The showbiz legend has spent her whole life in the spotlight. As she turns 80, her friends and collaborators share their stories from Hollywood singalongs to acid house raves

I first met Liza in 1963 when I was playing Eddie in a movie called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I was seven years old and I got this choice role, which was directed by the great Vincent Minnelli. There were no other kids on this movie, so I had a welfare worker who was also the studio teacher, and I was alone in my little second-grade classroom. But one day, Vincent introduced me to his daughter, who he said was just going to hang around.

It took almost a year of practice and then I was too embarrassed to show off my talent. But finally, during a stage performance, I elevated a solitary brow and the crowd went wild

When I was about 10, my mother mentioned something to me about the advantage of being able to raise one eyebrow. I can’t remember quite how she put it – I think she described it as an actor’s trick, a useful skill for conveying inner thoughts.

We both spent a couple of minutes trying to lift one eyebrow without the other following it. Neither of us could manage it. It was harder than Mr Spock made it look, and possibly not so much an acting skill as a genetic predisposition, like being able to roll your tongue.

The US president’s doctrine of lawless military adventures harms American interests and boosts Vladimir Putin

Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty much”.

US and Israeli bombs have caused death and destruction, shaking but not toppling the government in Tehran. Among the targets was the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He has been replaced by his son – an “unacceptable” candidate in the US president’s evaluation.

Until that point, all my life’s dreams revolved around becoming a saxophonist. But with sudden and significant hearing loss, I had to face up to a new reality

The first sign that something was wrong was a static noise that emerged suddenly in my left ear. It was 2008 and a doctor had just syringed my ears, washing out the antibiotic drops she had prescribed a week earlier, and which had rendered my world temporarily muffled. I was so relieved the drops were out that I didn’t question the strange new noise. I simply thanked her and left.

As I lay on my pillow that night, trying to ignore the new whooshing sound in my ear, a puzzling crunching noise caught my attention. My brain tried to unscramble the disturbance until, confused and now wide awake, I lifted my head up, only to realise it was our grandfather clock, chiming away the hour. My left ear, I realised, was no longer hearing sounds as they really were.

Analysis has found more than 3,000 mining operations within the most naturally precious areas of the planet, a much bigger footprint than previously thought

Weda Bay is just one example of a global trend that could see the mining industry expand into some of Earth’s last areas of wilderness in search of minerals and materials to feed the global economy.

Analysis produced for the Guardian by a group of academic researchers found more than 3,267 mining operations within key biodiversity areas (KBAs), accounting for nearly 5% of the mining sector’s global footprint. China, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico top the rankings for total surface mining area within key biodiversity areas, the most naturally precious areas of the planet.

It’s refreshing to see him dial down the ignorant-ingenue approach and go harder than usual. But there is too little examination of how online misogyny affects those who didn’t choose to be part of it

He’s a bit late to the party, is the first thought that crosses your mind when faced with the prospect of 90 minutes of Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. I’ve lost count of the number of documentaries there have been on either specific leading lights in the lucrative online misogyny business, such as Andrew Tate, or the general phenomenon (the latter most recently by James Blake with Men of the Manosphere).

Still, can a subject really be said to have been “done” until we have seen what Louis T makes of it? Evidently not, so here he is, repeating his shtick as he covers ground that other less high-profile documentarians have done before him. To be fair, he approaches his interviewees with a slightly harder, less ignorant-ingenue vibe than usual. This is pleasing on many levels. I find the latter quite an effortful pose and increasingly hard to endure, and he rightly intuits that the full version wouldn’t fly here. It’s also simply getting old. We know he is an intelligent man who lives in this world – the silent supposed bafflement and dependence on giving people enough rope to hang themselves, which are such a large part of his arsenal, look like increasingly feeble weapons when the matters are of such increasing importance in all of our lives.

Comments come amid speculation over the health and whereabouts of Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since he succeeded his father

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Over in Senate question time, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confirmed embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and the consulate in Dubai all physically closed in the last week.

Wong said the government’s number one priority is to “keep Australians safe at home and abroad”.

She continued:

“The dangerous and destabilising attacks by Iran put civilian lives at risk, including Australian lives.”

More than 3,200 Australians over 23 commercial flights have returned to Australia since the US and Israel attacked Iran, setting off a regional conflict and grounding thousands of international flights.

Wong criticised Nationals senators for “winding up people and stoking fear” to panic buy fuel.

The senator said:

“Petrol companies are telling us that fuel stock continues to arrive as expected and on time but there has been a large change in the pattern of demand and that is having an effect on the supply, particularly in regional communities. We have seen jerry cans coming off the shelves at Bunnings and lines at the pump.”

One of the two members of the Iranian women’s football teams provided with a humanitarian visa to stay in Australia has changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy, according to the country’s home affairs minister.

In Australia, people are able to change their mind, people are able to travel. So, we respect the context in which she has made that decision.

Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected … As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.

Decision expected on whether to use reserves amid supply shortages and market volatility caused by Iran war

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The International Energy Agency is reportedly proposing the largest release of oil reserves in its history to bring down crude prices that have soared during the US and Israel’s war with Iran.

The release would outstrip the 182m barrels of oil put on the market by IEA countries across two releases in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed officials.

The Tehran regime has weaponised geography in retaliation for the attacks by the US and Israel

Global oil markets have recorded some of the biggest price swings in history this week after the US-Israeli war with Iran throttled the flow of Middle Eastern crude through the strait of Hormuz.

The narrow waterway south of Iran is one of the world’s most important trade arteries, through which a fifth of global oil and seaborne gas is shipped from production facilities and refineries in the Gulf to buyers around the world.

While some argue for destroying the terminal though which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, others caution of a global market ‘tailspin’

Kharg Island – through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow – is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign.

Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.