The Guardian News

England’s strong results in an early learning study are a Sure Start legacy that ministers must build on

Recognition of the importance of babyhood and early childhood continues to grow. It is widely understood by many ordinary people, as well as experts, that what happens to us when we are very small, and our brains are at their most malleable, has lasting effects. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put it in a study of early years education, “the first five years of a child’s life represent a window of opportunity, but also of vulnerability”.

New Labour’s grasp of this underpinned its pioneering Sure Start programme. Much of this was dismantled under the Tory-Liberal Democrat austerity programme. But despite that loss, England’s results in this year’s OECD Early Learning and Child Well‑being Study were strong. This study does not have the high profile of the programme for international student assessment (Pisa) comparing the academic performance of 15-year-olds. It is newer and relies on a far smaller sample size. But while its findings should not be treated as gospel, it is heartening that England’s five-year‑olds were found to be thriving. On a social-emotional development measure, they came out on top.

Attorney says people have threatened to silence or harm ‘Jane Doe’ if she does not withdraw civil lawsuit

The woman who has alleged that ⁠she was drugged ⁠and raped ​by Cornell University students has been the target of threats, her lawyer said on Sunday.

Thomas Giuffra, who represents the ⁠woman identified as “Jane Doe”, told CNN that people have threatened to silence or harm her if she does not withdraw her civil lawsuit ⁠alleging that several members of a Cornell fraternity drugged and raped her in 2024.

Owner has put in £10m but seven victorious players at Old Trafford were in the Championship two years ago and stayed at Trinity

It may seem quite obvious to suggest there is plenty Super League can learn from its newest champions but as Wakefield Trinity’s dreams came true after beating Warrington 23-10 at Old Trafford on Saturday evening, it was easy to ponder just how transformational a moment this is for not only them, but so many others, too.

This fairytale has captured the national attention and punctured the mainstream unlike few other Super League stories in recent times. A second-tier club just two years ago, Wakefield are now champions of England and have a possible showdown with the NRL champions, Sydney Roosters, to contemplate early next year in the World Club Challenge.

• Antonelli and Hamilton led the criticism in Sepang

• Race delayed after software problems in wet conditions

Formula One drivers issued a damning condemnation of the sport’s current engine regulations that caused the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to open with farcical scenes of cars stopping on track and unable to accelerate because of software problems in the electronics that control the engines.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won in Sepang but only after F1 suffered the embarrassment of a host of cars barely able to complete two ­formation laps in the wet as they were making their way to the grid.

Calls for release of six Matsadaash staff after one is charged, while whereabouts of other five remain unknown

An Egyptian journalist has been charged with joining a terrorist group, days after an entire newsroom was detained in what rights groups have said is a crackdown on press freedoms.

Last week, authorities arrested six journalists from the independent fact-checking and investigative platform Matsadaash – literally meaning “don’t believe” – accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and publishing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Education minister says 24 schools have been burnt or ransacked and 78 staff members injured since student unrest began last month

• Europe live – latest updates

More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for another week of student protests.

Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.

Reform UK leader was interviewed for half an hour last month over money from crypto billionaire

Nigel Farage has been interviewed by the standards commissioner for an investigation into whether he should have declared a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

The Reform UK leader spent about half an hour being questioned over the money, the Sunday Times reported. Farage maintains the gift was for his personal security.

Exclusive: Average of nearly five sexual crimes a day against under-13s were reported to police between 2021 and 2025

• From unwanted touching to rape: the scale of child-on-child abuse in English and Welsh schools

Lawyers and campaigners have condemned the “horrifying” scale of child-on-child sexual abuse in schools after a Guardian investigation revealed thousands of sexual offences against under-13s, including multiple rapes, are reported to police every year.

Close to five sexual crimes against children aged 12 and younger were recorded on average by police every day in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, according to Guardian analysis of police data for 2021-25.

Ten years after full extent of problem was revealed, Guardian investigation finds schools facing uphill battle amid rapid societal changes

• Thousands of child-on-child sexual offences reported at schools in England and Wales

It is 10 years since a report first revealed the epic scale of sexual bullying, harassment and abuse girls faced in England’s schools on a daily basis.

The report, by MPs on the women and equalities committee, showed the horrifying normality of child-on-child abuse in schools. The need for government action was “overwhelming”, said the committee chair, Maria Miller. Ofsted duly investigated, recommendations were written, promises were made and a new sex education curriculum was rolled out.

From ‘Sharon London Sex’ to ‘Trashy Anne’, the names saved in our phones are tiny records of how relationships began. Why erase the evidence?

At first glance, it’s such a simple, reasonable ask. A Threads user went vaguely viral last week, with a post announcing: “In other news, my wife of 11 years is respectfully requesting that I take ‘(hinge)’ out of her contact name on my phone.” A lively discussion then followed, which included the pertinent note that Rob in the Channel 4 comedy Catastrophe “has the mother of his children in his phone as ‘Sharon London Sex’”. Somebody else reported a husband of more than a decade saved as “Feyonce”, but this makes perfect sense, because if you thought of a pun that good, of course you’d be reluctant to let it go.

Personally, I’ve never got over noticing – on their reality show rather than while lunching – that Kim Kardashian has her mother saved as Kris Jenner instead of, say, Mom. It felt like an extremely revealing detail from the queen of the genre.

