Ex-nurse says inquiry should be suspended until review of convictions has finished

Lucy Letby has called for the public inquiry into her crimes to be halted, arguing there is now “overwhelming and compelling” evidence undermining her baby murder convictions.

Lawyers for the former nurse took the extraordinary step of writing to Lady Justice Thirlwall on Monday to say that the inquiry – which is due to end on Wednesday – should be suspended immediately.

UK pharma group acquires Belgium’s EsoBiotec as it announces EU has approved Imfinzi lung cancer drug

AstraZeneca has struck a $1bn (£773m) deal to buy a Belgian biotech company that specialises in cancer immunotherapies, the latest in a string of acquisitions that also yielded positive results for a late-stage rare disease drug on Monday.

EsoBiotec, a small privately held firm, develops in-vivo CAR-T cell therapies that empower the immune system to attack cancers, and could offer many more patients access to cell therapy treatments, provided in minutes rather than weeks.

Welfare secretary visits Northampton centre helping out-of-work people develop skills, saying it is part of new approach

The welfare secretary, Liz Kendall, wearing an apron, is gingerly rolling a ball of sourdough. When it comes to getting people off incapacity benefits and back into work, breadmaking, it seems, has a part to play.

Kendall is at Workbridge, a community centre in Northampton. There’s a cafe, a garden centre, and workshops and kitchens offering people with mental illness, autism, learning disabilities and brain injuries the chance to develop their life and job skills.

Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discuss whether the backlash to the government’s planned benefit cuts will result in a U-turn. And which other departments could face eye-watering cuts?

To purchase tickets for Pippa Crerar’s live conversation with the health secretary, Wes Streeting, please visit: theguardian.com/WesStreetingEvent

The physical impact alone has been seismic, but has the pandemic also altered how we see ourselves and the world?

In the strange, scary days of early 2020, with the world suddenly upended by the outbreak of a terrifying new virus, there were times when it seemed certain every aspect of society would be hugely altered by the experience.

Five years on, the physical impact of Covid has been profound. More than 220,000 people have died in the UK, out of 7 million worldwide. Many more have been left with a devastating post-viral illness.

Consuming acidic foods such as vinegar can indeed affect how carbohydrates are absorbed by the body, experts say

Rises and dips in blood glucose levels influence our energy throughout the day – peaks give us a boost, while drops leave us fatigued. We get a spike and then a drop after eating. The sharper the spike, the more likely we are to experience energy crashes. Over time, frequent spikes can contribute to insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

One widely suggested remedy is a shot of apple cider vinegar every morning. Dr Christine Bosch, associate professor in nutrition at the University of Leeds, says studies over the past decade suggest that vinegar could indeed have positive long-term effects on our blood glucose levels.

Five years after the first lockdown, millions of lives are still being ruined by this debilitating disease. You wouldn’t know it

Imagine a disease that can render its sufferers bedbound for years. One that could take a marathon runner and leave them unable to walk to the toilet. Imagine that at least 2 million people in England and Scotland alone were affected to some degree, each with a mix of debilitating symptoms, from breathlessness to brain fog to multi-organ damage.

Then imagine that there were no proven treatments for this life-changing illness, let alone a cure. In fact, patients are often told it’s all in their heads. Now imagine that more people are falling ill every day with the virus that causes this devastating disability – and that successive governments have abandoned almost every strategy to try to get to grips with it.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

A surgeon (and TV host) encourages us to take a fresh look at our organs in a smart and forceful study

In the first week of medical school, my cohort was divided into small groups, given big sheets of white paper and assigned the task of drawing organs on a human outline, as our lecturer shouted “liver!”, “ovary … other ovary!”, “appendix!”, “spleen!” It was startling to confront our ignorance and the exercise was formative for me in retaining humility when talking with patients and being curious about what I call their “imaginary anatomy”: how we think our bodies look inside. Despite the smooth, slim, cross-sections we see on the walls of GP surgeries, each of us has this imaginary space that is of interest not only in its deviation from textbook “truth”, but because the idea of our innards affects how we feel about ourselves and what we think our bodies can do for us. This might explain why I chose to become a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon.

As Gabriel Weston writes in Alive, surgeons tend to think they “own anatomy”. Weston is herself a rare breed of surgeon, having read English at Edinburgh University before reckoning with her single biology O-level to join a new course for humanities students who wanted to become doctors. This made her “the least qualified medical student in the country”. Her “soft, arts-loving brain” had to pass as a scientist – an outsider status I share – which got easier once Weston became fascinated by the operating theatre and the “peachy slit” of the scalpel’s opening incision. It’s an obsession that is still evident everywhere in her writing. But she never lost her belief that medicine is dangerously resistant to seeing the body as more than mechanism, the person as more than a case.

Exclusive: Clare Moriarty hits out at Labour’s plan as ‘short-term action’ with ‘long-term consequences’ in rare intervention

Cutting benefits for disabled people will push more people into poverty and make it harder for them to get into work, the chief executive of Citizens Advice (CAB) has warned.

In a rare intervention, Clare Moriarty criticised the Labour government’s proposals as a “short-term action which has very serious long-term consequences” that risk leaving an intergenerational effect.

From chatshows in spare bedrooms to the sheer terror of infecting Hollywood megastars, making television in lockdown became utterly wild. The insiders tell all

Nearly four years ago, back when Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield were still mates, and both still employed by ITV, it felt normal to watch the two This Morning hosts get emotional as they embraced through a “cuddle curtain” – a thick sheet of plastic with arm sockets. “Why does it feel like we’re in prison?” laughed Schofield. “This is what the internet was made for!” yelled guest Ant McPartlin, sitting on the sofa a safe two metres away.

It was proof that coronavirus had turned television completely upside down.

New evidence of particles damaging crops strengthens the case for an international plastics treaty

New and concerning findings from environmental scientists about the impact of microplastics on crops and marine algae add to a growing body of evidence about the disruption caused to living systems by plastic pollution. The results, from a team led by Prof Huan Zhong at Nanjing University, China, are not definitive and require corroboration. But analysis showing that plastics could limit photosynthesis (the conversion of sunlight into chemical energy) must be taken seriously. If the researchers are correct, and staple crops are being reduced by about 12%, there are huge implications for global agriculture and food supplies. This could inject new urgency into efforts to tackle plastic pollution.

There is no single route by which microplastic particles inhibit plants from growing. The overall effect is attributed to a combination of blocked sunlight and nutrients, and damage to soil and cells. This can lead to reduced levels of chlorophyll – the pigment enabling photosynthesis. When the researchers modelled the crop losses caused by an effect of this size, they found Asia was hardest hit, potentially contributing to food insecurity and worsening hunger.

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Health secretary’s comments that too many people are ‘written off’ prompts warnings against stigmatising people

Wes Streeting’s comments that there is an “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions has prompted experts to warn against stigmatising and punishing people.

The health secretary also said too many people were being “written off”, as he was questioned about the government’s welfare measures. Speaking to broadcasters, Streeting was repeatedly challenged on whether ministers were leaving disabled people uninformed for too long about the plans – and whether they would freeze the personal independence payment (Pip) as part of their welfare package this week.

While writing my book, I asked on social media for stories from parents suffering extreme sleep deprivation. It was hilarious – and frightening

Sleep is a feminist issue. Or should I say, lack of sleep is a feminist issue. During a particularly thickly cut bout of tiredness, when my son was a newborn, I became so convinced that my tiny, milk-stained baby had rolled out of my arms and somehow, unfathomably out of the room, into the night outside that I started crawling along the floor of our hallway, in the dark, sobbing. The fact that the boy couldn’t yet roll over, was in his cot, and the door was closed, while my partner snored like a mechanical digger beside him, could not penetrate the exhausted fug of terror that had enveloped me after weeks, months of broken, fluttering, barely snatched rest.

Whether it’s waking up every 45 minutes to feed a screaming baby, making shopping lists while roasting under the duvet in an insomniac hormonal flush, staying up past midnight to clean the house once your children are in bed, or setting the alarm for 4.45am so you can get your elderly mother to the toilet before she has an accident; the night shift of unpaid, unrecognised and uncelebrated domestic labour is still predominantly undertaken by women. While the Office for National Statistics found that in 2022, almost 4.9 million (56%) night-time workers were male and almost 3.9 million (44%) were female, this does not by any means mean that women are getting more sleep. I very much doubt that it was a breastfeeding woman who smugly declared Friday 14 March as World Sleep Day.

Nell Frizzell is a journalist and author

ASMR videos can mimic the feeling of physical touch, which a study has found is popular with young consumers. But how many intimate gestures of love, care and connection are they missing out on?

You wouldn’t think a deep dive on slime-squishing and head-scratching videos could be haunting, but a recent study on ASMR content left me haunted and also slightly grossed out.

ASMR, for those not particularly online, is a content genre named after the feeling it provokes in some viewers: autonomous sensory meridian response, a pseudoscientific name for a pleasurable tingling accompanied by a sense of calm. If you’re moderately online, you may know it as “those whispering and tapping videos” – there is lots of that, plus scratching, slime and gentle brushing. But there is much more to it, as I discovered reading a report by innovation agency Revealing Reality, including subgenres that mimic physical touch. You can watch ASMR-ists pretend to brush your hair, groom you for nits or wipe your “face” – the camera – with a spit-moistened finger (that is the gross bit).

The pandemic forced many people in England and Wales to reflect how they might die with dignity, and the numbers of those wanting to die at home is on the rise

When Marlene Viggers was told her newly diagnosed cancer was untreatable, she said she wanted to go home to die. “She was the matriarch of the family, she held everything together, and she wanted to have her family all around her,” said Neil Andrews, her son-in-law.

For the next few weeks, until Marlene died in January 2022 at the age of 73, she was given round-the-clock care by her closest relatives supported by Marie Curie, the end of life charity.

Further 10 diagnosed with disease after mistakes with GP registration process

Ten people have died from cancer and up to 10 more have been diagnosed with the disease after a blunder meant they were not invited to NHS screening programmes.

Health officials failed to invite more than 5,000 patients in total for routine checks after an IT error affected bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening programmes, as well as abdominal aortic aneurysm screening.

My colleague and mentor Myra Garrett, who has died aged 92, was a pioneering development worker, philanthropist, and advocate for peace and social justice.

After leaving the US for the UK in 1970, she became a transformative figure in east London, co-founding organisations such as the Limehouse Project, in 1984; the Tower Hamlets Health Strategy Group, in 1986, which gained charity status in 1994 and was rebranded as Social Action for Health in 2000; and the Bangladeshi Mental Health Forum, in 1999. These initiatives addressed critical issues such as mental health, housing, education and women’s empowerment, profoundly affecting marginalised communities.

Thomas Cooper was inside an oxygen chamber in a Detroit area medical facility when it exploded on 31 January

Four people have been charged in the death of a 5-year-old boy who was “incinerated” inside a pressurized oxygen chamber that exploded at a suburban Detroit medical facility, Michigan’s attorney general said Tuesday.

Thomas Cooper from Royal Oak, Michigan, was pronounced dead at the scene on 31 January at the Oxford Center in Troy. His mother was standing next to the chamber and was injured trying to save her boy.

RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ giving fresh momentum to longtime efforts to outlaw additives, which is now a bipartisan movement

At least a dozen US states – from traditionally conservative Oklahoma to liberal-leaning New York – are rushing to pass laws outlawing commonly used dyes and other chemical additives in foods, citing a need to protect public health.

In one of the most far-reaching efforts, West Virginia last week advanced a sweeping ban on a range of common food dyes that have been linked to health problems, particularly for children, with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats.

The social, educational and financial impact is still making itself felt, especially for those who continue to mourn

Five years ago, on 11 March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. In the intervening years, more than 7 million people worldwide have been reported to have died from Covid. For most people, life as they remember it before the outbreak has returned to the way it was before. However, respondents to a Guardian callout reflect a more complex picture for those who are still affected.

While many reported feeling happier that working from home has allowed for a more flexible work-life balance and that eating more healthily and exercising has become a priority, many others described how they still live with what happened.