An international study found cool people are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful. At best, I have three of these traits. Could I change that?

Who would you say is effortlessly, undeniably cool? Charli xcx, certainly. David Bowie, of course. Yoko Ono and Fran Lebowitz – or do they just wear a lot of black? I’m not cool and never have been. As a teenager, I was a swot at a school that prized sports. As an adult, I’m always wearing a backpack. I’m garrulous, risk-averse, lazy with my personal presentation and not convinced that any drug beats eight hours’ sleep. “Cool” feels to me like the stock market or Michelin restaurants: none of my business.

I’m not alone. In a recent YouGov survey, a third of respondents said they weren’t cool at school, with only 10% reporting that, yep, they actually were. Half claimed they were “somewhere in between”.

When Nicola Thorp was growing up in Blackpool, the ‘kebab girl’ who had gone missing less than a mile away, aged 14, was spoken of as a cautionary tale. But what really happened to her? For the last three years, Thorp has been finding out

It has been more than 20 years since 14-year-old Charlene Downes went missing in Blackpool. Last captured on CCTV on a Saturday night in November 2003, Charlene still hasn’t been found, and the truth of what happened to her remains unsolved. Nicola Thorp, an actor, writer and broadcaster, who grew up in the town, describes Charlene’s disappearance, considered to be murder, as “a wound for Blackpool”. Over the last couple of decades, the case has been clouded by rumour, far-right rhetoric and police failures. In a new podcast, Charlene: Somebody Knows Something, she has set out to clear up some of the speculation, and expose how Charlene was repeatedly failed by those around her.

Many in the town, she says, still believe the two men who were first tried in 2007 – a retrial was ordered, which then collapsed amid “grave doubts” about the evidence – got away with murder. That in itself, she says, is an obstacle to finding out who is really responsible.

As he prepares to host The Game of Wool, the Olympian diver talks about trying to get murdered faithfuls resurrected on Traitors – and the time he knitted himself a woollen chandelier

In The Game of Wool, Channel 4’s quest to find Britain’s best knitter, you can’t take your eyes off Tom Daley’s outfits. One of his goals for the series, he says, is that “what I was wearing would get progressively more interesting”, which is ridiculous because in the very first episode he’s wearing a vivid, asymmetrical shawl that in some places reaches the floor, and he looks like a wizard who might seem chaotic but is actually very powerful.

“Sheila [Greenwell, one of two judges, along with Di Gilpin] made that for La Fetiche,” he says, referring to the avant garde house of knitwear. “Later on I wear some stuff by Hope Macaulay, a Northern Irish textiles designer, then Boy Kloves, right out of Central Saint Martins, then towards the end, two archival Stella McCartney looks.”

How did an obscure district in a neglected state become India’s byword for digital deceit?

On the surface, the town of Jamtara appeared no different from neighbouring districts. But, if you knew where to look, there were startling differences. In the middle of spartan villages were houses of imposing size and unusual opulence. Millions of Indians knew why this was. They knew, to their cost, where Jamtara was. To them, it was no longer a place; it was a verb. You lived in fear of being “Jamtara-ed”.

Over the past 15 years, parts of this sleepy district in the eastern state of Jharkhand had grown fabulously wealthy. This extraordinary feat of rural development was powered by young men who, armed with little more than mobile phones, had mastered the art of siphoning money from strangers’ bank accounts. The sums they pilfered were so staggering that, at times, their schemes resembled bank heists more than mere acts of financial fraud.

Ahead of the budget, Rachel Reeves should be out making her arguments. Instead, there is silence – and a huge opportunity for Labour’s opponents

Scroll back three years. The person sitting opposite me is yet to take their place at the top of Keir Starmer’s government. Instead, they are a star of the Labour opposition, for whom power advances or recedes with every poll and front page. They have just done a spot of electoral marketing, a photo op at a supermarket 100 or so miles from Westminster, and what they’ve brought home is the politics of the staff.

“They’d all voted for Boris.”

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Born into an independent Ukraine, the lives of these young women changed for ever when Russia invaded their country, forcing them to shoulder huge burdens of responsibility

• Photographs by Julia Kochetova

Ukraine is increasingly a country held together, behind the military lines, by women. Those in their 30s – millennial women born into an independent Ukraine, raised in economic turbulence and thrust into adulthood on the wave of revolution and war – are shouldering huge burdens of responsibility. They are fundraising for the army, or sometimes serving in it. They are running civil society organisations, advocating for their country abroad and becoming activists.

At the same time, unlike their male counterparts who are forbidden from leaving the country and are eligible for conscription, they have choices – to join the army, or not; to stay in the country, or not. For some, the question of whether to have children, when the war shows no sign of abating, looms large. For many of them, exhaustion, stress and grief are constant companions. We spoke to six Ukrainian women aged between 29 and 40 about their lives.

Donald Trump hails ‘amazing’ trade talks with Chinese counterpart, with ‘no roadblock at all on rare earth’

• Trump meets Xi in South Korea – live updates

Donald Trump has described crucial trade talks with the Chinese president in South Korea as “amazing”, saying their dispute over the supply of rare earths had been settled and that he would visit China in April.

Xi Jinping has not commented on Thursday’s discussions but noted that the economic and trade teams from both countries had “reached a basic consensus on addressing our respective major concerns” during recent talks in Kuala Lumpur, according to Chinese state media. That had “provided the necessary conditions” for their meeting on Thursday, he added.

Reeves has been renting out her south London home without the specific £945 licence required by the local council

Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says he thinks it is a mistake for the Conservatives to be saying Rachel Reeves should have to resign over the rental licence error. He explains why in a post on social media. Here is an extract.

Kemi Badenoch’s call for Starmer to sack Reeves, for failing to register her family home when she rented it on moving to Downing Street, lowers the bar quite significantly for sackable offences by ministers. I am not certain all her shadow cabinet colleagues will thank her.

The point is that there is a clear distinction between Rayner’s failure to take stamp duty advice and Reeves’s failure to register her home with the council for rent.

Public prosecutor says arrests were made in and around Paris but suspects ‘did not help us find the stolen goods’

Five new suspects have been arrested in connection with the Louvre robbery in Paris, in which thieves stole crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m), the city’s public prosecutor has said, but the gems remain missing.

Laure Beccuau told RTL radio on Thursday the arrests had been made on Wednesday night in the French capital and the surrounding area, particularly the neighbouring Seine-Saint-Denis department. But they “did not help us find the stolen goods”, she added.

Exclusive: HMRC told Lisa Morris-Almond there was no record of her return to UK, but she did not take the trip

A woman who booked a flight from London to Oslo but never checked in or travelled has had her child benefit stopped by the UK government. Tax authorities told her their records showed she had emigrated.

Lisa Morris-Almond is one of thousands of people who have had their child benefit frozen as part of a botched crackdown on benefit fraud.