New ‘liquid biopsy’ will act as an early warning sign to anticipate risk of tumours returning

A new blood test can predict the risk of breast cancer returning three years before any tumours show up on scans in an “incredibly exciting” breakthrough that could help more women beat the disease for good.

More than 2 million women are diagnosed every year with breast cancer, the most prevalent type of the disease. Although treatment has improved in recent decades, the cancer often returns, and if it does, it is usually at a more advanced stage.

DNA test, which takes seconds to collect, can detect men at high risk and spare others unnecessary treatment

Scientists have developed a spit test that could “turn the tide” on prostate cancer worldwide by spotting the disease earlier, detecting where men are at high risk and sparing others unnecessary treatment.

The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer worldwide is projected to double to 2.9 million a year by 2040, with annual deaths predicted to rise by 85%. It is already the most common form of male cancer in more than 100 countries.

Emily Baden says after a disagreement over political lawn signs with the US supreme court justice’s wife, a black car began parking at her mother’s home

Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.

Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.

Barbican, London
The UK premiere of the composer’s concerto written for Anne-Sophie Mutter was placed alongside two of Stravinsky’s ballet scores in this musically rich and vivid concert

The list of composers who have written concertos for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter is a long and varied one, from André Previn and John Williams to Wolfgang Rihm and Unsuk Chin. The latest name to be added to that distinguished list is Thomas Adès; Mutter gave the premiere of his Air at last year’s Lucerne festival, and she was also the soloist in its UK premiere, with the composer himself conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Composed during lockdown in 2020 and 2021, Air carries the subtitle Homage to Sibelius, and certainly there is an echo of the modal opening of that composer’s Sixth Symphony in the way that it begins, not in obvious thematic terms, as much as in the sense of tranquil reflection that the works share, as Adès’s soloist weaves a gossamer thread of sound through the orchestra’s stepwise descending lines, which gradually build, layer on layer, colour on colour, until the full ensemble is involved.

More than half of patients with advanced forms of disease who took lorlatinib were still alive after five years with no progression

Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. 

Here in the US, bird flu has now infected cows in nine states, millions of chickens, and—as of last week—a second dairy worker. There’s no indication that the virus has acquired the mutations it would need to jump between humans, but the possibility of another pandemic has health officials on high alert. Last week, they said they are working to get 4.8 million doses of H5N1 bird flu vaccine packaged into vials as a precautionary measure. 

The good news is that we’re far more prepared for a bird flu outbreak than we were for covid. We know so much more about influenza than we did about coronaviruses. And we already have hundreds of thousands of doses of a bird flu vaccine sitting in the nation’s stockpile.

The bad news is we would need more than 600 million doses to cover everyone in the US, at two shots per person. And the process we typically use to produce flu vaccines takes months and relies on massive quantities of chicken eggs. Yes, chickens. One of the birds that’s susceptible to avian flu. (Talk about putting all our eggs in one basket. #sorrynotsorry)

This week in The Checkup, let’s look at why we still use a cumbersome, 80-year-old vaccine production process to make flu vaccines—and how we can speed it up.

The idea to grow flu virus in fertilized chicken eggs originated with Frank Macfarlane Burnet, an Australian virologist. In 1936, he discovered that if he bored a tiny hole in the shell of a chicken egg and injected flu virus between the shell and the inner membrane, he could get the virus to replicate.  

Even now, we still grow flu virus in much the same way. “I think a lot of it has to do with the infrastructure that’s already there,” says Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. It’s difficult for companies to pivot. 

The process works like this: Health officials provide vaccine manufacturers with a candidate vaccine virus that matches circulating flu strains. That virus is injected into fertilized chicken eggs, where it replicates for several days. The virus is then harvested, killed (for most use cases), purified, and packaged. 

Making flu vaccine in eggs has a couple of major drawbacks. For a start, the virus doesn’t always grow well in eggs. So the first step in vaccine development is creating a virus that does. That happens through an adaptation process that can take weeks or even months. This process is particularly tricky for bird flu: Viruses like H5N1 are deadly to birds, so the virus might end up killing the embryo before the egg can produce much virus. To avoid this, scientists have to develop a weakened version of the virus by combining genes from the bird flu virus with genes typically used to produce seasonal flu virus vaccines. 

