Exclusive: Number of 18- to 24-year-olds needing help in England and Wales doubles in five years as services take calls every day in 2024

Honeypot locations posted on social media and poor-quality navigation apps are likely to be responsible for a record number of callouts for mountain rescue services, including a huge rise in young people needing saved, analysis reveals.

For the first time, mountain rescue teams in England and Wales were called out every day of the year in 2024. Callouts in Scotland topped 1,000 for the first time.

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Providers reprimanded for pressuring customers, exploiting women’s insecurities or trivialising medical risks

The Advertising Standards Authority has reprimanded six cosmetic treatment providers for pressuring customers, exploiting women’s insecurities or trivialising medical risks after an investigation into adverts for liquid Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs).

The cosmetic procedure, which involves injecting fillers into the buttocks to enhance their shape and size, is unregulated in the UK and can carry significant health risks, not least from potentially life-threatening infections.

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Scientists call for urban areas to be tested for contaminants and potentially cleaned before wildflowers are planted

Wildflowers could be absorbing toxic metals from soil in urban areas and passing toxins on to pollinators, a study has found.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that common plants including white clover and bindweed, which are vital forage for pollinators in cities, can accumulate arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from contaminated soils.

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By claiming that any regulation is censorship, the White House is bullying Britain to abandon online safety laws and digital taxes

Compared with many countries around the world, the US is still a great democracy, but a much lesser one than it was four months ago. The constitution has not been rewritten. Checks and balances have not been dissolved. The difference is a president who ignores those constraints, and the impotence of the institutions that should enforce them.

Which is the true US, the one enshrined in law or the one that smirks in contempt of law? If the latter, should Britain welcome its embrace as a kindred nation? That is an existential question lurking in the technical folds of a potential transatlantic trade agreement.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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I think back to my 20-year-old self and my sister, lost in her imagined worlds, and I feel compassion for us both

When my sister was 21, she was diagnosed with dementia. She had survived a malignant brain tumour diagnosis when she was 10, but her cancer was inoperable and sat directly on her hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory formation.

My sister moved in and out of what I would call “reality”. She spent days talking to people I couldn’t see, laughing at jokes I couldn’t hear. I would cajole her into playing Scrabble with me, and after a couple of hours she might say something “normal”, like, “How are you, Jackie?” She just needed mental stimulation, I would think. If I could play Scrabble with her every day, she would come back to me.

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To survive in acting, she thought she had to nail received pronunciation. Then she remembered Port Talbot’s extraordinary lineage, reverted to her native accent – and everything changed

Rosie Sheehy was in rehearsals for Conor McPherson’s new play, The Brightening Air, when the stage manager burst in with “something to say”. There was a pause and Sheehy expected a calamity to be announced. Her co-stars Brian Gleeson and Chris O’Dowd, who play her siblings, were present but not Derbhle Crotty. “For a second I thought, ‘What’s happened to Derbhle – has she been knocked down?’”

In fact, the Olivier awards nominations had just been announced – with Sheehy shortlisted for best actress (alongside eventual winner Lesley Manville) for her searing performance in Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 expressionist play Machinal, at the Old Vic in London. “It was hard to process,” says Sheehy, her face still bearing some of that surprise.

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The neurosurgeon saved the boxer’s life in 1991 and since then the pair have become close friends

“This man is my hero,” Michael Watson says simply as he turns to Peter Hamlyn, the neurosurgeon who saved his life and carried out seven operations on the stricken boxer’s brain in the aftermath of his fight against Chris Eubank in September 1991. “We are like family, me and Peter, and we have unusual banter. Peter says I’m a little bit dark to be family.”

Watson chuckles at his friend’s quip but, having interviewed Watson multiple times before and after the fateful bout that pushed him close to death, and having spent the morning with Hamlyn, I sense an essential truth. The brain surgeon and the boxer share a deeply compassionate intent to help each other.

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Freedom of information requests reveal disproportionate use of batons and rigid handcuffs for Muslims behind bars

Muslim prisoners are disproportionately subjected to force including pain-inducing techniques by jail staff, according to new data.

Freedom of information requests found that in eight out of nine prisons with high Muslim populations, Muslim men were more likely than the average inmate to be confronted with batons, made to wear rigid bar handcuffs, or deliberately held in a painful position.

At Belmarsh, a prison in south-east London often used to hold terrorist suspects, Muslim prisoners made up 32% of the population in 2023. Over the same period, Muslim men were subjected to 43% of incidents involving the use of rigid bar handcuffs and 61% of incidents involving the use of pain-inducing techniques.

At HMP Whitemoor, in Cambridgeshire, Muslim prisoners constituted 43% of the prison population. But more than half – 55% – of the use of rigid bar handcuffs and pain-inducing techniques over the year was on Muslim prisoners.

At HMP Isis in Thamesmead, south-east London, Muslim prisoners made up 45% of the inmates. But batons were used on Muslim prisoners in more than 57% of the incidents where batons were drawn, and 56% of incidents of pain-inducing techniques involved Muslim prisoners.

At HMP/YOI Feltham B in west London, Muslim prisoners were 42% of the population. Figures showed they were subjected to 53% of the uses of rigid bar cuffs, 57% of the instances where batons were drawn and 64% of pain-nducing techniques.

At HMP Woodhill, in Milton Keynes, Muslim prisoners constituted 37% of the population but were subjected to 49% of the uses of rigid bar handcuffs, 63% of instances of batons being drawn and 64% of incidents using pain-inducing techniques.

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Part-school, part-social network, a Mouride circle on the Spanish island is helping teenage asylum seekers prepare for adulthood and navigate a challenging welfare system

• Photographs by Diana Takacsova

In a three-storey building in a residential neighbourhood in Gran Canaria, about an hour’s drive from the airport, more than a dozen teenage Senegalese boys in colourful, flowing robes sit in a circle, soulfully chanting supplications. Behind them, girls sit with their heads covered, praying. On the top-floor terrace a feast of steaming rice, meat and vegetable gravy is being prepared.

It is a bright Sunday afternoon in February. The young people are mostly asylum seekers from Senegal, who live in detention centres where conditions can be brutal, according to Spanish human rights groups.

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