Weeks after jewel heist, world’s most visited museum in dispute over staffing, renovations and ticket price rises

Trade unions at the crisis-hit Louvre museum in Paris will begin a strike on Monday to demand urgent renovations and staffing increases, and to protest against a rise in ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, including British and American tourists.

The world’s most-visited museum – which has had a difficult few months after a jewel heist , a damaging water leak and safety fears over a gallery ceiling – could face days of partial or total closure at one of its busiest times of the year if many of its 2,100-strong workforce vote to continue striking.

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.

Emergency help should be available, but some being forced to travel 100 miles or go private, says Healthwatch England

People needing emergency dental care in England are being denied help from the NHS despite guidance saying that it should be available, in some cases resorting to risky self-treatment such as pulling out their own teeth, the patient watchdog has found.

Patients who experience a sudden dental crisis such as a broken tooth, abscess or severe tooth pain are meant to be able to get help from their dentist or by calling NHS 111.

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.

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!”

Though once so despairing she thought of giving up the law for art, Kateryna Rashevska is still pushing for the return of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by the invaders

At only 28, the human rights lawyer Kateryna Rashevska has become the public face of Ukraine’s campaign to repatriate children forcibly deported to Russia. She knows this means she is being watched.

The past two years have seen the Ukrainian addressing the UN security council, the US Senate and writing submissions to the international criminal court (ICC), which then issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.

The comforting tourist-brochure idea of what Italian food looks like obscures a story shaped by hunger, migration and innovation

• Alberto Grandi is the author of La Cucina Italiana Non Esiste and a professor of food history at the University of Parma

Italy’s cuisine has now joined Unesco’s “intangible” heritage list , an announcement greeted within the country with the sort of collective euphoria usually reserved for surprise World Cup runs or the resignation of an unpopular prime minister. Not because the world needed permission to enjoy pizza – it clearly didn’t – but because the news soothed a longstanding national irritation: France and Japan, recognised in 2010 and 2013, had beaten us to it. For Italy’s culinary patriots, this had become a psychological pebble in the shoe: a tiny, persistent reminder that someone else had been validated first.

Yet the strength of Italian cuisine has never rested on an ancient, coherent culinary canon. Most of what passes for ancient “regional tradition” was assembled in the late 20th century, largely for tourism and domestic reassurance. The real history of Italian food is turbulent: a saga of hunger, improvisation, migration, industrialisation and sheer survival instinct. It is not a serene lineage of grandmothers, sunlit tables and recipes carved in marble. It is closer to a national long-distance sprint from starvation – not quite the imagery Italy chose to present to Unesco.

Alberto Grandi is the author of La Cucina Italiana Non Esiste and a professor of food history at the University of Parma

Japanese green tea named stain of the year as survey finds Aperol spritz and bubble tea are also leaving their mark

It used to be curry sauce, egg yolk and red wine that ruined Britain’s clothes but in a sign of the times laundry detergents are being reformulated to tackle stains left by matcha lattes, Aperol spritz and bubble tea .

In a month when year-end gongs are dished out, from BBC Sports Personality to Pantone’s Colour of 2026 (a white called “cloud dancer” ), matcha has received the dubious accolade “stain of the year”.

Matcha (39%).

Aperol/Cocktails (38%).

Lipstick/bronzer (37).

Protein shakes/sports drinks (35%).

Bubble tea (35%).

Nail polish (35%).

Sriracha/hot sauces (34%).

Deodorant (33%).

Makeup/foundation (32%).

Authorities investigating ‘apparent homicide’ after 78-year-old director of Stand By Me and The Princess Bride was discovered dead at LA home with wife

• Interview: Rob Reiner on Trump, family – and his brilliant, beloved movie

Rob Reiner, the director of beloved films including When Harry Met Sally, Misery, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, has died aged 78 in an apparent homicide, along with his 68-year-old wife Michele Singer Reiner.

Reports first began to emerge on Sunday afternoon that the bodies of a 78-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman had been found by authorities inside a home owned by Reiner in Brentwood, Los Angeles.