• 23-year-old takes title one week after becoming father
• ‘It’s a huge moment becoming a European champion’

It took 6.49sec of staggering power and fluency for Jeremiah Azu to win the 60m European Indoor gold for Britain. And about the same time again for him to have a packed crowd in Apeldoorn eating out of his hand.

For no sooner had he been asked for his thoughts on his victory, the Rotterdam-born Azu began to speak in fluent Dutch: “I am here, I am in the building!” Having been foot perfect on the track, the 23-year-old proved to be word perfect off it too.

Cause of Betsy Arakawa’s death was hantavirus pulmonary syndrome while Hackman died of heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease contributing

The actor Gene Hackman died of natural causes days after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, succumbed to a rare respiratory virus, authorities said on Friday.

Arakawa died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome while Hackman died of heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease contributing, said Dr Heather Jarrell, the chief medical investigator for the New Mexico office of the medical investigator. The couple’s partially mummified bodies were discovered last month at their home in New Mexico.

Worries mount for health of media mogul and pro-democracy activist, 77, as his trial nears end

The son of the jailed Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai has called for an urgent meeting with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, saying he was “desperate” as his father’s defence drew to a close in a high-profile trial.

Sebastien Lai said a fresh diplomatic push was now needed to free the 77-year-old pro-democracy activist, who holds British citizenship and has been kept behind bars in Hong Kong since December 2020.

Lucy Boynton and Toby Jones’s outstanding performances meet beautifully claustrophobic cinematography in this tale of a young mother sentenced to death for killing her violent lover

For obvious reasons, the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman in Britain to be hanged by the state, has been told and retold in many different versions over the years, in film, theatre, radio and, of course, television. In A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, Lucy Boynton brings it to the small screen once again, playing the woman sentenced to death for shooting her lover, David Blakely, outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, north-west London. It is a sad and complex story, and while the performances are excellent, this solid four-parter can only march them grimly towards their inevitable conclusion.

It begins on the day of Ellis’s execution, in 1955, as she refuses an offer of drugs to “calm” her. It skips back several months to the night of her arrest – the night of the shooting – and then back again a few years, to where it all began for the purposes of this interpretation. Ellis, who was just 28 when she was hanged, is being interviewed for a job as the manager of a high-end(ish) London nightclub. The proprietor asks her to prioritise the final seat left vacant in the establishment: should it go to the aristocrat, the businessman or the actor? Boynton delivers the first of many wonderfully theatrical monologues in reply, establishing the framework of a fragile and shifting class system in postwar Britain.

• ‘Sometimes you need to lose to grow,’ says manager
• Manchester United face Fulham in FA Cup on Sunday

Ruben Amorim has said the challenges faced in his turbulent first three months in charge of Manchester United have made him a “more complete manager”. The Portuguese took over in November and has overseen five victories in 16 Premier League matches, leaving them 14th.

One of those wins was at Fulham, who visit Old Trafford on Sunday in the FA Cup fifth round. The holders face a crucial week with a last-16 first leg trip to Real Sociedad in the Europa League on Thursday with redundancies off the pitch and poor performances on it.

A weak economy, higher borrowing costs and increased defence spending will mean tough decisions

Rachel Reeves is rapidly running out of wriggle room amid higher borrowing costs, stubborn inflation, a sluggish economy and a promise to find billions of pounds for additional defence spending.

On Tuesday, the chancellor will get the final verdict from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) before her 26 March spring statement on whether her fiscal rules have been smashed apart by increasing financial pressures since last autumn’s budget.

Hendricks plays a Hollywood producer who returns to her home town to shoot a show in this whimsical comedy drama – and she is not someone you want to cross

How much you enjoy Small Town, Big Story will depend on how you feel first about whimsy and second about genre mashups. If your appetite for both is large, then Chris O’Dowd’s creation (he wrote and directed) has plenty to make you happy. If not, you might find the whole thing a little too underpowered to keep you going.

Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men fame, plays hard-bitten TV producer Wendy Patterson. She is in charge of her first big Hollywood production and returns to her tiny home town of Drumbán in Northern Ireland (after 25 years in Los Angeles surrounded by fat-cat bosses and patronising colleagues) to shoot it there. This follows shenanigans by Drumbán’s more colourful and eccentric characters to keep the location scouts from choosing a more tax-advantageous site across the border; these shenanigans include a pig’s head on a stick and a sign saying “Death to the infidels”, which, you know … well, OK, all right. Not even so much from an offence-giving point of view but from an “Is this remotely credible in this particular world?” position.

At the height of the cold war, the west advanced its soft power through aid and development spending. If we cut that now, who will fill the vacuum?

• Halima Begum is the chief executive of Oxfam GB

The savagely deep cuts that Keir Starmer has announced to the international aid budget make a mockery of the pledge his party made to the British people in its manifesto. Then, it promised to restore development spending at the level of 0.7% of gross national income “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow”. On Tuesday the prime minister stood in front of parliament and announced that he will cut it from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP. In the same manifesto, Labour made a commitment to “rebuild Britain’s reputation on international development with a new approach based on genuine respect and partnership with the global south”. This week, the government turned its back on it.

Of course, I understand the argument that defence spending has to be increased, but cutting our aid budget still further when governments around the world are cutting theirs too will only increase division in our already deeply divided world. More than that, cutting aid amounts to a collective betrayal of the most vulnerable and dispossessed by western leaders.

Dr Halima Begum is the chief executive of Oxfam GB

The outbreak, first discovered in three children who ate a bat, has caused 431 cases and 53 deaths

An unknown illness first discovered in three children who ate a bat has killed more than 50 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past five weeks, according to health workers.

As of 16 February there have been 431 cases and 53 deaths in two outbreaks across remote villages in Équateur province, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a bulletin.

Sobering but compelling, the latest powerhouse documentary from Norma Percy spans decades, speaks to everyone that matters – and proves to be vital viewing

The problem with calling a television programme Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October is that that is a hell of a long road to retrace. Where would a series like this begin? The formation of Hamas? The six-day war? Suez? 1948? 1917? Earlier?

The producer of this film, Norma Percy, has taken a more modern approach. Percy’s strongest skill as a documentary-maker has always been her ability to secure access to the people who matter, such as Gerald Ford for 1994’s Watergate series and Slobodan Milošević for 1995’s The Death of Yugoslavia. Given that the authors of the Balfour declaration – a letter written by the British government in 1917 supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland – are all long dead, Percy has decided to venture back only two decades.

Less than nine months ago Luton were competing in the Premier League but the prospect of League One football next season is looking increasingly likely after this crushing derby defeat at Watford.

A run of 12 league games ­without a victory paints a bleak picture for the Championship’s bottom club and their new manager, Matt ­Bloomfield, is still looking for a first win since his arrival last month following the departure of Rob Edwards.

News agency claims White House blocking journalists from press events is unconstitutional effort to control speech

The Associated Press sued three officials in Donald Trump’s administration over access to presidential events, citing freedom of speech in asking a federal judge to stop the 10-day blocking of its journalists.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday afternoon in US district court in Washington DC.

After Suits became a surprise Netflix smash hit in 2023, the inevitable follow-up is unlikely to find as many fans

For all my eye-rolling at spinoffs, reboots and IP rehashing, I have to admit that a redux of Suits, the erstwhile USA Network show about smartly dressed hyper-smart lawyers bickering smartly, is smart business. The original series, which ran from 2011 until 2019, is the type of show that linear television used to excel at, and what streaming services have long struggled to replicate: lightly serialized, an aspirational workplace drama with near-comically low stakes, sleek and sexy and easily second-screened. It was the show of the summer in, of all years, 2023, nearly half a decade after it wrapped its run and cultural eons away from the heyday of breezy, beautiful so-called “blue sky” television.

Given that everyone and their friend was watching (or rewatching) Suits a year-ish ago, it made sense, and was even maybe promising, that NBC greenlit Suits LA, a spinoff set in a somehow even sunnier environment than the original’s unrecognizably bright vision of New York (via Toronto). As an original series watcher carried back by the Netflix resurgence, I, too, was hopeful for an extension of the show’s cheeky, clever, bad-but-fun spirit, a show that doubled down on the magnetic hyper-competence of a corporate lawyer like Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), continued the predominance of unrealistically sexy tailoring, and transcended the presence of a pre-Sussex Meghan Markle.

A bailiff has an identity crisis after a tragedy in Radu Jude’s new film, a scornful polemic on 21st-century Europe set between hope and despair

Once again, Romanian film-maker Radu Jude has given us a garrulous, querulous movie of ideas – a scattershot fusillade of scorn. It is satirical, polemical, infuriated at the greedy and reactionary mediocrities in charge in his native land and wobbling on an unstable cusp between hope and despair. Like his previous film Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (whose lead actor Ilinca Manolache appears briefly in cameo here), Jude takes aim at bad faith and bad taste and takes us on what is almost a kind of architectural tour of Romanian malaise – this time in Cluj – in which he shows us the racism, nationalism, and a pointless obsession in the country’s governing classes with real estate and property development as a kind of universal aspiration. The movie closes with an acid montage of seedy public housing juxtaposed with gated private estates. And like the previous film, there is a repeated visual trope of a woman driving in a car, shown in profile, driving, driving, driving, looking for something – anything.

Kontinental ’25 is loosely inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51, in which Ingrid Bergman’s character is radicalised by a tragedy in her own life – a poster for this is shown in one scene in which our heroine is getting drunk in a cinema bar. Eszter Tompa plays Orsolya, a former law professor who has apparently lost her job and now humiliatingly works as a bailiff. She is now tasked with evicting a homeless, depressed man holed up in the squalid basement of an apartment building bought by a German property firm who intend to raze it to the ground and replace it with a luxury boutique hotel called the Kontinental (a building much bigger than the original and clearly conceived with minimal interest in the existing architectural forms).

