Tomorrow is Andy Burnham’s day of destiny as he seeks to return to parliament in a bid to become prime minister. Our North of England correspondent Hannah Al-Othman answered your questions – read the Q&A below.

ruthj70 asks: Should I go and volunteer to support Labour tomorrow, or have people in Makerfield had enough of people knocking on their doors?

Hannah: I think that question is probably best answered by the Labour Party, but I’d imagine they wouldn’t say no! People may generally be a bit fed up with people knocking on their doors – but I think they probably expect it will happen on polling day.

Hannah: The ticket he is standing on is mostly based around local policies. He has pledged: to build new flooding infrastructure, build a new link road, and to clear that toxic waste dump in Bickershaw that I wrote about last weekend. He’s also promised a new health centre, pharmacy and GP surgery in various parts of the constituency, and to save a local library. Burnham has also said he’ll fight a controversial housing development that some people locally are opposing, due to a potential loss of green belt countryside and destruction of ancient trees.

The main local issues I’ve found in the constituency are environmental ones such as flooding, transport issues, and public services, as well as a general sense that the area has been neglected and the high streets have become run down. Burnham’s ticket seems to be broadly designed to appeal to these local concerns.

Ten years ago, after complaining that traffic was ‘driving him nuts’, Musk’s Boring Company began building underground tunnels to ease congestion on the roads. Did he overpromise and underdeliver?

It’s another blindingly bright day in Las Vegas but I’m 30ft underground and strapped in for a rocket ride to the future. Actually, it’s a Tesla ride to the future, and not a self-driving one. And it’s pretty slow – my driver tells me the speed limit down here is 30mph. It’s also pretty short: the journey is over in a matter of minutes. In fact, the Vegas Loop is a pretty underwhelming experience: a brief trundle down a white-walled tunnel only slightly larger than the vehicle itself, lined by strips of LEDs that change colour every few seconds, in an attempt to inject some Vegas glitz. I’d been hoping to ask other Loop-riders what they made of the experience, but … there aren’t any. I’m the only person here.

This is not the futuristic transport solution Elon Musk originally promised. When he first announced this innovative technology in 2017, it was accompanied by sci-fi visuals showing a car pulling over from the street traffic on to an elevator platform, which then descended into a network of tunnels and whizzed along on an “electric skate” at 200km/h (124mph). “There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have … so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion,” Musk said. A few months earlier, with characteristic edgelordly nonchalance, Musk had announced on Twitter: “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging …” Followed shortly after by: “I am actually going to do this.” He did, and he named it the Boring Company.

The BBC debate seems dominated by its foes and commercial rivals, but a new survey reveals a hitherto silent majority in supportive voice

The battle for the soul and future of the BBC is clearly under way. It’s charter decision year; Trump is after the corporation’s scalp; parliamentary committees are embroiled in the vexed questions of how to pay for public service broadcasting and what to do about the relentless expansion of streamers; and the new director general is imprisoned in yet another round of cuts. Oh, and the Doctor Who Christmas special has been junked this year. Just to spice things up, Michael Grade has peppered this newspaper with the old charge that the BBC is part of the London metropolitan elite.

It’s not looking good for Auntie. Where is the love? Why is this great British institution not in the same position as the NHS – criticised of course, but revered in a way that means no political party – not even Reform or Restore – would think of advocating abolition?

Ten years after she was forced to leave her friends and family, the Turkish journalist feels the importance of home more keenly than ever. And she believes it is at the heart of many of the world’s conflicts

One summer’s evening in 2022, the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran found herself in a doctor’s office in Hamburg, Germany, lying flat on a stretcher with an IV drip in her arm. After six intense years of work and travel, her body was in revolt. “I now know that I need to talk,” she writes in her latest book, Nation of Strangers, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s prize for nonfiction. “I fear that not speaking will make me really sick. And when homeless, you cannot afford to get sick.”

