This week, as the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Ramadan lives in a tent on the beach and works to support his family

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

The tent is pitched on a platform set in the sloping sand dunes, above a long expanse of golden coastline. Rats have chewed holes in its canvas sides, and tendrils of pale sand blow in through the gaps. Inside, on the torn mattress he shares with his siblings, 12-year-old Ramadan Ghaban blinks the sleep from his eyes. The sun has just risen but it is already hot.

I wake up every morning at 6.30am. Sometimes, the heat wakes me up, and sometimes it is the sound of the birds, which are everywhere because we live near the sea.

Amid genuinely touching passages about his sister, the earl can’t help but put himself and his grievances centre stage

Charles Spencer’s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great deal about Charles Spencer – perhaps more than we needed to know. If that sounds snarky, after 400 pages of score settling, chest thumping, wild indiscretion and some truly touching passages about his late sister, the reader is left with a head-spinning story of the world that created Diana and a certain sourness at the manner in which it is told.

Let’s start with the headlines in last week’s Daily Mail, the newspaper to whom Spencer sold serialisation of a book which includes a line describing tabloid journalists as “those who inhabit the murky swamps of malevolence, and who need to suck their victims dry of their souls”. Perhaps he meant a different set of hacks. Anyway the top line in the Mail was that, shortly after Diana’s death, King Charles insulted her in a phone call to Spencer: “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’” Your take on this quote will likely dictate how you receive the book, and here’s mine: I’m willing to believe the king behaved badly, but “hissed” is a red flag, one of those embellishments, like “snarled” or “flounced”, that writers tend to use to make those they’re writing about appear worse. Spencer, always the injured party, has so many axes grinding away in this book that at times it’s impossible to hear what he’s saying.

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I took him to university this weekend, and it reminded me of the exhilaration of suddenly having your own space, absolutely separate from your mother

When kids are small, and their expectations of an event diverge from yours in some important way, you feel terrible about it. You might be taking them to a play, and they thought that meant they’d be allowed to play, but actually it meant they had to sit still while strangers shouted things. You experience their disappointment as much as your own physical pain.

Then when they’re “adults”, your expectations diverge again. They thought you’d drop them at university and immediately leave, while you thought you’d unpack, and meet their flatmates, explore the city, and spin round a supermarket, then have a Nando’s, and maybe read a bedtime story, get chatting to the other parents and maybe all do karaoke? Well, then it’s time to manage your own disappointment, and the only thing to be said for that is that it’s way less bad than managing theirs.

People in the UK are more interested in oral health than ever - and you can now buy prebiotic toothpastes and brushes that cost up to £600. Yet we remain in the midst of a serious dental crisis

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

In more than two decades in the Prison Service, Pia Sinha gained a reputation as a fixer. Now, as head of the Prison Reform Trust, she’s sounding the alarm about overcrowding and other problems

Pia Sinha has led the Prison Reform Trust since 2023. In that time, she has seen a Conservative government finally admit to an overcrowding crisis that had tipped over the edge. (It was in October 2023 that the early release scheme was devised; by May 2024, the Tories had also launched Operation Safeguard, using police cells as temporary housing.) She’s watched a change of government, then a change of prime minister, then Andy Burnham instantly assailed by negative headlines as the consequences of that early release scheme unfolded: prisoners had to actually be released early. “We’re a bit concerned about how [Burnham] has handled it,” she says, in the trust’s scruffy, un-corporate offices in central London, “but that’s in the knowledge that he had a bit of a hospital pass.”

To recap on Burnham’s handling: when he came in in July, he paused the scheme for an urgent review; in August he announced a series of exclusions, further crimes for which people couldn’t be released early, including manslaughter and death by dangerous driving. That solved an immediate problem, that the killers of PC Andrew Harper would otherwise have been released, but had the knock-on effect of reducing the numbers expected to be released by about a quarter. The conversation Sinha wants to have is what prison overcrowding looks like, what it does to prisoners and staff – and what it means for society.

António Guterres says humanity faces unprecedented convergence of threats but mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain

The world’s fault lines have turned from cracks into canyons as superpowers show that they alone do not have the military, economic and technological power to guarantee security or solve the world’s problems, the outgoing secretary general of the United Nations has said in his final address to the general assembly.

In a speech laced with despair but also glimpses of defiant hope, António Guterres said that over the last decade, largely spanning his 10-year period in office, “wars erupted with devastating consequences and dragged on with despicable cruelty. Civilians were targeted. Human rights trampled. Hunger weaponised. Humanitarians killed. International law cast aside.”

PM says immediate focus is on rebuilding bridges with EU as he prepares for first meeting with Ursula von der Leyen

Andy Burnham has opened the door to fighting the next election on the UK rejoining the EU, but said his immediate priority was continuing to rebuild bridges with European allies.

The prime minister, who will hold his first meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Tuesday, did not rule out including reversing Brexit in Labour’s next manifesto – but suggested the country should focus on securing closer trading ties first.

The US president made the comments as he arrives at the UN headquarters in New York

Nordic correspondent

Emotions among Greenlanders are a mixture of hope, scepticism and fear ahead of the signing of a new much vaunted deal on Arctic security between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

“There have been many different reactions in Greenland because they are talking about a deal but no one can see the deal, we don’t know what it is all about, and what’s in it for us or what’s in it. Also, because we have been terrorised as a people for the last 1.5 years by the American president, so many people feel no trust at all.”

MPs send out letter as Israeli government seeks bids for construction of large E1 settlement in West Bank

British banks and financial institutions are receiving written warnings from MPs that they should not invest in Israel’s E1 settlement project even though new UK laws banning trade with illegal settlements are unlikely to be in place for months.

A letter was sent to banks on Tuesday by the all-party Britain-Palestine group of MPs saying the onus was now on banks to review their obligations not to cooperate with new settlements.