Why do some people age better than others? Five extraordinary individuals – who scientists are studying – share their tips

Lajuana Weathers is determined to be the healthiest version of herself. She starts each day with a celery juice, is always trying to increase her step count, and meditates daily. Weathers is also 89 years old. And she has no plans to slow down. “I wake up in the morning and feel blessed that I have another chance at a day of life,” says the grandmother of six, and great‑grandmother of six more, who lives in Illinois in an independent living facility for seniors. “I look at my life as a holistic entity, and in that life is my physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I have to take care of all of those. That’s what I like about the ageing process. All the clutter of raising children is out and I can concentrate on the wellness of me.”

Weathers is a superager. This isn’t a self-proclaimed label, but one backed up by science – she is part of the SuperAging Research Initiative at the University of Chicago. To qualify for the study, you have to be over 80 years old and have memory performance that’s at least as good as the average 50- to 60-year-old. There are about 400 superagers enrolled across North America.

An extraordinary mosaic of wildlife has made Britain’s urban jungle its home

London is the only place in the UK where you can find scorpions, snakes, turtles, seals, peacocks, falcons all in one city – and not London zoo. Step outside and you will encounter a patchwork of writhing, buzzing, bubbling urban microclimates.

Sam Davenport, the director of nature recovery at the London Wildlife Trust, emphasises the sheer variation in habitats that you find in UK cities, which creates an amazing “mosaic” of wildlife.

As a bookish child with a distant father and a disapproving mother, the Curious Incident author retreated into a world of his own. Looking back, he asks what it means to lose parents who never showed you love

When I see washed-out photographs of English life in the 60s and 70s – cardiganed grandmothers eating roadside picnics beside Morris Minors, pale men sunbathing in shoes and socks on stripy deckchairs, Raleigh Choppers and caged budgerigars and faux leather pouffes – I feel a wave of what can’t properly be called nostalgia, because the last thing I’d want is to return to that age and those places where I was often profoundly unhappy and from which I’d have been desperate to escape if escape had been a possibility. Why then this longing, this echo of some remembered comfort?

Is it that, as children, we live inside a bubble of focused attention that gives everything inside a memorable fierceness? The way one could lie, for example, on a lawn and look down into the jungle of the grass to see earwigs and woodlice lumbering between the pale green trunks like brontosauri lumbering between the ferns and gingkos of the Late Jurassic. The way a rucked bedspread could become a mountain range stretched below the wings of a badly painted Airfix Spitfire. Or do objects, in their constancy, provide consolation in a world where adults are unpredictable and distant and unloving?

Martin Rowson has been drawing for the Guardian since the 1980s; Ella Baron since 2022. In paint and pixels, each is tasked with capturing the chaos and absurdity of our political moment

Photographs and video by David Levene

• Gallery: cartoonists Martin Rowson and Ella Baron at work – in pictures

Martin Rowson and Ella Baron are both regular contributors to the Guardian’s daily political cartoon. Martin has been with the Guardian for decades; Ella has been contributing since 2022. This week, we challenged the pair to draw on the same subject (Trump and a world in turmoil), on the same day, to see what each – with their different styles, tools and perspectives – would come up with. Martin landed on a Shakespearean scene, with a warped “King Leer” flanked by snickering world leaders. Ella proposed him squatting in a dystopian nest, surrounded by his spoils. Below, each reflects on their process, the challenges and joys of political cartoons, and what they have learned from one another.

Brooklyn’s Instagram bombshell tested decades of image control, revealing how fame, PR and power collide behind the scenes

On a personal level, it’s all extremely sad. A once close family ripped apart by feuding and bitterness. A much-loved son blocking all contact with his parents and siblings.

From another perspective, however, for those who have followed the movements of David and Victoria Beckham in their 30 years in the (carefully curated) spotlight, the public falling out this week of Britain’s alternative royal family has been a car crash from which it is hard to look away.

Though the cracks are starting to show, the endgame was undeniably nail-biting. And honestly, thank God for Rachel – the terrifyingly ruthless saviour of this series

Bit of a damp squib, this year’s Traitors. At its best, it was still able to skim the preposterously giddy heights of previous series, but I spent a lot of the run living with the growing realisation that the cracks in the format are starting to show.

One major culprit, as always, has been the mid-episode challenge; a slab of filler designed to kill any trace of intrigue, like a version of 12 Angry Men where the jurors get up halfway through to spend 20 minutes swanning around in a park. Nor did the new raft of tweaks amount to much, with the reveal of the Secret Traitor coming far too early, and the secret connections (Judy and Roxy, Ellie and Ross) fizzling out without resolution.

Meal at Mayfair club took place on day Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick criticised former PM’s mini-budget

If it was on the menu, a side helping of lettuce never made it to the table. Over blood-red steak and chips, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss came together on Monday for a discreet lunch at a swish Mayfair club, organised by a climate-denying US thinktank.

Lois Perry, a former leader of the far-right Ukip party who is now Europe director of the Heartland Institute, posted photographs, now deleted, on X of Farage addressing others, including Truss, at the meal.

Umer Khalid, 22, has stopped drinking water as well as food in protest against charges against him

The final remaining Palestine Action prisoner on hunger strike has now stopped drinking water, which a doctor has warned could kill him.

Umer Khalid, 22, has been on a hunger strike since November. His action was briefly paused at Christmas when he became unwell.

Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Kyiv says Moscow used 396 drones and missiles in ‘another night of Russian terror’ on second day of talks in UAE

• Europe live – latest updates

Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for the second day of tripartite peace talks.

“Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure.