The more we learn about the gut, the more we realise how central it is to health. Here are 16 ways to look after it, from making sure we get enough fibre to not taking phones to the loo

“Our gut is a complex machine,” says Dr Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire. “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” says Verma.

Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her

In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of Japan’s feared and rule-bound criminal underworld. She must have defeated many male gangsters. How, I asked her, did she do it? “First the legs,” she said, hands clasped, maintaining the calm demeanour of a village priest. “You cut him down with a club or a plank of wood.” Then you get to work.

Nishimura’s relaxed attitude to violence – you suspect, speaking to her, that it’s a little more than that – is what first caught the attention of yakuza members in 1986, when she was a 19-year-old runaway and former juvenile-prison inmate living in Gifu, a city near Nagoya. One night that year, Nishimura received a phone call. A pregnant friend named Aya was in trouble. Nishimura grabbed a baseball bat, ran down the street and found Aya surrounded by five men. When one of them kicked Aya in the belly, Nishimura yelled for her friend to run, then went for the attackers with her bat.

The move against the boss of London’s Southbank Centre sends a forbidding message about who is and isn’t seen as fit to lead in UK culture

I met Tommy Robinson once. It was 10 years ago exactly, during one of his many failed attempts to mainstream Islamophobia in British politics with a new “movement” called Pegida – a copycat of Germany’s far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

There was little memorable about this “launch”, which as a social affairs editor for Sky News I was sent to cover, only to discover a pitiful gathering of a few blokes at a pub near Luton. The thing that does stand out in my memory is what Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said to me. “It’s the Muslims that are a problem,” he said. “But you’re all right. You speak English. You’re like us.”

After more than a decade of global consultation, polycystic ovary syndrome – which affects as many as one in eight women – has been renamed. The condition is caused by high levels of androgens, which can lead to symptoms such as excess hair, weight gain and irregular periods. To understand why campaigners wanted it renamed, and what its new name – polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) – could mean for patients, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science correspondent, Nicola Davis, and Rachel, a campaigner from the charity Verity

‘Unprecedented’ global effort leads to renaming of polycystic ovary syndrome – and fresh hope for millions of women

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Who says hair can’t be art? We meet Taiba Akhuetie, who uses flowing human and synthetic locks to take brollies, tables, chairs, lampshades, handbags and more into a wild and wavy new dimension

Taiba Akhuetie’s art is uncomfortable to look at. This is mostly because you’re not sure whether you’re in the presence of something alive or dead. She uses hair as her medium, constructing mundane items out of synthetic and human locks. Handbags, mirrors, rocking chairs and umbrellas are adorned with long, chunky braids and loose, pin-straight strands. The result is that these inanimate objects take on the eerie quality of taxidermy.

Akhuetie, whose work is about to go on show at the Sarabande Foundation in London, has memories of being fascinated by hair in her childhood. “We used to go to my mum’s friend’s house …” She stops and quickly corrects herself. “My auntie’s – she would be called auntie, obviously.” Akhuetie would watch her “auntie” braiding her sister’s hair, taken aback by how quickly her fingers moved. She also remembers doing plaits for her friends at school in Kingston, Surrey, and feeling that she was naturally good at it.

Why would Tory leader bother to look into national or global politics? That time would be better spent picking fights

Being assertive and sounding confident is always a good start. No leader of the opposition is going to get far without those qualities. And Kemi Badenoch certainly manages that. But winning at prime minister’s questions requires something more basic than that. Something fundamental. A very basic understanding of the facts.

Not just reading a headline in the papers and a few posts on social media. Not just listening to a junior minister sound a bit confused on the Today programme. You need to put in the hard yards. Or at least do some very elementary research. Otherwise you risk coming badly unstuck.

Without urgent intervention England faces water shortages of 5bn litres a day by 2055, peers tell government

Rainwater harvesting, the use of grey water in homes and an urgent campaign to reduce water usage across society are vital to prevent water shortages of 5bn litres a day by 2055, the government has been told.

Without intervention, England will face severe water shortages in the coming decades, as climate change-induced weather patterns, population growth and the expansion of industries such as water-intensive datacentres put excessive demand on supplies and endanger life, according to a House of Lords report published on Thursday.

Changes to building regulations to require new homes to achieve a maximum water usage of 105 litres a person a day and accelerated grey water reuse.

Nature-based solutions such as restoring peat bogs and reconnecting rivers to their natural flood plains to enhance water retention.

An urgent awareness campaign for the whole of society to reduce water usage.

A full environmental and economic assessment of drought to weigh the cost of inaction against the value of resilience.

The rolling out of nature-based solutions more widely in urban and rural settings.

Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor understood to support home secretary’s push to limit legal and illegal migration

Andy Burnham is backing Shabana Mahmood’s controversial changes to the immigration system, his allies have said, in a blow to those in Labour who hope to soften them.

The Greater Manchester mayor is understood to be keen to reframe the changes but supportive of the home secretary’s attempts to limit legal and illegal migration, which have been criticised by some senior Labour MPs as un-British and mimicking Trump.

Far-right figure Itamar Ben-Gvir shares footage of himself taunting bound international detainees

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid.

Three activists were taken to hospital as result of Israeli violence, lawyers representing the group said. They were subsequently discharged. Dozens of others have suspected broken ribs, resulting in breathing problems.

The US, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia – some of the highest oil-producing nations and major greenhouse gas emitters – opposed the measure

The UN has voted 141-8 to adopt a resolution backing a world court opinion that countries have a legal obligation to address climate change, with the US – which is the world’s biggest historical emitter – among the small group opposing it.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said Wednesday’s general assembly vote, in which 28 countries abstained, underscored that governments are responsible for protecting citizens from the “escalating climate crisis”.