Royal and Derngate, Northampton
Inua Ellams displays a Stoppardian or Fraynian relish in turning complex topics into enjoyable theatre in his latest play

Over the last decade, Inua Ellams has written inventive and educational plays centred on modern Nigeria, starting with Barber Shop Chronicles in which hair care allowed cutting commentary on masculinity and politics.

Although The Half God of Rainfall had a detour to Mount Olympus, typical of Ellams’s structural fun, the focus was postcolonial Nigeria, his superb relocation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters to 1960s Africa showing ructions resulting from British imperial ruler Lord Lugard coercing the playwright’s birth nation from multiple cultures.

At the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, until 10 October, then touring.

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With just over an hour played in the 2pm games, these are the latest scores.

Aston Villa 1-0 Crystal Palace

Brighton 3-1 Charlton

Everton 1-1 Birmingham

Tottenham 1-4 London City Lionesses

West Ham 0-1 Chelsea

Motion that has alarmed some Jewish members is passed by 1,022 votes to 813 at party’s annual conference in Brighton

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Greens have formally adopted a policy which equates Zionism with racism, a move that will dismay the bulk of the party’s MPs and that has alarmed some Jewish members.

A vote at the party’s annual conference on Brighton about whether to back a motion which calls for Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state, to be “treated as any other form of racism”, saw it passed by 1,022 votes to 813.

Even the greatest prophets had questions but they learned to wait to see the full picture

We live in an age that has become profoundly uncomfortable with not knowing.

A delayed email reply becomes a source of anxiety. A medical symptom is immediately searched online. We refresh news feeds, ask AI for instant explanations, and expect the answers to life’s biggest questions to arrive at the same speed as food deliveries.

Suspect allegedly killed woman at hotel in Okinawa as prime minister calls crime ‘exceptionally brutal and vicious’

A US marine stationed on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa is accused of murdering a Japanese woman and has been arrested on suspicion of murder, police said on Sunday.

The suspect allegedly “killed [a] 39-year-old woman at a hotel in Naha and stole her wallet” as well as her backpack, local police told news media outlets.

Milton Court, London
A contemporary piece by David Fennessy is framed by JS Bach and Arvo Pärt in a show characterised by uncanny sounds and ghostly chorales

It’s not every day a concert promises “Bach & Blood”, nor delivers it so thoroughly. There were no massacres from the Scottish Ensemble, mercifully, just a characteristically singular bit of programming from this ever-adventurous string orchestra that framed Irish composer David Fennessy’s 2024 Blood with music by Bach and Arvo Pärt.

On 7 July 1720, while JS Bach was away in Carlsbad, his wife Maria Barbara died suddenly, buried before he could return. She was just 35. “Sei solo” – you are alone – the composer wrote at the top of his collection of Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin completed soon after. A slip of pen, misspelling “Sei Soli” (six solos), or a deliberate play on words? The intensity of the works – particularly the monumental 15-minute D minor Chaconne, with its weeping chromatic theme – suggest the latter.

Women hold just a fraction of new AI jobs but are overrepresented in roles with high risk of AI disruption

There’s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the “permanent underclass”, a phrase describing the fate of those who won’t have upward mobility in the age of AI.

The phrase usually describes a future in which AI automates human jobs. But for women in tech, it’s starting to look like the present.

Their careers are peaking, they’re rich in money and time – and young people think they’re cool. But maybe it’s not as simple as that

‘Stop sleeping on gen X.” I heard this on TikTok recently. I misinterpreted it, with a guilty start, as: “Stop sleeping, gen X,” because I am 51 (peak X), so always tired; while not sleeping at the time, I may have been resting my eyes. In fact, Joel Marlinarson, a marketing guru, was suggesting my generation have become a powerful, if underrated, force online.

Aged between 46 and 61, gen Xers with proper jobs are peaking, career-wise (although it’s a different story for those out of work, as a report last month on the struggles of over-50s jobseekers made plain). We’re more likely to own homes than the following generations; we’re emerging from the trenches of childrearing and, the argument goes, ready to indulge in some me-time. “If gen X were a country, it would be the world’s second-largest consumer market,” the World Economic Forum reported last year, with gen X women in particular influencing 70% to 80% of all consumer spending.

The punk poet on his heroin years, dressing like Ronnie Wood, and achieving his boyhood ambition

Born in Salford in 1949, John Cooper Clarke is a poet and author. He cut his teeth in the clubs of Manchester before signing to Epic Records in 1978. He performed alongside the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, the Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello, scoring a UK Top 40 hit with Gimmix! Play Loud in 1979. His poem Evidently Chickentown was later used in The Sopranos, introducing him to a whole new generation, and his work is now on the GCSE English syllabus. As well as three poetry collections he published a memoir, I Wanna Be Yours, in 2020. His new poetry collection, Have It, is out now and he is touring the UK until 27 November.

This is me dressed up as a cowboy with a hat and six-shooter. Not the full schmear with the chaps and all the rest, but the best I could do. I was crazy about westerns. Still am, actually. My uncle Dennis was the only camera-owning relative at the time, so he would have taken the photo in our apartment above a chemist’s shop in Salford, located on a busy traffic intersection.