What is a very private struggle – coming to terms with one’s own appearance – is being reshaped into a site of competition and ridicule

I felt something akin to devastation reading that the actor Barry Keoghan sometimes “doesn’t want to go outside” because of the scale of online abuse about his appearance. It’s not just the viciousness of the abuse, but how difficult I imagine it must have been for him to articulate, as well as what was not said – what parts of his face he’s likely now had to obsess over and scrutinise.

As a man, it is often hard to say out loud that you have been made to feel insecure in yourself, or that there are things that you do not like about your physical appearance. Keoghan’s vulnerability as a grown man is striking, but I have also been thinking about how much harder it is to articulate this as a teenager or boy. I was well versed in the language of bodily dissatisfaction from a young age, though these were thoughts I would keep to myself: that I did not like my thinning hair, how narrow my shoulders were, my large forehead, or the eczema on my right hand that often drew questions like, “Were you in a fire?” I did not like that I was not as tall as my brothers, or even that my voice did not break with a deep manly husk but retained some squeakiness.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

Biscoff-based recipes are breaking the internet – everything from cheesecakes and milkshakes to prawn dishes and salads. A few traditionalists are even enjoying the biscuits on their own. What’s behind this sweet success story?

Around 15 years ago, Ashley Markle was admitted into a secret world, introduced to the treasures of an exclusive supply chain. She was staying at her aunt’s house and, one morning, when her aunt made her a coffee, she placed a little plastic-wrapped biscuit on the side. “I’d never seen them before,” says Markle. She bit into it: “It was a warm flavour that I’d never really had in a cookie. I’m like, what is this?”

Her aunt had discovered the small, gently spiced Biscoff biscuits as an airline snack. She loved them so much that she contacted the maker, Belgian company Lotus, and asked them to ship a box to her in the US. At that time, says Markle, “I think she was the only person who actually had them in her home.” But, as we all know, the world changes rapidly. Last year, Biscoff was the fastest-growing biscuit brand in the US.

Social media full of complaints about digital nomads, while waiting list for social housing gets longer

Earlier this month, graffiti appeared on the promenade in Sea Point, on Cape Town’s wealthy Atlantic Seaboard: “Digital nomads go home! Now!”

Social media is full of complaints about the abundance of American and German accents, foreign property buyers, and properties being listed on Airbnb, all of which are being blamed for soaring housing costs.

Tate Britain, London
Anderson creates figurative paintings with a dreamlike intangibility, exploring his black British and Jamaican heritage with a startlingly fragile and unresolved intensity

Us and them, then and now, concrete and jungle, acceptance and rejection … Birmingham and Jamaica. Hurvin Anderson’s world is defined by clashing contrasts, by conflicts that can’t ever be resolved.

The British artist’s washed out, hazy, heat-drenched take on figurative painting is him trying to figure it all out, to make sense of a senseless world. That he doesn’t manage to – that you leave this big, affecting and often very beautiful retrospective at Tate Britain with more questions than answers – doesn’t mean he’s failed. The opposite, actually.

Why is it like something to be ourselves and how do physical processes create our subjective experience? These questions get to the heart of the knotty problem of consciousness, and they provided the spark for the latest book from award-winning author and journalist Michael Pollan. In A World Appears, Pollan goes in search of answers about what we do and don’t know about consciousness, and why it has proven such an elusive phenomenon. He tells Ian Sample how thoughts and feelings shape our conscious experience, whether we can learn anything about human consciousness from AI, and why he thinks our minds need to be defended in today’s technology saturated world

Order A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan via the Guardian Bookshop

Has a 25-year-old bet taken us a step closer to understanding consciousness?

Enslaved by debt, victims often feel compelled to sell an organ to repay loans – but can find themselves even worse off after the procedure

Shafeeq Masih* faced an impossible choice: remain trapped for ever by the debt he owed to the owner of the brick kiln where he worked, just outside the Pakistani city of Lahore, or try to pay it off by selling the only thing he had of any value: one of his kidneys.

The brick kiln owner was harassing him to repay the debt, which he claimed stood at 900,000 rupees (£2,420), but however hard he worked, it just kept growing. Masih knew the owner was fiddling the books but says, “whatever they put in writing, we can’t question that. They see us as slaves. We just have to obey.”

There are an estimated 20,000 brick kilns in Pakistan, employing as many as five million workers, the vast majority of whom are believed to be in debt bondage

Pakistan’s military attempting to broker negotiations between US and Iran

• Pakistan’s army chief attempts to broker Iran peace talks in call with Trump

In Australia, the number of petrol stations running out of fuel continues to climb as the Middle East war drags on, with at least 184 dry across the country’s three most populous states.

On Tuesday, 51 service stations in the state of New South Wales were out of fuel and 164 out of diesel, compared with 38 and 131 respectively the previous day, premier Chris Minns said.

Israel and Gulf states targeted and Iran hit by airstrikes as Tehran denies negotiations are taking place to end war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Violence has continued across much of the Middle East a day after Donald Trump said the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war in the region soon.

Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has threatened US, being weighed up as potential interlocutor to bring war to an end

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Just as in 1967 when a rank outsider won the Grand National due to a massive pile-up of other horses at one of the final fences, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and Donald Trump’s putative interlocutor, appears to have come to the front as the field around him rapidly thinned.

In the pantheon of Iran’s leaders, ruthlessly reduced by targeted assassinations, Ghalibaf stands out as a survivor, but if the US president hopes he has finally located the Delsy Rodríguez of Iran – a pragmatic leader from within the regime willing to do business with America – he may need to think again.

Exclusive: UK regulator makes U-turn over TalkTV and TalkRadio complaints after claims it let some broadcasters ‘spout dangerous climate lies’

A U-turn by the UK’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom means it will investigate complaints of climate change denial on television and radio for the first time since 2017. The move marks a victory for campaigners who have accused the regulator of allowing some broadcasters “to spout dangerous climate lies” and “flout” rules on accuracy and impartiality.

Complaints about programmes on TalkTV and TalkRadio were assessed by Ofcom, which then decided not to investigate, the same result as more than 1,000 other climate complaints since 2020. However, after a letter from the Good Law Project (GLP) in January, requesting an explanation for the rejections, Ofcom said it had withdrawn its original decision and would “consider afresh” the complaints.