From lighting and alarms to shed security and TV simulators, specialists share their top tips for making your house a tougher target

Whether you are going away, moving house, or have just become a bit complacent, there are many simple things that you can do to make your home safer. Here, security experts advise on the best ways to avoid being burgled.

Yes, there were some serious problems for Labour this week, but overblown claims in the press undermine what remains of our political debate

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Tell me, fellow Brits, how are you getting used to our island version of North Korea? How are you coping with life, now that we are a global pariah alongside Pyongyang? How do you feel about modern Britain having to vie with North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan for the wooden spoon on every international index of oppression?

For that is the country Wednesday’s Daily Mail front page insists we have now become. It is tempting to laugh off a headline that asks “When did Britain become North Korea?” as just another here-today-gone-tomorrow piece of journalistic hyperbole. That’s even more the case when you read the cobbled-up pandemonium of provocations that form the contents of the headline-writer’s charge that Britain is being strong-armed into “Starmer’s socialist utopia” – nervy bond markets, the possibility of compulsory ID cards, the arrest of the Father Ted writer for his tweets and, of course, Angela Rayner.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Kirsten Smith was 19 when she first tried heroin; within a few years she was in prison. She says she willingly made bad choices and wants society to stop treating addiction as a disease

Kirsten Smith was 16 when a boy from school injected her with morphine, 18 when she and a date Googled how to crush up and inject themselves with oxycodone, and 19 when she first shot up heroin. Living in Knoxville, Tennessee and modelling herself on Pulp Fiction’s freewheeling Mia Wallace, Smith spent her days experimenting with alcohol, cannabis, ecstasy, mushrooms, LSD and benzodiazepines. She read Kurt Vonnegut and the Beats, and wrote poems on an actual typewriter while listening to the Velvet Underground. For Smith, as for thousands of Americans who came of age in the early 2000s, drug use was a seemingly harmless lifestyle choice.

That is, until she ran out of money. After Smith dropped out of high school and started regularly using heroin, she was caught stealing credit cards and chequebooks from a boyfriend’s wealthy parents, from a family friend at church and from her grandmother. On probation for two years, and forced by her parents into a month-long stay at an addiction treatment facility, Smith felt, for the first time, ashamed.

Paul loves his spuds and finds Noor’s preference for rice mystifying. She wants a more equal approach to carbs. You decide who gets a roasting?

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We split the cooking, so it’s a battle between us as to which carb is better. To me, rice is more versatile

I made thousand-layer potatoes and they were amazing. Noor pretended she didn’t like them

(Matador)
His last album was criticised for being too upbeat during Trump 1.0 but became a phenomenal live show, and the Talking Heads frontman remains sunny – almost to a fault

It is seven years since David Byrne released his last solo album, American Utopia. So much has happened in the intervening period that it’s easy to forget that, initially, the record received a mixed response. There was praise for its expansive and experimental approach: songs built on rhythms by Brian Eno were handed over to a wide selection of producers to tinker with, then Byrne compiled the finished product. Part of a larger multimedia project called Reasons to Be Cheerful, it attempted to engender a spirit of positivity, but there were complaints that this amounted to a blithe abdication of responsibility amid the first Trump presidency. Respectful long-service-medal reviews coexisted with angry fulminating over the complete absence of female contributors.

A mixed response was business as usual as far as Byrne’s post-Talking Heads career is concerned. He’s pursued an idiosyncratic path – diversions into Latin American music, opera and trip-hop, collaborations with dance producers and St Vincent – but never with results that achieved sufficient acclaim or commercial success to overshadow his former band. But then, something weird happened. The ensuing American Utopia live shows, which used cutting-edge technology and choreography to demolish the conventions of a rock show, attracted deserved hyperventilating praise. A tour that began playing modest theatres wound up filling arenas, spawning a Broadway show, two live albums – one named after a critic’s breathless assertion that it was The Best Live Show of All Time – and a Spike Lee-directed movie.

E-bikes can legally travel at 15.5mph. But the fastest the police have seized was capable of 70mph. What will stop the rise of these souped-up and potentially fatal vehicles?

A busy Wednesday morning on Bishopsgate in London and Sgt Stuart Ford of the City of London police is pointing out possible offenders. “He’s not pedalling,” he says, indicating a man on a bike on the other side of the road. “Still not pedalling, but he is going downhill, he might be all right. I’d still pull him over and have a look.”

Not today, though, because the non-pedalling possible offender is heading north, while Ford’s team – two members of the cycle response unit he set up two years ago and leads – are facing south on the opposite side of the road. A lot of the unit’s work centres on illegal e-bikes; they have seized 212 so far this year.

Exclusive: Isaac Herzog will make trip just weeks before UK is planning to recognise statehood of Palestine

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Israel’s president will visit London next Thursday just weeks before the UK is expected to recognise the state of Palestine at the UN general assembly, the Guardian understands.

Two sources have confirmed Isaac Herzog is expected to meet UK ministers and senior political figures – the first time a senior Israeli leader has been in Britain since the foreign secretary, David Lammy, met his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, on an unannounced visit in the spring.

Exclusive: Land Registry documents show deputy prime minister used high street company for £800,000 transaction

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Angela Rayner used a small, high-street conveyancing firm for the purchase of the £800,000 Hove flat at the centre of a damaging tax row, the Guardian has learned.

The deputy prime minister employed Verrico & Associates, a family firm based in Herne Bay, Kent, to complete the transaction, according to legal documents seen by the Guardian.

His company announced death of designer synonymous with modern Italian style and elegance on Thursday

Giorgio Armani, the celebrated Italian fashion designer who built a global empire has died at the age of 91, his company said on Thursday.

“With infinite sorrow, the Armani Group announces the passing of its creator, founder and tireless driving force: Giorgio Armani,” the fashion house said in a statement.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against two 14-year-old girls and another against a woman

A man who became the focus of far-right demonstrations outside a hotel in Epping, Essex where he and others were housed has been found guilty of sexual assault against two 14-year-old girls.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, an asylum seeker from Ethiopia, was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against the girls and another against a woman.