For years, her husband was adding sedatives to her evening cup of tea. Now, with fellow survivor Amanda Stanhope, she is lifting the lid on a hidden and diabolical crime

In September 2024, Amanda Stanhope watched, transfixed, from her home in Manchester, as the Gisèle Pelicot case made headlines around the world.

“Gisèle’s case was the first time I knew of somebody else who had been raped while they were drugged,” says Stanhope. “I remember feeling: ‘Thank God I’m not alone. There’s one other person in the world that this has happened to.’” Stanhope’s former partner, David Rogerson, was under investigation at the time for raping her while she slept, and filming the abuse. Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, would end up being convicted for drug-facilitated rape and sexual assault (DFSA), along with 50 strangers he had recruited online to abuse his wife.

Anger, guilt, shame: the deepest unseen wound of this war is the rift between those who left and those who stayed behind

“Can we reschedule?”

Over the years of working with western colleagues, I had learned to accept that they don’t fully understand what war feels like from the inside. They would ask me to find someone in occupied Mariupol for an interview, or seem genuinely puzzled that I couldn’t just log on at a time that suited them. I made my peace with this long ago – they don’t have to understand. But this time, it was a Ukrainian who asked.

Diana Berg is a Ukrainian artist, writer and cultural manager from Mariupol, and the founder of Platform TU, an independent cultural initiative now operating in exile after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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Ray Exworth spent his life filling Cornish sheds with breathtaking sculptures – but wouldn’t let anyone in to view them. Now, after his death, his secret body of work has been revealed

Ray Exworth spent six decades creating one of Britain’s most extraordinary bodies of sculpture – and almost nobody has seen it. Hidden inside a labyrinth of sheds on a remote Cornish smallholding, his vast, obsessive constructions have remained locked away from the world, visited only by a fortunate few. Even his wife Susie, 92, was largely kept out. “I could not visit without an invitation!” she recalls.

Exworth, who died in 2015 aged 84, had just one major exhibition in his lifetime, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975. Since then, the man who might belong among Britain’s most notable artists has disappeared almost entirely. His works – sprawling, intricate and wildly ambitious, assembled from an array of salvaged materials – have remained exactly where he left them: filling seven studio sheds and a scattering of shipping containers, unseen.

It is hard to make the case for a 10-year plan in our political culture of constant campaigning frenzy – but the new PM will try

It all sounded feasible but improbable. A few days after Labour’s disastrous performance in local and devolved elections in May, one of Andy Burnham’s allies confidently forecast for me the sequence of events that would convey the then mayor of Greater Manchester to No 10. A friendly MP would surrender a parliamentary seat. Keir Starmer would be persuaded to resign. Other leadership contenders would see the futility of resistance to the Burnham bandwagon. It would roll, unchallenged, up Downing Street. It was a plan with many moving parts, and a lot that could go wrong.

That it all worked as predicted took more than luck. The Makerfield byelection was winnable for Labour only with the right candidate and a strong campaign. The scale of Burnham’s victory generated momentum sufficient to push other obstacles aside. The “Andy” brand was stronger than his party’s logo.

Rafael Behr is an Guardian columnist

Hackney council will close Keith Miller sports pitch at end of year to build urgently needed social homes

Campaigners say the loss of a much-loved football pitch in east London to a housebuilding programme will be a huge blow to the local community.

Hackney’s Keith Miller sports pitch is known locally as the “San Siro of east London” – for non-football fans, that’s the famous Milan stadium that is one of the biggest in Europe. The Hackney version, however, is due to be demolished at the end of the year so that urgently needed social homes can be built.

These visualisations from exclusive polling modelling show how the UK parliament could change under different voting systems

New analysis produced exclusively for the Guardian reveals how different voting systems would return wildly different seat totals in the UK parliament based on current polling.

While the current first past the post (FPTP) system could leave Reform UK just 30 seats short of a majority based on recent polls, the modelling shows how proportional systems would be likely to give the UK a more finely balanced parliament that better represents the votes people cast.

Measure to cost more than £500m, with money allocated to allow devolved nations to do the same

Single bus fares across England will be capped at £2 from January, Andy Burnham has announced, as he continues a cost of living blitz in his first week as prime minister.

The nationwide cap is currently set at £3 until the end of March 2027, although some areas – including London and Greater Manchester, where Burnham set a £2 limit as mayor – have lower top rates for single tickets.

Andy Burnham was speaking to reporters during a visit to BatH

Wes Streeting said the US president was “right” to demand Europe pays more for its own defence.

Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of Europe for relying too much on the US for its security, and has demanded Nato allies reach 5% of GDP on defence spending by 2035.

President Trump has called on Europe to carry a greater share of the burden for our own defence, and he is right to do so. The UK has always been a leading light on defence spending, but the world is changing and in these dangerous uncertain times it is clear that we have needed to go further.

That’s why we’ve committed £298bn over the next four years, including an additional £15bn on top of last year’s spending review settlement. At the recent Nato summit, all members reaffirmed our commitment to 3.5 by 35 [3.5% of GDP by 2035].

Exclusive: Global investigation reveals 235 lawsuits have been brought against governments in five countries since 2010

The world’s biggest ultra-processed food companies have filed scores of lawsuits challenging government policies that tackle junk diets, the Guardian can reveal.

Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health. Worldwide consumption is rising and UPF now makes up as much as half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.

US military completes 11th night of strikes as attacks overshadow diplomatic efforts in Pakistan to salvage interim ceasefire deal

• Houthis threaten attacks on shipping tankers if they use Saudi ports on Red Sea

• What is Pickaxe Mountain, Iran’s underground nuclear facility?

The Jordanian army said it intercepted four Iranian missiles on Wednesday with two additional missile falling in an open area, AFP reports.

The two missiles that the army did not intercept fell in “two remote, uninhabited areas, without causing any human casualties or material damage” the army said in a statement.