Many people are now opting for minimal contact with their parents and other relatives. But while this can provide time to think, it is fraught with emotional complexities

When her mum called her, stress would ring through Marie’s body like an alarm going off. So “I stopped answering the phone,” she says. She forms the words purposefully, as if reading from a script. This was one of the “boundaries” she discussed carefully with her therapist three years ago when she reached a point of crisis in managing her maternal relationship.

She has never explained her decision to her mother, but it followed a lifetime of what Marie, who is in her 40s, feels has been rejection, shaming and feeling like the “black sheep of the family”. Marie’s mother, she says, would always make everything about herself. “Everything I did was just … everybody has it worse. You know, I’d say, ‘I don’t feel very well’ and she’d reply: ‘Yes, well, I’ve got diabetes.’ I was scared to have a voice.”

At a party event in a school hall in Lewisham, people told me how disillusionment with Labour has led to this moment

“How many?”

On the end of the phone is a nice press officer for the Greens, head full from a long day in Gorton, Manchester, showing off their would-be MP. And now, as Friday’s sky turns indigo, I’m calling about reports from Lewisham, south London, that tomorrow they’re expecting a flood of 500 Green activists. This comes as a surprise to the party’s own news machine.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Armed with rubber gloves and cleaning supplies, helpers trek through the wilderness to spruce up remote huts dotted across the country

From two-person shelters to a 54-bunk fortress, New Zealand’s countryside is scattered with huts that offer weary hikers a safe place to rest. Some huts sit along the popular Milford and Routeburn tracks, others are perched in remote valleys in the wilderness, with views ranging from snowy peaks to flourishing bush.

But the publicly owned network is too vast for the government to maintain, so ordinary people in New Zealand are filling their backpacks with cleaning supplies and hiking into the hills to clean and maintain the huts.

In a few isolated communities in central Nigeria, some babies are believed to be bad omens. Olusola and Chinwe Stevens run a thriving home for babies at risk. But what happens when the families want them back?

Esther Stevens’ life nearly ended as soon as it began. She was born in 2007, in a village on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city. Her mother died giving birth to her, and in the eyes of some villagers, that meant the baby was cursed. According to tradition, there was only one way to deal with such a child. The villagers tied the newborn to her mother’s lifeless body and prepared to bury them together.

When word reached a Nigerian missionary living in the community, she rushed to the burial site and pleaded for the baby’s life. After the villagers and relatives refused, she appealed to the traditional priest who had been called on to perform the rite. “Finally, the priest agreed and said, let them give her the evil child and see what the child will become,” Esther said. “The child, that’s me.”

Russia’s invasion forced Ukrainian men of all ages to the frontlines, most with no experience of combat. Tracy McVeigh spoke to five soldiers about how life in the army transformed them and their relationships

After his mother died when he was very young, Valentyn Polianskyi was raised in the Kherson region by his aunt and his grandmother.

Organisers are hoping for a celebration of winter sport at Milano Cortina 2026 but tensions will not be far from the surface

A short stroll from where the grandees of the International Olympic Committee are staying in Milan sits the Museum of Illusions – a place devoted to magic and misdirection. Mirrors distort. Perspectives shift. And nothing is quite what it seems. It is an apposite metaphor for these Winter Olympics, which officially open in Italy on Friday.

Over the following 16 days, the world will be enraptured by the dazzle and spin of these Games: downhill skiers bombing down mountains at 95mph, snowboarders twirling like gyroscopes, the balletic grace of the world’s best skaters. But in Milano Cortina a fresh cold war is also brewing amid global political chaos.

MPs say release of papers on Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador could trigger leadership challenge

Labour MPs have warned that Keir Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered after a day of fury over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The government was on the brink of a defeat in the Commons until a mid-debate amendment brokered by Meg Hillier and Angela Rayner to force the release of documents about Mandelson’s appointment and the depth of his relationship with the convicted child sex offender.

The message, believed to be from Ghislaine Maxwell, was released as part of the latest tranche of the Epstein files

An email believed to have been sent by Ghislaine Maxwell appears to confirm a photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with his arm around Virginia Giuffre’s waist is real.

The message, released as part of the latest tranche of the Epstein files, was headed “draft statement” and sent by “G Maxwell” to Jeffrey Epstein in 2015.

Position of Mountbatten-Windsor now appears even more grave, and the shadow cast over his family even darker

When King Charles stripped Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his titles and announced he would be booted out of Royal Lodge, Buckingham Palace said the “censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him”.

Four months and more than 3m documents later, Charles must surely feel vindicated on his tough approach. For while there is nothing to suggest the king nor any other senior royals knew then what was to come in the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, what has emerged has been truly shocking.

The chairman of Paul Weiss dined with Jeffrey Epstein and sought his help getting his son a job with a Woody Allen film production

Brad Karp, the longtime chair of powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss, has resigned his top leadership role and will be replaced by partner Scott Barshay, the firm said on Wednesday.

Karp has faced scrutiny after emails released by the US Department of Justice on Friday revealed extensive personal and business communications he had with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.