More and more people are turning to egg freezing to increase their chances of becoming a parent. Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering it – from the hidden costs to the chances of success

When I first told my mother I was freezing my eggs, she asked: “So my grandchildren are going to be stored next to some Häagen-Dazs?” (Very funny, Mum.) I’m one of an increasing number of women in the UK who have chosen to put their eggs on ice in order to preserve their fertility, although this does – as discussed later – have clear limitations.

According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK’s regulator for the fertility industry, there was a 170% increase in the number of egg freezing cycles between 2019 and 2023. The technology has been around since the 80s, but became more accessible in the 00s with vitrification, a flash-freezing technique. Now, celebrities such as Florence Pugh and Michaela Coel openly discuss their experiences of it, and companies such as Meta, Spotify and Goldman Sachs subsidise the procedure for employees.

Marissa Bode is the first disabled actor to play Nessarose, a key character in the stage turned film franchise – but has had to respond to online abuse

Disabled actor Marissa Bode, who plays the prominent role of Nessarose Thropp in the hit film musical Wicked and its forthcoming sequel Wicked: For Good, has called for improved representation for disabled performers in the entertainment industry – and specifically an end to what activists call “cripping up” – casting non-disabled actors in disabled character roles.

“I really hope my casting sets precedent,” says Bode, adding: “It’s just navigating a world and a system that we have just not been acknowledged in as we should be.” A recent study by the Rudderman Family Foundation found that only 21% of disabled characters on US TV between 2016 and 2023 were played by disabled actors.

This six-part adaptation of Sarah Moss’s novel is deeply confused. The acting is melodramatic, the tone bewildering and the plot is full of cartoonishly grim situations that go nowhere

Holidays can be murder. Regular domestic life often smothers a festering seam of incompatibility in a relationship, or a fault in an outwardly solid family dynamic. But trap people together for a week or two somewhere far away and there’s nowhere to hide. In Summerwater, a forbiddingly bleak drama written by John Donnelly and based on Sarah Moss’s novel, each of the six rain-lashed lochside cabins contains a uniquely unhappy household-on-holiday that is, on one particular day, about to endure a reckoning.

We start, as far too many dramas do, with characters being interviewed in the near future by the police. There has been a fire, but we won’t know who started it, whose cabin it was in and who died until episode six. In between is an interlinked anthology, the same day seen again and again from different perspectives. First we shadow Justine (Valene Kane), a wife and mother of two preteens.

Summerwater is on Channel 4 now.

Rescue operations in Wales, submerged railway lines in Cornwall – these events are ever more common. So why have we utterly failed to prepare?

As autumn blurs into winter, the news is once again filling up with a familiar story: overflowing rivers, inundated streets and overwhelmed infrastructure. Since Friday, England, Wales and Ireland have been hit by the storm the Spanish meteorological agency has elegantly named Claudia, with grim results. One place in particular massively bore the brunt of it all: the Welsh border town of Monmouth, where the raging River Monnow spilled into the streets, people had to be rescued from their homes and drones captured aerial views of the scene, showing fragile-looking buildings suddenly surrounded by a huge clay-brown swamp.

Claudia and her effects made it into the national headlines – but mostly, local and regional floods now seem too mundane to attract that kind of attention. Eleven days ago, Cumbria saw submerged roads, blocked drains and over 250 flood-related problems reported to the relevant councils. Railway lines in Cornwall were submerged; in Carmarthen, in west Wales, there were reports of the worst floods in living memory. But beyond the areas affected, who heard about these stories? Such comparatively small events, it seems, are now only to be expected.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Long after his conviction for sexual abuse, people in royalty, academia, business, journalism and politics sought his ear

He got by with a little help from his friends. From British royalty to White House alumni, from a Silicon Valley investor to a leftwing academic, connections and influence were the ultimate currency for Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet none appeared to challenge Epstein over his horrific crimes. If silence is complicity, the casual disdain of the elite circles he moved in spoke volumes.

Resignations, suspensions and infighting lead to party losing crown of highest number of seats in the county

“I know whenever I come back here next,” Nigel Farage told a jubilant crowd of hundreds in a leisure centre in Redruth, “Reform UK will become a dominant force, not just in Cornwall politics, but in British politics.”

That was in February and when the local elections arrived three months later it appeared Farage’s prophecy was in part coming true – Reform took 28 seats on Cornwall council, the highest number of any party.

There is understood to be growing unease in party over home secretary’s sweeping overhaul of refugee rights

Shabana Mahmood has warned Labour MPs that “dark forces are stirring up anger” over migration, amid growing alarm among senior party figures over the most sweeping overhaul of refugee rights in a generation.

On Monday, Mahmood will announce controversial new laws to overhaul refugee status, which must be reassessed every two years, as well as curbing asylum appeals and toughening the approach to rights to family life.

Restricting asylum seekers to one single appeal rather than different appeals on multiple grounds.

Creating a new body for fast-tracking cases for dangerous criminals and those with little hope of success.

Legislating to restrict last-minute modern slavery claims

Joining other countries in seeking reform of ECHR article 3 rights, to more narrowly define the risk of torture and degrading treatment.

Changing the Home Office’s duty to provide support to asylum seekers to a discretionary power, enabling them to potentially be removed from accommodation.

Not ‘appropriate’ to use licence fee payer’s money to pay US president after threat to sue for up to $5bn, says peer

The BBC should not pay any money to Donald Trump, the former BBC director general Tony Hall has said.

The US president has said he plans to sue the BBC for up to $5bn (£3.8bn) despite receiving the apology he demanded over a misleading Panorama edit of his 6 January speech.

November drop of 1.8% is biggest for this time of year since 2012, with chancellor’s plans looming

Budget speculation has depressed the UK property market, figures from a leading property website have suggested, with asking prices slipping in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s much anticipated fiscal set piece on 26 November.

The average new seller asking price fell by 1.8%, or £6,589, month on month in November, the figures collated by the property website Rightmove set out, taking the average price tag on a British home put up for sale to £364,833.

The US president has said he backs US lawmakers efforts to release the files, ahead of an expected House vote this week

US President Donald Trump has said he backs lawmakers’ efforts to release more files related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, despite being previously opposed to the measure.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, calling the controversy over his former friend’s criminality a “Democrat hoax.”