The actor has said that she is increasingly facing problems with her memory as well as failing eyesight, struggling to remember appointments or see faces

The actor Judi Dench has spoken about her worsening eyesight and increasing memory problems, saying she struggles to recall immediate appointments – but is still able to remember reams of Shakespeare.

“I can’t remember what I’m doing tomorrow, I swear to you,” she told the Radio Times; her assistants then confirmed that she does sometimes require such help.

Patrick Mahomes has led his team to seven straight AFC Championship Games, winning three Super Bowls on the way. That run appears to be over

This is how great runs end. Not with a single catastrophic collapse, but with a slow drift towards the finish, looking old, tired and out of ideas. For the Chiefs, that sense of finality arrived on Sunday night, delivered by the Texans in a 20-10 defeat at home that felt more lopsided than the score.

For much of this season, there had been a gnawing sense of inevitability about the Chiefs. Whether judging by the eye test or the advanced data, this year’s group has been slightly better than the 15-win team who trudged through one-score victories last season, got hot in the playoffs and then were crushed by the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Even as the losses mounted this year, it felt like the Chiefs still had a run in them. If they could figure out their disjointed offense and find any juice on defense, they could sneak into the playoffs. And in a one-off game, with everything on the line, it would still be hard to look past the Andy Reid-Patrick Mahomes axis.

• Seven-time world champion could not ‘wait to get away’

• First year without podium for Brit in Ferrari debut season

A despondent Lewis Hamilton has said he could not wait to get away from Abu Dhabi after enduring what has been the worst season of his career. He finished in his lowest ever championship position of sixth place and is looking forward to the winter break and disconnecting from the sport as he attempts to reset and regroup.

In the final race of the season in he qualified in 16th place and finished in eighth, while the young British driver Lando Norris claimed his first world championship, the first Briton since Hamilton last did so in 2020.

Former Radio 1 DJ pleads not guilty to a total of 15 charges at Southwark crown court

Tim Westwood has pleaded not guilty to four counts of rape, nine counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault.

The former DJ stood in the glass dock with his hands clasped in front of him as he was arraigned on all 15 counts, at Southwark crown court.

Linbury theatre, London
An alter ego of the Nirvana frontman is hounded by a stream of fans, friends, Jehovah’s Witnesses, deliveries and even a private investigator

We first see him clambering around, slowly, under the scaffolding that supports his crumbling home (part doll’s house, part squat). He mutters constantly. In one scene he falls suddenly out of a kitchen cupboard. In another, he pulls his lurid green coat closed over his head, childlike in his efforts to disappear.

Blake is the deeply troubled protagonist of Oliver Leith and Matt Copson’s 2022 opera Last Days, based on Gus Van Sant’s film of the same name . With his 90s grunge-icon blond hair and baggy jeans, Blake is unmistakably the alter ego of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain: these imagined last days are his. But it is what we hear in Leith’s operatic version, revived for the first time at the Royal Opera’s Linbury theatre, that transforms this depiction of a person undone into something truly disturbing.

When abuse occurs, the first instinct is too often containment. We know this pattern because we have seen it ourselves

For years, Jeffrey Epstein conjured a kind of grotesque fascination: the private island, the powerful friends, the whispered allegations. But focusing on the lurid details of his life and eventual death obscures the far more unsettling truth his case lays bare. Epstein’s story is not really about one man’s depravity. It is about a system – legal, cultural, and institutional – engineered to protect the powerful through silence. His crimes thrived not because they were hidden, but because the people who knew were coerced, encouraged, or more than willing to shut up.

Silence was not incidental to Epstein’s success. It was central to it. And in this, he was hardly unique.

Gretchen Carlson is a journalist, bestselling author and internationally recognized advocate for women’s rights. Julie Roginsky is a champion of women’s rights and political consultant. Carlson and Roginsky co-founded the nonprofit Lift Our Voices, dedicated to eliminating silencing mechanisms like forced arbitration and NDAs for toxic workplace issues

The use of airport lounges is soaring, born of a desire to feel a bit special. The reality is we’re all going to end up crammed into the same awful, environmentally disastrous metal tube

The New Yorker has published a deliciously fact-stuffed long read on the airport lounge : there are more than 3,500 worldwide, of which 37 are in Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok. American Airlines opened the first in 1939 and called its VIP members “admirals”.

There are almost more admirals than ordinary seamen now (a weird metaphor in an air travel context, yes; blame American Airlines). The “mostly low- and mid-tier” lounge network Priority Pass saw a 31% increase in usage last year , including me: my credit card came with this seemingly seductive perk. I was thrilled to join the global elite in what I imagined would be a cashmere and champagne cocoon, saved from the usual three hours (my husband is one of those travellers) crouched by a bin in the purgatorial wasteland of Manchester Terminal 3, nursing a half-frozen Boots falafel wrap.

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On election day last month, I spent some time interviewing poll workers in New York City .

When I introduced myself to one, I told her that I write a column for the Guardian and her immediate reply was “thank you”. I was a little taken aback: people don’t normally react that way to journalists. Trust in the news media is low, and Donald Trump ’s unfair cries of “fake news” and his efforts to depict journalists as “enemies of the people” have taken their toll.

The US defense secretary’s belief that the military should not be held to account has been a defining factor in his career

Pete Hegseth’s office is located on the third floor of the Pentagon, in the E ring, room 3E880, facing the Potomac River with a scenic view of the monuments and the Capitol. He posted a video on 5 September showing a new bronze plaque being affixed to his door reading: “Pete Hegseth Secretary of War.”

His splendid new designation, not established by the Congress as required by law, was purely notional and performative, announced by Donald Trump in an executive order that carried no legal weight, but befitted Hegseth’s self-conceit as warrior-in-chief. He now had the title to go with the tattoos: the crusader cross; “Deus vult”, or “God wills it”, the crusader battle cry; the sniper rifle against the background of an American flag; and the cross and sword inspired by Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man , Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth . He is a Guardian US columnist