When you’re separating from a partner you’ve lived with, dividing up your shared belongings isn’t always a priority. There are ways to navigate this emotional and financial minefield, though

When wandering around Ikea arm-in-arm, most newly cohabiting couples are too excited about their new sofa, or Billy bookcase, or the enormous house plant they are about to wrestle into an Uber, to think too deeply about what might happen to those items were their relationship to sour. But at a time when many young couples can’t afford to buy property or have children, furniture can end up being the only thing to fight over at the end of a relationship. And, as the cost of living rises, having to replace furniture after a breakup can have a huge impact on people’s finances.

“It took me a couple of years to recover financially,” says Becca of her 2022 breakup. The 35-year-old, who is based in Leeds, had been in a relationship for about a year when her then-girlfriend invited her to move in to her house. At the time, Becca was renting her own flat, which was “amazing: big garden, really bright and lovely”, she says. But being what she describes as “young, stupid and in love”, she left that behind to move in with her partner. Becca reluctantly agreed to get rid of all the furniture she had bought for her flat, since her girlfriend didn’t want any of it in her place.

Sirin Kale on the BBC Panorama investigation into Married at First Sight UK

Is it possible to make dating reality TV shows safe for their participants?

A BBC panorama investigation recently reported that two women alleged they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” during the filming of Married at First Sight UK. They have not been named. A third woman, who agreed to be identified, Shona Manderson, accused her on-screen husband of subjecting her to a non-consensual sex act. All the men deny the allegations.

Their influence is evident in every corner of society, the imperial family owns some, and Tokyo even has its own ‘cat town’

Feline features stare out from the covers of umpteen novels, they have an officially designated day devoted to their mystique and popularity, and have outnumbered dogs as pets for a decade.

The influence of cats is evident across every corner of Japanese society, with a recent report crediting them with generating an expected ¥3tn ($18.8bn) in value to the Japanese economy this year – a phenomenon dubbed “catnomics”.

Now in residence at the Madrid Prado, the author talks about its dark, inspirational Goyas, the clandestine nature of her writing – and why she finally wrote about her jailed then posthumously exonerated father

It is a bright, chilly spring morning in Madrid, and the Museo del Prado doesn’t open to the public for another hour. Without the crowds, the museum is amorphous and eerily silent. A pale light pools in the corners and casts long shadows around the paintings, as if the figures inside them have slipped quietly into the room. It is here that I meet the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, who has spent the past two weeks using the space as inspiration for her work.

With quick strides, Slimani leads us to a basement gallery housing some of her favourite works: Francisco Goya’s dark and haunting Black Paintings, created later in life when the Spanish artist had adopted a particularly bleak outlook on humanity. Among them are Saturn Devouring His Son, a violent depiction of the god biting into his own child; The Fates, with its three ominous figures spinning the thread of life; and Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), in which the devil appears as a goat presiding over a coven.

Researchers racing to document Oceania’s last tropical glaciers found the remaining ‘eternal snow’ in Indonesia’s West Papua region has lost almost all its ice

• Mapping the last glaciers in Oceania – in pictures

An expedition to document the end days of the last tropical glaciers in Oceania has revealed sombre footage of “planetary destruction on fast-forward”.

The once-mighty ice sheets on Puncak Jaya, a mountain surrounded by dense rainforests in West Papua, Indonesia, have survived beyond projections they would disappear by 2026 but have shrunk to a fraction of their original size.

A new cap on bus fares in the Highlands and islands makes exploring this stunning archipelago in Scotland a breeze

The views are remarkable. From one window, gorse-gold hills roll west towards mountains patched with snow. On the other side, fields of new spring lambs slope down to a silver sea. Elsewhere, the bus crosses wide estuaries and cascading burns. There are thatched crofts, rocky bays and birch woods starred with anemones. One of the most remarkable things about this scenic 111-mile, 3½-hour trip on bus X99 is that it costs just £2.

Until March 2026, a single from Inverness to Scrabster on Scotland’s north coast was £28. Now, thanks to a new bus fare cap in Orkney, Highland and Moray, no journey in the area costs more than £2. The bus is timed to coincide with the Northlink Ferry to Stromness, Orkney’s second biggest town, and I’m heading there to explore by bus.

Ex-PM uses 5,700 word essay to accuse Starmer, Burnham and Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk

• Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump

Jakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said a new Polish-British defence and security treaty to be signed today in London will focus on countering the long-term, strategic threat posed by Russia.

And as you know, in today’s reality … speed of response, adequate response, is something that will matter in a conflict.

The Guardian – you’ve got to love them. I always used to say when I was prime minister that the most the greatest source of election losing advice was always from the Guardian.

I’m not saying the Labour party should love Donald Trump, get close to Donald Trump. I’m simply saying the American relationship matters to Britain.

We put together a plan that ended the war [in Gaza]. Now, at the moment, you’ve still got some fighting going on. You’ve still got a dire situation for the people.

This next week we will have further negotiations with Hamas because we need to move this new government into Gaza. And we need Hamas to agree that this government should be in control of Gaza.

Strikes on Lebanon further strain supposed ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and came as Iran said US had violated separate truce

Iran and the US have not yet reached an agreement on the strait of Hormuz, said Ali Bagheri, Iran’s deputy secretary of the supreme national security council, according to Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a security summit in Moscow, he said: “Until we agree on all the issues, we consider that we have agreed on nothing.”

Exclusive: Nursing and Midwifery Council admits it did not carry out checks on professionals who broke the law

Nurses and midwives who should have been banned from treating patients have practised over the last 12 years because of “potentially dangerous” failings by a medical regulator.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has admitted that its “completely and utterly unacceptable” mistakes meant it failed to protect the public from about 15 professionals whom it should have banned from ever working in healthcare in the UK because they had broken the law.

Prisons inspectorate finds almost 100 children each year are remanded to custody only to be bailed or moved

Children are witnessing extreme violence including stabbings while being unnecessarily held in custody awaiting trial or sentencing, the England and Wales watchdog has found.

Despite professional expectations they would be managed safely in the community, a report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons has concluded that almost 100 children each year are remanded to custody only to be bailed or moved to local authority accommodation less than two weeks later.