Overnight Israeli strikes increase numbers leaving southern city for ahumanitarian zonea on coast

• Middle East crisis - live updates

Thousands of people are evacuating from Rafah, Gazaas southernmost city, hours after the Israeli military told residents and displaced people in eastern neighbourhoods to leave in advance of a long-threatened attack on the city and its environs.

Witnesses described frightened families leaving the city on foot, riding donkeys or packed with their belongings into overloaded trucks on Monday. Overnight Israeli airstrikes had reinforced apanic and feara, prompting more to heed the instructions to move.

Former PR chief says Trump wielded complete control over 2016 campaign a and her testimony could be a coup for prosecutors

Donald Trumpas hush-money criminal trial enters its 12th day Monday morning, following testimony from a teary top aide, Hope Hicks, at the end of last week.

Hicks told jurors on Friday that Trump wielded complete control over his 2016 presidential campaign a including a media strategy which, prosecutors allege, involved illicit business records for hush-money payments.

Kremlin says tactical drills are a response to statements from the West about possibly sending troops to Ukraine

Russiaas plans to conduct tactical nuclear drills are nothing more than its continuing nuclear blackmail, Ukraineas military spy agency spokesperson said on Monday.

aWe do not see here anything new, except for the information effect and statements... Nuclear blackmail is a constant practice of Putinas regime,a Andriy Yusov told national TV.

Drake says aI feel disgusteda by allegations, as enmity between rap superstars deepens following weekend flurry of diss tracks

Drake has denied allegations of child sex offences and of him harbouring a secret child, both levelled at him by Kendrick Lamar in recent days.

The enmity between the rap superstars has escalated over a series of diss tracks in the past few weeks, culminating in a flurry of activity during the weekend with three tracks by Lamar and two by Drake.

Far-right congresswoman has spearheaded effort to oust fellow Republican as speaker but motion to vacate widely expected to fail

The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.

Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnsonas removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.

Researchers say experimental shot is step towards goal of creating vaccines before a pandemic has started

Scientists have created a vaccine that has the potential to protect against a broad range of coronaviruses, including varieties that are not yet even known about.

The experimental shot, which has been tested in mice, marks a change in strategy towards aproactive vaccinologya, where vaccines are designed and readied for manufacture before a potentially pandemic virus emerges.

Company, which has been plagued by safety issues in its avionics wing, will send two astronauts to the ISS in its new spacecraft

Boeing has an opportunity on Monday night to restore some luster to its tarnished name, with the scheduled first crewed launch from Florida of Starliner, a pioneering new capsule designed to transform human exploration of space.

Although the companyas space operations are entirely independent of its aviation wing, which has been plagued by a recent series of safety and quality issues, the spacecraftas pathway to the Cape Canaveral launchpad, and planned 10.34pm ET liftoff, has been similarly bumpy.

Officers in riot gear raid encampment at dawn as university warns demonstrators that failure to leave could lead to arrest

Police have dismantled the student-led Palestinian solidarity encampment at the University of Southern California.

About 4am on Saturday, as many as 100 Los Angeles police officers in riot gear raided the encampment at dawn as anti-war student demonstrators slept in the tents. In a series of tweets during the raid, the university warned demonstrators to leave the area, adding that apeople who donat leave could be arresteda.

Families of two Australians and American who went missing in Baja California have identified the bodies, officials say

Mexican authorities have identified the three dead bodies found in a well in Mexico as Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their travelling companion, Jack Carter Rhoad.

The trio, who went missing in the Pacific coast state of Baja California, were killed with gunshots to the head, Mexican authorities said on Sunday.

South Dakota governor and possible Trump running mate says she made aa choice between [my children] and a dangerous animala

The South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful Kristi Noem asked the American public to consider having to amake a choice between your children or a dangerous animala, as she again defended her killing of a 14-month-old dog.

aI would ask everybody in the country to put themselves in that situation,a Noem told CBSas Face the Nation about her decision to shoot the dog, named Cricket, after the animal ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighboras chickens.

Bureau of Labor Statistics releases latest estimate of how much labor receives of national income, showing bleak decline

When Jesse Motte began working at a Starbucks inside a Target store in Columbia, South Carolina, more than two years ago, $15 an hour sounded great. He was excited to start because it was the most he had ever made after working for years in the service industry.

The excitement has dissipated due to his inconsistent and erratic work schedule, the rising costs of necessities and the minuscule raises he and his co-workers receive annually. His most recent annual wage increase was $0.37 an hour.

Exclusive: the human rights lawyer, temporarily released from jail on medical grounds, describes her love for her family, and why she keeps going despite brutal treatment at the hands of the regime

Iranas Qarchak jail has been called many things: a torture chamber; the worst womenas prison in the world; unfit for humans. Nasrin Sotoudeh uses just one word to describe the nine months she spent there: aHell.a

Sotoudeh does not speak of the appalling conditions or stench of sewage, the undrinkable water or lack of food, the disease or cruelty of solitary confinement. She simply says: aI am ready to return whenever they say.a

Amsterdammers find themselves at the nadir of a Europe-wide housing shortage. But some bold initiatives offer hope

• Fix Europeas housing crisis or risk fuelling the far-right, UN expert warns
• Higher costs and cramped conditions: the impact of Europeas housing crisis

It started maybe 10 years ago, says Tamara Kuschel. Since the 1970s, the charity she works for in Amsterdam, De Regenboog, has run day shelters for homeless people a typically, people with serious addiction and mental health issues.

Then, in about 2015, a new kind of client began to appear. aThey didnat have the usual problems of homeless people,a Kuschel says. aThey had jobs, friends. In every respect, their lives were very much together. But they couldnat afford a home.a

From lactating Madonnas to disembodied orbs, a new exhibition surveys the depictions of breasts and asks a what about the women who own them?

Breasts have been a focus in the culture wars of the last 50-odd years. Second-wave feminists casting off their bras in the 1970s come to mind, and then ongoing judgment-filled debates around breastfeeding, and the even more fraught, and recent, hostilities around trans healthcare. Recent celebrations of female sensuality manifested in things like #freethenip, hot girl summer, widening conversations around sexual pleasure, and the body positivity movement all take breasts as a key motif, too.

But for all the girlies freeing their nips on Instagram, itas much rarer to see them free on the street. We keep them under wraps and rarely articulate why they seem to be so contentious. The potency of breasts as symbols of things as disparate but overlapping as gender, eroticism and motherhood makes them the nexus of a wild cocktail of emotions, politics and desires.

On stage and screen, self-referential works such as A Strange Loop and American Fiction are on the rise, with playful postmodernism a potent weapon in the fight against inequality

Officers storm a ballroom, releasing a flurry of bullets that pierce through a Black man as he collapses in a pool of his own blood. Monk, American Fictionas neurotic protagonist, is unarmed, clutching nothing more than an ill-gotten literary award. It could end here. Yet a spoiler alert! a in the final act of the recent Oscar-winning film its writers take us along for the ride as they toy with reaching for a romantic reconciliation with Monkas disgruntled ex-girlfriend or even fading to black with no resolution.

American Fiction, an adaptation of Percival Everettas novel Erasure, sees Monk, a middle-class Black academic, struggle to get his highly intellectual books published because they arenat aBlack enougha. In order to make some money for his family he writes Fuck, a Black working-class struggle narrative laden with violence, crime and pain. He instantly finds fame and fortune and is embraced by the cultural elite, who think heas brave for being so authentic.

Critics might have fallen for Luca Guadagninoas erotic tennis romp but itas a vapid string of disappointing choices

I have spent the week and a half since seeing Challengers on the brink of throwing a racquet-trashing, expletive-scattering, McEnroe-style tantrum. Is Hawkeye working? Did they not see it? How, for an exhausting Mahut-Isner length of huffing and puffing, practically every single one of the wild swings taken by Luca Guadagninoas film missed its target and landed out by a country mile? Four-star reviews? Five-star reviews? Camon, fellow critics. You cannot be serious.

Some points I will concede as inarguable. The film is a box-office champion. And itas pure fire on the internet, a movie more memeable than even the sainted Saltburn. There are clear generational issues in play: I can see why excitable younger viewers, raised on a largely sexless cinema, have fallen so hard for the filmas sprayed-on sweat and forceful faux sophistication. Itas my senior-tour colleagues Iam staring at with hands on hips, wearing an expression of disbelief. The film theyave been politely applauding looks to me less a modern classic than another marker of American cinemaas ongoing infantilisation: a Muppet Babies redo of Jules and Jim.

Possibly some spectators were swayed by the spirit of indulgence fostered by the filmas on-screen umpire, handing out code violations as if they were candy. (In actual tennis, those breaches of court decorum have consequences: loss of whole games and matches. Not so in Luca-land.) Swallow those, and maybe youall also overlook how neither of the filmas male leads persuade as the whey-bulked jocks observed swaggering around Americaas secondary tennis circuits. Even at their most drained, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh OaConnor) resemble the gauche nerds of a thousand other teen comedies, sniggering at their own witless masturbation stories.

