Conquering of Beaufort Castle for first time in 26 years brings back memories of occupation of south

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When Hussain Alawieh used to take tourists to Beaufort Castle, they would marvel at the view. The ancient hilltop fort, captured nearly 1,000 years earlier by Crusaders, still offered the same sweeping panoramic views of south Lebanon and the Litani River that empires fought over for a millennia.

On Sunday, the view from the castle was obscured by white phosphorus smoke, the toxic incendiary munition providing a smoke screen for advancing Israeli soldiers. Out of the fog rose an Israeli flag, and the castle, for the first time in 26 years, was once again conquered.

Casting shifts to EU talent as paperwork delays and visa limits make hiring British crews less viable

From blacklists for UK passport holders to being asked to work illegally while on holiday, the plethora of extra costs and red tape thrown up post-Brexit are restricting opportunities for British actors seeking work in the EU.

Mainland Europe has always been a springboard for those in the creative industries, from gaining crucial first credits on a TV, film or theatre production to building a marketable resume and paying the bills while attempting to make it big in the UK or US.

The Prince of Darkness appears in his element bad-mouthing colleagues and allies behind their back

Peter Mandelson *** Red Dispatch Box *** Please contact *** and ask her to talk to *** about ***. It is ridiculous that *** cannot do *** in time for the ***. In the meantime, please also get *** to vote for me as Oxford Chancellor. It’s the least I deserve. My bank account details are ***. Feel free to send to ***. Probably best to discreetly delete all correspondence on these matters. This message will self-destruct in *** seconds.

Thousands of documents released. Many of them rendered almost meaningless with redactions. Almost poetic the level of chaos that has always followed Mandy wherever he goes. The man who believed he was entitled to get away with almost anything.

It’s natural to focus on breakthroughs, but there are many challenges in Britain and around the world. There is no magic bullet, but there’s room for optimism

Cancer causes nearly one in six deaths worldwide every year, some 10 million all told. That is a stunning number, but it also masks the reality that some cancers are more deadly than others. We have become remarkably good at detecting and treating melanoma and prostate cancer, for example, and today five-year survival rates for those cancers are well over 90% in most rich countries. Others, such as pancreatic cancer, are more difficult. In the UK, just over one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

That is why a new drug for pancreatic cancer, called daraxonrasib and announced at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago at the weekend, has been met with such jubilation. The drug – taken as a pill once a day – doubled the survival time of those enrolled in a 500-person trial, with fewer side effects compared to traditional chemotherapy. The drug works by shutting down a protein, Kras, that causes cancer cells to grow and divide. One longtime cancer researcher reported that she cried reading the results. With so few effective treatments for this cancer available, the drug is likely to be a real game-changer.

For the star’s 100th anniversary, Lawrence Schiller relives the nude photoshoot that showed, far from being a ‘messy’ blond bombshell, Monroe was a shrewd controller of her image

A few days after doing a nude swimming pool shoot on the set of the 1962 comedy Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe jumped into her raven black T-Bird and drove her photographer, Lawrence Schiller, to Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard. Schiller had brought his negatives, now ready to be turned into prints. And in her purse Monroe had brought her scissors, which she now reached for – and, under the glow of the now legendary Hollywood hangout’s streetlights, began to cut the colour film into pieces.

“Ziiiiiip – the ones she didn’t like,” says Schiller, animating the sound. “Ziiiiiip.” She destroyed them? “Oh yeah, but that came with the territory,” laughs the now 89-year-old, the last living photographer of Monroe, as he recalls his 25-year-old self bending down to pick up the debris and thinking: “Well, I would’ve killed that one, too.” In fact, he speaks of her editing with nothing but admiration: “There wasn’t a picture she destroyed that I would’ve published.”

The acronym ‘FOH’ for ‘Fuck off home’ was used beside the names of expectant mothers. Senior midwives advised others not to be ‘too kind’. But as this and other shocking evidence is brought to light, sexism is only one part of the story

It’s said to be mother nature’s stunning con trick, the single most helpful move in the propagation of the species – that childbirth might be the worst thing ever to happen to anyone, but once you are through it, you instantly forget how painful it was. And that is true, up to a point, although you can often remember enough of the surrounding detail – swearing at strangers, wishing you were dead – that you can infer the rest.

What you don’t forget, however, is what the midwives were like, and nor, even in moments of extremis, do you fail to notice if they’re treating you scornfully. Panorama tonight is about the maternity unit run by Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, the subject of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history, spanning 13 years from 2012, and covering 2,500 families. The details are hair-raising: “FOH” written next to women’s names on a whiteboard, which stood for “fuck off home”; accounts of senior midwives advising others not to be “too kind”; gut-wrenching individual cases of women being warned off coming in to hospital for so long that, when one finally arrived, her baby was dead and her perineum and vaginal wall had collapsed. And every one of those women will have known, on some level, even if she was in no state to ask for her notes or read them, that someone wanted her to “fuck off”. You get a superpower in a life-and-death situation, though it’s unclear how helpful it is: you can tell pretty fast who’s on your side and who isn’t.

Documents also reveal internal Labour criticism of Keir Starmer in embarrassing detail

Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, newly released documents reveal.

Declassified emails show the ambassador designate and Richard Moore, the former chief of MI6 – a role known as “C” – had agreed to meet in early January 2025 before Mandelson went to Washington.

Documents were published to reveal what ministers knew about his links to Epstein, but instead exposed government rifts

• What is new in the latest release of Peter Mandelson documents?

Peter Mandelson wrote to David Lammy on 18 November 2024, making a simple promise to the foreign secretary: “If you were minded to appoint me [as ambassador to Washington],” he said, “I would make sure you never regret it.”

Since then, senior government figures, including Lammy and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, have had reason to look back at that appointment with almost nothing but regret.

Emails and WhatsApp messages reveal string of exchanges with ministers when he was president of Global Counsel

Peter Mandelson, as president of his then advisory firm Global Counsel, lobbied hard for ministers to attend his events and to meet his firm’s staff in the months following Labour’s general election win, newly released documents reveal.

Emails and WhatsApp exchanges show how active the Labour peer was in the wake of the election to work his contacts within government to the potential advantage of both his company and his then campaign to be chancellor of Oxford University.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has meanwhile threatened to strike Beirut and says IDF will continue operations in southern Lebanon

• Iran suspends all peace talks in protest at Israeli offensive in Lebanon

The exchange of strikes between the US and Iran reflects the fragility of the current ceasefire, which has seen repeated violations even as American and Iranian officials try to negotiate a deal to extend it.

Iran has maintained its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies as a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed through the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. The US continues to enforce its own blockade on the strait, as it pressures Tehran to reach an agreement.