From marching bands to TikTok takedowns, employees are resigning in spectacular fashion. While going viral seems risky, some find it opens new doors ...

In 2011, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco had been working in room service at a luxury hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, for nearly four years, whisking delicacies on demand to guests’ rooms, when he reached breaking point. He was paid a measly $5.50 (£4) an hour, made to work punishingly long shifts and, to top it off, had managers taking a cut of his hard-earned tips.

The poor treatment ratcheted up after DeFrancesco and colleagues tried to unionise workers at the hotel. In response, managers would berate those involved for making tiny mistakes. Things got so petty that workers on shift who had to take calls from guests were banned from sitting down.

Described as inscrutable and smart, the PR man has a job on his hands to turn around No 10’s communications effort

Tim Allan once acknowledged that under Tony Blair’s No 10 press operation it was a mistake that “spin doctors became the story”.

Now he is returning to Downing Street more than 25 years later at the request of Keir Starmer, and will be hoping to avoid that destiny that so many political press chiefs – from Alastair Campbell and Steve Hilton to Fiona Hill and Dominic Cummings – have faced.

Even the cheap rooms cost £1,400 a night at London’s bling-heavy hangout for high net worth individuals. From mega-basement spa to gaudy rooftop bar, our writer takes a tour

Rumours have long swirled about what lies beneath the great 1960s fortress of the former US embassy on Grosvenor Square. There have been lurid fables of cold war bunkers, secret service shooting ranges, CIA interrogation chambers and even escape tunnels to Hyde Park. But none of these fictional fantasies quite compare to the underground lair that has now been excavated below the imposing block, in its new incarnation as one of the fanciest hotels in London.

Owned by the royal family of Qatar, and operated by an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, belonging to one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest dynasties, this former outpost of US imperialism has become a gilded temple to the new global order. Reborn as the Chancery Rosewood, it is a beacon of luxury designed to attract the cream of the world’s ultra-high net worth individuals, so it is only fitting that it should boast the mega-basement to end all mega-basements.

At 16, I fell for Giacomo when I was on holiday in Italy. Our young love didn’t survive my move home to Scotland, but years later, quite unexpectedly, we found each other again

Grownups often roll their eyes at young love: at how all-consuming it is for the teenagers involved, and how predictably doomed it is to fail. But my holiday romance changed the course of my life.

I was 16 when I met Giacomo at a bar in Atina, the tiny Italian mountain town where my parents grew up. There was a local festival one evening and tables were scarce, so our two friendship groups ended up squished around the same one. At more than 6ft tall, Giacomo was hard to miss. He was also friendly, smiley and, while he didn’t speak a word of English, I loved that he spared me the whole ciao bella swagger usually reserved for “foreign girls”.

A retrospective at the BFI celebrates how Wong – whether typecast in orientalist fantasies or breaking taboos with a kiss – could always steal the show

Anna May Wong is everywhere these days. The chic Chinese-American actor who first made a splash in the silent era has been fictionalised in films and TV shows, including Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, and an excellent novel, Amanda Lee Koe’s Delayed Rays of a Star. She has her face on the quarter, the first Asian-American to be honoured in that way, and she is the subject of a page-turner of a biography, Not Your China Doll by Katie Gee Salisbury. But what about the films? This month, BFI Southbank in London hosts a retrospective of this remarkable star’s career, titled Anna May Wong: the Art of Reinvention.

Wong was born in Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese parents in 1905. At the very beginning of her film career in 1921, she self-consciously told a movie magazine that she was “a considerable spot of yellow that’s come to stay on the silver of the screen”, announcing her difference as a rare Asian-American leading lady and her determination to become a star in the same breath. As her career continued, she would become more outspoken about the challenges of typecasting and her disappointment with the representation of Chinese characters on screen.

Fatimazohra Serri’s photography grew from a desire to question and resist roles imposed on Moroccan women

This photograph is titled The Swing of Life. My aim was to illustrate the deep connection between a woman and a man, a relationship shaped by care and burden, intimacy and distance. The man swings from the flowing black dress of the woman above him. The clothing becomes the bridge between the two figures, soft yet unbreakable.

It’s a visual metaphor for how men, knowingly or not, often rest on the invisible emotional strength of women.

Spanish prime minister says double standards over Gaza and Ukraine threaten to undermine west’s global standing

• ‘You need solidarity and consistency’: Pedro Sánchez on the EU, Trump and fighting the far right

​Europe and the west’s double standards over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza threaten to undermine its global standing, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has warned, describing the response to Israel’s assault on the Palestinian territory as one of the darkest episodes of international relations in the 21st century.

In an interview with the Guardian before talks with UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, in London on Wednesday, the socialist leader also said the US under Donald Trump was trying to end the post-second world war, rules-based global order it had originally created.

Trump criticises victory day event as China caps off week of diplomatic grandstanding seen as rebuke to west

Xi Jinping said the world was facing a choice between peace or war as he held China’s largest-ever military parade, joined by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in a show of defiance to the west.

Putin and Kim, the authoritarian leaders of Russia and North Korea, were among dozens of world leaders who attended the parade, a massive display of military hardware and personnel, orchestrated to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, which China calls the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

Leftist would need to see ‘very strong arguments’ before agreeing a deal with party launched by ex-Labour leader

The new Green leader, Zack Polanski, has said he would need to see “very strong arguments” before agreeing any electoral pact with Jeremy Corbyn, arguing that there is enough space on the left of British politics for both to thrive.

Polanski earned a resounding mandate to take the Greens in England and Wales in a more explicitly leftwing direction on Tuesday, winning 85% of member votes, a crushing defeat for the joint ticket of Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, two of the party’s four MPs.

Exclusive: Home secretary warned by Tory predecessor not to repeat ‘hostile environment’ mistakes of Conservatives

Yvette Cooper risks another Windrush-style scandal by repeating the mistakes the Conservatives made in implementing a hostile environment for migrants, a former Conservative home secretary has warned.

Amber Rudd, who was home secretary under Theresa May, urged her successor not to rush her response to the asylum controversy, as Cooper rolls out a series of new policies to quell public anger over irregular migration.