Content creators love the built-in camera; sceptics call them ‘pervert glasses’. Do we really need any more hi-tech wearables, even with a voice assistant that sounds like Judi Dench?

Lately, I’ve been hearing Judi Dench’s voice in my head. She tells me tomorrow’s forecast, when to turn right, that there’s been another message in my group chat. Day or night, Dame Judi is eager to assist. When I ask the eight-time Academy Award nominee what I’m looking at, she answers: a residential area, a person in a pub, daffodils. “They are a bright yellow colour and are often associated with spring.”

This isn’t a delusion. This is, apparently, progress. I am test-driving Meta’s smartglasses and Dench voices its integrated AI assistant: “Here to chat, answer questions, create images and provide advice and inspiration,” said “Judi” when I selected her over the actors John Cena and Kristen Bell. “Shall we begin?”

Many will recognise their own experiences of digital abuse in Collien Fernandes’s allegations – technology offers perpetrators both tools and cover

Some stories that unfold in real life would read like the plot of a bad crime novel if you wrote them down. Too obvious, too contrived, almost lazy in their cruelty. For example, this one: a woman spends years trying to identify the person who has allegedly been violating her online, only to eventually conclude that it was her husband all along.

This is how the case of Germany’s once-favourite celebrity couple Collien Fernandes and Christian Ulmen now presents itself to the public. Fernandes, TV presenter, actor and author, has been a familiar face in mainstream entertainment for more than two decades. Ulmen, an actor, producer and former MTV presenter, is long associated with a certain kind of ironic, self-aware masculinity. The two married in 2011, had a daughter, and cultivated the image of a modern, witty supercouple, working together on series and advertisements, in which they playfully talked about their seemingly average marriage for comedic effect. Until that image fractured.

Embassy Village offers 40 canal-side flats and support with budgeting, cooking and finding work, to help men start new lives and rediscover community

It costs a lot to live by the canal in central Manchester, with even the pokiest of studios renting for £1,000. But in Embassy Village, the city’s newest waterside community, residents do not need to be rich. Quite the opposite, in fact. To live there, you have to be male, homeless and ready to get your life back on track.

Nestled between the River Irwell and the Bridgewater canal, just across from the fashionable Castlefield district, Embassy’s 40 studio flats have been built under two Victorian viaducts carrying the city’s trams and trains.

From medieval church wall paintings to Liam Gallagher’s viral X post, charity has catalogued more than 6,600 pieces

Some of the UK’s smallest public murals are on bollards in Shrewsbury while one of the biggest is on a 1960s 16-storey block of flats in Gosport.

Perhaps the funniest though is in Cardiff. Ahead of last summer’s Oasis concerts it was a straightforward copy of Liam Gallagher’s viral post on X declaring: “Because Cardiff is the bollox.”

Government keen to avoid panic as oil price surges, but perhaps households need advice on reducing consumption

Labour ministers sent out in recent days to respond to the looming energy crisis sparked by the Iran war have essentially stuck to that reassuring wartime slogan: keep calm and carry on.

“I think people should go about their lives as normal, knowing that the government is taking action to bring energy bills down,” James Murray, the chief secretary to the Treasury, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday.

The philosophy was embraced by film noir, the French New Wave and modern hitmen questioning life’s purpose. Now dust off your turtlenecks, for Sirāt and a new version of Albert Camus’ The Stranger look set to make ennui on-trend again

“For it all to be consummated, to feel less alone, I had only to wish for a big crowd on the day of my execution, and for them to greet me with cries of hate.” The lacerating signoff of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger isn’t a collection of words you’ll see appearing as life advice in some influencer’s Instagram caption any time soon. In the age of vapid social media self-help, François Ozon’s new film adaptation of the existentialist masterpiece rears up like a great monolith. Eighty-four years after the novel was published, that’s rather unexpected; as far as IP goes, L’Étranger (The Stranger) was probably some way behind Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on the film industry’s revival list. Does this mean that existentialism is suddenly back in vogue? Or is the film just a farewell tour for every angsty student’s favourite source of tattoo quotes?

It should be said that Ozon’s version is a big improvement on Luchino Visconti’s ill-conceived 1967 stab at Camus’s novel, Lo Straniero (the only other direct adaptation). Filmed in serenely aloof silvery monochrome, the new film is a tasteful but pointed interpretation. Newcomer Benjamin Voisin is superb in the lead as antihero Meursault, who is famously unmoved by his mother’s death and says the sun’s glare is what makes him shoot an Arab. This Meursault is hard-edged in his nonconformism, coming across at times like a sociopathic, colonial-era Patrick Bateman, next to the book’s sleepily acquiescent figure. And Ozon is on politically strident form, recentring the story on colonial power relations from the prologue onwards – which features a chirpy newsreel-style propaganda film about Algiers’ “smooth blend of Occident and Orient”.

US president continues criticism of Nato ahead of giving update on war later today

• ‘Get your own oil’: Trump launches tirade against Europe for not joining Iran war

Houthi forces in Yemen have claimed responsibility for a missile attack on southern Israel this morning, saying it was a joint operation with Iran and Hezbollah.

In a statement, the Houthi movement said it carried out its third missile attack in the conflict “in conjunction with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon”.

Prime minister says UK will host meeting later this week with other nations on the reopening of the strait of Hormuz

Starmer says he understands why people are concerned about the cost of living.

He says he has already set out a five-point plan to deal with the crisis.

Just look at what’s happening today. Today your energy bills will be cut because of the action that we took at the budget. And whatever happens in Iran, that price is now fixed until July.

The most effective way we can support the cost of living in Britain is to push for de-escalation in the Middle East, and a reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which is such a vital route for energy.

To that end, we’re exploring each and every diplomatic avenue that is available to us.

South Korea will delay the shutdown of coal-fired plants, while the Philippines also plans to boost the output of its coal-burning plants

Governments across Asia are ramping up their use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, as they try to cover huge energy shortfalls triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran.

The move has triggered warnings from climate experts who point to coal’s devastating environmental impact, and say the energy crisis should be a wake up call for governments to invest in renewables, which can offer a more stable supply that is not exposed to price shocks.

Rachel Reeves will address concerns about price rises and shortages with retailers as energy costs surge

The bosses of the UK’s biggest supermarkets are to meet the chancellor on Wednesday as the government seeks to gauge the extent of potential price rises and shortages of household essentials amid a surge in energy, fuel and fertiliser costs.

Rachel Reeves is meeting the bosses of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons as concerns rise about the potential impact on the cost of living – including higher food prices – as a result of the Middle East conflict.