Approach to expanding trade has been castigated for allowing Beijing to invest heavily in vital UK infrastructure

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As even Donald Trump was forced to accept in scaling back his latest tariffs, China is just too big to ignore. And so it is, on a much smaller scale, that yet another UK government is doing several contradictory things at once when it comes to Beijing.

This weekend brought a particularly resonant example. On the one hand, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, was hinting that British Steel’s Chinese owner, Jingye, was to blame for neglect – if not worse – over the fate of the threatened blast furnaces at Scunthorpe.

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There’s funny, there’s mean, and there’s mean and funny. But unfunny and mean will always die a death

In these partisan times, when all is binary and everyone must pick a side, I have chosen mine. Aimee Lou Wood, she of The White Lotus and thus now instantly recognisable worldwide, is absolutely right to call out Saturday Night Live, the legendary US entertainment and satire show, for making jokes about her teeth . The special relationship is under enough strain without having to lean into old stereotypes about British gnashers. I am still reeling from the Big Book of British Smiles gag in The Simpsons and I continue floss every day because of it.

The SNL joke, if you are yet to see it, is part of a wider sketch making fun of the Trump administration. (Because if one thing has been proven to quell the march of the right, it’s parody.) A White Lotus character is mashed up with someone adjacent to Robert F Kennedy, he mentions fluoride, and a Wood-esque character says “What’s that?”

Athena Kugblenu is a writer and comedian

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Looking for love or a new career in San Francisco, Los Angeles or Phoenix? You just might find it in a Waymo autonomous vehicle

Name: Waymo.

Age: Founded in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project.

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Analysis of over-50s who engage with phones, tablets and other devices challenges fears of ‘digital dementia’

Fears that smartphones, tablets and other devices could drive dementia in later life have been challenged by research that found lower rates of cognitive decline in older people who used the technology.

An analysis of published studies that looked at technology use and mental skills in more than 400,000 older adults found that over-50s who routinely used digital devices had lower rates of cognitive decline than those who used them less.

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Former City minister denies allegations she received land illegally from her aunt, the ousted PM Sheikh Hasina

The former City minister Tulip Siddiq has said an arrest warrant issued against her in Bangladesh over allegations she illegally received a plot of land from her aunt, the country’s ousted former prime minister, is a “politically motivated smear campaign”.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Hampstead and Highgate MP said: “No one from the Bangladeshi authorities has contacted me. The entire time they’ve done trial by media. My lawyers proactively wrote to the Bangladeshi authorities, they never responded.

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Much-anticipated black comedy western from Midsommar director stars Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal

The first footage has been released of Eddington, the much-anticipated black comedy western from Midsommar director Ari Aster. The film, which will premiere at Cannes next month, is set in May 2020 and concerns a standoff between the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico and the town’s mayor, who is seeking re-election.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the sheriff, with Emma Stone his wife, while Pedro Pascal is the mayor. Austin Butler plays a charismatic preacher whose stirring speeches we see over YouTube and Instagram; we also see footage of the quarantined central characters on social media.

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No disrespect to the pop star or the rest of Blue Origin’s all-female crew, but most of them weren’t obvious astronaut material

I am broadly of the view that Katy Perry should do whatever she likes, and wear whatever she likes, and if she wants to be shot into space for no obvious purpose looking like one of Charlie’s Angels, then that falls squarely into those categories. So why am I so bothered by Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which has just made a suborbital flight to the edge of space and back? OK, it’s partly the outfits (see Angels, Charlie’s, above), but it’s mainly the flight manifest: Perry joined Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s fiancee; Amanda Nguyen , a civil rights activist; CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; film producer Kerianne Flynn and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe. I cannot help but notice that only two of these women had anything to do with astronauting (Nguyen studied astrophysics and interned at Nasa before becoming an activist).

Obviously it’s very staid and 20th century to think that only experts should be allowed in space – yet their absence did suggest the primary purpose of the trip to be tourism rather than research. Which in turn suggests that this was a dumb waste of money. Which itself makes you wonder just how many of the world’s problems would have to have been solved before space tourism would look like a worthwhile enterprise – hard to put a number on it, but significantly more than have been solved today.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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The reigning champions appear to have corrected the worst of their problems but the days when they conquered all before them are probably over

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There was something very familiar about Manchester City’s 5-2 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday. In August 2022, Palace went 2-0 up at the Etihad, the second goal a header from a corner but City came back to win 4-2, Erling Haaland scoring a hat-trick in a dominant second-half performance. Saturday’s game followed a similar path, with the exception that the City comeback began before half-time. This time the key figure wasn’t Haaland, but Kevin De Bruyne, who produced a display to remind everybody just how worthy he was of the tributes that have followed the announcement that he will leave the club in the summer.

Does this, then, mean that City are somehow suddenly back? They’re unbeaten in five games, three of them won. The January signings, Omar Marmoush in particular, have enabled them to stabilise. They are back in the top five and should qualify for the Champions League next season (with all the usual caveats about the Premier League charges they are facing , which they deny). That is a significant step as they look to rebuild, not only in terms of being to attract players but for future PSR calculations .

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com , and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

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Families of those displaced wait for news from Darfur amid reports of hundreds killed by paramilitary RSF

Sudan’s information blackout has left relatives of those in Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp struggling for news of their safety after it was overrun by militiamen at the weekend.

As leaders across the globe prepared to meet for peace talks in London to pressure the backers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army to agree a ceasefire, the RSF launched a deadly assault that led to it seizing Zamzam after weeks of tightening its siege.

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