Modern lifestyles seem to be exacerbating the problem of bromhidrosis – an underresearched condition that is widely misunderstood and devastating for sufferers

If Hayat goes out to eat, she’ll choose a table far away from other diners, ideally by a door or open window. She likewise tries to avoid people at the cinema or on planes, even if it means paying extra – whatever it takes to avoid being too close to others.

She chalks it up to a persistent past insecurity. “I still have that paranoia … It’s just in my head, because of everything I went through.”

Toor’s electrifying pictures have made him a global star – and he’s even painted Zohran Mamdani. As the artist hits London’s prestigious Courtauld Gallery, he talks about Manet, mullahs and the mayor

In Salman Toor’s paintings, queer south Asian men hang out in bars, twerk at trippy gatherings and lose themselves in phone screens. Sometimes they huddle in the back of taxis or pillow-fight on beds. In one portrait, a brown man stares apprehensively while facing customs officials. For the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, it’s crucial that these figures take centre stage, after years of being demonised and erased.

“It excites me that the cuteness and sexiness of brown protagonists can become familiar,” says Toor when we meet at his sun-drenched Brooklyn studio, a few weeks before his first solo show in Europe. “Their stories are not a gay side story in a family saga. It’s the main story. And everyone else is in the background.”

The problem is not famous people speaking out, as they always have. It is the feeling that leaders have failed, obliging celebrities to fill the vacuum

Every time a public figure in entertainment speaks up about politics in a way deemed “controversial”, it is as if it’s the first time that has ever happened. The outrage is fresh; critics rediscover and announce, as if they have just captured an elusive, profound notion, that art should be separate from politics. A form of disciplining is dispensed. Please, Mr or Miss Moneybags, with your preening notions that you have anything intelligent or informed to say about immigration policy or Palestine. Stick to football. Stick to pop music. Stick to acting. Stick to children’s shows.

Even at a time when a political moment has engulfed everything, this response continues to be born again, without regard for history or ability to confront rupture. The horror of Gaza has broken the art world, roiled Hollywood, fractured literary institutions. And still, as Ed Sheeran stands alone on stage following the withdrawal of all his support acts (in solidarity with Macklemore, who was removed from the tour due to a pro-Palestinian speech), he told his audience that he wants his music to be “about unity, not division”. The speed at which his tour unravelled is not evidence of the incompatibility of music and politics, necessitating that they remain separate to avoid that “division”. It is a study in how it is becoming increasingly unnatural to separate them.

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films remembers a 1987 teenage girl classic

There is probably a Swedish word for the emotional state engendered in me by Dirty Dancing. A kind of turbo-nostalgia which blends solace, joy and a sense of continuity with a yearning so acute I can feel it in my ribs.

I must have been around 12 years old when I first watched Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) fall in love while bumping pelvises as dance partners (before Strictly Come Dancing, this trajectory felt more surprising.)

Intensified by this year’s super El Niño, fires in Borneo and Sumatra are emitting toxic air for swathes of the population in Indonesia and its neighbours

For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer.

So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn.

Finland, Sweden and Norway modernise underground infrastructure as Russia’s war in Ukraine revives fears of conflict on their soil

Across Finland, Sweden and Norway, cold war bunkers are being given a new lease of life as Russia’s war in Ukraine revives fears of conflict in northern Europe.

In the three countries, the work brings together multiple eras. The traces of the second world war and the cold war now coexist with contemporary infrastructures, revealing how these societies have adapted their protective measures over the decades.

The underground levels of a hotel in Helsinki.

After a plane journey in shackles, an Iranian woman found herself in the middle of Africa in a country she did not know existed. She is one of thousands deported from the US on the back of shadowy deals made with dozens of countries. An in-depth investigation reveals the ‘show of force’ costing American taxpayers millions

No one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the seat-back video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out.

Children born after 2025 will experience three more years of brutally fire-conducive weather as global heating intensifies

European babies will face almost twice as much extreme fire weather as their great-grandparents if climate action does not ramp up quickly, a study has found.

Global heating under current policies will expose a child born in Europe in 2025 to three more years of brutally fire-conducive weather over their lifetime than someone born in 1950, the researchers found.

School leaders’ union says new system is worse than one it replaced and has left members feeling overwhelmed

Headteachers in England want Ofsted to stop grading their schools, saying its new inspection regime is harming their mental health and creating greater stress than the system it was designed to replace.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it has given the education secretary, Lucy Powell, “countless examples” of the damaging effects on its members since the new inspection framework was introduced a year ago.

Tory scrapped the scheme which allowed overseas visitors tax-free shopping when she was a Treasury minister

Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton.

It is a brave person who tells John Curtice, the eminent political scientist and guru of British polling, that he doesn’t really understand modern politics, but that’s what Lisa Smart of the Liberal Democrats did at the party’s conference in Brighton.

How will the party get back to the 24% it won in 2010? I might gently suggest, Prof Curtice, that with winning 57 seats on 24% in 2010 and winning a record-breaking 72 seats on 12.2% of the vote in 2024, I know which one I prefer. I think John is asking the wrong question. We are not in two-party politics any more.

The decision to scrap the VAT refund scheme for international visitors in 2021 left the UK “less competitive” than many other European destinations as the country left the EU, the Tories said.

Badenoch, who personally announced the abolition of the VAT refund scheme when she was a Treasury minister in 2020, said retailers were being “let down by a policy that is driving their customers away.”

The Tories have pulled off a spectacular U-turn. Kemi Badenoch used to say tax-free shopping was a costly giveaway and now she’s trying to sell it as an economic miracle.

If they really think it’s such a great idea, they should explain why they scrapped it in the first place and how they’d pay for bringing it back.

The UK is one of the most-visited countries in the world with international tourism driving billions into our economy. We are supporting the continued growth of this industry and the government is working to meet our ambition to welcome 50 million international visitors a year to the UK by 2030.

Visitors can still claim VAT relief where the items purchased are shipped directly to their home country as exports.