La Chimera looks like a crime caper about looters in 1980s Italy. But itas about way more than that. The great director, loved by everyone from Scorsese to Gerwig, talks about the dark secrets of the heart a and her debt to bees

Alice Rohrwacher could be the European arthouse made flesh, or its distilled essence, bottled and preserved for the ages. Sheas quoting Italian poets one minute and German poets the next. Sheas discussing nature, civilisation and the power of collective memory. She says she makes films to shake us from our lethargy and invite us to reflect on the state of the world. It doesnat matter whether we even like her films. Like or dislike: thatas beside the point.

Certain criticisms she takes as compliments. aFor example, people will tell me, aI always knew that I was watching a film.a Well, good, thatas great. I am trying to break your hypnosis. Or people will say, aI struggled to get into this film.a Which is fantastic, Iam pleased. We donat need to get inside everything, break down every door, storm in like conquistadors. There are other ways to approach a film. We can gently knock. We can walk around it in circles.a

I used to be an avid user of TikTok, but the algorithm serves much less delight and serendipity than it used to

TikTok is facing its most credible existential threat yet. Last week, the US Congress passed a bill that bans the short-form video app if it does not sell to an American company by this time next year. But as a former avid user whose time on the app has dropped sharply in recent months, I am left wondering a will I even be using the app a year from now?

Like many Americans of my demographic (aging millennial), I first started using TikTok regularly when the Covid-19 pandemic began and lockdowns gave many of us more time than we knew how to fill.

Trauma, vulnerability, dependency a| like it or not, we canat just wish them away

When I was a little girl, I cried a lot. I used to wish ferociously that I was not such a crybaby. I remember the shame so well. Sitting on my bed on a Sunday evening, hot-cheeked and furious with my tears, holding on to the thought that when I was a grownup, I would never cry. I would be a strong, confident and capable woman, and I would never again feel like a sobbing little girl who doesnat want to go to school tomorrow and just wants to stay with her mum. I hated that part of myself and I desperately wanted to get rid of it. That is what a better life meant to me back then.

Since becoming a psychotherapist, I have seen this kind of wish at play in patient after patient a and Iave continued to see it in myself as a patient in therapy, too. It seems to be a pretty ubiquitous desire, although we are not always aware of it: this wish and even belief that if we just try hard enough, if we can find the magic self-help book or therapist or personal trainer or Instagram filter, we will truly be able to get rid of the parts of ourselves we feel ashamed of, or hate, or donat want to acknowledge.

Known to his friends as the Legend, John Starbrook is living, breathing proof of the power of exercise and enthusiasm. I tried to keep up with him a and barely survived

I like to think of myself as a strong swimmer. Iam not fast, I canat dive or tumble turn, but when I get a lane to myself Iall happily bash out 50 or 60 lengths. Give me a nice big lake, and my idea of heaven is to backstroke into the middle and watch the swallows overhead. I donat worry that Iall cramp up or suddenly forget how to float.

But Iave never fancied water polo. If youave not watched it, itas a sort of cross between swimming, basketball and wrestling, usually played in a pool thatas so deep you have to tread water or drown. There are two teams, two goals, a large ball and an ungodly amount of throwing, catching and flat-out sprinting. Aquatics GB, the governing body, says players can swim two miles in a single game, and need aremarkable staminaa to cope with all the holding and pushing.

The singer takes on double duty and does a surprisingly effective job as a comedic actor but the writing mostly fails to match her ability

Saturday Night Live kicks off the final run of episodes for Season 49 with a televised roundtable discussion on Columbia student protests over Israelas war on Gaza. Two white parents discuss the struggle of supporting their childrenas activism with their fear over the aggressive nature of the demonstrations. The third parent, Alphonse Roberts (Kenan Thompson), initially expresses full-blown support for the protests, until the host suggests that his daughter is taking part in them, exclaiming, aNu-uh! Alexis Vanessa Roberts better have her butt in class!a When questioned on the disconnect, he explains: aIam supportive of yaallas kids protesting, not my kids. My kids know better!a

Somehow, SNL found a way to address the Israel-Palestine protests while saying absolutely nothing about them. Itas almost impressive in its way.

At Columbia University I saw young people who feel they have no choice but to risk their futures

On a hot day last week, the pavements outside Columbia University were heaving. About 200 protesters were gathered, making a noise that was bigger than their numbers, raising pro-Palestine chants and signs. It was a disparate crowd, diverse across ethnicities and generations. aIave lived in this neighbourhood all my life,a said one of them when I asked him why he was there. One smiling elderly lady walked through the crowd offering small bottles of water. A helicopter circled overhead. The police who encircled the crowd were jittery, yelling at passersby to keep moving, and raising the temperature of what was a loud but perfectly orderly and amiable crowd.