And then there’s the problem of securing enough chickens and eggs. Right now, many egg-based production lines are focused on producing vaccines for seasonal flu. They could switch over to bird flu, but “we don’t have the capacity to do both,” Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, told KFF Health News. The US government is so worried about its egg supply that it keeps secret, heavily guarded flocks of chickens peppered throughout the country. 

Most of the flu virus used in vaccines is grown in eggs, but there are alternatives. The seasonal flu vaccine Flucelvax, produced by CSL Seqirus, is grown in a cell line derived in the 1950s from the kidney of a cocker spaniel. The virus used in the seasonal flu vaccine FluBlok, made by Protein Sciences, isn’t grown; it’s synthesized. Scientists engineer an insect virus to carry the gene for hemagglutinin, a key component of the flu virus that triggers the human immune system to create antibodies against it. That engineered virus turns insect cells into tiny hemagglutinin production plants.   

And then we have mRNA vaccines, which wouldn’t require vaccine manufacturers to grow any virus at all. There aren’t yet any approved mRNA vaccines for influenza, but many companies are fervently working on them, including Pfizer, Moderna, Sanofi, and GSK. “With the covid vaccines and the infrastructure that’s been built for covid, we now have the capacity to ramp up production of mRNA vaccines very quickly,” says Hensley. This week, the Financial Times reported that the US government will soon close a deal with Moderna to provide tens of millions of dollars to fund a large clinical trial of a bird flu vaccine the company is developing.

There are hints that egg-free vaccines might work better than egg-based vaccines. A CDC study published in January showed that people who received Flucelvax or FluBlok had more robust antibody responses than those who received egg-based flu vaccines. That may be because viruses grown in eggs sometimes acquire mutations that help them grow better in eggs. Those mutations can change the virus so much that the immune response generated by the vaccine doesn’t work as well against the actual flu virus that’s circulating in the population. 

Hensley and his colleagues are developing an mRNA vaccine against bird flu. So far they’ve only tested it in animals, but the shot performed well, he claims. “All of our preclinical studies in animals show that these vaccines elicit a much stronger antibody response compared with conventional flu vaccines.”

No one can predict when we might need a pandemic flu vaccine. But just because bird flu hasn’t made the jump to a pandemic doesn’t mean it won’t. “The cattle situation makes me worried,” Hensley says. Humans are in constant contact with cows, he explains. While there have only been a couple of human cases so far, “the fear is that some of those exposures will spark a fire.” Let’s make sure we can extinguish it quickly. 

Now read the rest of The Checkup

Read more from MIT Technology Review’s archive

In a previous issue of The Checkup, Jessica Hamzelou explained what it would take for bird flu to jump to humans. And last month, after bird flu began circulating in cows, I posted an update that looked at strategies to protect people and animals.

I don’t have to tell you that mRNA vaccines are a big deal. In 2021, MIT Technology Review highlighted them as one of the year’s 10 breakthrough technologies. Antonio Regalado explored their massive potential to transform medicine. Jessica Hamzelou wrote about the other diseases researchers are hoping to tackle. I followed up with a story after two mRNA researchers won a Nobel Prize. And earlier this year I wrote about a new kind of mRNA vaccine that’s self-amplifying, meaning it not only works at lower doses, but also sticks around for longer in the body. 

From around the web

Researchers installed a literal window into the brain, allowing for ultrasound imaging that they hope will be a step toward less invasive brain-computer interfaces. (Stat) 

People who carry antibodies against the common viruses used to deliver gene therapies can mount a dangerous immune response if they’re re-exposed. That means many people are ineligible for these therapies and others can’t get a second dose. Now researchers are hunting for a solution. (Nature)

More good news about Ozempic. A new study shows that the drug can cut the risk of kidney complications, including death in people with diabetes and chronic kidney disease. (NYT)

Microplastics are everywhere. Including testicles. (Scientific American)

Must read: This story, the second in series on the denial of reproductive autonomy for people with sickle-cell disease, examines how the US medical system undermines a woman’s right to choose. (Stat)

The NHS in England is recruiting for the first large-scale trial of its kind, with hopes high that the personalised jabs could be a gamechanger

• NHS patients in England to be offered trials for world-first cancer vaccine

Cancer vaccines are a form of immunotherapy. Unlike vaccines that protect from an infection, such as the Covid-19 jab, cancer vaccines treat people who already have the disease. They are designed to help the patient’s immune system recognise and then kill cancer cells – and prevent them from coming back.

