Knowsley is a Labour stronghold. But judging by the polls and the people I spoke to, the messages of the right are truly cutting through

At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.

It was a Friday evening, so we opened a bottle of wine and put pizzas in the oven. I was updated on various family milestones – a house sale had gone through, a baby bump was starting to show, the poor dog was on its last legs. My daughter entertained everyone with an energetic rendition of Sleeping Bunnies. Behind her, the BBC News at Six played images of migrants huddled on inflatable boats sailing across the Channel.

In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race

By the time Song-Chun Zhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count. Or so it felt. This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, and his father ran a village supply store in rural China. There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home, and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge and share tales. Zhu grew up in that shop, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of tragedies: a family friend lost in a car crash, a relative from an untreated illness, stories of suicide or starvation. “That was really tough,” Zhu recalled recently. “People were so poor.”

The young Zhu became obsessed with what people left behind after they died. One day, he came across a book that contained his family genealogy. When he asked the bookkeeper why it included his ancestors’ dates of birth and death but nothing about their lives, the man told him matter of factly that they were peasants, so there was nothing worth recording. The answer terrified Zhu. He resolved that his fate would be different.

Keir Starmer will have to choose how to spend limited political capital, with most pressing issues ones UK and US do not agree on

Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man”, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.

One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.

The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over ...

‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.

To be clear, “that thing” is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on storytelling, their strangest interactions with fans and bonding over The Lord of the Rings

How does one measure success? For Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the historians behind the hit podcast The Rest Is History, it could be the number of unexpected and overly familiar conversations with strangers. On a holiday high up in the mountains of Bulgaria, Holland was wandering around a secluded monastery when someone called out, “Love the podcast!”

Sandbrook, meanwhile, is used to getting weird looks from fans who find it hard to compute that the man in front of them is one half of the soundtrack to their dog walks and commutes. “The weirdest thing that people say – which I’ve heard more than once – is, ‘My wife and I listen to you in bed every night,’” he says, looking mildly appalled.

It felt like a gargantuan achievement – I’m someone who regularly forgets the most important item on a shopping list

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There’s a scene from the 2010s series Sherlock that I think about a lot. Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) visits his “mind palace” to figure out how he and his friend/minion John Watson (Martin Freeman) got drugged. Words, phrases and images float around his head, and he moves them around with his hands.

“It’s a memory technique,” Watson explains to a confused onlooker. “You plot a map of a location – it doesn’t have to be a real place – and then you deposit memories there.” Theoretically, he says, you can never forget anything, he says: “All you have to do is find your way back to it.”

Labour MPs talk openly about replacing PM, as third senior ally in two weeks departs after publication of messages

The crisis engulfing Keir Starmer has deepened on the eve of Donald Trump’s visit to the UK after the resignation of a third senior ally in two weeks raised further questions about the stability of his government.

Paul Ovenden quit as the prime minister’s director of political strategy after the publication of old messages in which Ovenden relayed lewd jokes made at a party about the Labour MP Diane Abbott.

Israel Katz appears to have declared a new phase in the Israel Defense Forces’ offensive in the wake of visit by Marco Rubio

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The Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, is citing Palestinian reports as saying there are Israeli tanks on the streets of Gaza City.

CNN is reporting that Israel has begun a ground incursion into the city, citing two Israeli officials.

US president says he is bringing defamation and libel action in Florida against the newspaper, accusing it of being a ‘virtual mouthpiece’ for Democrats

Donald Trump says he has brought a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, alleging defamation and libel.

In a social media post late on Monday, the US president accused the newspaper of a “decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole”.

Government’s plans in disarray before Trump talks as MSD, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca moves prompt job fears

Big pharmaceutical companies have ditched or paused nearly £2bn in planned UK investments so far this year, causing “suffering” to patients, as ministers gear up for discussions with Donald Trump amid a row over drug pricing.

The government’s plan for the life science sector, a key pillar of the economy, has been thrown into disarray, after US drugmaker MSD’s shock announcement last Wednesday that it would scrap its £1bn London research centre. Two days later, AstraZeneca decided to halt a planned £200m expansion of its research facilities in Cambridge.