The environmental costs of flying are much higher, and the government subsidises rail travel, so what explains the baffling price difference when travelling domestically?

Years ago, airline travel was the preserve of the wealthy, and this may be why it can still come as a surprise when getting on a plane looks like the money-saving choice compared with taking the train.

When the personal finance comparison site Finder did some research this summer, it found flying within the UK was the cheapest option more often than taking the train. It then asked people what they thought of its findings. Louise Bastock, a money expert at the website, says respondents all said “trains should be cheaper as it is public transport and more accessible”, with some saying “it feels all wrong” when plane travel cost less.

The Neoliner Origin set off on its inaugural two-week voyage from France to the US with the aim of revolutionising the notoriously dirty shipping industry

It is 8pm on a Saturday evening and eight of us are sitting at a table onboard a ship, holding on to our plates of spaghetti carbonara as our chairs slide back and forth. Michel Péry, the dinner’s host, downplays the weather as a “tempête de journalistes” – something sailors would not categorise as a storm, but which drama-seeking journalists might refer to as such to entertain their readers.

But after a white-knuckle night in our cabins with winds reaching 74mph or force 12 – officially a hurricane – Péry has to admit it was not just a “journalists’ storm”, but the real deal.

Steve Clarke’s history-making team has a ferocious work ethic that should typify what Scotland stands for

It was not a time for calm reflection. Kenny McLean had just lobbed Kasper Schmeichel from the halfway line. Limbs. Unbridled, unfiltered joy.

On one outrageous Hampden Park night McLean, Kieran Tierney and Scott McTominay relegated Archie Gemmill’s stupendous solo effort against the Netherlands in 1978 to merely the fourth best Scotland goal of all time. Zinedine Zidane’s volley for Real Madrid in Hampden’s Champions League final of 2002? A mere tap-in by comparison. What was produced by McTominay, Tierney and McLean will live long in the memories of the children and grandchildren of anybody who was in attendance on Tuesday night. They call McLean “the Mayor of Norwich”. He may as well now be the mayor of Nairn, North Berwick and Newtongrange.

A moral crusade won’t work. To defeat Faragism, Labour must revive a vision of social cohesion and collective responsibility

Last month, as the Nobel peace prize eluded Donald Trump’s covetous grasp, the Harvard professor Michael Sandel received an accolade sometimes described as a Nobel equivalent for philosophers. The $1m Berggruen prize is awarded annually to a thinker deemed to have helped humanity find “wisdom, direction, and improved self-understanding”. Somewhat wistfully, given the state of the polls, I found my mind wandering back to the early 2010s, when Sandel was recruited by the Labour party to deliver just these benefits to the British centre left.

At the time, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, Labour was trying to develop a One Nation politics to address deepening social fissures which – we now know – were soon to turn our politics upside down. Having addressed the Labour party conference of 2012 on responsible capitalism and the “moral limits of markets”, Sandel was interviewed at a fringe event, where he elaborated on the challenges he believed modern progressives faced.

Julian Coman is a Guardian associate editor

When Katrina Brownlee tried to leave her fiance, he aimed a gun at her pregnant stomach. The 22-year-old wasn’t expected to survive, let alone walk again. But she soon began her fight for other victims of crime

A month before she was shot, Katrina Brownlee had a premonition. It came to her in a dream: the 22-year-old saw her former fiance, a law enforcement officer who had been abusing her for years, try to kill her, but she survived. She had experienced premonitions from a young age – she later came to see them as guidance from God. On the way to the house she had shared with him, she could hear a voice in her head pleading with her: don’t go back there.

It was a freezing January morning in 1993. Brownlee was five months pregnant and had taken a cab with her two-year-old daughter through the snow to the house she had shared with her ex in Long Island, New York state. Her elder daughter, then seven, was at a playdate. A few weeks earlier, Brownlee had left her fiance for good and she and her daughters had been living in a motel to hide from him. However, over the last few nights, she had spoken to him on the phone. He seemed to have accepted their relationship was over and agreed she could come and collect her belongings.

Two of the world’s leading cult interventionists live (with their parrot) in Philadelphia. They explain the art of coaxing people out of the most pernicious cults in the world

When the phone rings at Patrick Ryan and Joseph Kelly’s home in Philadelphia, chances are the caller is desperate. One couple rang because their son was about to abandon his medical practice to follow a new-age guru in Spain. Another call came from a husband whose wife was emptying their life savings for a self-proclaimed prophet in Australia. Yet another family phoned about their niece, who was in a relationship with a man stealing from her, maybe drugging her, probably sexually assaulting her.

These families had tried everything else. When nothing worked, they heard there were two men in Philadelphia who might still be able to bring their loved one home.

PM raises Guardian reporting of allegations from more than a dozen school contemporaries of Farage

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Keir Starmer has called on Nigel Farage to explain himself after the Reform leader wholesale denied numerous detailed allegations of racist behaviour during his teenage years.

Responding to the Reform MP Lee Anderson at prime minister’s questions, Starmer raised the Guardian’s reporting of allegations from well over a dozen school contemporaries of Farage.

After MI5 issues China espionage alert to parliament, Luke Pollard says message should be heeded by all citizens

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Ordinary UK citizens need to watch out for online contact with Chinese spies, the defence minister has said, after MI5 issued an espionage alert to parliament.

Luke Pollard said a warning given to parliamentarians on Tuesday that China was attempting to recruit individuals with access to sensitive information should also be heeded by the public at large.

Tory leader says Reeves will be breaking Labour’s manifesto if she freezes income tax thresholds

Healey is now taking questions.

Q: How close are are we to war?

It is Labour that is the party of defence.

Fallout from increased emissions linked to president’s ‘America First’ policies expected to most affect those in poor, hot countries

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding of the human cost of the Trump administration’s approach to climate.