Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan and Morgan Wallen have all dealt with audience effluence in recent weeks – but that’s only one part of a fearsome subculture that has built up around fandom, endurance and ‘getting barrier’

The front row of a gig is a sacred space. When you love an artist, you want to be as close to them as possible, without a view obscured by someone else’s hairdo. You want the possibility that the artist will pluck you from the crowd, form a deep and enduring connection and end up marrying you. Or at least notice you.

Last month, Olivia Rodrigo revealed how acutely she had noticed some of the fans lining the barriers at her shows. “People wear diapers so that they can be front row,” she said, adding, to everyone’s absolute horror: “That’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled.”

This is no aberration, and while genuine medical needs should be taken into account, situations down the front have clearly got out of control. Also last month, video of a very stoic stadium worker cleaning up human excrement at a Noah Kahan gig went viral and prompted Kahan himself to post on X: “If you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao.” This week, a fan of US country star Morgan Wallen complained that he, his brother and his niece were urinated on by another concertgoer, and police are investigating. Must we be subjected to headlines such as “Someone Also Shit Their Pants at a 5 Seconds of Summer Concert”? And in 2024, someone urinated on the floor of the standing section of a Sabrina Carpenter concert, causing a run on a fairly horrifying item called a “pit diaper”, whose mere existence speaks to a wider problem.

Anger, guilt, shame: the deepest unseen wound of this war is the rift between those who left and those who stayed behind

“Can we reschedule?”

Over the years of working with western colleagues, I had learned to accept that they don’t fully understand what war feels like from the inside. They would ask me to find someone in occupied Mariupol for an interview, or seem genuinely puzzled that I couldn’t just log on at a time that suited them. I made my peace with this long ago – they don’t have to understand. But this time, it was a Ukrainian who asked.

Diana Berg is a Ukrainian artist, writer and cultural manager from Mariupol, and the founder of Platform TU, an independent cultural initiative now operating in exile after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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Gold dances, the Good Friday agreement and standup superstardom … get ready to blub because here are the most heartwarming denouements in TV history

Warning: this article contains spoilers

Despite official claims that the São Francisco River project supplies 12m people, many of those who had to make way for its construction in 2007 still have no water at all

A concrete canal cutting through the Caatinga scrubland feeds a surface reservoir two and a half miles from Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva’s home in rural Brazil. The canal passes Sertânia and continues until it reaches Monteiro, the next town along, where it spills its precious cargo into the bed of the Paraíba River – a human-directed inflow into the seasonally dry waterway.

Such proximity to a reliable water source would usually be considered a blessing in the sertão, a vast outback in Brazil’s north-east known for its punishing droughts. But not for Ferreira, who was displaced nearly 20 years ago by the construction of the canal and now lives in a house without any water supply, despite the nearby reservoir.

Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva in her maize crop at Salão productive rural village. She bathes at the reservoir and collects water there for her smallholding and donkey, and pays to fill her barrel with drinking water each month

The Carr family took in Steven Judy, hoping to ‘save’ a troubled teen. They didn’t know he would become one of the most hated men in America

Childhood returns to Traci Carr in fragments.

Night-time. She is five. She wakes to shadows on the wall, her room strange in the dark. Her footie pyjamas slip against the wood as she pads downstairs and climbs into bed next to her foster brother, Steven Judy.

For years, her husband was adding sedatives to her evening cup of tea. Now, with fellow survivor Amanda Stanhope, she is lifting the lid on a hidden and diabolical crime

In September 2024, Amanda Stanhope watched, transfixed, from her home in Manchester, as the Gisèle Pelicot case made headlines around the world.

“Gisèle’s case was the first time I knew of somebody else who had been raped while they were drugged,” says Stanhope. “I remember feeling: ‘Thank God I’m not alone. There’s one other person in the world that this has happened to.’” Stanhope’s former partner, David Rogerson, was under investigation at the time for raping her while she slept, and filming the abuse. Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, would end up being convicted for drug-facilitated rape and sexual assault (DFSA), along with 50 strangers he had recruited online to abuse his wife.

New PM says the main perpetrator in the killing of PC Andrew Harper will now ‘not be subject to early release’ and he will also review ‘whole policy’

Wes Streeting said the US president was “right” to demand Europe pays more for its own defence.

Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of Europe for relying too much on the US for its security, and has demanded Nato allies reach 5% of GDP on defence spending by 2035.

President Trump has called on Europe to carry a greater share of the burden for our own defence, and he is right to do so. The UK has always been a leading light on defence spending, but the world is changing and in these dangerous uncertain times it is clear that we have needed to go further.

That’s why we’ve committed £298bn over the next four years, including an additional £15bn on top of last year’s spending review settlement. At the recent Nato summit, all members reaffirmed our commitment to 3.5 by 35 [3.5% of GDP by 2035].

Measure to cost more than £500m, with money allocated to allow devolved nations to do the same

Single bus fares across England will be capped at £2 from January, Andy Burnham has announced, as he continues a cost of living blitz in his first week as prime minister.

The nationwide cap is currently set at £3 until the end of March 2027, although some areas – including London and Greater Manchester, where Burnham set a £2 limit as mayor – have lower top rates for single tickets.

Exclusive: Global investigation reveals 235 lawsuits have been brought against governments in five countries since 2010

The world’s biggest ultra-processed food companies have filed scores of lawsuits challenging government policies that tackle junk diets, the Guardian can reveal.

Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health. Worldwide consumption is rising and UPF now makes up as much as half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.

US military completes 11th night of strikes as attacks overshadow diplomatic efforts in Pakistan to salvage interim ceasefire deal

• What is Pickaxe Mountain, Iran’s underground nuclear facility?

The Jordanian army said it intercepted four Iranian missiles on Wednesday with two additional missile falling in an open area, AFP reports.

The two missiles that the army did not intercept fell in “two remote, uninhabited areas, without causing any human casualties or material damage” the army said in a statement.