Once inside the campus, I made my way to the reason for protesters, the police and the high security at the university gates: an encampment of students on a patch of lawn at the heart of campus. It had been up for about two weeks at this point, after a series of demands to university administrators, including divestment from acompanies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheida, were not met.

Beware what the fitness gurus tell you: the body has its limits. Perhaps thatas why orthopaedic waiting lists are so long

I am preparing for an anaesthetist to sink a hypodermic needle into my back at a busy London hospital ahead of a scheduled surgery to replace my knee. Knowing this might be painful, I ask a fellow patient how he got his mind around the jab. aTwo spliffs of good dope worked for me,a he confessed. Iam yet to try that, but this is my second left knee replacement in less than 15 years a an increasingly common story as our population ages and obesity levels cause growing strain on our joints.

More than 2m hip and knee replacements have been performed in the UK since the early 2000s and waiting lists continue to grow. By 2060, demand for hip and knee joint replacement (based on data for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man) is estimated to increase by almost 40%.

Cosmetic procedures are on the rise among younger people; Iam barely 30. Still this is about more than just clinging to youth

Everyone goes through it: a reckoning with oneas own mortality in the mirror, poking at eye bags and tugging at folds of loose skin. Am I looking a bit rough? Itas part of the human condition to fear ageing, but among millennials and gen Z there seems to be a heightened anxiety around growing older, coupled with an increasingly casual attitude towards getting fillers and Botox compared with previous generations.

Almost half of millennial women polled by the BBC in 2019 said they believed that having a cosmetic procedure was akin to having a haircut. I can say from experience that it is not. Like many, I have fallen victim to negative anti-ageing rhetoric. After months of staring at my tired face on Zoom calls during lockdown, I felt as if my hot years were slipping through my fingers. When the world opened up, I found a doctor to arestorea my hollowed out under-eyes with 1ml of filler. I was barely 28.

Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity and the Truth About Where I Belong

Radical honesty isnat for the faint-hearted, but itas one of the greatest joys Iave ever discovered

I never used to think of myself as a liar. I always saw myself as an honest person. The only time Iad ever veer from the truth was to protect someoneas feelings. But that wasnat really lying, I would tell myself, it was an act of kindness!

And then I had a therapy session, where I realised that all of this was actually people-pleasing behaviour and it turned out I was a prolific liar. Not only that, but according to my therapist, by constantly hiding my true feelings to protect those I loved, I was blocking them from ever getting to know the real me and creating true intimacy.

Radhika Sanghani is a writer and author. Her childrenas book The Girl Who Couldnat Lie is published on 9 May

The mistakes made at one point in time have an eerie way of re-emerging as memories fade

• Get Robert Reichas latest columns delivered straight to your inbox

Iave been spending the last several weeks trying to find out whatas really going on with the campus protests.

Iave met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. Iave visited with faculty at Columbia. Iave spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

The WTA finals host revealed its commitment to womenas rights by jailing a female activist

If a record of sexual apartheid is not the ideal look for a nation that must still, occasionally, placate progressives, news of an extreme example a the lengthy imprisonment of Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old fitness instructor and womenas rights activist a has at least arrived too late to tarnish Saudi Arabiaas latest sporting triumph: buying up the Womenas Tennis Association finals.

In fact, given that countryas hectic promotional schedule, there could hardly have been a more convenient time for human rights organisations to report, as they did last week, that al-Otaibi whose circumstances were for months unknown, is serving 11 years in prison for the aterrorista offences of wearing aindecent clothesa (ie, not an abaya) and supporting womenas rights. Her sister, Fouz al-Otaibi, fled the country in 2022 to avoid similar persecution. Fouz tweeted last week: aWhy have my rights become terrorism, and why is the world silent?a

The business and trade secretary played into the ideological tosh that the wonders of the Industrial Revolution were funded by beer brewers and sheep farmers

Britain ran an empire for centuries that at its peak 100 years ago occupied just under a quarter of the worldas land area. Yet if you believe aImperial Measurementa, a report released last week from the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the net economic impact of this vast empire on Britain was negligible, even negative.

If you thought the empire profoundly shaped our industry, trade and financial institutions, with slavery an inherent part of the equation, helped turbocharge the Industrial Revolution and underwrote what was the worldas greatest navy for 150 years, think again. The contribution of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people to our economy was trumped by domestic brewing and sheep farming, opines the IEA. The tax aburdena of defending this barely profitable empire was not worth the candle. Instead, it was free-market economics that unleashed British economic growth a a truth that must be restated before Marxists and reparation-seeking ex-colonies start controlling the narrative.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk