Returning for a 20th album of sumptuous synthpop, Andy Bell and Clarke open up about difficult recent years, being happily uncool and battling resurgent homophobia

Andy Bell is rabbiting away on multiple topics. There’s his farm in Mallorca, where he and his husband Stephen Moss have had a fine year harvesting pomegranates, kiwis and lemons. Then there’s the Erasure frontman’s fascination with clowns (“Would the makeup help you avoid facial recognition technology?”), memories of 90s nightclubbing (“You could do anything and get away with it!”) and a worry that he’s turning into “a fussy old grandpa”. Suddenly, he catches himself: “But what about you, Vince? You’re being very quiet!”

Bell’s bandmate, whose only contribution since joining the video chat from his San Diego home has been to say hello, smiles. “No, no, I just love listening to you, man. I’m really enjoying this.”

Boys learn by watching how the men they respect treat their partners, female colleagues, women on the street. Now is the time for those men to step up

There were seven men in all, and it lasted almost seven hours.

What followed, according to the woman at the heart of the Cornell University case that has gripped student campuses around the world, was less a sexual encounter than a grim pack-bonding exercise fuelled by booze and ketamine, in which she was passed around like a blow-up doll.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

In the UK, the Rape Crisis national freephone helpline is on 0808 802 9999 (12-2.30pm and 7-9.30pm every day of the year). Rape Crisis also operate a live chat helpline, open Monday: 2pm-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Tuesday: 2-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Wednesday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Thursday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Friday: 9am-11.30am, 2pm-4.30pm. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and also by email in Ireland jo@samaritans.ie. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk. The 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, is on 0808 2000 247. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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My condition is severe, so I have to a keep close watch on my body temperature and can’t eat chilled foods

In 2012, when I was 37, I started noticing that my fingers would get swollen and red whenever I held an iced drink. I thought it was strange, but I didn’t know what was going on. Then the same thing would happen when I handled food from the fridge. My instinct was to put my hands under hot water, but that made it worse.

For a while, that’s all I experienced. I thought it was weird but not dangerous. I was busy with my three children, so didn’t worry.

EU Copernicus report shows surface air temperatures from June to August were 2.5C above decadal average

The scorching heat that persistently baked western Europe this summer was the worst on record, a report has found, with more than half the continent seared by “very strong” heat stress that felt hotter than 38C.

Surface air temperatures in western Europe from June to August were 2.5C above the recent decadal average, according to an update from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring service on Friday, while milder but still deadly heat across the rest of the continent made the summer Europe’s third hottest on record.

The most hotly anticipated TV show of the year is here! And a number of the stars – ahem Grant Mitchell – are struggling already …

Warning: this article contains spoilers for episode one of The Celebrity Traitors.

So – have they managed to capture lightning in a franchised bottle again? The new series of The Celebrity Traitors, more hotly anticipated than Nigella entering the Bake Off tent, is here. Twenty-one contestants of varying levels of fame, but never dipping below C-list, have signed up to endure Claudia Winkleman’s tyranny in Ardross Castle, in the hope of winning up to £100,000 for their chosen charity and a place in the nation’s consciousness and possible heart for between one week and a lifetime, depending how things work out.

Gieß den Kiez app shows trees in critical need of watering and can be adopted by other heat-stressed cities around the world

Amanda Gläser-Bligh sometimes attracts puzzled looks when she goes to water the eight-year-old street tree she has adopted outside her door in Charlottenburg, Berlin.

“I named her Linda the linden,” she says. “Berliners are not always known for being super friendly but most people react really positively when they find out what I’m doing.”

Exclusive: Martha Dalton worked closely with Burnham’s team on byelection that secured his return to parliament

A recent lobbyist for the controversial $450bn US tech company Palantir played a senior role in helping Andy Burnham become prime minister, it has emerged.

Martha Dalton, whose company Lodestone worked for Palantir in 2024 and 2025, campaigned for Burnham in the Makerfield byelection that secured his return to parliament. She worked closely with his team on strategic communications and rebuttals, and was among supporters who clapped him into Downing Street in July.

In effort to avoid panic at pumps, Keir Mather insists supply of fuel to Britain is ‘inherently resilient’

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The government has moved to avert panic at the pumps, insisting that the UK is not facing a diesel shortage after Donald Trump threatened to cut off US supplies of the fuel.

The transport minister Keir Mather said on Friday that the UK has a wide range of sources of the fuel and is in talks with other European countries over the potential release of emergency diesel stockpiles.

Smit Machchhar says in video call with Indian PM that he realised if he did not get up then ‘passengers would lose their lives’

The Indian pilot who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a flydubai flight has described how he fought for his life in the minutes after his co-pilot stabbed him and the plane began a steep descent.

Capt Smit Machchhar, who is recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, told the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, in a video call broadcast live on television news channels that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save the passengers onboard.

Pike alive but in critical condition as experts call ordeal that unfolded in Tennessee Wednesday ‘unimaginably barbaric’

Top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community are calling for a moratorium on the US death penalty after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike left the prisoner alive but in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care.

The recent spate of harrowingly botched executions across US death penalty states reached a new low late on Wednesday when Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee called off the procedure after Pike had been injected with two full syringes of pentobarbital. She is the only person to have survived being administered 5mg of the sedative – a massive dose that under normal circumstances is considered fatal.