About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Those unemployed for a year or more explain how they are coping

Thomas doesn’t leave the house much. Apart from walking his dog, the only other excursion the 24-year-old regularly makes is a “humiliating” weekly trip to Iceland, where he stocks up on seven £1 frozen meals, usually an assortment of bland curries with the occasional garishly sweet, takeaway-style Chinese meal. “You’re going in and buying seven and the cashier is 100% thinking: oh, that’s one a day,” he says.

Half the time, he doesn’t bother eating them. “You just sit there and go: I don’t want it again. I’ve had it for two days on the trot.”

He’s the perfect comedian to cool down these incendiary times. As Philly Philly takes his Uh Oh standup show on tour, he talks about woke traps, lefty blindspots – and gen Z’s lurch to the right

Born in Stoke-on-Trent to a British mother and Chinese-Malaysian father then raised in Borneo and educated in Brunei, Bath and Cambridge, Phil Wang – or “Old Wang”, as he refers to himself mock-imperiously on stage – has certainly been around. Today, the 36-year-old standup with the pleasantly befuddled air is in a cafe near his home in London, wearing high-waisted baggy black trousers, a blue shirt, salmon-coloured New Balances and a baseball cap bearing the word “Chump”. Most significantly, he is sporting a moustache.

Wang went public with his face furniture two years ago but the upcoming tour of his new show, Uh Oh, will mark the first time he has taken it out on the road. Is the tache here for good? “Well, I’ve got five minutes of standup on it now,” he says over coffee. “Until I come up with a better five minutes, it’s staying.”

Politicians, social media and far-right agitators convinced people that migrant-targeting violence would solve all their problems

Within minutes of the footage going online – of a Black man stabbing a white man – there was a sense of inexorability to what came next in Northern Ireland.

The grievances, the social media platforms, the politicians’ doublespeak and the international cheerleaders all provided a fuse. On Monday night came the spark.

Claudia Sheinbaum started as an activist. Now she is Mexico’s president. Has she stayed true to her ideals?

The president’s dressmaker works at home, down a narrow road in a working-class neighbourhood on the southernmost edge of Mexico City. There is no sign, just the house number marked in chalk on a rusted metal door. In the brightly lit, pink-walled room at the back of her modest house, Olivia Trujillo sits at her sewing machine, piecing together the president’s signature suits and dresses. Trujillo sews everything here, accompanied only by her family, three dogs, and one green parrot. Once finished, an assistant spirits away the items by motorcycle straight to the National Palace, where the president lives. Claudia Sheinbaum’s clothing – tailored from modest fabrics produced in Mexico and featuring Indigenous motifs – is one of the many ways that her administration communicates its slogan: “For the good of all, first the poor.”

The dressmaker has just one problem with the president. People who wear made-to-measure clothes normally sit for the tailor twice: first, to have their measurements taken, then a second time for final adjustments. “Not once has she done a fitting for me, never!” says Trujillo, an exacting and neatly turned-out woman in her 60s. She knows the president is busy. “Still,” she objects, “any normal woman does a fitting for important clothes, like their wedding dress.”

While he denies wrongdoing, Sullivan traded on the idea of womens’ bodies as consumable objects. His terrible era laid the ground for the 21st-century porn industry

There was a time, not so long ago, when female breasts appeared daily in some national newspapers. It was part of a culture that stripped and infantilised women, presenting very young “girls” with a nod and a wink, as though it was all a joke. Feminists who objected were dismissed as killjoys, even though the campaign against what became known as “Page 3” was ultimately successful.

This week’s Panorama programme revisited that era, focusing on the alleged activities of one man, David Sullivan, who made a fortune from sex shops and sleazy tabloid newspapers. The allegations against Sullivan, which he angrily denies, are that he “interviewed” young women at his mansion in Essex and demanded sex in return for furthering their careers as “glamour models”. The women’s stories were horrible.

Joan Smith is an author, journalist and a former chair of the mayor of London’s violence against women and girls board

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

From marvelling at teenage wonderkids to tracking the world’s largest coffee pot, our team of writers outline their expectations for the jamboree in North America

• Use our Bracketology to click your way through the group stage and the knockouts to crown a champion

  
  

Spain and Portugal in the final, with Spain winning. I’ve played our Bracketology game 20 times and gotten 20 different paths but Spain always end up winning. Alexander Abnos

‘If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin how else can you describe them?’ said Hilary Benn

• Full report: Police use water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland

• Tell us: how have you been affected by the situation in Belfast?

The Home Office has released more information about the increase in immigration enforcement activity in Northern Ireland mentioned by Hilary Benn in his interview this morning. (See 10.52am.)

It says the number of immigration enforcement raids to detain and remove illegal migrants in Northern Ireland has “increased by 16% (from 2,312 during the last 21 months of the previous government, compared to 2,682 under this government).”

The home secretary is investing £3.7bn into immigration enforcement activity over the next 3 years including in Northern Ireland. Investment into enforcement will increase by over 20% by 28/29.

This will see a surge in intelligence-led operations lead by immigration enforcement and Border Force along CTA [common travel area] routes to detect, track down, arrest and remove illegal migrants. Nearly 1,000 illegal migrants have been removed in the last year alone.

Despite a small real terms increase in Scottish government funding for 2026/27, councils still face major risks to their financial sustainability as funding fails to keep pace with rising demand and increasing costs.

Of notable concern, the ‘critical financial pressures’ facing our health and social care partnerships, and real terms reductions in the capital settlement justify and strengthen support for the resourcing Cosla called for through our budget lobbying this year.

The report quite rightly expresses grave concern for local government finance over the medium term, spanning from the Scottish spending review. [We] will continue to advocate for fair and flexible funding for our councils moving forward.

US launches second round of airstrikes on Iran, and Tehran responds by targeting Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan

• US strikes Iran for second day, as ceasefire appears close to collapse

Three Indian seafarers were killed in a US attack on an oil tanker earlier this week, India’s shipping minister, ‌Sarbananda Sonowal, said.

“It is deeply unfortunate to learn of the tragic incident aboard the Palau-flagged MT Settebello. Sadly, three Indian seafarers initially reported missing are now confirmed dead after bodies have been located and identified,” he wrote in a post on X.

The Middle East is being pulled deeper into crisis & the consequences reach far beyond the region.”

Budget airline describes inquiry as ‘bogus’ as watchdog says it is only large carrier flying from UK to impose charge

• Business live – latest updates

Europe’s biggest low-cost airline, Ryanair, is facing an investigation over the mandatory fee it charges a parent to sit with their child.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the Irish carrier’s terms and conditions require at least one parent to sit with their children, including those with disabilities, and bills them about £8 a flight to do so.

Home secretary also urged to force tech firms to share data on stolen devices and if they are reactivated

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has asked the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to force all phone companies to make stolen devices “unusable bricks” in order to make them harder to sell on and less desirable to steal.

London is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day. The city accounts for up to three-quarters of all mobile phone thefts in England and Wales.