The theory of parental alienation is a ‘harmful pseudo-science’, according to recent official guidance in England and Wales. Yet it led to Sarah’s two daughters being taken away six years ago – and never returned

On the afternoon that Sarah’s daughters were taken away from her, they had been due to go to a paddling-pool party. It was July 2020 and, with the easing of lockdown restrictions in England, the girls – then nine and six – were excited about seeing their friends again after months apart. Sarah had just bought them matching swimsuits: blue with sequin unicorns.

But the girls never made it to the party. Three days before, Sarah had received a call from her solicitor. “I could not comprehend what I was hearing,” she says. “My legs started shaking.” Her solicitor explained that she had been called a “narcissist” in evidence presented to the family court, which claimed she was an immediate danger to herself and her children. Both of her girls could be removed from her with immediate effect.

One man’s irresponsible drilling causes a global crisis in Iñárritu’s exasperatingly laborious, self-congratulatory film

A new movie from the Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is always an event. So it’s disconcerting to discover that the event in question is the most disappointing film of the year: an exasperatingly shallow, laborious, self-congratulatory satire with a trick up its sleeve, featuring very good actors giving not very good performances. There are moments to enjoy in Tom Cruise’s boisterous leading turn, yes, but the film’s value resides chiefly in some dreamlike and disturbing images, distorted and bulging from the screen, conjured by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Dennis Gassner.

An ageing, paunchy Texan oil tycoon called “Digger” Rockwell is seen fretfully getting up in the morning, cooing over his horrible old incontinent cat, taking urgent messages from underlings about a certain situation developing in his drilling station in the frozen Arctic. He is played by Tom Cruise with a wispy baldingness and various other prostheses, together with a good-ol’-boy twang and a Stetson borrowed from Slim Pickens’s bomb-riding army major in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. His prized possession is the battered old shovel his granddaddy used a century before, digging for black gold as a penniless young man in the lone star state. Digger likes to brandish this to make a point.

Nothing was off the table, no coded hints, and by the end no one could be in any doubt about what Burnham believed

You’ve got to hand it to Andy Burnham. He left nothing out on the pitch. It would have been so easy to play it safe. To deliver a traditional leader’s speech to a home crowd. One we’ve been seeing from leaders of all parties for more than 15 years. Something warm, a feelgood vibes word salad with the odd minor spending announcement thrown in. Hell, the Labour conference would have probably settled for it. They already had all the hope that they had come for. The hope that they were back in with a fighting chance of winning the next election. They wouldn’t have even dared think that three months ago.

But Andy did it differently. Just as he had promised. He had said he was a different kind of politician and he duly made good on that. Hope came with honesty, he said. And honesty was what we got. Nothing was redacted. No coded hints. Come the end of his hour-long speech, no one could be in any doubt about what he thought. More than that, what he believed.

As a business journalist, Nilsson began rigorously reporting on the power players of the adult industry, who prefer to remain in the shadows. Along the way, she uncovered how porn has shaped the internet – and our lives as a whole

There was a time, a few decades ago, when the men who owned the world’s biggest pornography businesses were happy to be famous. They paraded a lifestyle they hoped looked glamorous, appearing in public dressed in silk pyjamas or with a woman in swimwear on each arm. Porn moguls like Hustler’s Larry Flynt or Playboy’s Hugh Hefner were household names.

“Say what you want about these old perverts, who once set the tone of our sexual culture, but at least you knew who they were and what they were selling,” Patricia Nilsson writes in her new book, Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else. “These days, the men calling the shots are nowhere to be seen.”

PM’s speech, written almost entirely alone, was full of radicalism but his biggest plans will have to wait until after the next election

• Key takeaways from Andy Burnham’s conference speech

Hope Again is the conference slogan. But what felt even more apt was Try Again.

Just forget about the last two years, after the party won a historic majority but where the mood never matched the achievement. Now, as conference delegates and MPs filed out of the hall after Andy Burnham’s first speech as prime minister, it was close to euphoria. Where the hell have you been all our lives? What have we been doing – when you were right there all along?

Trekking poles can improve balance on uneven terrain and reduce stress on joints. Our seasoned adventurer put 10 to the test to find the best

• ‘I’d never head out without one’: 10 hiking essentials

Oh, I would walk 500 miles – with the help of a trusty pole. A walking pole – or two – makes a surprisingly handy addition to your hiking kit, helping with balance on uneven terrain, taking strain away from your legs and knees, and making going up and down hills much easier. I first tried walking poles when I went trekking in the Himalayas – now, I wouldn’t be without one on rugged terrain, but they can be just as helpful on a casual stroll.

Hiking poles are typically used as a pair, and the idea is to swing each pole in time with the opposite foot as you move forwards: right foot and left pole, then left foot and right pole, in a rhythm. You can also use poles singly to keep a hand free or to take the weight off one side of your body.

PM accepts some of his plan could be difficult and admits he ‘may pay a political price’

• Analysis: PM’s promises will take time to come good

• Key takeaways from Burnham’s conference speech

Andy Burnham has staked his future on a gamble that the public will back radical progressive policies on social care, electoral reform and Europe, telling voters that his agenda will break the mould of the last 40 years and “allow us to rise again”.

In a deeply personal speech at Labour’s conference, Burnham began building his next general election manifesto, acknowledging that he may end up paying the price for creating sharp new dividing lines in politics.

• Commission: club broke rules over nine-season period

• City will appeal against verdict before Friday deadline

The Premier League has confirmed Manchester City have been found guilty of all charges of breaching its financial rules over a nine-year period, with the club found to have boosted their income by a staggering amount of more than £900m.

In a bombshell announcement the Premier League revealed an independent commission had found City guilty of arranging “sham ­contracts” with commercial partners to artificially inflate revenues and reduce costs, and of filing inaccurate accounts to hide the true state of their finances, which if accurately reported would have led to significant breaches of Premier League and Uefa spending limits.

Head of Counter Terrorism Policing defends decision to bail five British men arrested in connection with incident

No explosive devices were found in three vans searched near RAF Fairford as part of a terrorism investigation but a quantity of petrol was recovered, police have said.

Five British nationals were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning after a resident living near the Gloucestershire airbase reported suspicious activity involving three vans.

More than 25,000 people have been deported to 29 countries under ⁠the policy implemented last year, according to a tally by human rights groups

• Sign up to the US Breaking News email

For some context, it’s worth remembering that Smith had a two-volume report of his findings as a result of his criminal investigations – that resulted in two indictments against the president after his first term. The first focused on Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, while the second on the president’s retention of classified documents.

However, in February, a Trump-appointed federal judge permanently barred the justice department from releasing the second volume of Smith’s report.