The landmark documentary series looked like it was done for good – until one participant was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Asif Kapadia takes the helm for its most elegaic, thoughtful outing ever

And so the great experiment begun by Granada Television in 1964 is over. That year, Seven Up! introduced the viewing public to 14 primary school children – 10 boys and four girls from a range of backgrounds – who would become part of an ongoing documentary project that returned to film them at regular intervals and interrogate the truth of the Jesuitical motto “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man”.

Seven Up!, part of ITV’s flagship World in Action series, was directed by Paul Almond but thereafter the enterprise became synonymous with Michael Apted, who originally helped find the children and took over the making of the programmes. He died in 2021, two years after completing 63 Up. It had been thought the series would end there but when one of the participants, Nick Hitchon – a Yorkshire farmer’s son who grew up to be a nuclear scientist – called one of the team to say that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wanted to give one last interview, a final episode was commissioned.

US president insists that fears expressed by top experts are a hoax – and that humanity can sleep easy while he’s at the wheel

We can all sleep easy. In a post on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump has declared that fears over artificial intelligence were all a hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists. Obviously that includes the top bods at Anthropic and its competitors, who all called for a coordinated global slowdown while the industry works out how to mitigate the risks. Still, good to know the tech bros are just fantasists and space cadets at heart.

All that was needed to keep humanity safe and well, The Donald insisted, was a president with a very high IQ. Someone very like him. The only man alive who could out-think the combined power of the world’s supercomputers. He could tell them where to draw the line and they would reprogram themselves to back off. Inside every AI network is a default off switch that kneels before the US president. Trump can rewire the world with the power of his mind.

The characters are dead-eyed waxworks which speak with all the nuance of a satnav. But this AI-created workplace comedy is so bad that even the greatest actors alive couldn’t stop it being unwatchable

As you will no doubt be aware, one Anthropic researcher claimed there is a greater than one in 10 chance that AI will end all of humanity as we know it within the next decade. However, now that I’ve given it some thought, I think this statistic might actually be a little conservative. This is because I have just watched an episode of a sitcom created by AI, and if I ever have to do it again I’m genuinely going to die of boredom.

The show is No Big Deal, and it premiered on YouTube on Friday. I was apparently only the 376th person to watch it. This is by no means a recommendation that you become the 377th, more a warning to avoid it if your algorithm ever decides it hates you enough to suggest this.

As a cyclist I want the authorities to act with clarity. Lime bikes and renters can be annoying, but the true threat is those who dangerously flout the law

One of the curiosities of debates about cycling in the UK is that almost all of them centre on the place with the greatest concentration of not only bikes but also politicians and journalists: inner London. Inevitably this is just a small part of the story.

Much of the current focus is on so-called share bikes operated by companies such as Lime and Forest – nippy electric-assist machines that can be picked up and left on pavements. On Saturday, a Guardian investigation revealed that councils in the capital have so far this year seized 3,393 dangerously parked or abandoned ebikes, a number 23% higher than the total for the whole of last year.

She has played rugby for Wales, is putting a Welsh spin on Princess Leia and is returning to TV screens as Shirley, the explosive, traumatised MI5 agent. Why is Edwards so drawn to liars, crooks and sneaks?

There was a moment, just before Aimee-Ffion Edwards jumped off a nightclub balcony in Slow Horses, when she had to lie to herself about what she was about to do. “It was quite hard,” says the actor. “You basically tell yourself, ‘You’re not jumping.’ Obviously, you know you’re harnessed in, but you’re also going, ‘This is mad! This is mad! This is mad!’”

She laughs. “I couldn’t feel my fingers for a second. I was like, ‘Huwwaah!’” She sucks in her breath, then says: “But there were 200 people stood there watching. You’re like, ‘Well, I gotta do it.’”

ICE says it has no updated information on the number of miscarriages after 3 October 2025. Lawmakers, advocates and immigration attorneys have raised alarms that pregnant detainees are not receiving basic prenatal care and screenings

ICE is arresting a record number of pregnant women and teenagers – placing them in detention centers where they say it can be exceedingly difficult to access medical care. At the same time, the agency appears to have lost count of how many suffered a miscarriage.

Government documents obtained by the Guardian show that the Trump administration placed more pregnant immigrants in detention last fall and winter than at any time over the previous year.

Lady Justice Thirlwall’s report concludes three babies might have survived if hospital had acted on concerns about nurse

Ministers have promised sweeping changes to the NHS after a “devastating” official review concluded that three babies might have survived if hospital bosses and doctors had acted on concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby.

A public inquiry found a “complete failure” to protect babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.

Dan Thomas, elected in May, says he does not wish to be a ‘distraction’ on same day Reform MS defects to Plaid Cymru

The leader of Reform UK in Wales is standing down after he was arrested and bailed on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviour.

Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor, had only been announced as Reform’s Welsh leader by Nigel Farage in February.

More than 100 people are reported to have joined the search effort for Noah, who is autistic, non-verbal and has partial hearing loss

Police are urging people to check their gardens and sheds for a three-year-old boy who went missing on Tuesday during a visit to a playground near the Suffolk-Essex border.

The boy, named Noah, was last seen at 3pm in Merriam Close in Brantham, near Manningtree, before being separated from a relative. Officers from Suffolk constabulary said that Noah was reported to have run down an alleyway near the playground towards a housing estate.

Experts air concern over AI lingo redolent of James Joyce’s prose that is creating barriers to monitoring and oversight

AI models have begun communicating in a strange new version of English that reads like a cross between James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and tech bro jargon, new research has found.

Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour.