In the 90s my mum embarrassed me with her rejection of ultra-processed foods – but the growing body of evidence about them is vindicating her

A very specific childhood experience arose from being a “weird-lunchbox kid” growing up in the 90s with a food-conscious mother. It was the sense of palpitating trepidation felt when opening your school lunchbox, knowing that what lay within was going to be seen as “weird” in comparison with the sliced-white-bread-plastic-ham sandwiches, cheesy Wotsits and Club biscuits everyone else was gobbling.

What’s that?” your classmate would ask, their nose wrinkling as they took in yesterday’s veggie curry, crumbling homemade falafel or – my mother’s speciality – a “deconstructed sandwich” of doorstop-thick fresh bread, filling of some kind (often cucumber) and attendant crumbs floating freely in the bag. (Why bother assembling at all?, my father asked once, when you could simply throw in all the elements and shake?)

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

The singer on being a school bully, having a panic attack on stage, and ‘fearless bitch’ Elton John

Born in Washington state, Brandi Carlile, 44, released her self-titled debut album in 2005. She went on to win 11 Grammy awards and is part of the country supergroup the Highwomen. She has collaborated with Joni Mitchell and this year released the album Who Believes in Angels? with Elton John. Their song Never Too Late was Oscar nominated. She has published a memoir, and established the charitable Looking Out Foundation . Her eighth studio album, Returning to Myself, was released last month. Carlile lives in Washington state with her wife and two daughters.

When were you happiest?
I’m the happiest right now. I can see that I’m in a kind of sweet spot: my parents are alive, my kids are little, my wife is hot and my body doesn’t hurt.

Some teachers and pupils voice concerns about pilot programme after government’s agreement with OpenAI

Secondary school teachers in Greece are set to go through an intensive course in using artificial intelligence tools as the country assumes a frontline role in incorporating AI into its education system.

Next week, staff in 20 schools will be trained in a specialised version of ChatGPT, custom-made for academic institutions, under a new agreement between the centre-right government and OpenAI.

London and the south-east said to be worst affected, with valuations often coming in at 10% below the agreed sale price

An increase in property down valuations, with some homes being marked down by 10% or more by surveyors, is “turning deals and lives upside down,” mortgage experts claim.

Some believe that uncertainty around the contents of the budget may be fuelling a rise in surveyors taking a cautious stance and valuing properties at less than the agreed price.

Exclusive: Royal College of GPs chair says surgeries desperate to hire more doctors but lack funding to do so

GPs can no longer guarantee safe care for millions of patients because of a dangerous shortage of medics, Britain’s top family doctor has said.

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), said surgeries were desperate to hire more doctors to meet soaring demand for care but could not afford to do so because of a lack of core funding.

Acquisition likely to trigger in-depth investigation by regulator after agreement between DMGT and Redbird IMI

The owner of the Daily Mail has struck a £500m deal to buy the Telegraph titles, in a move that will create a right-leaning publishing powerhouse.

Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) has entered a period of exclusivity with RedBird IMI, which has been seeking a buyer since being forced to put the papers up for sale last Spring, to finalise the terms of the transaction.

Trump has demanded Ukraine accepts a ‘peace plan’ that would force it to give up territory to Russia and make other painful concessions

A Ukrainian drone attack targeted energy facilities in Russia ’s Samara region , killing two people in the southern city of Syzran , the region’s governor said on Saturday.

The attack was repelled by air defence forces, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev wrote on Russia’s state-backed Max messenger app, reports Reuters.

The Age of Disclosure is a new film featuring high-ranking government officials who claim proof of extraterrestrial life has been covered up

Director Dan Farah grew up with aliens. As a child of the 80s and 90s, pop culture was awash with extra-terrestrial sightings. “How can you be a kid watching movies like ET and Close Encounters, TV shows like The X Files, and not end up curious about whether or not we’re alone in the universe?” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “And whether or not the US government does, in fact, hold secrets from the public.”

Farah’s exposure to otherworldly beings in fiction kickstarted an interest that’s now morphed into a professional quest, and the subject of his documentary debut The Age of Disclosure. Here, Farah makes the case that the United States has been hiding, for decades, a font of information related to UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – the acronym rebrand of the stigma-ridden UFO.

On the border with Lebanon, communities have started to return and rebuild – even though some are in no hurry to return

Noam Erlich looks out over what was his beer garden. Beyond the disordered chairs and tables and the sign instructing neighbours and friends to “pay whatever you like”, the ridge falls away to fields, then a fence, then hills littered with the skeletal ruins of shattered Lebanese villages.

The 44-year-old brewer is standing in front of the house his grandfather built when the Manara kibbutz was founded in the 1940s in the very far north of Israel. The building was hit repeatedly by missiles fired by Hezbollah during the conflict, which ended a year ago, and will now almost certainly be demolished, along with most of the neighbouring houses.