so speechful that you cannot help but share in some of her hellion joy.

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over

In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning.”

And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead.” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak.

Some arguments used to challenge convictions are inconsistent with ‘available evidence, science and established physiology’, say two scientists

Two leading experts have withdrawn from Lucy Letby’s defence team over concerns about the “scientific credibility” of some of its evidence.

Separately a public inquiry into the murders will publish its findings on Tuesday. The review, led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, is expected to highlight a number of missed opportunities for bosses to intervene after doctors raised the alarm about a spate of unexplained deaths on the neonatal unit in 2015 and 2016. A criminal investigation is ongoing into potential corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter at the Countess of Chester hospital.

Economists urge John Healey to press Bank to change policy that is costing the exchequer billions of pounds

Economists have urged the chancellor, John Healey, to press the Bank of England to slow down its bond-selling programme that has already cost the exchequer billions of pounds.

The Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) meets this week to not only decide the level of interest rates but also whether they should freeze or slow the sale of government bonds, known as gilts, bought as part of the rescue operation after the 2008 banking crash.

The drone, which reportedly entered from Belarus, ⁠was shot down near Pratkunai village in central-southern Lithuania

Nato fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania after an alert was issued in the ‌capital, Vilnius, and surrounding region, while Poland scrambled fighter jets less than a day after retrieving a suspected Russian drone adrift in its waters.

The Lithuania drone ⁠was shot down near the central-southern village of Pratkunai outside the city of Kaunas, said emergency authorities early on Tuesday. The drone came from neighbouring Belarus and was heading west, according to information from Lithuania’s crisis management centre that was reported by national radio LRT.

Plans to strengthen legislation already going through parliament might mean donors having to meet stricter UK residence requirements

Andy Burnham’s government could thwart Reform’s unprecedented £72m donations with retrospective restrictions on political donors that will include tough new residency requirements, ministers have announced.

In a move that is likely to set off furious complaints from Nigel Farage’s party, the government will table amendments to legislation going through the House of Lords within weeks that puts the legality of Reform’s latest donations in doubt.