Lund Point in east London was once ‘a beautiful community’, according to Tee Fabikun, who has lived there since 1997. Now just four flats are occupied. Why are Fabikun and her friends hanging on? And what happened to the long-promised redevelopment?

Tee Fabikun is sitting in an armchair in her cosy, homely flat, surrounded by her things – papers and letters, family photos, a few Nigerian handicrafts, a forest of houseplants by the window. She is telling me about her neighbours here on the fifth floor of Lund Point, a tower block on the Carpenters estate in Stratford, east London. Next door there’s “a grumpy old man”; well, she thought he was a grumpy old man, but then she saw him in the lift with his granddaughter and he was sweet with her, so maybe he’s not so bad. “There’s always two sides.”

In the next flat along is a young couple who met in the building, maybe in that lift. She was living on a higher floor, but moved down and in with him when they got married, and rented out her place. Then there’s a Bangladeshi family who only speak a little English. Fabikun’s first contact with them was when their daughter knocked on the door holding out an exercise book and just said “homework”; after that Fabikun would often help with her studies. And so on. And it’s not just her immediate neighbours on the fifth floor that Tee knows; she knows pretty much everyone in the 21-storey block.

Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her

In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of Japan’s feared and rule-bound criminal underworld. She must have defeated many male gangsters. How, I asked her, did she do it? “First the legs,” she said, hands clasped, maintaining the calm demeanour of a village priest. “You cut him down with a club or a plank of wood.” Then you get to work.

Nishimura’s relaxed attitude to violence – you suspect, speaking to her, that it’s a little more than that – is what first caught the attention of yakuza members in 1986, when she was a 19-year-old runaway and former juvenile-prison inmate living in Gifu, a city near Nagoya. One night that year, Nishimura received a phone call. A pregnant friend named Aya was in trouble. Nishimura grabbed a baseball bat, ran down the street and found Aya surrounded by five men. When one of them kicked Aya in the belly, Nishimura yelled for her friend to run, then went for the attackers with her bat.

The more we learn about the gut, the more we realise how central it is to health. Here are 16 ways to look after it, from making sure we get enough fibre to not taking phones to the loo

“Our gut is a complex machine,” says Dr Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire. “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” says Verma.

FairSquare report claims migrant workers injured in Saudi Arabia received no compensation, including one who says his legs were crushed

Lying in a hospital bed in Saudi Arabia, his legs encased in plaster casts, Shrawan Shah Rauniyar clung to the hope that at least he would be fairly compensated. After all, when his legs were crushed under a giant metal beam that fell off a forklift, he was working on a project belonging to one of the most profitable companies in the world: Saudi Aramco.

Rauniyar, a migrant worker from Nepal, was not employed directly by the state-owned energy company, but like tens of thousands of other migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom, he worked for a small labour supply company, which sent him to work on a project managed by the Italian firm Saipem, which in turn was contracted to Aramco.

The move against the boss of London’s Southbank Centre sends a forbidding message about who is and isn’t seen as fit to lead in UK culture

I met Tommy Robinson once. It was 10 years ago exactly, during one of his many failed attempts to mainstream Islamophobia in British politics with a new “movement” called Pegida – a copycat of Germany’s far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

There was little memorable about this “launch”, which as a social affairs editor for Sky News I was sent to cover, only to discover a pitiful gathering of a few blokes at a pub near Luton. The thing that does stand out in my memory is what Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said to me. “It’s the Muslims that are a problem,” he said. “But you’re all right. You speak English. You’re like us.”

Who says hair can’t be art? We meet Taiba Akhuetie, who uses flowing human and synthetic locks to take brollies, tables, chairs, lampshades, handbags and more into a wild and wavy new dimension

Taiba Akhuetie’s art is uncomfortable to look at. This is mostly because you’re not sure whether you’re in the presence of something alive or dead. She uses hair as her medium, constructing mundane items out of synthetic and human locks. Handbags, mirrors, rocking chairs and umbrellas are adorned with long, chunky braids and loose, pin-straight strands. The result is that these inanimate objects take on the eerie quality of taxidermy.

Akhuetie, whose work is about to go on show at the Sarabande Foundation in London, has memories of being fascinated by hair in her childhood. “We used to go to my mum’s friend’s house …” She stops and quickly corrects herself. “My auntie’s – she would be called auntie, obviously.” Akhuetie would watch her “auntie” braiding her sister’s hair, taken aback by how quickly her fingers moved. She also remembers doing plaits for her friends at school in Kingston, Surrey, and feeling that she was naturally good at it.

Office for National Statistics says figure of 171,000 in year to December 2025 was the lowest since 2021

The Home Office has also published asylum figures this morning. These show that the number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels stood at 20,885 at the end of March 2026, down 35% year-on-year from 32,326. The Press Association says:

It is the lowest figure since data was first reported in 2022, Home Office figures show.

The total had climbed as high as 56,018 at the end of September 2023.

Brits are leaving on a massive scale and non-EU immigration remains far too high. Mass immigration undermines our society and low wage immigration is bad for the economy. British families feel it in lower wages, longer waiting lists for public services and housing shortages.

Labour must go further and reform indefinite leave to remain before their hard-left flank forces them to abandon it altogether.

MP says current system is unfair and his idea would result in a ‘wealth tax that works’

• UK politics live – latest updates

The former health secretary Wes Streeting has set out plans for a “wealth tax that works”, by equalising tax on assets and income.

Streeting said the current system – in which capital gains tax is generally much lower than income tax – was not fair and penalised work.

Ban social media and reform education to tackle scandal of young people not in work or study, says Peter Hyman

Schools have become a “pipeline” to worklessness for a large cohort of young people in the UK, according to an influential former Labour adviser who has called for urgent action to help a “lost generation”.

Peter Hyman, a former adviser to Tony Blair and Keir Starmer, told the Guardian the government should ban social media and enact radical education reform to tackle the “national scandal” of young people who are not in education, employment or training (Neet).

Chancellor launches ‘Great British summer savings scheme’ after Keir Starmer postpones fuel duty increase

• Planned fuel duty rise to be scrapped, says Keir Starmer

Rachel Reeves is to promise free summer bus rides for children and cut tariffs on some food imports, as part of a package of measures aimed at easing the costs of the Iran conflict.

The chancellor will give a statement in the House of Commons on Thursday, outlining her latest plans for cushioning the blow to consumers from an expected rise in inflation later this year.