To kick off Making Love, our new series in which the stars behind TV’s hottest relationships relive their romances, Mathew Horne and Joanna Page talk about meeting the one, snogs with strangers – and saving people’s lives

It’s a classic romcom story: Essex boy from Billericay meets Welsh girl from Barry, they declare their love in a coach station, he proposes in a train station before being dragged away by police and – with the help of a fake-vegetarian mum, a crackin’ friend who had a fling with John Prescott and a top-secret fishing trip – they win the hearts of the nation.

Gavin & Stacey was the 2007 love child of Ruth Jones and James Corden, following the ordinary couple played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page. Their mates Nessa (Jones) and Smithy (Corden) became the “will they/won’t they?” relationship of the show – and Gavin’s parents, Pam (Alison Steadman) and Mick (Larry Lamb), were proof of everlasting love – but Gavin and Stacey were the pair we could all relate to. So much so that they are regularly voted one of Britain’s ultimate TV couples.

World Cup victory for England next week could raise expectations the likely new prime minister can’t live up to

Andy Burnham yesterday got himself clear of the magic number – the 323 Labour MPs who had to support him to make any leadership challenge mathematically impossible. Half a week had gone by in limbo, his endorsements standing at 322, everyone knowing he was the next prime minister, nobody able to call it anything more than “likely”. What were those last MPs waiting for? Maybe they were just in it for the atmospherics.

You can’t run a coronation like a slam dunk; it needs choreographed suspense, a sense of ceremony. In an ideal world, the last names would have arrived in the form of a wax-sealed letter, carried by a horse or a bird.

Chinese tourism is booming in Laos and the illegal wildlife trade is booming with it. Pangolin scales, rhino horn and elephant ivory are all being sold at secret shops and restaurants as a new high-speed rail line brings millions of visitors to the country. Working with Chinese activists, the Guardian goes undercover to investigate the criminal networks profiting from this trade and to reveal how wildlife trafficking is pushing the critically endangered pangolin ever closer to extinction

The Piano director shares her memories of the actor on set – and the last time she saw him in hospital

• Sam Neill’s final interview and his life in pictures

• ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill

• Neill interviewed in 2023, 2024 and 2026

Sam. So effortlessly handsome, and that rare thing in New Zealand and Australia: a movie star.

My hands actually shook when I met him at a cafe in Vulcan Lane, Auckland, to discuss rehearsals. He had arrived, we all had, to start pre-production on The Piano. He was to play the repressed and violent Stewart, the one who would chop off his wife’s finger. Who but Sam could play that part, could surprise with that part?

Last week’s Timms report shows how disability is still vilified. But some pragmatic fixes would help both claimants and the economy

“Broken Britain” has become the favourite narrative of the right in recent months. The playbook goes like this: politicians and pundits alike exploit genuine concerns about squeezed services and living standards to propagate a sense of division and despair. Meanwhile, the parts of the state that actually need radical change are then either ignored or misrepresented, if only because their worst impact tends to be felt by the very marginalised communities the hard right scapegoats.

Few areas demonstrate this more than the disability benefits system. Reading the damning Timms report – the government’s landmark review into the personal independence payment (Pip) in England and Wales – last week, I was struck by the gulf between reality and rhetoric. The disability benefits system is “not fit for purpose” and “dehumanising” for claimants, the report found, yet scroll through a news site or switch on talk radio and there’s tumbleweed when it comes to substantive ideas to reform it, especially from figures typically eager to declare the nation’s institutions at risk of imminent collapse.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

He was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019, and had announced his candidacy for the 2028 presidential elections. But Ekrem İmamoğlu is now behind bars, and his trial, on charges including fraud and organised crime, could take 12 years

• This piece first appeared in the Dial

There’s a Turkish saying, “Silivri soğuktur”: Silivri is cold. You’ll hear it from journalists, politicians and activists after they say something critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. The kind of comments that could send them to the notorious prison complex in Silivri, where it would take months before they saw a judge.

For decades, Silivri was considered a “sayfiye yeri”, a place for cottages, country and summer houses. All around the complex are small family-run farms and villas with private pools, protected by watchdogs. Construction of the Marmara Prison complex began in 2005 and lasted three years. It contains eight closed correctional institutions and an open prison where the court is located. It is Europe’s largest prison complex.

UAE says Iranian cruise missiles hit two oil tankers in strait, killing a crew member and wounding eight

• US launches third night of strikes on Iran as Trump announces Hormuz blockade

Resurgent oil and fuel prices could cement a fourth interest rate rise in Australia this year if Donald Trump’s renewed conflict with Iran is not resolved within a week, economists warn.

US missile strikes on Iran and Trump’s announcement of a new maritime blockade has lifted oil prices to their highest point in the month since the two countries agreed to a peace deal.

Chair criticises use of ‘VIP lane’ to prioritise PPE contracts for companies with Tory connections in damning report

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government wasted public money on a “vast” scale with flawed buying of personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, an official inquiry has concluded.

The Covid-19 inquiry chair, Heather Hallett, also criticised the then government’s controversial “VIP lane”, which gave high priority for PPE contracts to companies with political connections to the Tories.

The head of Reform UK refused the security, which was a similar level to that received by the leader of the opposition, because he considered it inadequate

Last night Andy Burnham voted for the government’s immigration and asylum bill. Sundus Abdi and Jessica Elgot have the story.

There were 14 Labour MPs who voted against.

It is shameful that Andy Burnham voted in favour of Shabana Mahmood’s cruel immigration and asylum bill which will undermine the rights of refugees.

As a key Burnham ally I am calling on Bev Craig [Labour’s candidate for Greater Manchester mayor] to disown this act of performative cruelty and to stand up for what is right, to celebrate immigration - which has hugely benefitted Greater Manchester both socially and economically - and treat some of the most vulnerable people in our communities with dignity and humanity. We are so much better than this in Manchester.

Shock development based on ‘new information and evidence’ renews debate over security of politicians

British counter-terrorism police are now leading the investigation into the death of the former MP and Reform spokesperson Ann Widdecombe in a shock development that has renewed the debate over the security of politicians.

Widdecombe’s body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Haytor Vale, Devon, at 11.40am on Thursday. A 28-year-old man from Rotherham is being held in custody on suspicion of her murder.