Black Panther made him a megastar, but in private the actor and his wife Simone Ledward Boseman were dealing with his terminal cancer diagnosis. In a rare interview, she talks about the shock of losing him, and how a revival of one of his plays has helped her heal

Simone Ledward Boseman is reflecting on the five years that have passed since the death of her husband, actor and writer Chadwick Boseman. “The edges of grief get less sharp over time,” she says. “Five years definitely feels like a marker. I’ve had to gradually figure out how I talk about Chad. What do I want to share, and what do I feel comfortable sharing? Can I find something that I might want to share in the midst of something I don’t want to share?” We meet on a video call across time zones – it’s 9am in California, where she lives. “Except for my mom, I’m not talking to anybody before 10am,” she laughs. She’s made an exception to give a rare interview ahead of the UK premiere of her late husband’s play Deep Azure, which is currently in previews in London at Shakespeare’s Globe.

When Boseman’s death was announced at the end of August 2020, the shock reverberated across the globe. He was devastatingly young – only 43 – and the world was just getting to know him. The release of the movie Black Panther two years earlier, in which he played the eponymous character also known as T’Challa, had skyrocketed his fame. Before then, he had been a successful Hollywood actor. Now? He was a global megastar – the first Black superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The news was doubly shocking because the family had not previously revealed that he had been suffering with colorectal cancer.

Punchy cocktails and roaringly traditional Greek food in the heart of Birmingham

Cylla, a classy Greek restaurant on Newhall Street, Birmingham, draws inspiration, it says, from Scylla, the legendary Greek man-eating sea monster that lives close to the whirlpools of Charybdis. She’s a beautiful woman, but has six dog heads, all grumpy and snarling, as well as a serpent’s tail.

If Scylla herself were ever to turn up at Cylla, dogs’ heads barking and tail flapping, they’d have to seat her in one of the gorgeous private booths at the front as you enter the room. These are the spots to grab if you want a little privacy, which is why we eschewed the long, prettily lit cocktail bar and headed straight to this cosy hidey-hole for a round of Poseidon’s Wrath. “It’s a bit like a dirty martini,” explained our server, who was one of those warm, bright, commanding, knowledgable souls who, in a hospitality setting, is worth her weight in drachma. This invigorating, mega-bitter tipple of vodka and vermouth laced with piney, herbaceous mastiha, seaweed and kalamata olive brine is the cocktail equivalent of being rescued by the RNLI: salty, breathtaking and head-spinning. Fret not, sweetness seekers, because they also offer a dozen other honey-, peach- and even meringue-based cocktails, if those are your thing, and all with equally dramatic, Greek myth-related names. Aphrodite’s Bloom, anyone? It’s a sensuous ode to the golden hour, the menu says.

You need to check where you stand legally, but I fear you’re being taken advantage of and will have to ask her to leave

In spring 2022, my husband and I were lucky enough to sell our house for a profit and, with help from my parents, bought a much bigger home. At the time, my friend was going through a tough time, so I asked if she would like to move in with us and our two children. There was no written agreement, but the plan was that she would either quit her job and retrain, or save for her own place and move out in six months to a year. She pays us £350 a month, which goes towards energy bills, bar a three-month period when she wasn’t working. I also gave her money towards taking a course.

She hasn’t retrained, got a new job or saved for a new place. And she doesn’t have the money to move out. I feel trapped and resent all I have to do as a working mum while she’s here, but that’s compounded by guilt as I know I’m very privileged to have a big house and a well-paid job. I hate that she sees me at my worst (rowing with my husband/sorting out arguments between the kids) and I feel as if I’m constantly keeping my emotions in check around her. Our friendship feels warped into a parent-child dynamic.

It’s chilling to watch as Trump and Netanyahu adopt the methods of regimes their countries once condemned

• Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza

In Syria, where I worked during the years of Bashar al-Assad’s terror, people were often taken away to torture cells before dawn by masked men. The timing was deliberate. It disoriented them at their most vulnerable, ensuring the torture to come would be even more agonising. The testimonies I recorded from survivors almost always contained the same phrase: “The morning they came for me.” One young woman, shattered by rape and violence, later told me that her life had split in two – before and after the masked men came for her.

In Iraq, those who spoke against Saddam Hussein – even abroad, even casually – were punished in cruel ways by a vengeful leader determined to crush any hint of dissent.

Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza. She is the author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria.

It’s refreshing, groundbreaking and absolutely piles up the gags. The return of this Glaswegian sitcom is very welcome indeed

The second series of Dinosaur opens on the Isle of Wight – a mere seven-hour drive and ferry ride away from our heroine’s beloved Glasgow. Oh dear. Nina (Ashley Storrie) is eight months into a dig, the job she took at the end of series one, and despite discovering a metazoic dung beetle and getting pally with a big American fella called Clayton who is so charming he can call her “Scotland” and get away with it, she’s homesick.

She is missing Lee, her almost-sort-of boyfriend who used to make her morning coffee outside the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, where she worked in the palaeontology department (not with the dirty grave robbers over in antiquities). She is missing watching The Real Housewives with her sister, Evie, their takeaway Tuesdays and walks around the “wee dodgy parks in case we uncover a homicide”. She’s all set to go home when she is asked to stay on another year. Will she choose her precious old rocks, or head to the exact midpoint between the Isle of Wight and Glasgow to reunite with Lee? So begins the madcap rush (in a very slow buggy) to a park bench in Knutsford, and the happy return of this hilarious, heartwarming and covertly groundbreaking sitcom.

Almost 1m UK households are hooked up to heat networks. None had protection from poor service or price hikes … until last month

‘If I could move, I would – to a place without a heat network. But I can’t while this debt is hanging over me,” says Anja Georgiou.

The mother lives with her family in a rented flat in the River Gardens development in Greenwich in south-east London where, three years ago, residents were shocked to be presented with a surprise £200,000 bill for heating and hot water.

Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found.

The platform, which says it has about 50 million users worldwide, allows members of the public to self-publish articles and charge for premium content. Substack takes about 10% of the revenue the newsletters make. About 5 million people pay for access to newsletters on its platform.

Exclusive: Ministers to act after last year’s legislation ‘outwitted’ by failing firms paying millions to executives

The government is to close loopholes which allow bosses of failing water companies to continue to receive large bonuses despite a ban passed last year, it can be revealed.

Bosses of companies that illegally dumped sewage into England’s rivers and seas and presided over water shortages which left thousands of people in misery have still been paid millions in bonuses despite the ban.

Grocery delivery firm will begin picking up broken tech across the UK and charging consumers to recycle items

A UK dairy delivery business is to begin collecting unwanted or broken toys, mobile phones and laptops while dropping off milk, orange juice and butter in its latest attempt to expand.

The Modern Milkman was founded by entrepreneur Simon Mellin in Burnley, north-west England, in 2019 and delivers groceries to more than 100,000 households across the UK.

Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff

Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence, who discussed a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney who was briefed on details of the call.

The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard.