Logjam in pension pot valuations is ‘causing huge distress’ and costing money for divorcing couples

Current and retired teachers who are getting divorced have said their lives are on hold because of a bureaucratic logjam involving their pensions.

One teacher, Katherine Laird, said she believed she was among “huge numbers” of people who were unable to finalise a divorce while she waited for a valuation from Teachers’ Pensions, with the wait “causing huge distress and also costing money”.

Lack of leaders exposes overreliance on the captain, Heather Knight, and the flaws in Jon Lewis’s easy-option coaching

The England women’s cricket team were touted as gold medal hopes at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. They didn’t even manage bronze. Heather Knight was ruled out on the eve of the tournament with a hip injury and the stand-in captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt, struggled to assert her authority: her wife, Katherine, was reprimanded for swearing on the field of play; England threw away their bronze-medal match against New Zealand; and Sophie Ecclestone was shown live on television knocking a chair over with her bat.

Why hark back to something that happened more than two years ago? Because England’s disastrous group-stage exit from the T20 World Cup , at the hands of West Indies, had eerie echoes of summer 2022. This time, Knight’s injury was a “popped calf” (her words), but it was once again the vice-captain, Sciver-Brunt, who was forced to step in when Knight couldn’t take the field.

The Indonesian photographer created this beautiful vibrant image using models dressed in a rainbow of colours

‘Conceptual photography is just like making paintings,” Dikye Ariani says. “You come up with an idea in your imagination and then you work to bring your visualisation to life.” One morning in the rainy season of 2022, Ariani drove from her home in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to neighbouring Bogor for an early shoot. Waiting for her at Lake Tamansari were the five women pictured, local talent hired to take part as models. For the next four hours, Ariani dressed the women, positioned them and various elements in the warm water, and climbed up and down a ladder with her phone. She took about 100 photographs from different angles.

“In the centre you can see a very common boat called a perahu mayang , and on the water, lotus flowers and enormous lily pads,” Ariani says. “I chose a rainbow of colours for the clothing to bring vibrancy to the image, and each woman is wearing a traditional bamboo hat.”

There was more to Emma Coronel’s turn at the Milan fashion show than most would have realised. It’s a cynical game of clues and signals

In the midst of an important Italian fashion event, Emma Coronel Aispuro , who is a former beauty queen but no ordinary model, appeared on the Milan catwalk wearing a sumptuous wedding dress. The wife of Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera – better known by the nickname El Chapo, or “the shorty”, due to his short stature – made her appearance at Palazzo Serbelloni during Milan fashion week (which, incidentally, has officially distanced itself from her). Much has been written about the fact of her appearance. The remaining issue is why it happened and whether those who were complicit knew what they were complicit in.

Guzmán is considered the premier Mexican drug lord. Before his capture, he was head of the Sinaloa cartel . He has escaped from prison twice : in 2001 and then in 2015. Arrested again in 2016, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is serving in Florence prison, Colorado.

The French-Senegalese film-maker on winning the top prize at Berlin for her otherworldly new work, cultural identity and her beef with Beyoncé

What thoughts would go through the mind of a king exiled from his country for more than a century? What if that monarch took the form of a wooden statue boxed up for transportation from France to west Africa? Would he worry about recognising his native land? Perhaps his musings might turn to the abstract: “Within me resonates infinity.” It would be a challenge for any film-maker to choose an inanimate object, however resonant, as her philosophical protagonist and narrator – but French-Senegalese director Mati Diop does just this to powerful effect in her new feature Dahomey .

Part documentary, part visual and sonic poem, Dahomey follows a consignment of historical artefacts as they are returned by the French government to their source in the former African nation of Dahomey, now Benin. This year’s winner of the Berlin film festival’s top prize, the Golden Bear , Dahomey is the latest triumph for Diop, 42, who for a decade and a half has been a much-admired presence in world cinema, first as an actor, then as a director. She made a memorable acting debut in 2008 in Claire Denis’s hypnotic urban reverie 35 Shots of Rum and later became the first Black female director to have a feature in competition in Cannes. That was 2019’s visionary Atlantics , a story of young Senegalese men who attempt the perilous journey to Europe by boat – only to return as ghosts.

Foreign secretary discussed China’s treatment of Uyghurs and support of Russia as well as ‘areas of cooperation’

David Lammy pressed his Chinese counterpart on human rights concerns and China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during talks in Beijing, the Foreign Office has said.

The foreign secretary had been under pressure to take a tough line on a range of human rights issues with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, when the pair met on Friday during Lammy’s first visit to China since taking office.

The 12 Years a Slave star on hoarding, lying about running, and getting torn to shreds for driving badly

Born in London, Chiwetel Ejiofor, 47, trained at the National Youth Theatre and Lamda. In 2008, he won an Olivier for his Othello at the Donmar Warehouse, London. His performance in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave gained him an Oscar nomination and the best actor Bafta. His other work includes Rob Peace, which he also wrote and directed, Endgame and Doctor Strange. His latest Marvel movie is Venom: The Last Dance, out on 25 October. He lives in London with his partner and child.

What is your greatest fear?
It’s actually people knowing how fearful I am.

Both Harris and Trump have been giving long interviews on a range of podcasts, signaling a shift in campaign strategy

For much of this strange and unprecedented presidential campaign cycle, candidates have been making news for the press they aren’t doing, rather than what they say when they actually give interviews. Kamala Harris was criticized for a lack of real sit-downs following her sudden ascent to the nomination over the summer. Donald Trump , meanwhile, keeps pulling out of major-press interviews, including one with NBC News, as well as a 60 Minutes segment. (Harris did appear on the TV newsmagazine institution as scheduled.) But both candidates have firmed up their dedication to traveling into less traditional media territory: podcasts . Between the two of them, this may be the most podcast-favoring presidential campaign ever conducted.

It might seem like an odd strategy. Even for hardcore podcast enthusiasts, it might feel like a medium that peaked in excitement a couple of election cycles ago, now lingering somewhere above Pokémon Go but below TikTok and Netflix. Format-wise, talk-based podcasts still hew closely to old-fashioned radio and – with video components now popular – talk shows, which don’t exactly feel like the most forward-thinking reference points. And though they can produce plenty of sound bites, podcasts aren’t exactly concise, either. Isn’t doing a big entertainment podcast akin to sitting for a lightweight Jimmy Fallon interview but at marathon length and, depending on the host, featuring even more self-satisfied cackling?

We would like to hear what your local shopping centre has meant to you and how use of them has changed over the years

Shopping centres across the UK have been declining in recent years, as a vicious cycle of store closures and internet shopping have changed consumer habits for good.

With this in mind we would like to hear how your local shopping centre and how you use it have changed over the years.