Several kinds of bacteria can give you an upset stomach. Here is how to steer clear of the worst offenders, and what to do if they do make it through

Many people in the modern world, it’s probably fair to say, do not take food poisoning particularly seriously. Yes, most folks wash their hands after handling raw chicken and use different chopping boards for beef and green beans – but who among us can honestly say we’ve never used the same tongs for an entire barbecue or left a storage box of cooked rice on the sideboard for a couple of hours? Ignore that rhetorical question for a moment, though – before you comment that of course everyone should do all those things, let’s talk about what’s happening in your body when it all goes horribly wrong.

At the risk of stating the obvious, food poisoning occurs when you eat food contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses or toxins – but that doesn’t mean it always works the same way. “Some bacteria, such as Bacillus cereus – sometimes found in reheated rice – produce toxins before the food is eaten, meaning they can cause symptoms such as sudden vomiting within hours,” says Dr Masarat Jilani, an NHS specialist who regularly manages children and adults with food poisoning. Bacillus cereus also produces another type of toxin in the small intestine, which can cause diarrhoea. “Others, such as Salmonella and E. coli, act after you’ve eaten and often cause longer-lasting symptoms through inflammation of the gut.”

An early flu season, a new variant and poor takeup of vaccines leave the already vulnerable health service in a dangerous position

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

You might be feeling stressed out seeing the headlines about “super flu” and comparing the current winter health challenges with 2020 and Covid. Amid all the noise, it’s difficult to know how bad this flu really is – and how much is political spin. I should start by saying “super flu” is not a scientific term or one used by any academics or clinicians I work with. It’s a colloquial phrase that’s been used by various NHS England bosses and taken up by Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Keir Starmer.

This year, a couple of factors have come together to make it a harder flu season for hospitals to manage. First, flu has arrived earlier than previous years. This isn’t unique to the UK: it’s the same picture across the US, Canada, Japan, Germany – basically the northern hemisphere going into winter. This is in the context of multiple viruses circulating such as Covid and rhinoviruses, which means patients could be fighting one or more viruses at the same time and are more susceptible to getting sicker from influenza.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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Apollo theatre, London
Mischief Theatre return to the am-dram battlefield, turning the Victorian tale into a blizzard of bruised egos and expertly timed farce

In the interval, I hear a newcomer to Mischief Theatre’s enduring “goes wrong” concept ask if these comic symphonies of am-dram mishaps ever get stale. On the contrary: in the first half of this Dickensian foul-up, much of the pleasure comes from watching the company spring-load a very familiar crop of gags ready to explode after the break.

Long-term Mischief watchers will guess, for example, that when a Maltesers box is dropped during rehearsals inside the model box for the Cornley Polytechnic Players’ A Christmas Carol, it will end up as a giant-sized component of the set. They will know that the rivalry between supercilious director Chris and bombastic actor Robert, fond of essaying the classics in the nude, will result in crazed feats of sabotage when the production gets under way. And they can be sure that dim-witted Dennis, who thinks he is auditioning for the role of “Frog Cratchit” after seeing the Muppets’ musical as research, will well and truly cook everyone’s goose.

The French fashion designer’s lavish Mediterranean villa was frequented by everyone from Dalí to Garbo to Stravinsky to Churchill. It has now been lovingly restored – with a thrillingly bolstered library

It is the place where Salvador Dalí painted The Enigma of Hitler, a haunting landscape featuring a giant telephone receiver that seems to be crying a tear over a cutout picture of the Fuhrer. Conceived in 1939, the work seems to anticipate war. It is also the place where Winston Churchill penned parts of his multi-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and painted its dappled-light view. Somerset Maugham would visit, too, as well as novelist Colette, composer Igor Stravinsky and playwright Jean Cocteau, partaking in lunches that lasted all day and night, with debates and discussions around artistic ideas.

This place is La Pausa: the Mediterranean villa in the hills of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, once owned by husband-and-wife writing duo Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson, followed by French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who had it rebuilt from scratch at the end of the 1920s. She later sold it to an American publishing couple, Emery and Wendy Reves.

