This week, as the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Ramadan lives in a tent on the beach and works to support his family

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

The tent is pitched on a platform set in the sloping sand dunes, above a long expanse of golden coastline. Rats have chewed holes in its canvas sides, and tendrils of pale sand blow in through the gaps. Inside, on the torn mattress he shares with his siblings, 12-year-old Ramadan Ghaban blinks the sleep from his eyes. The sun has just risen but it is already hot.

I wake up every morning at 6.30am. Sometimes, the heat wakes me up, and sometimes it is the sound of the birds, which are everywhere because we live near the sea.

Amid genuinely touching passages about his sister, the earl can’t help but put himself and his grievances centre stage

Charles Spencer’s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great deal about Charles Spencer – perhaps more than we needed to know. If that sounds snarky, after 400 pages of score settling, chest thumping, wild indiscretion and some truly touching passages about his late sister, the reader is left with a head-spinning story of the world that created Diana and a certain sourness at the manner in which it is told.

Let’s start with the headlines in last week’s Daily Mail, the newspaper to whom Spencer sold serialisation of a book which includes a line describing tabloid journalists as “those who inhabit the murky swamps of malevolence, and who need to suck their victims dry of their souls”. Perhaps he meant a different set of hacks. Anyway the top line in the Mail was that, shortly after Diana’s death, King Charles insulted her in a phone call to Spencer: “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’” Your take on this quote will likely dictate how you receive the book, and here’s mine: I’m willing to believe the king behaved badly, but “hissed” is a red flag, one of those embellishments, like “snarled” or “flounced”, that writers tend to use to make those they’re writing about appear worse. Spencer, always the injured party, has so many axes grinding away in this book that at times it’s impossible to hear what he’s saying.

In her weekly column for the Guardian, Anna Tims solves readers consumer problems – ranging from the devastating to the ridiculous. She answered your questions on AI chat bots, consumer protection and how companies keep getting away with terrible customer service

TLouis1990 asks: What are your tips for getting the best out of customer service? Are there mistakes we all make that make issues worse?

Anna: I like your question; too often we focus on what customer service agents owe us rather than vice versa. Remain calm and polite is my top tip. That’s not always easy, especially when you feel you are being messed about, but it’s essential. Temper and rudeness is not only unfair on call centre staff, it can backfire on you. Companies may refuse to deal with abusive customers. Occasionally, when I’ve contacted a press office about a reader’s complaint, I’ve been so horrified by transcripts of their treatment of agents that I’ve dropped the case.

When you complain, include all relevant information such as booking references, your address, screenshots of relevant bills or letters to save to-ing and fro-ing. You basically want to ensure that they can identify you quickly on their system and that they have evidence of the problem. If you’re phoning, have all that information at your side. Make a note of who you spoke to and when in case you have to follow up. And be reasonable in terms of timescales and redress. Demands for £500 in compensation when you report a burned Deliveroo may stop you being taken seriously.

Anna: Thank you for your thank you! If you mean companies I’ve dealt with professionally, there was a now defunct utilities company who offered a reader a spa day to help her recover from the stress its blunderings had caused her. Bagcraft, a luggage store in Essex is a stand-out. A customer had ordered two suitcases for a New Year’s holiday. One of them arrived from the manufacturer with a fault. The store owner reordered it and, worried that it would not reach the customer in time, set off the day after Boxing Day on a 820 mile round trip to deliver the cases in person.

Readers often write in to praise Le Creuset for its no-quibble lifetime guarantee which has resurrected the most ancient of steelware. And speaking as a customer, I was amazed when the online plant supplier Primrose informed me that part of my order was unavailable, sent a generous voucher unbidden as an apology and answered my subsequent questions about suitable alternative plants with prompt, personalised responses. And no, they didn’t know I was a journalist!

Our cartoonist on Manchester United’s billionaire joint-owner showing a startling lack of self-awareness

• Buy a cartoon | Some of David’s favourite works

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

I took him to university this weekend, and it reminded me of the exhilaration of suddenly having your own space, absolutely separate from your mother

When kids are small, and their expectations of an event diverge from yours in some important way, you feel terrible about it. You might be taking them to a play, and they thought that meant they’d be allowed to play, but actually it meant they had to sit still while strangers shouted things. You experience their disappointment as much as your own physical pain.

Then when they’re “adults”, your expectations diverge again. They thought you’d drop them at university and immediately leave, while you thought you’d unpack, and meet their flatmates, explore the city, and spin round a supermarket, then have a Nando’s, and maybe read a bedtime story, get chatting to the other parents and maybe all do karaoke? Well, then it’s time to manage your own disappointment, and the only thing to be said for that is that it’s way less bad than managing theirs.

In more than two decades in the Prison Service, Pia Sinha gained a reputation as a fixer. Now, as head of the Prison Reform Trust, she’s sounding the alarm about overcrowding and other problems

Pia Sinha has led the Prison Reform Trust since 2023. In that time, she has seen a Conservative government finally admit to an overcrowding crisis that had tipped over the edge. (It was in October 2023 that the early release scheme was devised; by May 2024, the Tories had also launched Operation Safeguard, using police cells as temporary housing.) She’s watched a change of government, then a change of prime minister, then Andy Burnham instantly assailed by negative headlines as the consequences of that early release scheme unfolded: prisoners had to actually be released early. “We’re a bit concerned about how [Burnham] has handled it,” she says, in the trust’s scruffy, un-corporate offices in central London, “but that’s in the knowledge that he had a bit of a hospital pass.”

To recap on Burnham’s handling: when he came in in July, he paused the scheme for an urgent review; in August he announced a series of exclusions, further crimes for which people couldn’t be released early, including manslaughter and death by dangerous driving. That solved an immediate problem, that the killers of PC Andrew Harper would otherwise have been released, but had the knock-on effect of reducing the numbers expected to be released by about a quarter. The conversation Sinha wants to have is what prison overcrowding looks like, what it does to prisoners and staff – and what it means for society.

Trump threatens to ‘annihilate’ Iran and ‘drive them into Hell’ if there isn’t a deal, while also underscoring US policy on Cuba, Mexico, Greenland and AI

• Sign up for US Breaking News emails

Trump is arriving at the UN HQ right now.

After very brief doorstep comments – almost exclusively mocking CNN - he answers a reporter’s very loud question by saying his message to Putin is: “settle the war.”

Lib Dem leader tells party conference that ‘something big and dangerous is happening in our country’

If Andy Burnham wanted to inject some edge into his meeting with Donald Trump later (which he doesn’t), he could bring along a copy of today’s Financial Times. This front page headline speaks for itself.

Mortgages ‘on the front line’ as Iran war deals £840 blow to homeowners

British homeowners are paying an average of £840 a year more when they refinance their mortgages, as the rising borrowing costs triggered by the Iran war start to impact consumers’ spending power.

Approximately 1m households have rolled off fixed-rate mortgage deals since February, according to Bank of England data.

The US president addresses the UN general assembly in New York

Nordic correspondent

Emotions among Greenlanders are a mixture of hope, scepticism and fear ahead of the signing of a new much vaunted deal on Arctic security between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

“There have been many different reactions in Greenland because they are talking about a deal but no one can see the deal, we don’t know what it is all about, and what’s in it for us or what’s in it. Also, because we have been terrorised as a people for the last 1.5 years by the American president, so many people feel no trust at all.”

Exclusive: Nearly half of survey respondents aged 16-24 have experienced violence on the internet, with many saying their complaints were not taken seriously

When Jane* learned that intimate photos of her had been posted on a website without her consent, she expected the police would help her. Instead, she was warned that researching where her photos had been shared might put her at risk of breaking the law.

After she was handed a leaflet on internet safety and told to go to tech companies for help – but to expect little from them – the case was closed.

Name has been changed