Ahead of her final European tour, the US songwriter discusses her unlikely life as a country star, seeking advice from Pete Seeger – and why retirement isn’t on the cards just yet

When Emmylou Harris was starting out in the late 1960s, she thought country music wasn’t for her. “I hadn’t seen the light,” she says. “I was a folk singer who believed you don’t ever work with drummers as they wreck everything.” It was Gram Parsons, of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, who changed her mind. Their musical partnership was brief – Parsons died after an accidental drug overdose at the Joshua Tree national park in 1973, aged 26 – but his impact on her was profound. “He had one foot in country and one in rock and was conversant in both. It changed my thinking completely.”

Is Harris, legendary doyenne of the country ballad and distinguished recipient of three Country Music Association awards whose guitar was exhibited in Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, really saying she hated country? “It can be corny!” she says. “Country music aims straight for the heart and when it misses, it misses really badly. And that’s the stuff that makes the most noise and takes up most space.” She pauses. “But then you hear something like George Jones’s Once You’ve Had the Best, and you hear the simplicity of his phrasing and the earnestness with which he sings. There’s a soulfulness to country music that can elude you if you just look at the big picture.”

When I went to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s to see my Dad it felt like visiting another planet. But beyond the scale and shininess of the country was the feeling of my family finally being together

In the 1980s, the British construction industry was hit hard by recession. At the same time, Saudi Arabia had the opposite problem; lots of money and a desire to build infrastructure, but not enough skilled workers. As a result, thousands of British labourers found it was the only place where they could earn a wage. My dad – freshly out of work with a young family to support – was one of them. We travelled out to see him twice, once to Riyadh and once to Jeddah.

Objectively, the Riyadh trip was better. Dad lived on a worker’s compound, and there was a pool and a restaurant and loads of room to run around. Jeddah, less so – but that’s where this photo was taken. Dad shared a tiny flat on the city’s noisy Palestine Street with one of his colleagues. I caught mumps basically upon landing and (according to the diary I kept at the time) experienced excessive diarrhoea for the duration of the visit. My dad bought me and my brother novelty karate-style pyjamas on arrival, which my brother used as an excuse to beat me up as often as possible. But I was six years old, and I still had the time of my life.

Forecasts suggest that global heating could create a shortcut from Asia to North America, and new routes for trading, shipping – and attack

Another week, another freak weather phenomenon you’ve probably never heard of. If it’s not the “weather bomb” of extreme wind and snow that Britain is hunkering down for as I write, it’s reports in the Guardian of reindeer in the Arctic struggling with the opposite problem: unnaturally warm weather leading to more rain that freezes to create a type of snow that they can’t easily dig through with their hooves to reach food. In a habitat as harsh as the Arctic, where survival relies on fine adaptation, even small shifts in weather patterns have endlessly rippling consequences – and not just for reindeer.

For decades now, politicians have been warning of the coming climate wars – conflicts triggered by drought, flood, fire and storms forcing people on to the move, or pushing them into competition with neighbours for dwindling natural resources. For anyone who vaguely imagined this happening far from temperate Europe’s doorstep, in drought-stricken deserts or on Pacific islands sinking slowly into the sea, this week’s seemingly unhinged White House talk about taking ownership of Greenland is a blunt wake-up call. As Britain’s first sea lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, has been telling anyone prepared to listen, the unfreezing of the north due to the climate crisis has triggered a ferocious contest in the defrosting Arctic for some time over resources, territory and strategically critical access to the Atlantic. To understand how that threatens northern Europe, look down at the top of a globe rather than at a map.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Deluge of ‘nudified’ images on social media platform X raises questions about regulation of use of AI technologies

The deluge of images of partly clothed women – stripped by the Grok AI tool – on Elon Musk’s X has raised further questions over regulation of the technology. Is it legal to produce these images without the subject’s consent? Should they be taken off X?

In the UK alone there is some doubt over the answers to these queries. Social media regulation is a nascent area, let alone trying to control the deployment of artificial intelligence. There are laws in place to tackle the problem, such as the Online Safety Act, but the government has yet to introduce additional measures such as banning nudifying apps.

