Surge of departures – mostly fleeing a weak economy – fuels concern over the longer-term impact on the country as some small towns scramble for survival

She considers herself a diehard South Island girl, but Harriet Baker, 33, won’t be raising her children in the city where she’s spent most of her life.

“When we bought our house I said, ‘You’ll be taking me out of here in a casket,” she says, of the Dunedin home she and husband Cameron Baker, 33, sold last month.

Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory finds common ground between Ella Fitzgerald and Charli xcx – and its free-thinking alumni are thriving. We go on a tour to see what’s in the water there (aside from shipwrecks)

Before she was getting DMs from Dua Lipa and minting K-pop hits, and long before yesterday’s surprise release of her sumptuous fourth album, Erika de Casier was a nervous student in her 20s debating what to wear on her first day.

It was 2019, her debut album Essentials had come out that year and received critical acclaim. But at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC), that was by the by. “In Denmark, it’s incorporated in our way of being: everybody is so humble,” says the Portuguese musician. “It wasn’t like I went to school and people were like …” She makes an exaggerated starstruck face. “That would be crazy. It was just, ‘Oh, congrats. I heard the new album. Sounds great.’”

As Kemi Badenoch makes a bad situation worse, and an alliance with Reform looms, I’ve been speaking to centrists desperate to stop the rot

The thanksgiving service for the Tory grandee Michael Ancram last week resembled the funeral of his party. Amid an array of traditional Conservatives such as John Major and a multitude of that old ilk, one observer tells me there was no sign of the current shadow cabinet: they belong to a different party altogether. After their lowest vote ever last week, is it all over?

A sign of life stirs among the embers. All is not quite lost, if the silenced cohort of moderates listen to the likes of a new party member. David Gauke has rejoined the Conservative party, where he was justice secretary before being ejected for rebelling against Boris Johnson’s threatened “no deal” Brexit. He wasn’t sure the party would take him back, he was ready to write about his second rejection, but the computer said yes. He’s back to fight and fight again to save his party from its rightward march into Faragism.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The US president’s plan for Hollywood is full of plot holes. But when it comes to the hidden propaganda baked into movies, he may have a point

As always with pronouncements by President Trump, once you had peeled away the xenophobia, removed the stew of resentment, ignored the sheer idiocy and asterisked the possible illegality, there was a small kernel of truth to his posting on Truth Social last Sunday. “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote, pointing to the nefarious tax breaks other countries gave film-makers as “a National Security threat” and proposing an 100% tariff on films made oversees. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA AGAIN!”

How would a 100% tariff on films made oversees work? Just movies shot overseas? What about movies set overseas? And who would pay? How do you impose tariffs on goods without a port of entry? “Commerce is figuring it out,” said a White House official. In fact, movies are listed as an exception to presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president authority to address national security threats, so it is likely the lawyers would end up figuring it out, if Trump’s plan went ahead. But, many executives in Hollywood are quietly nodding agreement. It is true that Los Angeles has seen feature movie shoot days plummet from 3,901 in 2017 to just 2,403 in 2024, a 38% drop. Many major franchises such as Avatar and Mission: Impossible are shot mostly overseas, where the lure of lucrative tax breaks offset such minor inconveniences as the incursion of some Derbyshire sheep into one of Tom Cruise’s paragliding set-pieces.

Many saw the beloved tree that Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham cut down as a part of north-east England’s DNA

“It was just a tree,” said a mystified Adam Carruthers, one of the two men who illegally cut down the tree at Sycamore Gap in the early hours of a stormy night nearly two years ago. “It was almost as if someone had been murdered.”

Carruthers was right about the reaction to the felling. Many likened its loss to that of a good friend or relative. Its destruction prompted feelings of sadness, grief and then blind fury. Some people wept.

From rocks being thrown at cars to spectators being given the red cards, readers share their experiences of the most shocking scenes at children’s soccer games

The first manager my son had, when he was seven, got the parents together and told us how shouting could affect our sons’ development and behaviour, not only as players but as human beings. Usually, I don’t behave so badly. The worst I’ve done is to complain to the referee and I’ve sworn once or twice. But mostly I’ve been civil. There was one time, though, when a game was interrupted because the other team had fielded ineligible nine-year-old players. There was a lot of swearing and shouting from managers and dads. My wife decided enough was enough and took our son from the field to go home. He was the team’s only keeper so without him there was no game and several of the other team’s dads taunted us, shouting: “Are you running?”, “Are you scared?”. My wife ignored them and headed for the exit but one of the dads pushed her. Another guy punched me from behind and I completely lost it and punched back. Both teams were expelled from the tournament.
André Pereira Leme Lopes, 53, Brazil

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, found to have criminally damaged tree and Hadrian’s Wall

• ‘Stealing joy’: the sadness and symbolism of the crime at Sycamore Gap

Two friends who embarked on a “moronic mission” to fell the Sycamore Gap tree with a chainsaw have been found guilty of “mindless” criminal damage.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, cut down the cherished tree, next to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, as Storm Agnes raged in the early hours of 28 September 2023.

New leader says he wants a Catholic church that ‘illuminates the dark nights of this world’

• Five things to know about Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV said he hoped to lead a Roman Catholic church “that illuminates the dark nights of this world” as he held his first mass as pontiff under Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

The surprise election of Robert Francis Prevost, the first US pope, came after a conclave that lasted less than 26 hours, one of the shortest in modern Catholic history.

Dylan Tippetts of Plymouth resigns from party ‘that does not support my fundamental rights’

• UK politics live – latest updates

One of Labour’s only transgender councillors has resigned from the party, accusing it of “throwing trans people under the bus”.

In a post on X on Friday morning, Dylan Tippetts, who has represented Compton ward on Plymouth city council since 2022, wrote: “I cannot continue to represent a party that does not support my fundamental rights. I cannot as a trans person continue to support the Labour party.”

Two Ukrainians arrested as authorities claim operation had one eye on a possible future military incursion

• Europe live – latest updates

Ukrainian authorities claim to have busted a Hungarian spy ring operating on its territory, alleging that Budapest was collecting sensitive military data with one eye on a possible future incursion into the west of the country.

Hungary’s foreign minister dismissed the accusations as “propaganda” and announced the expulsion of two Ukrainians described as “spies working under diplomatic cover” at the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.