You can’t infer people never liked you because they haven’t reached out, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. The question is whether you can tolerate this asymmetry

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I’m a 43–year-old man. Well-educated, with a healthy social skill level. I’ve always been surrounded by friends. Always invited to parties and events, both happy and sad, without effort on my part. Last year I moved from the city to a country farm and I came to the realisation that I had been the one maintaining contact. I was the one initiating every time, and when I stopped, they all went away. We’re not talking just one friend either. I’m talking full-on loss of an entire social circle.

It’s been a rough year, socially and emotionally speaking. My partner has borne the brunt of it, being my only contact and social outlet. I just don’t understand it. If I had been an atrocious person then people wouldn’t have interacted with me like they did, seemingly voluntarily and happily. I was invited to every wedding, engagement, birthday, hiking trip, you name it. I was made to feel welcome and wanted. As long as, it turns out, I was the one sending the first message, making the first call.

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Cohabiting with my partner meant addressing my addiction to the lives of extremely rich women I have never met

When you move in with a partner, you can no longer hide the embarrassing or unattractive parts of yourself. Your dirty laundry is metaphorically and literally aired – and so are your bad habits.

Six months ago, cohabiting with my partner for the first time meant coming face to face with my addiction: I cannot stop watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

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From An Almost Perfect Affair to Mr Bean’s Holiday, there’s nothing the festival enjoys more than seeing itself on screen. The next season of The White Lotus is tapping into that rich tradition – can it capture the Côte d’Azur’s peculiar magic?

Some years ago, the Guardian decided to boost its Cannes coverage by having a video crew accompany its regular festival reporters. At the meeting prior to the festival, I explained why this bright idea wouldn’t work. Cannes was a fortress and it wasn’t going to let us shoot anywhere. The security was too tight, the bureaucracy too byzantine. It would be a colossal waste of time and money. You couldn’t just run around Cannes pointing a camera at people.

It turned out I was wrong. Cannes didn’t care. It let us shoot everywhere. We shot on the street, on the beach and on the roof of Le Palais des Festivals. We dragged a sand-smeared rubber dinghy into the five-star Carlton hotel and asked famous actors to sit in it for an interview. We filmed on the carousel in the park and in the pavilions by the sea. The only resistance we encountered came from the steward of a billionaire’s yacht. The steward was perfectly happy to allow us free run of the deck, but he wanted his palms greased with a few hundred euros.

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If Olly Robbins stood firm the government could have avoided this disastrous episode of bad political judgment that could cost the PM his job

• Richard Dearlove is the former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service

The restricted compartments of the UK’s national security infrastructure are clearly defined and closely controlled. To work across them requires “a developed vetting certificate”. The primary qualification for holding a “DV” is integrity, honesty and transparency in one’s personal and professional life. To lie about or hide potential vulnerabilities is an immediate disqualification. Staff who do not meet the DV requirements for whatever reason are barred from positions that demand DV clearance. There are no grey areas or soft edges.

The role of British ambassador in Washington is one of those posts. It sits across a number of highly classified compartments. It is no ordinary diplomatic job. The extensive security acreage of the special relationship includes, for example, the UK’s nuclear deterrent, the intelligence relationship, the UK-US alliance which ties together the National Security Agency and GCHQ by treaty, and other domains of great sensitivity. The ambassador has access to these even though their need to become involved in them in normal times is limited. The British staff that comes under the ambassador’s authority is extensive and stretches beyond those working in the embassy. The ambassador’s access to the US administration is also usually highly privileged, such is the nature of the special relationship.

Richard Dearlove is the former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service

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This empty-calorie Netflix flick, about a steely woman being hunted by a scary local in the Australian wilderness, is shot like a Mountain Dew commercial

Charlize Theron plays the latest in a long line of movie characters to confront the harsh realities of the Australian landscape, in Netflix’s empty-calorie action drama Apex – only to discover that the real terror lies in the locals. Just ask John Grant from Wake in Fright or the backpackers in Wolf Creek. In Apex, director Baltasar Kormákur depicts neither the land nor the locals in particularly interesting ways, bathing the former in the glossy, sun-lit sheen of a Mountain Dew commercial and serving up a villain barely distinguishable from the usual backwoods bogeymen.

The film opens by firmly establishing its popcorn survival movie credentials, leaning into “pretty but dangerous” imagery as Theron’s protagonist, Sasha, wakes up in a tent dangling off the side of a mountain. Her unfazed reaction tells us that this vertigo-inducing choice of accommodation was intentional. In the tent, next to her, is hubby and fellow adrenaline fiend, Tommy (Eric Bana), though he’s not long for this world, soon to tumble like a ragdoll into the great beyond.

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YouGov survey shows cross-party consensus – but that many fear abortion access could be reduced

New polling has found that whatever their party political leanings, an overwhelming majority of people support the right to access an abortion – although young people, in particular, fear reproductive rights may be reduced.

The YouGov polling, commissioned by MSI Reproductive Choices to mark its 50th anniversary, found nine in 10 people support the right to access an abortion.

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More than 50% of voters at first AGM under new leadership oppose plans to scrap climate reporting

BP’s board has suffered a triple climate rebellion in its first shareholder meeting since appointing new leadership to steer the embattled oil company.

More than 50% of shareholders voting at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) came out against its plans to scrap its existing climate reporting, and its resolution to replace in-person annual shareholder meetings – a lightning rod for climate protest in recent years – with online-only events.

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Removal site in Dunkirk will hold people of 10 nationalities trying to reach UK in small boats under new £660m deal with French

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The UK will pay for 200 French officers to detain and deport people seeking asylum from some of the world’s most oppressive and war-ravaged regimes under a new UK-France deal to try to reduce Channel crossings.