People say my job must make me morbid, but I think the opposite is true, I truly appreciate life

Not many people can say their happy place is a cemetery, but mine certainly is. I didn’t set out to dig graves for a living – it’s nobody’s childhood dream – but working as a contract gardener for the council in Oxfordshire, I did some work tending cemeteries, and eventually I was offered a job digging graves.

I found it quite daunting at first. I was responsible for digging the plots and being on hand during the funeral service, as well as filling in the grave. It felt like a huge responsibility. I’d recently lost my nan and I’d sit and watch the funerals with a lump in my throat. From the beginning, I treated every grave as though it were for a member of my own family. For the first time, I felt like my job really mattered.

Featuring Wood, her famous sidekicks Julie Waters and Celia Imrie and other female standups, this documentary is tender, moving and an absolute hoot

There is a moment at the start of this documentary about the comedian Victoria Wood when you realise what she was up against at the beginning of her career: a snippet from the archives of Melvyn Bragg hailing her as Britain’s first female standup comedian. That wasn’t entirely the case, but it seems unthinkable now that it took until the 1980s for women to break through in any numbers. In 1985, when season one of Wood’s sketch show As Seen on TV aired on BBC2, there were sniffs of doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman. How wrong they were. Clips from the show, featuring Wood, Julie Waters and Celia Imrie, are a hoot: high on a tipsy energy, the performers are all on the edge of collapsing into giggles.

For those who grew up with Wood as a national treasure, Becoming Victoria Wood will be a revelation. Her standup routines in the 1980s blazed a trail, with jokes about tampons and cellulite. She had a lonely childhood, was ignored by her mother and was shy and self-conscious about her weight. (Later press coverage fixating on her size was vile.) She didn’t feel clever or good-looking enough but she had a fierce streak of ambition that seemed to come from nowhere.

About 60,000 homes across England and Wales also lost power, according to the National Grid

Officials in the West Midlands have warned of the “worst snowfall in a decade” as parts of England and Wales prepare to be hit with 5-10cm of snow on Friday, and up to 15-25cm in some areas.

In a statement on Wednesday, Stoke-on-Trent city council reassured residents it had not run out of grit after “misinformation” began to circulate. It said:

We are now facing the worst snowfall we have faced in 10 years. The Met Office has predicted that we could have 3.5 inches of snow and temperatures as low as minus 4C on Thursday into Friday morning. As a result, we are carefully managing our resources and stock of salt.

Unfortunately, we have been made aware of some misinformation circulating regarding the council’s salt supplies and gritting operations. It simply isn’t true that we have run out of grit.

The current cold snap is now expected to last at least until this weekend according to Met Office forecasts, and we know that prolonged exposure to low temperatures can have a severe impact on people’s health, especially if they’re older or have serious health conditions.

That’s why we’re urging people to check in on friends, family and neighbours who may be more vulnerable to the cold and make sure that they’re able to keep themselves warm while this period of cold lasts.

Exclusive: Dulwich college contemporaries say Reform leader often used antisemitic language and racial epithets

Thirty-four school contemporaries of Nigel Farage have now come forward to claim they saw him behave in a racist or antisemitic manner, raising fresh questions over the Reform leader’s evolving denials.

One of those with new allegations is Jason Meredith, who was three years below Farage at Dulwich college, a private school in south-east London. He claims that Farage called him a “paki” and would use taunts such as “go back home”.

Trump was once dismissive of María Corina Machado but said it would be a ‘great honour’ to accept her Nobel peace prize if she made the offer

Donald Trump has said he plans to meet Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, days after launching an attack that resulted in the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and threatened land strikes against drug cartels in Latin America.

In the aftermath of that operation, the future governance of the South American country has remained an open question, with Trump over the weekend dismissing the idea of working with popular opposition leader Machado, saying “she doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

Mayor urges ICE to pause operations as representative says victims alive but extent of injuries unknown

US federal agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.

The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.