In fact, she had not been silent in the preceding years: she had published two well-received books, How To Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism (2019) and Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World (2021). She had spoken her warnings in public, too, on stages all across the west, saying: this is what happened to us in Turkey – make sure it doesn’t happen to you, too. And she is not technically homeless; she lives in Berlin. But by “speaking” and by “home”, Temelkuran means something specific yet vast. Nation of Strangers posits that the idea of home, and the emotions that idea contains, is one of the dominant political forces of our time.

With Two Weeks in August and the return of The Four Seasons, TV dramas about nightmare getaways are having a moment. Here are Guardian readers’ tales of their own

In early 1969, my parents booked a holiday in Belfast for one week and a bed and breakfast in Dublin for one week. When we arrived at our Belfast destination, The Elsinore Hotel, there wasn’t another car in the parking lot and the hotel was empty except for the aged husband and wife owners. Being 12 years old, I didn’t think too much at the time about the quiet, empty place but the owners invited the whole family down to the dining room every evening and we enjoyed some great meals. Lots of pictures of JFK and the pope adorned many of the hotel walls and being a Catholic family ourselves, the hosts made a big fuss of us.

The right is obsessed with ‘two-tier policing’. This is indeed a two-tier government – but the real victims are progressives

“If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin,” the Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, asked last week, “how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery.” It is. But there is another way of describing the actions of the rioters burning people out of their homes in Belfast, though ministers somehow cannot bring themselves to say it. Terrorism.

The violence there clearly meets the government’s definition: “the use or threat” of actions designed to “intimidate the public” for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Among these actions are “serious violence against a person” and “serious damage to property”. I happen to believe that the property clause blurs the issue. But either way, in what possible world do the Belfast attacks not fit the definition?

British retirees Jane and Alan Kelvey say they do not want incident in Channel to stop them enjoying their sailing trip

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A British woman on a yacht in the Channel near which a Russian warship fired warning shots has told how she does not want the incident to be blown out of proportion, saying: “We don’t want world war three to start because of this.”

Jane Kelvey, 69, and her husband, Alan, 70, were on their yacht, Bright Future, travelling from the south coast of England towards France on Tuesday when they came into close contact with the Admiral Grigorovich, a 409ft (125-metre) Russian frigate.

Rachael Maskell said she hoped Andy Burnham could become prime minister before the Labour party conference in September

Andy Burnham may have trouble getting through to Keir Starmer if he tries ringing him after the Makerfield byelection to urge him to set a timetable for his departure. Burnham reportedly wants to call Starmer this weekend. (See 9.47am.) But, in his interview with Sky News, Starmer said: “I’m sure I’ll talk to Andy after the weekend.”

If Starmer declines to take Burnham’s call, he may be following Ed Miliband’s example. In a Times story today, Patrick Maguire and Steven Swinford report:

Sir Keir Starmer’s relationship with Ed Miliband has broken down to such an extent that the energy secretary has been accused of “ghosting” the prime minister in recent weeks.

Senior government sources claimed that Miliband declined to take calls from the prime minister during a tense stand-off over defence spending.

French president closes meeting of world leaders in Évian-les-Bains, as Trump says ‘we are looking at’ further sanctions on Moscow

Rutte says the adjustment in the US pledge to the Nato Force Model is “not primarily about where forces and assets are currently, but about who would do what if our defence plans were activated.”

He says historically the model was “overly reliant” on the US.

“You will likely have seen news adjusting its contributions to the Nato force model. In some cases, this has been cast as a problem, as the US pulling away from its allies, but that is not the reality. The US has made clear that it is committed to Nato.

That commitment comes with an expectation that allies will more fairly share the responsibility for our security here in Europe.”

Pamphlets from event featured projects in West Bank and East Jerusalem despite previous denials by organisers

An Israeli real estate event in north London appears to have advertised the sale of land in Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, despite previous denials that illegal settlement properties would be marketed at the event.

Pamphlets shared with the Guardian from the event on Sunday showed real estate projects in Ma’ale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Kfar Eldad and Teneh Omarim in the occupied West Bank, as well as Ramat Eshkol and Givat Hamatos in East Jerusalem.