Campaigners suspect block on new applications for at least two years was imposed to limit burden on water firms

The government has suspended all applications for bathing water status in waterways, delaying the cleanup of rivers and coastal waters for at least two years.

River campaigners fear the block on new applications to create bathing water areas, which are regularly tested for water quality, has been introduced to stop water companies facing huge resource implications to tackle poor water quality in new bathing areas.

Britain’s first black female MP faced hostility from the media and political establishment from the start. Nearly 40 years on, she is still not giving up. By Andy Beckett

Jab personalised for individual’s tumours hailed as ‘gamechanger’ amid high hopes of stopping disease returning

• What are cancer vaccines and could they be a cure?

Thousands of patients in England are to be fast-tracked into groundbreaking trials of personalised cancer vaccines in a revolutionary world-first NHS “matchmaking” scheme to save lives.

The gamechanging jabs, which aim to provide a permanent cure, are custom-built for each patient in just a few weeks. They are tailored to the individual’s tumours and work by telling their body to hunt and kill any cancer cells and prevent the disease from coming back.

US official says policy change relates to ‘counter-fire purposes’ and prohibits long-range attacks inside of Russia

Joe Biden has allowed Ukraine to use some US-made weapons over one part of the Russian border, to allow Kyiv’s forces to defend against an offensive aimed at the city of Kharkiv, relaxing an important constraint on Ukraine’s able to defend itself.

“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use US-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” a US official said.

Alok Shukla is one of the winners of the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize. He's cited for a campaign to keep a company from felling a forest in India to excavate the coal that lies beneath.

(Image credit: Idrees Mohammed)

Enlarge / The Framework Laptop 13. (credit: Framework)

Framework will release a fourth round of iterative updates and upgrade options for its Framework Laptop 13, the company announced via a blog post yesterday. The upgrades include both motherboards and pre-built laptops that feature new Intel Meteor Lake Core Ultra processors with Intel Arc dedicated GPUs; lower prices for the AMD Ryzen 7000 and 13th-gen Intel editions of the laptop; and a new display with a slightly higher 2880x1920 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate.

The Core Ultra boards can come with one of three CPU options: an Ultra 5 125H with four P-cores, eight E-cores, and seven graphics cores; an Ultra 7 155H with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and eight graphics cores; or an Ultra 7 165H with the same number of cores but marginally higher clock speeds. Prices start at $899 for a pre-built or DIY model (before you add RAM, storage, an OS, or a USB-C charger), or $449 for a motherboard that can be used to upgrade an existing system.

All of the Core Ultra systems and boards ship in August as of this writing. Once this first batch sells out, a second batch will ship in Q3.

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Takács Quartet
(Hyperion)
The group’s new recording of G major quartet is strikingly different from their intense 1997 recording, while the Haydnesque B flat is a model of good manners

The Takács have recorded the G major quartet, the last and most ambitious of Schubert’s string quartets, before, on a disc released by Decca in 1997. Both the first violin Edward Dusinberre and the cellist András Fejér on that disc are still members of the group today, and play on the new version, which was recorded in the UK a year ago, but in some respects the two performances feel strikingly different.

Where the earlier reading seemed to be driven by nervous energy, every rhythm taut, every accent sharply etched, the new one seems much more relaxed, and distinctly less intense. The tempos for the first and last movements in particular feel markedly slower this time around, and the great first movement, one of Schubert’s most sublime tragic statements despite its major key, takes almost two minutes longer than before. Of course, it almost goes without saying that technically the performance is as precise as ever, and the account of the rather Haydnesque B flat quartet D112 that’s also on the disc is a model of good manners, but the G major quartet just doesn’t quite compel attention in the way the Takács’s playing so regularly has in the past.

Booth/Glynn
(Orchid)
Soprano Claire Booth and pianist Christopher Glynn turn to Schoenberg’s early and little known songs in this immaculate recording

Soprano Claire Booth and pianist Christopher Glynn follow their earlier discs of songs by Mussorgsky, Grieg and Grainger with this thoughtfully assembled Schoenberg collection. As they point out in a sleeve note, Schoenberg’s songs are very much a neglected part of his output, but in the first third of his career, at least, it was poetry that fired his creativity and through setting it he found his voice.

The 24 songs that Booth and Glynn include are taken from six different sets, grouped thematically, so that there are three songs under the heading of “Expectation”, three under “Flesh”, three “Nocturne” and so on. Most were composed in the first few years of the 20th century, though they also include one of the two songs of Schoenberg’s Op 14 from 1908, when his music was just beginning to move into atonality, and another from Op 48, written 25 years later, in a fully fledged 12-tone style; Booth also sings one of Tove’s arias from the lushly romantic oratorio Gurrelieder, while Glynn punctuates the sequence with two of the little piano pieces from Schoenberg’s Op 19.

Rishi Sunak says timing of action days before general election appears to be ‘politically motivated’ to help Labour

Up to 100,000 patients in England face having their NHS care cancelled days before the general election after junior doctors announced a fresh wave of strike action, with Rishi Sunak saying it appeared to be politically motivated.

Health leaders expressed alarm, warning the five-day strike would jeopardise efforts to tackle the record waiting list and “hit patients hard”.

Regulator understood to be looking at ‘recovery regime’ for Thames Water and others in sector

• Business live – latest updates

Ofwat, the water regulator for England and Wales, is understood to be considering cutting fines for sewage-dumping water companies if they are facing financial pressures.

According to the Financial Times, which first reported the plan, the regulator intends to draw up a “recovery regime” for Thames Water, which is facing collapse or restructuring owing to its high debts, and others that find themselves in similar positions.

Wes Streeting says another Conservative term could result in waiting list swelling to 10m cases

Labour has promised to clear the NHS waiting list backlog in England within five years, with Wes Streeting warning that the health service risks becoming “a poor service for poor people” while the wealthy shift to using private care.

In an interview with the Guardian, the shadow health secretary said that in another Conservative term the total waiting list in England could grow to 10m cases, with healthcare becoming as degraded as NHS dental services.

Labour reiterates claims that pensions will have to be cut to fund Tory idea to scrap national insurance

Labour has opened applications for a string of new safe seats after half a dozen MPs announced last-minute retirements, with key allies of Keir Starmer expected to be lined up to take their place.

Those standing down include the former shadow minister Barbara Keeley, the chair of the parliamentary Labour party Jon Cryer, as well as John Spellar, Virendra Sharma and Kevin Brennan.

Pensioners used to have a bigger personal allowance than people of working age – it was the Conservatives who got rid of it.

So this is one of many examples actually of tax policy that has been reversed by the same Government. George Osborne got rid of it in the 2010s when the personal allowance of people under pension age continued to rise.

Labour leader says prime minister’s claims about UK are ‘form of disrespect’ due to high taxes and commitment to abolishing national insurance

Starmer is now running through his six first step promises.

Starmer says he is fed up with hearing Rishi Sunak says the UK has “turned the corner”.

Initiative will enable urgent second opinion and review of care of patients whose condition is deteriorating

Martha’s rule, the patient safety initiative enabling those whose health is failing to obtain an urgent second opinion about their care, is to be rolled out in 143 hospitals in England, the NHS has said.

The move, described by NHS officials as one of the most important changes to patient care in years, will allow patients, relatives and staff to get a review of their condition and treatment directly from doctors and nurses not involved in the medical team treating them.

With new chapters in the worlds of Mad Max and Planet of the Apes out now, Guardian writers have picked their favourite big screen franchises to date

When a blockbuster franchise is seven movies in (and counting), and the consensus choice for worst entry was directed by John Woo, arguably the most influential action film-maker of his time, you’re looking at an uncommonly consistent series. Though the Mission: Impossible movies have cycled through many directors – one apiece for Brian De Palma, Woo, JJ Abrams and Brad Bird, before settling on Christopher McQuarrie – the first film, particularly the astounding Langley break-in sequence, established the franchise as a showcase for impeccable crafted set pieces. The plots may be an enjoyably hokey tangle of global threats and clever unmaskings, but the series’ determination to keep topping itself, leaning on the physicality of stunt work and practical effects, has provided reliable thrills for approaching three decades. With each film, Tom Cruise continues to outrun his own mortality and another classic sequence or two is added to the inventory, from Cruise dangling from the Burj Khalifa high-rise during a sandstorm in Ghost Protocol to him zipping off a cliff on a motorcycle in Dead Reckoning Part One. It’s a high-wire act that has yet to tumble off the line. Scott Tobias

A TikTok ban threatens to destroy millions of jobs and silence diverse voices. It would change the world for the worse

I’m a TikTok creator. I’ve used TikTok to build a multimillion dollar business, focused on sharing interesting things I’ve learned in life and throughout my years in college. TikTok allowed me to create a community and help further my goal of educating the public. I always feared that one day, it would be threatened. And now, it’s happening.

Why does the US government want to ban TikTok? The reasons given include TikTok’s foreign ownership and its “addictive” nature, but I suspect that part of the reason is that the app primarily appeals to younger generations who often hold political and moral views that differ significantly from those of older generations, including many of today’s politicians.

Dominic Andre is a content creator and the CEO of The Lab

DJ Kyel 925 says the rave set on a train on Brisbane’s Shorncliffe line resulted in passengers dancing in the aisles

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Commuters on a Sunday evening train were surprised when the Brisbane suburban service was transformed into an ad hoc rave by a local DJ.

Kyel 925, from NO. ONE NETWORK and Liquid Steele Sessions, said the group had been heading from a gig with a media trolley on the Shorncliffe line from Fortitude Valley at about 6.30pm when they had the idea.

Under new defence minister Andrei Belousov, FSB is tackling corruption aggressively with serious implications for Ukraine

In the weeks since Vladimir Putin sacked his longtime defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s FSB security service has pursued a series of high-level corruption cases against a deputy minister and department heads in what many insiders are now calling a purge in the defence ministry.

Andrei Belousov, the technocrat economist appointed to replace Shoigu, has a mandate to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output.

For 40 years, Amit Shah has been at Narendra Modi’s side – his confidant, consigliere and enforcer. Today he is India’s second-most powerful man, and he is reshaping the country in radical ways. By Atul Dev

This revealing memoir about the author’s 20 years in the City of Light identifies the complex codes of behaviour that newcomers are obliged to master

In 1990 the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo published a short essay called Paris, Capital of the 21st Century. By the end of the 20th century, he had decided that Paris was exhausted. The city of avant gardes, ideas, revolutions and class struggle, which had defined so much of European and world history, was now no more than a museum. As almost a lifelong Parisian and a lover of the place, Goytisolo desperately wanted Paris in the 21st century to retake its place as a great metropolis. But this could only happen, he argued, if Paris reinvented itself by “de-Europeanising” itself. By this, he meant it had to look towards the world beyond Europe, welcoming its sometimes dissident non-French, non-European voices to make itself a truly global city. Only in this way could Paris be brought back to life.

More than 30 years on from that essay, Simon Kuper has written a book about what it has actually been like to live in Paris during the past two decades. I have lived in the city for exactly the same period, in the working-class district of Pernety, and seen all the changes that Kuper has. The view from Pernety and the view from his hipster right bank world have not always been the same. He often underestimates, for example, the severity of racial and class tensions in Paris. To his credit, however, he is always aware of his limitations as a foreigner and as an apprentice Parisian.

Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have endorsed Sunak but messaging is more nuanced in Murdoch’s Sun and Times

• UK politics live – latest updates

In the build up to the 1992 election the Sun’s attacks on the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, who had been expected to win, were relentless. On polling day, its front page featured a mock up of Kinnock as a lightbulb with the headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

When he lost, its front-page headline declared: “It’s the Sun wot won it.” Later, the Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, told the Leveson inquiry the headline was “tasteless and wrong”, and that he had given the editor at the time, Kelvin Mackenzie, “a hell of a bollocking”. He added: “We don’t have that sort of power.”

Labour soon got over its surprise, leaving the Conservatives reeling in shocked disarray

The defining image of the last general election was Boris Johnson driving a digger emblazoned with “Get Brexit Done” through a fake wall made of polystyrene bricks. This proved to be a presentiment that he was about to demolish a load of Labour seats before going on to do the same to standards in public life.

Rishi Sunak made an early bid to provide the enduring visual metaphor of campaign 2024 when he presented his hunched and drenched back to the cameras after making his announcement on Downing Street. I have never seen, and I’ve witnessed quite a lot of them, a prime minister launch their appeal for re-election in such a dismal fashion. Even incumbents who know in their bones that they are fated to lose usually manage to invest the moment with some authority and dignity. Mr Sunak resembled a drowned ferret during a speech that was rendered near inaudible because he proved unequal to the fight with pelting rain and a protester’s boom box blasting out New Labour’s 1997 victory anthem. Every wag at Westminster chortled: “Things can only get wetter”. If your central electoral pitch is that you are the man with a plan, best to have someone on your staff who knows how to erect a covering or hold an umbrella.

Nearly 80 years since the Allied invasion, the testimony of Charles Shay, a 99-year-old former US army medic, reminds us of the significance of that day

Next month will see the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, when about 156,000 troops crossed the Channel to fight their way on to five Normandy beaches.

No one who took part in that day, 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne assault in history, would ever forget the experience. Indeed, many were haunted by memories of it for the rest of their lives. Yet no matter how momentous an event might be – in this case it amounted to nothing less than the securing of western Europe’s liberty – a kind of societal amnesia inevitably deepens with each new generation.

Jeremy Corbyn’s old constituency reacts to his decision to stand as independent, while decision looms on allowing Diane Abbott to rejoin the party

Ever since the Labour party withdrew the whip from Jeremy Corbyn in 2020 after he claimed that antisemitism in the party had been overstated, there has been much speculation about whether the former Labour leader would run as an independent.

Last week that question was finally answered when Corbyn announced that he would stand independently in Islington North, the constituency he has represented for 41 years, on a platform of “social justice, human rights and peace”.

The Dogfather has monetized his celebrity with an auction at a time when artists struggle to make the money they once did

After spending the past three decades making the word “shiznit” synonymous with hot property, Snoop Dogg is giving away some of his own.

This week the rap icon announced a partnership with an auction house called The Realest. Snoop’s collection – called, The Shiznit, of course – runs the gamut from bargain bin finds (concert photos, autographed riders) to precious relics (Snoop’s Death Row Records chain, the master reel for Beautiful). “This is the shit we have, but didn’t know it was worth something,” Snoop told Variety. His peers could soon be coming to the same realization.

Observer investigation reveals use of ‘intimidating’ police tactic on at least 432 minors in 2023 under age of criminal responsibility

Hundreds of children under 10 faced stop and search by police last year, including some who were strip-searched, the Observer can reveal.

At least 432 children under the age of criminal responsibility were searched by the police forces in England and Wales in 2023, according to data.police.uk, an official site for open data on crime and policing.

Comedian, writer and actor Stephen Merchant on standup, fame and the pressures of cancel culture; testing the ‘world-leading science’ claims behind the Zoe nutrition app; and the point when writer Harriet Tyce realised she didn’t want to be remembered only as a drinker

Fifty years on, a documentary revisits the Romanian player’s stroppy ascent to international stardom

“We’d never seen a player like this,” says one contributor. “When Ilie was on the court, something was always happening,” says another. They are talking in a new documentary about Ilie Năstase, the original bad boy of tennis in the early 70s, which is screening at the Cannes film festival on Friday.

The film’s title is Nasty, the nickname that quickly attached itself to Năstase, whose on-court antics, petulant complaints and confrontations with umpires were barely thinkable in what had previously been a staid and well-behaved sport dominated by amateurism. The “open” era, in which grand slam tournaments started to offer prize money and allow professional players to compete alongside amateurs, had only started a few years earlier in 1968, and Năstase became one of the first high-profile beneficiaries.

After his wife died in childbirth, Aaron Horsey found he did not have automatic right to paternity leave

A father who was left without the right to parental leave after his wife died in childbirth has won a change to the law in England, Wales and Scotland on the last day of this parliament.

Aaron Horsey found himself battling bureaucracy as well as grief after his wife, Bernadette, 31, died while giving birth to their son, Tim, at Royal Derby hospital in 2022.