A majority of people imagine they’re far fresher-faced than they actually are. So should we be battling our internalised ageism and embracing the ravages of time?

Sit your old bones down, because I’ve got bad news: you probably look older than you think you do. Don’t shoot the messenger – blame science. A recent study published in the journal Psychology and Aging found that 59% of US adults aged 50 to 80 believe they look younger than other people their age. Women and people with higher incomes were slightly more likely to say they thought they looked fresher than their peers; and only 6% of adults in the bracket thought (or realised) they looked older than others their age. In short, most of us are delusional.

While the survey only included people over 50, I reckon they would have got the same results if they polled anyone over 30. Our brains have inbuilt denial mechanisms that stop us confronting our own mortality. Many people’s biological age tends to differ from their “ subjective age ” (or how old they feel ). Mine certainly does: according to my passport I’m 40, but in my head I’m still a sprightly 29.

Campaigners welcome move as survey suggests they have become too bright and risk causing accidents

Campaigners have hailed the government’s announcement of independent research into headlight glare, which comes as a survey suggests many drivers believe they have become too bright and risk causing accidents.

The RAC, which has been highlighting the problem in recent years, said it was a key concern among motorists and welcomed the move as an opportunity to fix it.

Britons were among seven people who died after missile hit World Central Kitchen vehicles

Three British nationals have been killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit an aid convoy in Gaza, World Central Kitchen has confirmed.

The three Britons were among seven aid workers employed by the charity spearheading efforts to alleviate looming famine in Gaza.

First bikes will be collected in the Netherlands and Germany in mid-April, with other countries following afterwards

Dutch cargo bike firm Babboe is recalling 22,000 of its popular cycles over safety fears, around one-third of its bikes on the road.

Babboe had already announced a recall of two models in February but said five more models were now a concern.

When desperate measures to persuade women to have children fail, it’s time to think differently about demographics

• Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

For the past 75 years in global public health, one of the major priorities has been exponential population growth and Malthusian concerns that the supply of food on the planet won’t be able to keep up. In 1951, the world’s population was 2.5 billion, which increased to 4 billion by 1975, 6.1 billion by 2000, and 8 billion by 2023. Governments in the two most populous countries, India and China, even implemented, respectively, draconian policies such as forced sterilisation and a one-child restriction.

It now seems that many nations have switched to worrying about the opposite problem. Findings published last month from the Global Burden of Disease study, which examines epidemiological trends across the world, notes that fertility rates are falling in most countries. This can be seen as a public health success: lower fertility rates tend to reflect fewer children dying in the first 10 years of life, and an environment that protects women’s bodily autonomy and access to birth control, as well as girls’ education. Having mainly planned pregnancies is seen as societal progress.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to lowest rate since records began in 1939

Elizabeth, 29, a sales executive from Surrey, would very much like to have children, but feels she is unable to do so for the time being.

“Simply – it’s money,” Elizabeth says. “I’ve been with my husband for 10 years, and we would have children already but for the cost of living.”

• Manchester United defender stresses dangers of heading
• ‘My son plays football and I advise him not to head the ball’

The Manchester United defender Raphaël Varane has said concussions have damaged his body as he stressed the importance of creating more awareness among players around the dangers of heading.

Varane said he had suffered a concussion a few days before playing in France’s 1-0 defeat by Germany in the quarter-finals of the 2014 World Cup, as well at his former club Real Madrid when they lost to Manchester City in the last 16 second leg of the 2020 Champions League.

Europe’s weights system is baffling for American cooks used to volumes and cups, but will metric’s accuracy eventually tip the scales?

Like most Americans, Samin Nosrat grew up in a home with cup measures in the kitchen. That said, they didn’t always get used. “My mom taught me in a more ‘old world’ way,” she says – measuring the water to cover rice with one of her knuckles, for instance. Nosrat, the author of cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat and presenter of the Netflix show with the same name, has built a career on what she calls “sensory-guided cooking” – helping home cooks to build culinary instincts by understanding how ingredients behave – and so admits to having “a somewhat tortured relationship with measurements”. But as a recipe writer, she describes herself as “neurotic”. “If I’m going to write recipes which are clear and which work,” says Nosrat, “it just makes sense to use scales. I have three sets.”

There is a chasm between Europe and America’s kitchen cultures. The fundamental difference is that Americans use volume, not weight, to make measurements in their kitchens. Cooking with cups is volume-based and relies heavily on visual cues – everyone knows what a cup of granulated sugar looks like; less so 200g or 7.1oz – while the metric system is weight-based. “The issue isn’t that Americans weigh things differently,” says Sarah Chamberlain, a writer who Americanises British cookbooks for the US market. “It’s that most of them don’t weigh things at all.”

Lawsuit argues lockdown violates inmates’ rights by preventing them from taking part in religiously significant event

Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday’s total solar eclipse .

The suit filed Friday in federal court in upstate New York argues that the 8 April lockdown violates inmates’ constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.