Timothée Chalamet’s live-wire striver using ping pong as his ticket out of normie American life is just one of many wonders in this extraordinarily rich tale
• The best films of 2025 in the UK
• More on the best culture of 2025

When reports started to emerge that Timothée Chalamet was going to play a ping pong champion in a film called Marty Supreme, the world (including this correspondent) rolled its eyes. Was Hollywood’s most annoying actor going to go for broke in what promised to be the most irritating film of all time? Well I am here to hold up my hand and say that first impressions couldn’t have been more wrong. Marty Supreme is one of the most exciting, indeed sensational films of the year, and if the Guardian film critics’ poll wasn’t a democracy, many of us would made it No 1 by some distance.

For it turns out that Marty Supreme is a character drama of quite remarkable richness, its excitement and sensation deriving from the nervous energy of its protagonist – who is indeed a ping pong player called Marty – but plying his trade in the decidedly non-quirky early 1950s where our hero, played by Chalamet, is essentially trying to use this non-traditional sport to plot a way out of the dullness and grind of his normie life, where he is on track to become a manager of a shoe store. Marty (whose last name is not actually Supreme, but the amusingly alliterative Mauser) is a pretty dislikable individual: happy to abandon a girl he gets pregnant, throw a fit when he loses a match, and think he can talk his way out of any kind of difficulty. But such is his verve, charisma and never-say-die attitude, he carries you with him.

After years as Hollywood’s romcom darling, Hudson is putting music at the centre of her career – and after her show-stealing turn in Song Sung Blue, the Oscar buzz is growing

The first voice I hear when I enter the hotel room to meet Kate Hudson belongs to her 21-year-old son, Ryder, who speaks from the end of a phone: “Love you, Mum!”

Doesn’t everyone? You don’t have to be related to Hudson to consider her a joyous proposition – a great performer who hasn’t yet made a great film. It was a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous, her breakthrough picture, that she first proved she could hoist a movie out of the doldrums while making the task appear as effortless as blow-drying her hair. Without her performance as Penny Lane, the rock’n’roll muse who describes herself as a “band-aid” rather than a groupie, Cameron Crowe’s dopey valentine to the 1970s of his youth would have been Almost Forgettable.

Naveed Akram previously known to security agencies, prime minister says. His gun-owning father, Sajid, was shot dead by police at the scene

• Victims named so far

• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

The alleged gunmen behind the Bondi beach attack are a father-son duo suspected of using legally obtained firearms to commit the massacre, according to police.

Naveed Akram, 24, was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries. His 50-year-old father, who the Sydney Morning Herald first reported to be Sajid Akram, was shot dead by police.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese says ‘we are stronger than the cowards’ as people return to the scene of Australia’s worst ever terror attack

• Victims named so far

• What we know about the Bondi terror attack

In the fading light, they came back to Bondi, to light candles, to sing and to stand together, in solidarity and in defiance of the terror that had been visited upon their beach, their world.

Across Bondi, and Sydney, and Australia, people lit candles in solidarity with the Jewish community which suffered the worst antisemitic attack in the country’s history when two gunmen allegedly opened fire on a Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach shortly after 6:40pm on Sunday evening.

Family say al-Ahmed ‘doesn’t discriminate’ and would have done anything to save lives during the attack

• Victims named so far

• What we know about the Bondi terror attack

When Ahmed al-Ahmed tackled and wrested a gun from an alleged shooter at Bondi beach, he was simply thinking that he “couldn’t bear to see people dying”, his cousin says.

Less than a day later, al-Ahmed remains in a critical but stable condition at St George hospital in Sydney. Since the attack, the 43-year-old father of two young girls has catapulted to international fame with a GoFundMe page already raising more than $A1.3m (£645,000; $864,000) in less than 24 hours.

• Former England cricket captain is in Australia for Ashes series

• Pat Cummins and Usman Khawaja lead tributes to victims

The former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan has described hearing gunshots during the terrorist attack at a gathering to celebrate the first night of Hanukah at Sydney’s Bondi beach as “terrifying”.

Vaughan, who is in Australia working as a media pundit for the Ashes series, said he was locked in a restaurant “a few hundred yards from the attack” with his wife, two daughters, sister-in-law and a friend.