Chelsea star on her club’s new manager and how the Euros defence is motivating the forward to make history

The one-on-one shooting drills have concluded, the coaches are collecting the footballs and maybe some of the watching parents are keen to get back inside in the warm, but none of these young players want to go anywhere just yet. A long, eager queue has formed. They all want their picture taken first with the England forward Lauren James.

“Sometimes I forget how many people look up to me,” says James, pleasantly surprised, after helping out with the grassroots session at Worcester Park in south-west London. Perhaps it is also easy for the rest of us to forget that the Chelsea No 10, who has played 24 times for the Lionesses, only recently turned 23.

Ben and Jack bonded while watching Lord of the Rings and admiring Aragorn. Now, their sexually-charged friendship has turned to a hot relationship

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I first spotted Jack across the room, at a queer event, and was completely transfixed

Before I met Ben, I had been having a lot of casual sex – but often I wouldn’t feel entirely present

A hearty soup with a Mediterranean edge that’s chock-full of just the right balance of comforting ingredients

I’ve written before about things that feel just right , such as a bath at the perfect temperature. To this list I’m now adding making a stew after an autumnal walk, and the tearing and dunking of good bread into a steaming bowl of said stew. Of course, the stew has to be just right, too – not too brothy or light, and it needs to sit in the stomach radiating away, but not so heavy as to put you straight to sleep. I think today’s stew, sweetly spiced and generously flavoured with some of my favourite ingredients, might be that “just-right stew”.

From chaotic collisions to depletion of the ozone layer, the thousands of satellites in orbit around Earth have the potential to wreak havoc in coming decades. What are the solutions to a growing menace?

“Since the start of the space age, we’ve had a throwaway culture – a bit like plastics in the ocean,” says Nick Shave, managing director of Astroscale UK, an in-orbit servicing company headquartered in Japan.

Getting a satellite into orbit around the Earth used to be a big deal. From the launch of the first, Sputnik, in 1957, as it became easier and cheaper to put satellites into space, the numbers have boomed. In 2022, there were about 6,000 and by 2030, one estimate suggests there will be nearly 60,000 satellites in orbit around our planet.

Men in my situation have to come out twice: first as gay, then as someone who is attracted to senior citizens

You can usually tell a person’s age by the state of their hands. I stared at the pair across from me, folded on the scratched wood bar beside the lemon wedges and cocktail napkins. They were rough-hewn, liver-spotted, with wrinkles that cross-hatched a sparse thicket of hair. It was another night of yearning at a gay bar and I was contemplating going home with the man beside me because his hands kept a score (“I’m 65!” they screamed) that belied everything he’d done to hide the decades behind him. His face looked middle-aged, no doubt thanks to a skin-care routine that cost more each month than my whole wardrobe; his body was toned from years spent in the gym; and his hair was buzzed on the side and longer on the top, which was fashionable in New York back then. Everyone in cosmopolitan western cities tries to look young. But I only slept with men who looked old.

Back then I was 24, but the guys I wanted were at least in their mid-50s. Now I’m 33, and my lovers are almost always senior citizens. My husband is 77. “You have daddy issues,” a college friend I no longer see told me blithely a year or so after graduation, as though this cliche was newer and wiser when it emerged from his mouth. Now it’s a wonder no one tries to diagnose me with “grandaddy issues”.

The TV presenter on pet lions and monkeys, moving to the UK from Sudan, and his love for the Scottish Highlands

Born in Sudan in 1990, Hamza Yassin is a wildlife cameraman and TV presenter. With a BA in zoology with conservation, and a master’s in biological imaging and photography, Hamza had his first presenting experience on The One Show, and went on to front Countryfile and CBBC’s Ranger Hamza’s Eco Quest. The champion of 2022’s Strictly Come Dancing, he lives on the west coast of Scotland. His book, Hamza’s Wild World, is out now.

My neighbour had a few animals that he kept as pets, and one of them was a lioness who had just given birth. I was super-excited to meet the cub. Shortly after this photo was taken, my neighbour asked: “Do you want to go in and say hello to the lioness too?” I said: “No, um, thank you. I think I’m OK!”

While Don Jr is influential behind the scenes, Ivanka and Melania have been notably absent during this campaign

In late afternoon sunshine, Eric Trump shook his fist and led chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The second son of Donald Trump told a fervent crowd: “They tried to smear us, they tried to bankrupt us, they came after us, they impeached him twice … then, guys, they tried to kill him.”

A who’s who of the Maga movement had gathered for a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, less than three months after the Republican presidential nominee survived an assassination attempt there. Trump was joined on stage by running mate JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk . But if he was looking for moral support from his family, he would have to settle for Eric. His other children – and his wife – were notably absent.

When I started looking at how the superhero movie sausage gets made for a new HBO comedy, I found a world of dysfunction, missed deadlines and utterly frazzled film-makers

When the wheels are coming off, there is no more exquisite humiliation that can be visited upon an adult human than being the director of a big-budget superhero franchise movie. Not even working as the guy who had to wipe a medieval king’s arse. “Groom of the Stool” is sometimes a more covetable credit than “Directed by”. And as even the most fearsome talent agent will tell you, both guarantee you get shit on the back end.

But that’s confusing, you might think, because aren’t directors supposed to be god tier? That’s definitely what I thought, back when I started as one of the writers on The Franchise, a new HBO comedy set behind the scenes in the world of superhero movies. Except the more we talked to people inside the comic-book movie machines of Marvel and DC – and we talked to huge numbers of people – the more dysfunctional the picture that emerged became.

News that no symbolic apology or reparations are planned could put Starmer on collision course with other nations

The UK government will not apologise over Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade at next week’s Commonwealth heads of government (Chogm) summit in Samoa, Downing Street has said.

Downing Street said on Monday that the government would not be paying reparations for slavery. News that neither an apology nor reparations are on the agenda could put Keir Starmer, who will attend the gathering, on a collision course with other nations.