Ahead of the WSL season kick off tonight, the Guardian’s women’s football writer Suzanne Wrack answered your questions

Weekender73 asks: Daughter’s favourite player: Ellie Carpenter. Mine: Mary Fowler. Who is right?

Suzanne: Both. Who am I to say who an individual’s favourite player should be? It’s personal, and mine would probably be different - no I’m not saying who, probably because I’m not totally sure! They’re both top players, Ellie Carpenter has looked rampant in Chelsea’s two games against Real Sociedad in the last two weeks and both looked excellent last season when they featured. Hopefully Mary Fowler has an injury-free season back at her best following her recovery from her ACL injury.

Suzanne: This is what I think is really exciting this season. Each year, while you haven’t necessarily been able to predict exactly which of Arsenal, City or Chelsea will win the title, you could predict that the only points they would drop would be against each other, at least 99% of the time. This season, I think the likelihood of those teams dropping points to some of those in the chasing pack on a more frequent basis is much higher.

We saw Brighton, Tottenham, London City Lionesses, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Manchester United all take points off the top three across the course of last season and I think that trend will continue. How the top three handle that and how those challenging for the ‘best of the rest’ mantle capitalise is going to be super interesting.

Horgan’s hilarious new show probes the perils of ageing and the horror of being single again – and it has sex scenes so wild you’ll be laughing for weeks. The creator and her co-stars open up about Youth

When Sharon Horgan walked into HBO to pitch her new series, Youth, she basically just said “sandwich generation” to them. Alex, the protagonist, is squished between a teenage son and two elderly parents. That’s the classic; the rest of it – the recent divorce, the dating hell, the busy, creative professional life full of pricks – is the icing on the sandwich (if you like). Horgan had been incubating some of the characters for five years, but “honestly”, she tells me, “I said about three sentences and a week later, they said yes. I’ve never had that experience before.”

You might think you can imagine it, but Youth is unlike any portrait you’ve ever seen in the gallery of (for brevity) menopausal women doing everything for everyone. There’s an urgency and valour to it that is very much drawn from Horgan’s own experience. “Everything just changed for me when I hit my 50s,” she says. “I was very bamboozled but I really had a hunger to make time count.” Not every situation is lifted directly from her own life, post-divorce – she’s also borrowing from her friends, she emphasises – but in general terms, the pressures, the worries, the outrages, the surprise and the delight are all so exquisitely drawn that even if it’s not Horgan herself, you hope someone, somewhere, is living this in real life.

Fury at Russia’s death and destruction has fuelled art, action and resistance. But eventually, rage’s fire is all-consuming

Twice, I have heard Ukrainians perform Verdi’s Requiem. Once in Lviv, last Maundy Thursday, and once last month, under the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. In St Paul’s, performed by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra with the Philharmonia Chorus, the great Dies irae – “day of anger” – unfurled in an operatic gale of fury, reverberating so powerfully around Wren’s lofty spaces that the music felt like thunder echoing between mountain peaks.

In Lviv, where it was performed by a Ukrainian chorus and orchestra, the evening began with a call to remember the war dead. Lviv’s lay a mile up the road: 153 graves when I first visited in autumn 2022, and by this year more than 1,000. Ranks and ranks of soldiers killed in their 20s, 30s and 40s, each grave planted with flowers and plants, flags flying above. On that occasion, Dies irae – in the more sober acoustic of the Lviv Philharmonic Hall – seemed to contain the furious ache of grief. Certainly I have never heard a more wrathful day of anger.

The CEO is the throughline in a history of billion-dollar blunders that have caused real harm, culminating in last week’s settlement

Last week, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, agreed to a settlement of up to $18bn after dozens of US states accused it of harming children with addictive products. The settlement’s regulatory implications for social media will affect every user, far beyond teens.

But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.

O2 Arena, London
Fans scream ‘eat zucchini’ as if their lives depend on it as the six-piece’s remaining members strut their way through chest-rattling hits, ludicrous bangers and flaccid flops

It takes a certain amount of resilience to be a Katseye fan. Since debuting three years ago via the boot camp meets reality TV show The Debut: Dream Academy, the multinational K-pop hybrid girl band have put their so-called Eyekons through the wringer. Last month alone they lost their second member to a “personal health and wellness” related hiatus, with Sophia joining Manon (who stepped away in more mysterious circumstances back in February) on the sidelines. Weeks later, they landed their first US No 1 album with Wild, a collection led by the carbonated dance-pop rocket Pinky Up – a song referred to by the band’s many online detractors as “skibidi toilet music” (ie slop).

Even as this debut arena tour arrived in the UK, there were fears the newly reshaped quartet might be reduced to a trio after Megan sprained her ankle. But if the fans are worried, they don’t show it, their ear-piercing screams drowning out the opening Hootie Frutti, a sonic melange that somehow makes Brazilian funk sound leaden. By the time petulant hyperpop bop Internet Girl kicks in they’re screaming lines like “eat zucchini, eat zucchini” as if their lives depend on it.

High food prices are affecting everyone right now, but it turns out they are affecting some people way more than others. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks at the grocery price situation and official healthy eating advice in different countries to find out how food prices are hitting lower-income households harder and whether it’s even mathematically possible to eat a government-recommended healthy diet

James Orr and Dan Jukes, aides to Nigel Farage, stepped down after an investigation by Channel 4 News

British ministers have hit back after the Argentinian president said “winds of change” favourable to his country’s claim to the Falklands were “blowing around the world”, Kiran Stacey reports.

The Electoral Commission has issued a statement this morning saying it is in touch with the police about the undercover investigation into Reform UK. In a statement, it said:

We are considering all relevant information, in line with our regulatory remit, and we are in touch with the Met police.

The Electoral Commission has not approved the donor vetting process for Reform, or any other party. Parties are responsible for ensuring their internal processes and controls are fit for purpose.

Energy secretary could recommend new North Sea drilling next week, as ministers also consider approval for Rosebank oilfield

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Ministers are poised to approve a controversial new gasfield in the North Sea this month, according to government sources, and are considering approving a major oilfield later this year.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, will give her recommendation to approve the Jackdaw field off the coast of Aberdeen as soon as next week, according to people close to the decision, and the formal approval could follow a week after.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported a Russian drone hit the headquarter of the security service of Ukraine, in Kyiv

in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt

Polls have suggested that the election on Sunday could yield Germany’s first-ever state government led by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), shattering a postwar taboo and leaving minorities’ fate in the hands of a party that has promised to launch deportations “from day one”.

Mourning turns to anger as residents of Kuhestak say Baloch communities are being placed in path of conflict

People in Kuhestak, a predominantly Baloch city in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, are mourning after a strike on a wedding killed at least four people, including a child, and injured more than 60, according to local authorities.

The blast hit at around 9.30pm on 1 September, turning a night of celebration into one of devastation for the small coastal community, which is on the strait of Hormuz.