Files reveal a world of flattery and fratboy tones, where rich men are cultivated and women provide services

Pluck an email at random from the millions in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. It is a Saturday evening in February 2013, and Jeffrey Epstein is messaging Bill Gates’s assistant about guests for a dinner he wants to organise.

“People for Bill,” the email begins. Epstein starts listing possible candidates: the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the film director Woody Allen, the prime minister of Qatar, a couple of Harvard academics, the billionaire CEO of Hyatt hotels, a White House communications director, a former US secretary of defence.

The actor on a disastrous speech, his rules for how people should get around cities and an embarrassing encounter with a doorman

Born in New York state, Billy Crudup, 57, made his film debut in Sleepers in 1996. His subsequent movies include Almost Famous (2000), Big Fish (2003), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Spotlight (2015), Alien: Covenant (2017) and most recently Jay Kelly. On TV he has a long-running role in The Morning Show, for which he has won two Emmys. He stars in High Noon at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre until 6 March. He has a son and is married to Naomi Watts. He lives in New York City.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Flashes of hubris.

Almost 1m UK households are hooked up to heat networks. None had protection from poor service or price hikes … until last month

‘If I could move, I would – to a place without a heat network. But I can’t while this debt is hanging over me,” says Anja Georgiou.

The mother lives with her family in a rented flat in the River Gardens development in Greenwich in south-east London where, three years ago, residents were shocked to be presented with a surprise £200,000 bill for heating and hot water.

Experts say dangerous sleep apnoea affects an estimated 8 million in the UK alone, and everything from evolution to obesity or even the climate crisis could be to blame

When Matt Hillier was in his 20s, he went camping with a friend who was a nurse. In the morning she told him she had been shocked by the snoring coming from his tent. “She basically said, ‘For a 25-year-old non-smoker who’s quite skinny, you snore pretty loudly,’” says Hiller, now 32.

Perhaps because of the pervasive image of a “typical” sleep apnoea patient – older, and overweight – Hillier didn’t seek help. It wasn’t until he was 30 that he finally went to a doctor after waking up from a particularly big night of snoring with a racing heartbeat. Despite being young, active and a healthy weight, further investigation – including a night recording his snoring – revealed that he had moderate sleep apnoea. His was classed as supine, the most common form of the condition, meaning it happens when he sleeps on his back, and is likely caused by his throat muscles.

Jack Thorne takes on William Golding – and you’ll never have felt so grateful to live under the rule of law, that ultimate dweeb’s charter

Castaway stories, from Cast Away to The Martian, often make for feelgood classics. They are tales about an ingenious individual overcoming huge odds, a triumphant metaphor for the human spirit. Here’s a funny thing: castaway stories featuring large groups of people lead to the exact opposite. Forced to self-organise, they end up eating each other. The exception is Lost; I don’t know what that was about. Polar bears?

Needless to say, I like them all. So it’s exciting to see a new kid on the block – or rather an old boy. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, about a group of British schoolboys who crash-land on a desert island, has been part of the UK curriculum for more than 60 years. I wonder if we forget the books we’re forced to study, and are obliged to rediscover them in later life. I know this story well, but am not sure I can say I fully experienced it until this striking new BBC version (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One).

The Obama video should take a toll on the president’s political career – but of course it won’t

Despite Donald Trump’s war on woke, he hasn’t (yet) made Black History Month illegal. In fact, on Tuesday the president issued a proclamation declaring February 2026 to be a celebration of Black history and called “upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities”.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found.

The platform, which says it has about 50 million users worldwide, allows members of the public to self-publish articles and charge for premium content. Substack takes about 10% of the revenue the newsletters make. About 5 million people pay for access to newsletters on its platform.

Exclusive: Lib Dem Daisy Cooper says ex-minister could have ‘abused trading laws’ when sharing state information with Jeffrey Epstein

The Liberal Democrats have urged the UK’s financial regulator to immediately investigate Peter Mandelson, saying his apparent decision to leak highly confidential government information to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein may have led to insider trading.

In a letter to Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Daisy Cooper, the MP for St Albans and the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, said it was “crucial” to determine whether Mandelson or those he shared information with had profited from accessing “market-sensitive and confidential material” in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

After first dismissing uproar over depiction of Obamas as apes, White House then said it was erroneously posted by staffer

Donald Trump said on Friday he made the call to post a now-deleted video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes but deflected blame for the move, causing new speculation in his orbit about whether the blame lay with the president or his aide Natalie Harp.

The brief clip, shared late Thursday night on Trump’s Truth Social account, appeared in a video pushing conspiracies about the 2020 election. Invoking racist tropes, the video depicted the Obamas’ faces superimposed on the bodies of cartoon apes dancing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Eight children including two infants among dead in vehicle carrying displaced people, says Sudan Doctors Network

A drone attack by a paramilitary group has hit a vehicle carrying displaced families in central Sudan, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, a doctors’ group said on Saturday.

The attack by the Rapid Support Forces took place close to the city of Er Rahad in North Kordofan province, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s war. The vehicle was transporting displaced people who fled fighting in the Dubeiker area, the group said in a statement. Among the dead children were two infants.