This often-distressing BBC documentary follows astonishing kids working as TikTok chefs and hospital porters – and shows their determination to smile in the face of unimaginable horror

The children of Gaza will be its future, if they are able to remain there. Starting several months into Israel’s bombardment and continuing right up until the recent ceasefire, London-based directors Jamie Roberts and Yousef Hammash made their documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone by remotely instructing two local cameramen, Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba, as they captured life inside the “safe zone” – an ever-changing, ever-dwindling area in the south-west of Gaza, designated by Israel as the place where displaced Palestinians should reside. That the cameras predominantly follow children has an unexpected double effect: it makes the film’s many deeply distressing moments all the more unbearable, yet it tinges them with some sort of hope.

The kids are led by 13-year-old Abdullah, who acts as narrator as well as appearing on camera. “This area used to be colourful,” he says, briskly touring a scene of apocalyptic destruction in Khan Younis, where he lived in a house that sheltered 40 people before Israeli bombs turned it to dusty rubble. “Now, it’s grey.”

Mikel Arteta challenged his Arsenal squad to bare their teeth and prove they have the tools to fight for the title despite stomaching a significant injury to Kai Havertz. For 80 minutes it seemed fears of being blunt in attack would be founded in a frustrating stalemate at struggling Leicester but then the excellent Ethan Nwaneri dinked a feathery cross into the box and the substitute Mikel Merino, unmarked between Wout Faes and Woyo Coulibaly six yards out, twisted his head to power in the first of his two goals. Merino, who replaced the ineffective Raheem Sterling, sealed victory with his second with three minutes of normal time to play.

Arteta began with Leandro Trossard as a false 9, Sterling to his left and Nwaneri to his right in a three-pronged attack but until Merino’s header the Arsenal manager must have been wondering how else to penetrate Leicester, now without a clean sheet in 21 matches in all competitions. This was the first Premier League game in which Arsenal began without any of Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus or Havertz, who is out for the season with a hamstring injury, for almost four years. But Merino ensured Arsenal cut the gap to Liverpool, the leaders who host Wolves on Sunday, to four points for at least 24 hours.

This utterly idiosyncratic sitcom about young men in smalltown Northern Ireland has hints of This Country – but with a pedalo-based masturbation scene that is unspeakably, brilliantly awful

Like so many great comedies, Funboys is an idiosyncratic, gently nurtured, quietly horrific thing. The creation of RyanDylan and Rian Lennon, who also play two of its main characters, it began life as a 14-minute film – small but perfectly formed – that premiered at the BBC Two comedy festival two years ago. Now, with cast nicely broadened and content nicely deepened, it has become a series. We follow the three “emotionally unassembled” twentysomethings – Callum Brown (Dylan), Jordan McCafferty (Lennon) and Lorcan Boggin (Lee R James) – whose earnestness belies their self-chosen funboys moniker, as they attempt to assemble and entertain themselves with the sparse resources on offer in the tiny town of Ballymacnoose, Northern Ireland.

Callum is no longer engaged to his ultra-religious fiancee Morgan (Emer O’Connor), but the gang is disturbed and astonished when an English girl, Gemma (Ele McKenzie), arrives in town and promptly makes Callum her boyfriend. “Strong, rugged, good-looking,” she tells him. “I’m sick of that rubbish.” Jordan quickly gets very drunk to cope with his friend’s absence from their group gaming sessions. “I’m worried about Callum’s post-nut depression,” he insists. “I don’t want that for you, Callum.”

Experts warn president’s blatant violations of law could upend US government’s system of checks and balances

The deceptively legalistic camouflage rendered the words almost banal – while still clearly communicating their ominous undercurrent.

“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” wrote Vice-President JD Vance, a graduate of Yale law school, on X as he waded into an escalating tug-of-war between his boss, Donald Trump, and the US federal courts.

Actor reportedly in final negotiations to follow up performance in Oscar-nominated hit Conclave with key role in much-anticipated HBO series

John Lithgow is nearing a deal to star as Professor Albus Dumbledore in HBO’s hotly anticipated Harry Potter series, sources told Deadline and Variety.

HBO did not confirm any casting for the show based on JK Rowling’s bestselling books. “We appreciate that such a high-profile series will draw a lot of rumor and speculation,” the network said in a statement to Deadline. “As we make our way through pre-production, we will only confirm details as we finalize deals.”

Airport’s chief executive to formally spell out expansion plans in speech at British Steel plant in Scunthorpe

Heathrow will submit third runway proposals to the government this summer, pledging to use UK steel and boost growth, the airport has confirmed.

Its chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, will formally spell out plans for a third runway to follow a multibillion-pound upgrade of the London airport’s existing terminals and facilities, in a speech at the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe on Wednesday.