My generation had great role models, free university and the morning-after pill. We should be running the world. Instead, two-thirds of us are facing mental health problems – and it’s not all about the menopause

Looking at the women in my own immediate friendship group, ranging in age from 50 to 63, we have lived through every flavour of chaos. Apart from the haywire hormones and feelings of invisibility, there are also the life-changing events that happen at this life stage – post-divorce relocation, caring for a parent with dementia, a breast cancer diagnosis, redundancy. Some of my friends are also supporting adult children with mental health problems, who are still living at home. When the singer and memoirist Tracey Thorn referred to this life stage as “sniper’s alley” she wasn’t kidding.

A survey by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) reported recently that almost two-thirds of women over 50 struggle with their mental health. Underlying factors included anxiety, sleep problems and bereavement, as well as the glaringly obvious: menopause. Nine out of 10 of the 2,000 women surveyed had not sought any help.

The Reform UK leader uses the energy of memes to fuel his popularity, but this should not distract us from the seriousness of his purpose

• Guardian investigation into Farage on Cameo

Nigel Farage has spent the past five years upending politics, breaking the two-party hold on parliament, and apparently sending several Cameo videos a day to his paying customers, charging £374,893 overall. But the Reform UK leader’s side hustle isn’t separate from his political work: posting is politics now, which is why Farage loves to brag that he runs laps around other MPs on TikTok.

Cameos are personalised messages, but they are not private – punters get a shareable link so they can post their anniversary wishes and birthday messages on social media. When Farage sent videos to a neo-Nazi group that used the videos for publicity, or described Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in language typically found in Pornhub categories, he was indeed making public statements. The defence from Farage’s team is that he can’t be held responsible for what people do with the messages he sends them, which is perhaps why most politicians don’t send personal endorsements to random people over the internet for money. His spokesperson said that Farage’s Cameo videos “should not be treated as political statements or campaign activity”.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Cosmologists and physicists come up empty handed when they attempt to pin down time. So what, exactly, is it?

When was the last time you raced against an unforgiving clock? Perhaps you skipped breakfast, broke a sweat, shelled out for a taxi or missed time with your family. Many of us have become slaves to time, with huge portions of our day spent chasing appointments and deadlines. But what is this thing we’re trying to beat?

We tend to imagine time as incessant and non-negotiable, ticking by somewhere out in the world, impossible to slow or stop. Yet an emerging scientific picture is that such “clock time” isn’t a standalone, physical phenomenon at all. It’s a mathematical tool or book-keeping device – useful for coordinating our interactions, but with no independent existence of its own. As with other key innovations, such as money, we can no longer get by without it. But I hope that debunking the myth of the clock can help us to focus on how life really progresses, and how much power we have to shape it.

When you are cured, the world cheers; when you are dying, it mourns. But when you are simply maintaining, the world is at a loss

Mornings begin with a silent inventory, conducted in the dark before the curtains are drawn: can I breathe easily today? The question is stripped of all poetic veneer. When you have stage four lung cancer, breath is no longer a background process; it is a finite currency I must spend with the caution of a miser. It dictates the architecture of my day, the borders of my energy and the very cadence of my speech.

I am not a “survivor” in the triumphalist sense of the word, nor am I imminently dying. I occupy the long middle – a rarely charted territory where the body remains fragile, treatment constant, and life does not so much move forward as stubbornly persist.

At the very moment Trump’s rambling speeches and meme–fied inanity threaten to overwhelm us, fashion, music and film are moving in the opposite direction

Put down your negroni, hang up your Prada handbag and pick up a paperback. Next time someone whips out their phone to take your picture, grab your reading specs, not your lipstick. Smart is the new hot.

Pop stars are launching book clubs – the 1970s had Studio 54, this decade has Dua Lipa’s online literary salon Service95 – or joining Substack, where Charli xcx recently published a 1,800-word essay interrogating why it is that as a pop star “you cannot avoid the fact that some people are simply determined to prove that you are stupid”. The supermodel Kaia Gerber (who is fashion royalty – her mum is Cindy Crawford) passes the time backstage at fashion week reading Didion, Duras and Camus, not Vogue.

Donald Trump’s ‘little excursion’ is likely to have long-term effects, from oil prices to inflation to growth, say experts

In the days after the US and Israel first bombed Iran, financial markets bet the economic fallout from Donald Trump’s “little excursion” in the Middle East would be short-lived.

“There are risks from higher oil prices longer term. But this is a tail risk,” one US-based fund manager said after the airstrike killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “History has shown time and time again that geopolitical flare-ups like this tend to be short-lived. This one should prove to be no exception.’’

Energy and oil sites across region would become ‘legitimate targets’, Tehran says

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Iran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East if the US attacks its energy sites, hours after Donald Trump threatened to “obliterate” the country’s power plants if the strait of Hormuz was not opened within two days.

As Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities overnight, injuring dozens and shattering apartment buildings, the developments signalled a dangerous potential escalation of the war in the Middle East, which is now in its fourth week.

Israeli air defence systems fail to intercept projectiles during attacks on southern cities of Arad and Dimona

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Iranian missile strikes have wounded about 200 people in southern Israel, after air defence systems failed to intercept projectiles that hit two cities close to a nuclear facility.

Among the injured in the attacks on Arad and Dimona were a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both reported to be in serious condition. The Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported early indications of possible deaths, though there was no official confirmation.

Yet another cost of living crisis looms with fuel, food, holiday, energy and home loan prices expected to rise

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Here we go again. For Britons it has been a rollercoaster few years and just as better times seemed ahead the country has been plunged into a fresh cost of living crisis.

The economic storm caused by war in the Middle East is already pushing up the cost of key household outgoings, including mortgage payments, energy bills and driving. There are warnings that the weekly shop will be next.

Exclusive: Allowing US tech firm to analyse intelligence in name of tackling fraud raises fresh concerns over privacy

• FCA deal gives Palantir yet more access to inner workings of power in Britain

Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company’s deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a contract to investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data in an effort to help it tackle financial crime, which includes investigating fraud, money laundering and insider trading.