Last year, romance fraud rose 52% for over-55s in the UK. Victims often feel they’ve made a terrible mistake and are at fault – but really, they’ve been expertly groomed by criminals

In total, over two and a half years, Elizabeth gave £100,000 to “Sam”, the “man” she met online, who she thought she loved and loved her back. She emptied her savings account, pawned her late mother’s jewellery and took out bank loans. She became so overdrawn that she could barely afford food and lived mainly on soup.

She had sent this money, for all sorts of reasons, to a man she’d never met. The first was a $500 Amazon voucher because Sam, a consultant, was out on an oil rig and needed to buy a manual. Later, the rig required a new part; then the tanker transporting the oil ran into problems, too. She gave money to Sam’s daughter who was trapped in an abusive marriage. Finally, when Sam became ill, Elizabeth was contacted by his doctor and began paying Sam’s medical bills. “When this doctor messaged to tell me that Sam was in a coma, I remember thinking he had such a strange, unprofessional turn of phrase,” says Elizabeth. “He said, ‘I’m sorry to spill the beans.’” She breaks into laughter. “A doctor! How could I have been so gullible?”

They may lack Labour’s party machine, but Zack Polanski’s burgeoning popularity could have seismic consequences for British politics

When Zack Polanski won the Green leadership in September, he made clear that he was coming for Labour. At the time, his warning that “we’re here to replace you” still seemed faintly presumptuous, coming from a man who hasn’t even managed to get himself elected to parliament and whose party was only barely into single digits in the polls. Even battered and beleaguered as it was by autumn, Labour was still the big beast of the left: the only one big enough, anyway, to win a majority.

Little more than a month on, pollsters are now talking about arguably the most underpriced wildcard in the 2025 pack, which is the prospect of the Greens overtaking Labour in the polls in the same way Reform overtook the Tories at the end of last year – not just in one rogue sample or outlier, but consistently enough to be credible.

Russell Crowe has a malevolent charm as the Nazi on trial in a compelling new film. His co-stars and director explain how they understood this monster – and the persistence of evil today

Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring. Less widely known, though, is the involvement of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who spent more than 80 hours interviewing and assessing Göring and 21 other Nazi officials prior to the trials. As described in Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Kelley was charmed by Göring but also haunted by his own conclusion that the Nazis’ atrocities were not specific to that time and place or to those people: they could in fact happen anywhere. He was ultimately destroyed by this discovery, and what he saw as the world’s reluctance to heed it.

The writer-director James Vanderbilt, whose script for David Fincher’s enigmatic serial-killer drama Zodiac similarly explored the real-life case of a professional being corroded by his pursuit of truth, has used The Nazi and the Psychiatrist as the basis of his new film, Nuremberg. Russell Crowe plays the preening, charismatic Göring, Rami Malek plays Kelley, and Michael Shannon is Robert Jackson, the American supreme court justice who was not only instrumental in mounting the trials but went head-to-head with Göring in court.

I knew he was running away from something. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered the truth

Craig was a runaway when I first met him. Missing from a local children’s home, he spent his days hanging out in Nottingham city centre. He had just turned 13 and he was tall for his age, easily recognisable with his blond hair, but he seemed invisible to the authorities.

No one was looking for him or the other dozen children who congregated on the market square. Most of them had absconded from care, some were dodging school. A few, like Craig’s mate Mikey, just didn’t bother going home. The youngest runaway, Mark, claimed he’d been missing from foster care for months and had spent his 12th birthday on the run. They were glad to have found each other and for a week or so they slept together in an alleyway. Craig organised bedding. He had picked up some tips from the experienced rough sleepers, he told me, as he collected cardboard he’d stored behind a bin. “Keeps the cold off your bones,” he said, without confidence. That was his first taste of being homeless.

Mohamed Salah has drifted from crucial to peripheral in big games, and Arne Slot’s decision to keep picking him is strange

There must be blame. We need heads on the battlements. We need entrails, horses, chains, a public quartering. Basically we just need to feel something. We need, above all, to feel that this is all someone’s fault.

This is how elite football must function now. The Dalai Lama once said that instead of looking to blame others we should look for answers within ourselves, which just goes to show how wrong you can be and is, frankly, very disappointing from the Dalai Lama.

Music photographer Barrie Wentzell shot the world’s biggest stars between 1965 and 1975. He talks us through some of his favourite moments

Sources say Robbie Gibb amplified criticisms of Trump, Gaza and trans rights coverage, and had ‘a lot of oxygen in the room’

• ‘Make no mistake – this was a coup’: the extraordinary downfall of the BBC’s top bosses

A BBC board member with links to the Conservative party “led the charge” in pressuring the corporation’s leadership over claims of systemic bias in coverage of Donald Trump, Gaza and transgender rights, the Guardian has been told.

Sources said Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief who was appointed to the BBC’s board during Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister, amplified the criticisms in key board meetings that preceded the shock resignation of the director general, Tim Davie, and the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness.

ONS says jobs market worsening before budget, as HMRC reports falling number of workers on firms’ payrolls

• Business live – latest updates

Unemployment in the UK has risen by more than expected to the highest level in four years, official figures show, amid a worsening slowdown in the jobs market before Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget.

With under three weeks to go before the chancellor’s tax and spending statement, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the headline unemployment rate rose to 5.0% in the three months to the end of September, up from 4.8% in the previous quarter.

Briefing paper warned proscription could also heighten Muslim-Jewish tensions and be seen as favouring Israel

Ministers banned Palestine Action despite being told by their advisers it could “inadvertently enhance” the group’s profile, an official government document shows.

The briefing paper was written three months before the proscription of the group, which was set up to take direct action to halt UK arms supplies to Israel.

World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity

• Cop30: click here for full Guardian coverage of the climate talks in Brazil

China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, analysis reveals, adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO₂ emissions well ahead of schedule.

Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation – which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year – meant the country’s energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased.