At the height of Covid, hundreds of cancer patients had mastectomies without the reconstruction that would normally accompany them. They would eventually get the surgery, they were told – but for many that promise feels more meaningless by the day

Every time she lifts her arms to get dressed or hang out her washing, Julie Ford gets a painful reminder of one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. At 7am one day in April 2021, she had gone into hospital, alone and wearing a mask, to have her right breast and lymph nodes removed in a bid to stop breast cancer from spreading. Later that day, still groggy from the anaesthetic, in pain and with surgical drains hanging from both sides of her chest, she had staggered to the door with the help of two nurses. She was eased into a friend’s car and driven home to fend for herself.

While Julie’s breast had been removed, it was not reconstructed. Usually, both procedures are carried out in the same operation. But as reconstruction using tissue from the patient’s abdomen is a complex, eight-hour procedure requiring a large surgical team, it was considered “non-essential” and paused by most NHS trusts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tom Watson wants to fill in the creek in front. The Golden Bear says play safe if the pin is on the right. McIlroy defied the conventional wisdom and won

There’s hot, and then there’s the back nine on Sunday at Augusta when there are five players within two shots of the lead. The TV weathermen reckoned it was 30C but then they weren’t down at Amen Corner when Rory McIlroy was standing on the tee at Augusta National’s 12th hole, that little rinky-dink 155-yard par three, tied for the lead and waiting for the wind to drop long enough that he could get his shot off. Four days ago, they asked Tom Watson what was the one change he’d make to this golf course if he could. Watson didn’t blink. “I’d fill in that creek in front of No 12.”

“Touché” said Gary Player.

What a relief that this is the end for Sam Levison’s grim drama. A show which was once blackly funny is now humourless torture porn

To say that season three of Euphoria is long-awaited would be something of an understatement. HBO’s high school drama debuted in 2019, when it garnered a fanfare of attention with its heady mix of grinding trauma, heavenly eyeshadows and cheap/daring (delete as appropriate) feats, including a locker room scene starring 30 penises. In the years since, it cemented itself as a show with much to say about gen Z’s relationship to sex, drugs and mental health, and pushed Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and former Disney teenybopper Zendaya to the A-list. It has also released a mere 18 episodes in that time, a victim of everything from the Covid pandemic to the Los Angeles fires. Like a new Rihanna album, Euphoria season three has – in time – become shorthand for a pop culture mirage that would maybe, possibly arrive sometime before 2030. At least, we hoped, before most of the cast were in their 30s.

Excitement, too, has waned over time. Rumours of rifts between the cast and creator Sam Levinson have only grown since its return was confirmed last autumn, and the press tour that followed has had a distinct flavour of “contractual obligation” about it (social media posts from the cast were few and far between, while Zendaya, in an interview with Variety, ambiguously described filming as a “whirlwind”). It brings me no pleasure, then, to report that, based on the three episodes released for review, Euphoria’s third (and probably final) run was absolutely not worth the wait. It’s a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that’s obsessed with and repulsed by sex work.

For its inaugural show, the V&A’s east London outpost is celebrating 125 years of Black music-making in Britain. We asked top performers to pick their favourite exhibit

Goldie: Kemistry and Storm (The Diptych) by Eddie Otchere (1995)

The prime minister’s meal in a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing has spawned a national menu. The man has, bizarrely, become a phenomenon

It’s always heartening when people agree with you. I had Keir Starmer down as a non-ideological technocratic centrist dad the moment I first clocked him, with a tin ear for both simple human interaction and the darker subtleties of the political arts. So despite carrying his famous “Ming vase” over the line in the 2024 election, I’ve been wholly unsurprised by him flatfooting and pratfalling through jagged shards of porcelain ever since, living down to all my worst fears. Now absolutely everybody else thinks he’s crap too.

Or so I thought, until a family visit to China last month, when I established a connection beyond mythical Ming vases. The “Keir Starmer menu” has become a foodie phenomenon.

Martin Rowson is a cartoonist and author

Ludwig Koch was once as influential as David Attenborough is today – a new film by his granddaughter sheds light on a tragic event in the naturalist’s life in Berlin before he fled the Nazis

In his lifetime, pioneering German sound recordist Ludwig Koch’s heavily accented voice was as familiar to British audiences as David Attenborough’s is today. His tireless passion for capturing birdsong and bringing it first into German and, after his exile from Nazi Germany, British homes via sound books and BBC radio, made him a household name from the late 1930s onwards.

He was celebrated beyond his life, parodied by Peter Sellers (playing Koch observing life at a Glasgow traffic junction) and immortalised in Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1980 novel Human Voices, about the wartime BBC, which depicts Koch’s assiduous approach to capturing natural sounds and indirectly highlights how the organisation benefited from new voices like his.

Péter Magyar’s Tisza party wins election as prime minister concedes defeat, in result likely to reshape ties with EU

• ‘Hungary has chosen Europe’: EU leaders jubilant after Magyar’s victory

Hungary’s opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, has won the election, bringing an end to Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power, in a result that is likely to rattle the White House and reshape the country’s relationship with the EU.

Less than three hours after polls closed on Sunday, Orbán conceded defeat after what he described as a “painful but unambiguous” election result.

Centcom says blockade to begin at 10am ET; US president says ‘I don’t care if they come back or not’

• Full report: Trump says US will blockade strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail

• Planeloads of negotiators and too little time: US and Iran’s 21 hours of talks

Circling back to Donald Trump’s coming naval blockade, the US military said it would block all Iranian Gulf ports on Monday at 10am ET on Monday (5.30pm in Iran and 1400 GMT), effectively seizing control of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.

“The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command said on X.

This is like a game of chicken. It’s who caves first. The Iranian regime is hoping that Trump will cave. Today, he showed he’s not.”

Exclusive: MPs say profit-making levels in England are ‘scandalous’ and call for cap on amount private companies can make from NHS

Private firms providing services to the NHS including healthcare and consultancy have made £1.6bn in profits over the last two years, research reveals.

The findings – on the basis of contracts worth £12bn – have prompted claims of “scandalous” profiteering, concern that the health service is being “taken for a ride” and calls for ministers to impose a cap on maximum profit levels.

£2bn of the £12bn of contracts went to firms with owners based outside the UK.

£533m of that £2bn went to companies owned by people living in tax havens such as Jersey and the Cayman Islands.

Firms, especially those owned by private equity outfits, used £353m of their £12bn NHS income to pay interest on debts.

Exclusive: Ministers planning new legislation for alignment without full parliamentary scrutiny if in national interest

Ministers are planning to fundamentally reshape Britain’s relationship with the European Union, with new legislation that could result in the UK signing up to EU single market rules without a normal parliamentary vote.

In a major development in the prime minister’s push for closer ties with the continent after the Iran war, the Guardian understands ministers are bracing to face down opposition to “dynamic alignment” with the EU from those who “scream treason” over the powers in a new EU-UK reset bill.