After years as Hollywood’s romcom darling, Hudson is putting music at the centre of her career – and after her show-stealing turn in Song Sung Blue, the Oscar buzz is growing

The first voice I hear when I enter the hotel room to meet Kate Hudson belongs to her 21-year-old son, Ryder, who speaks from the end of a phone: “Love you, Mum!”

Doesn’t everyone? You don’t have to be related to Hudson to consider her a joyous proposition – a great performer who hasn’t yet made a great film. It was a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous, her breakthrough picture, that she first proved she could hoist a movie out of the doldrums while making the task appear as effortless as blow-drying her hair. Without her performance as Penny Lane, the rock’n’roll muse who describes herself as a “band-aid” rather than a groupie, Cameron Crowe’s dopey valentine to the 1970s of his youth would have been Almost Forgettable.

After weeks of allegations of schoolboy racism, the Reform leader is doubling down. And our political establishment is allowing it

Just as I was starting to write this column, an email alert popped up on my screen. “Punters back Nigel for prime minister after Keir Starmer,” it read, placing the Reform leader second in the odds market after Wes Streeting. What a weird, dissonant duality this is. Nigel Farage is in his fourth week of revelations about alleged racist behaviour at school, and yet, here we are. This is one of those twilight-zone moments in British politics, where it seems something is going to “cut through” any minute now. For a moment it seems as if it absolutely will. And then, there’s a loss of momentum and a return to the status quo. In my mind it manifests like a battle of physical forces, acting on one another. Journalistic investigations, testimonies, whistleblowers, all as a sort of storm that blows on a political actor who may be knocked off his feet, but still manages to cling on by his fingernails, until the gale blows over.

Up scrambles Farage, a few pieces and more than a few polling points knocked off him, but still in place. This is, so far, what he is managing to survive – the testimonies of some 28 of Farage’s contemporaries at Dulwich college who have told the Guardian that they experienced or witnessed racist or antisemitic behaviour when he was a teenager. Jewish students were taunted; “gas them,” Farage said, “Hitler was right”. A black student, much younger than the then 17-year-old Farage, was told: “That’s the way back to Africa.” The allegations amount, in my reading, to a sort of obsessive campaign against minority students, pursued with the kind of bewildering commitment that anyone who has ever been bullied will feel in their bones.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Family friend, sources in Russia and Syria, and leaked data help give rare insight into life of dictator’s reclusive household

In 2011, a group of teenage boys spray-painted a warning on to a wall in their school playground: “It’s your turn, Doctor.” The graffiti was a thinly veiled threat that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, a London-trained ophthalmologist, would be next in the line of Arab dictators toppled by the then raging Arab spring.

It took 14 years, during which 620,000 were killed and nearly 14 million displaced, but eventually the doctor’s turn came and Assad was deposed, fleeing to Moscow in the middle of the night.

Arsenal and City march on, Sunderland enjoy bragging rights, and Ekitiké gives Liverpool fans a much-needed lift

Mikel Arteta had the option to frame things differently. The Arsenal manager was even teed up to do so with a generous question in the press conference that followed his side’s 2-1 win against Wolves on Saturday. Had his team shown the toughness of champions by recovering from a 90th-minute concession to steal all three points? “That’s something very positive but I don’t put it down to resilience,” Arteta replied. It was of a piece with him essentially reading the riot act to his players. They had not turned up at the start, he suggested, and the less said about the closing stages, the better – apart from the last-gasp winner. It is rare to hear Arteta be so critical but he knew his team had got away with one and he wanted them to know, too. Arsenal have a rare blank midweek before they go to Everton for another 8pm kick-off next Saturday. The standards must be higher. David Hytner

Match report: Arsenal 2-1 Wolves

Match report: Crystal Palace 0-3 Manchester City

Match report: Sunderland 1-0 Newcastle

Match report: Liverpool 2-0 Brighton

Match report: West Ham 2-3 Aston Villa

Match report: Chelsea 2-0 Everton

Timothée Chalamet’s live-wire striver using ping pong as his ticket out of normie American life is just one of many wonders in this extraordinarily rich tale
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When reports started to emerge that Timothée Chalamet was going to play a ping pong champion in a film called Marty Supreme, the world (including this correspondent) rolled its eyes. Was Hollywood’s most annoying actor going to go for broke in what promised to be the most irritating film of all time? Well I am here to hold up my hand and say that first impressions couldn’t have been more wrong. Marty Supreme is one of the most exciting, indeed sensational films of the year, and if the Guardian film critics’ poll wasn’t a democracy, many of us would made it No 1 by some distance.

For it turns out that Marty Supreme is a character drama of quite remarkable richness, its excitement and sensation deriving from the nervous energy of its protagonist – who is indeed a ping pong player called Marty – but plying his trade in the decidedly non-quirky early 1950s where our hero, played by Chalamet, is essentially trying to use this non-traditional sport to plot a way out of the dullness and grind of his normie life, where he is on track to become a manager of a shoe store. Marty (whose last name is not actually Supreme, but the amusingly alliterative Mauser) is a pretty dislikable individual: happy to abandon a girl he gets pregnant, throw a fit when he loses a match, and think he can talk his way out of any kind of difficulty. But such is his verve, charisma and never-say-die attitude, he carries you with him.

It started out as a fringe musical about an outlandish war plan – and became a West End and Broadway smash. As the show hits China, Australia and Mexico, its ‘nerd’ creators explain how they went global with a box of hats and a dream

Natasha Hodgson is wondering what to make of all the straight women who have developed a crush on her. Or, to put it more accurately, all the straight women who have developed a crush on her when she’s dressed as a second world war naval intelligence officer and speaking in a silly voice. But is it really Hodgson these woman have fallen for? Or is it Ewen Montagu, the bombastic, braces-wearing war hero she plays in the hit musical Operation Mincemeat?

“The confusion is real,” says Hodgson. “These women come to the show believing themselves to be straight, then they have a total identity crisis. But hey – if that’s not what musical theatre is for, I don’t know what is!”

Naveed Akram previously known to security agencies, prime minister says. His gun-owning father, Sajid, was shot dead by police at the scene

• Follow the latest live updates on the Bondi beach shooting

• Victims named so far

• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

The alleged gunmen behind the Bondi beach attack are a father-son duo suspected of using legally obtained firearms to commit the massacre, according to police.

Naveed Akram, 24, was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries. His 50-year-old father, who the Sydney Morning Herald first reported to be Sajid Akram, was shot dead by police.

Family of Ahmed al-Ahmed say he ‘doesn’t discriminate’ and would have done anything to save lives during the attack

• Victims named so far

• What we know about the Bondi terror attack

When Ahmed al-Ahmed tackled and wrested a gun from an alleged shooter at Bondi beach, he was simply thinking that he “couldn’t bear to see people dying”, his cousin says.

Less than a day later, al-Ahmed remains in a critical but stable condition at St George hospital in Sydney. Since the attack, the 43-year-old father of two young girls has catapulted to international fame and been hailed as a hero by the Australian prime minister, the New South Wales premier and the US president.

One moment, Rozen was ‘eating donuts and celebrating light’ with her family. Then peace turned to terror as the attack began

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• Bondi terror attack: full report

• What we know so far about the shooting in Australia

Jessica Rozen ran, searching desperately for her three-year-old son as the shots rang out at Bondi beach on Sunday.

Rozen had attended the Chanukah by the Sea event with her family when the terrorist attack began that evening, bringing a terrifying end to the day’s Jewish celebration of light.

Australia suffered one of its deadliest massacres in its history on Sunday when two gunmen opened fire on a Jewish celebration

• Bondi beach shooting live updates

• Full report

• Victims named so far

Australia experienced one of its deadliest mass shootings in its history on Sunday when two gunmen opened fire on a Jewish celebration at Bondi in Sydney. At least 16 people are dead, including one of the alleged killers.

Here is what we know so far:

On Sunday at 6.47pm local time, police and emergency services were called to Archer Park next to Sydney’s Bondi beach after reports of gunshots.

Footage shared on social media showed two gunman firing continuously at a large group who had gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of Hanukah.

At least 16 people are dead, including one of the alleged shooters. Among the dead are holocaust survivor Alexander Kleytman, London-born rabbi Eli Schlanger, French national Dan Elkayam, businessman Reuven Morrison, retired police officer Peter Meagher and a 10-year-old girl. Police believe the oldest victim is 87.

Forty-two people were taken to hospital after the attack. At 1pm local time on Monday, there were 27 people in Sydney hospitals. Six were in a critical condition, six were in a critical but stable condition and 15 were in a stable condition.

Two police officers were among the injured and were both in a critical but stable condition.

Police said they were treating the attack as an act of terrorism.

The alleged gunmen were a 50-year-old, who was shot by police and died at the scene, and his 24-year-old son, who suffered critical injuries and was taken to hospital under police guard where he remained on Monday.

Police have not named the alleged gunmen, but media have identified them as Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid Akram.

Naveed Akram is an Australian-born citizen, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said. His father arrived in 1998 on a student visa, transferred in 2001 to a partner visa and, after trips overseas, had been on resident return visas three times.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the son first came to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) in October 2019. He was examined “on the basis of being associated with others”.

New South Wales police and the director general of Asio, Mike Burgess, said one of the shooters was known to authorities, “but not in an immediate threat perspective”.

The NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, said the father was a licensed firearms holder with six guns.

Bomb disposal experts removed two active improvised explosive devices from the scene. Police said on Monday a third IED was located at Bondi.