As one of today’s greatest essayists, the Pulitzer-nominated writer’s new book investigates why the mother-daughter relationship is the most complex bond of all

Interviewing Rachel Aviv is a great way to source reading recommendations. The exacting essayist responds to my questions about her new book by asking if I’ve read her colleague Parul Sehgal on the trauma plot (of course), Janet Malcolm’s oeuvre (are you kidding?), or Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose (you know, I’ve been meaning to). And then there’s the self-help book from the 90s making the rounds among her friends.

The Middle Passage – “a bad title”, admits Aviv – advances the Jungian belief that if you hold on to the identity you first developed in young adulthood, in middle age you’ll end up small and afraid. You have to alter something fundamental in order to make it to the other side. Over green tea at a cafe near her home in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, the New Yorker staff writer on the deliciously nebulous “psychology, medical ethics and criminal justice” beat confirms that’s basically, frustratingly true. “I have always been very afraid of change,” she says. “I had a really profound high school relationship where I totally lost myself. Everything I’d been interested in before just fell away.” She feared this would happen when she gave birth to her first child in 2017, and was thrilled when it didn’t: “I thought I had won, as if there weren’t more opportunities for change later down the road.”

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This pretty little plant is carnivorous, so when placed next to plants affected by the insect pest it can be an effective living flypaper

The problem
The fungus gnat is the pest that just keeps coming. You dry out the soil, set up sticky traps, maybe even reach for the hydrogen peroxide, and just when you think you’ve have won, they’re back. The adults are harmless but maddening, drifting around your face and laying the next generation in any damp compost they can find. And most controls only deal with one stage of the cycle and leave the rest to carry on.

The hack
Butterworts are small carnivorous plants whose leaves are coated in a sticky mucilage that traps tiny flying insects, including fungus gnats. Keep one or two among your collection as living flypaper, catching adult gnats before they can breed.

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The film-maker Don Edkins lost his son Max in 2019, in the Ethiopian Airline crash that killed 157 people. With Max’s brother Teboho, he has made a documentary, not about the crash, but about their mourning

It was, says Teboho Edkins, “a film I didn’t want to make”. On 10 March 2019, Edkins’ brother, Max, was among the 157 people killed when Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa airport.

For Teboho, making a documentary about the disaster seemed impossible: “It’s not a sexy subject. At first, I really didn’t want to do it at all.”

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After a career as a City headhunter, Harriman took up photography eight years ago and became well known for his protest images. He was soon shooting the cover of Vogue and made chair of the Southbank Centre. How did he end up engulfed in controversy over his social media?

It has been a hectic few weeks for Misan Harriman. When we meet, he has just returned from New York, where he hosted screenings of a new documentary about his work as an activist and photographer of protests, Shoot the People. While there, the 48-year-old got to soak in the glorious chaos of the New York Knicks’ victory parade.

“I’ve never seen New York like that: all colours, all shapes, and sizes,” says Harriman, who had not been to the city since he was a child. For him, the parade – in which 2 million people took to the streets to celebrate the basketball team’s first NBA championship win in 53 years – complements his incredibly popular protest photography.

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Large-scale datacentre projects around the world are being challenged or cancelled, as infrastructure’s energy demands ramp up

Datacentre planning proposals face all kinds of hurdles, from securing energy supply to high construction costs. But the 2,000 acre Prince William Digital Gateway site in the US state of Virginia had another problem: its proximity to a Civil War battlefield.

“If the development is allowed to proceed, the solemn nature of this historic site would become marred by sitting in the shadow of the monstrous datacentres, along with their associated electrical infrastructure,” said one legal brief against the plans.

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• It says overturning red cards is a common measure

• No talk from Uefa before about ‘red line’, Fifa states

Fifa has hit back at Uefa in the war of words over the lifting of the USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension by accusing it of hypocrisy in its condemnation of the decision.

In a statement attributed to the chair of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, Mohammad Al Kamali, published before the USA’s last-16 defeat by Belgium, Fifa insisted that “the overturning of red cards is a common disciplinary measure” in Uefa-affiliated leagues, “yet this has never raised concerns about crossing any ‘red line’”.

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Parliamentary authorities are already looking into a £5m donation to the Reform Uk leader from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne

In her speech this morning Kemi Badenoch will claim that Keir Starmer will be “completely powerless” at the Nato summit today, and that his defence investment plan is “not fit for purpose”.

According to an extract released in advance, she will say:

Today Keir Starmer heads off to the most important Nato summit in a generation.

Britain has received intelligence that Russia could launch an attack on Nato as soon as 2030.

Nigel Farage is rattled

A shadow of the cocky showman Reform supporters are used to, being briefed against from inside his own party and looking for an off-ramp.

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Twee medewerkers van Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen zijn zeven uur bezig met het uitsmeren van pindakaas (zonder stukjes) over de vloer voor een heruitvoering van Wim T. Schippers’ Pindakaasvloer. Tegelijkertijd is in het Stedelijk Museum postuum zijn laatste kunstwerk onthuld.

STRAATSBURG (ANP) - Het Europees Parlement is het erover eens dat er dringend maatregelen moeten worden genomen om de Europese auto-industrie te redden. Die eensgezindheid is weg zodra het gaat over de soort maatregelen. Grofweg zet het ene kamp vol in op de productie van elektrische auto's, terwijl het andere kamp de focus op elektrificering overdreven vindt en geen verbod wil op verbrandingsmotoren per 2035.

Vrijwel alle Europarlementariërs spraken in het debat hun zorgen uit over de Europese auto-industrie, waar honderdduizenden banen zijn verdwenen en dreigen te verdwijnen. De verkoop van goedkope Chinese auto's in Europa is daar mede debet aan, stellen ze. Ook de EU-regelgeving zet autobedrijven op achterstand, verwijt een flink aantal de Europese Commissie.

Rechtse en radicaalrechtse partijen willen geen verbod op verbrandingsmotoren, omdat de auto-industrie daarmee "de nek wordt omgedraaid". Linkse partijen vinden juist dat de omslag naar elektrische auto's sneller moet.