In what is being billed as the first time the French government has agreed to target those heading to the UK in small boats, a removal site in Dunkirk will be used to hold people from 10 countries: Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen. The Home Office said they were the top 10 nationalities who crossed the Channel by small boat last year.

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The merger will still require governmental approval and could be delayed by a lawsuit seeking to block it

Shareholders of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the company’s $110bn merger with Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS News, on Thursday.

But shareholders voted against generous proposed compensation packages for WBD executives, including a $550m payout to the outgoing chief executive, David Zaslav.

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Woman raped by two men while a third filmed ordeal after she became separated from friends on night out

Three men have been found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack after she became separated from her friends on a night out.

A trial at Hove crown court heard the woman was targeted by the men as she was “staggering in the street” and was “incapacitated” in the early hours of 4 October.

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Tehran has shown that its grip over the strait of Hormuz is its most potent deterrent – arguably more consequential than its now defunct nuclear programme

• Fawaz Gerges is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics

Donald Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran will be remembered as a grave strategic miscalculation – one that has reshaped the region in unintended and destabilising ways. With the ceasefire now extended indefinitely, we can see more clearly how the war has undermined the US’s standing in the world and failed to achieve its core objectives: it has neither brought about regime change in Tehran, nor forced Iran to submit to American demands. Far from it.

By inflicting economic pain far beyond the region and slowing the global economy, Iran has demonstrated that its grip over the strait of Hormuz constitutes its most potent deterrent – arguably more consequential than its now defunct nuclear programme. Control of the strait will be Tehran’s most powerful source of leverage in the years ahead.

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Storage vendor predicts current crunch will outlast COVID disruptions

The supply crunch gripping the storage market has pushed Everpure – the artist formerly known as Pure Storage – to reassure customers it won't make things worse.…

Veldkamp was eerder ambassadeur in Griekenland en Israël en minister van Buitenlandse Zaken voor NSC. Hij trad af vanwege de oorlog in Gaza. China is voor de EU een belangrijke handelspartner maar ook een geopolitieke tegenstrever.

Gedreven door hoge tabaksprijzen haalt inmiddels een op de acht rokers tabak over de landsgrens. De accijnzen nog verder verhogen zal niet veel extra mensen verleiden te stoppen, denkt het RIVM.

Brussels also approved a loan of 90 billion euros to Ukraine after Hungary and Slovakia dropped their vetoes.

Een jonge man die een Capels echtpaar (71 en 72 jaar) meer dan tienduizend euro afhandig maakte, wordt nu herkenbaar getoond door de politie. Hij werd vorige week nog geblurd in Bureau Rijnmond, maar heeft zich in de tussentijd niet gemeld. De oplichter deed zich voor als bankmedewerker en is mogelijk minderjarig.

De vijf tieners die zijn opgepakt na een explosie bij een synagoge aan het A.B.N. Davidsplein in Rotterdam-Blijdorp blijven langer vastzitten. Dat is donderdag besloten, toen zij voor de Rotterdamse raadkamer verschenen.

Onze angst voor het donker voelt vaak kinderachtig, maar volgens evolutionaire biologen is het juist een van de meest hardnekkige én rationele reflexen die we hebben.

In de prehistorie was de nacht simpelweg levensgevaarlijker dan de dag. Paleontologen Robert Hart en Russell Sussman betoogden al in hun boek “Man the Hunted” dat vroege mensachtigen vooral prooi waren, niet jagers. ’s Nachts hadden roofdieren als leeuwen en luipaarden een enorm visueel voordeel: waar wij vrijwel blind zijn, kunnen zij bij weinig licht nog altijd prooi waarnemen en volgen. Wie na zonsondergang nerveus dicht bij het vuur bleef, had dus grotere overlevingskansen dan de zorgeloze avonturier die het donker in liep.

Die selectie heeft sporen in ons brein achtergelaten. De amygdala, het kleine amandelvormige gebied diep in de hersenen, verwerkt dreigingssignalen via een snel kanaal dat het rationele denken overslaat. Bij duisternis, als informatie schaars en vaag is, kiest dat systeem automatisch voor het “better safe than sorry”-scenario: liever een valse alarmreactie dan één keer een écht gevaar missen. Psycholoog Martin Seligman noemde dit in 1971 “prepared learning”: mensen nemen bepaalde angsten – zoals voor donker, slangen of hoogtes – razendsnel aan en ze zijn opvallend resistent tegen uitdoving door redeneren.

Zelfs onze ogen werken mee aan deze ingebouwde nachtwaak. In 2002 beschreven onderzoekers in Science speciale ganglioncellen met het pigment melanopsine, die niet ‘zien’ maar licht meten en rechtstreeks naar onze biologische klok en stresssystemen seinen. Zodra het licht wegvalt, gaat een hormonale alarmketen lopen nog vóórdat we bewust denken: “Het is donker.”

Opvallend is dat kinderen overal ter wereld tussen hun vierde en zesde jaar een piek in angst voor het donker laten zien, ongeacht cultuur of mythes. Dat patroon lijkt eerder op een biologisch programma dan op aangeleerde angst. En misschien voelt die volgende keer in de parkeergarage om 23.00 uur net iets minder gênant als je bedenkt: het is niet je volwassen ratio die faalt, het is een oeroud waarschuwingssysteem dat precies doet waarvoor het is gebouwd.

If you want to surf elsewhere in the galaxy, it doesn’t actually look that promising. “Surfing on Titan would likely be a surreal, slow-motion, and tenebrous experience.” Or there’s also a planet with a sulfuric acid ocean?