Seemingly what elevates this case to a matter of national security is that two Tory MPs were allegedly spied on

There are few things that MPs take more seriously than themselves. Their desire to put themselves front and centre of world events. Their need to imagine that everything they do makes a difference. No greater self-love hath any person than this. If they were to have a therapist, I am sure they would be having a field day. The triumph of ego over ever-diminishing quantities of self-worth.

So the collapse of the Chinese spy trial has been a godsend to almost every opposition MP. Now, you might have thought the key components of the case were two blokes called Christopher being accused of doing the espionage. Albeit fairly basic stuff like leaking diary engagements that weren’t exactly state secrets in the first place.

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here.

The Bonfire of the Insanities by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

We asked experts to share tips on how to take control of dreams once you realize you’re in it

Usually, we don’t have much say in what we dream about. Our brains churn up images, and we sit back and watch. But it’s possible to take control. You can turn the monster chasing you into a mouse, or fly through the sky like a bird. All it takes is realizing you’re in a dream, mid-dream – otherwise known as lucid dreaming.

Lots of people want to lucid dream. There are online communities devoted to sharing tips and tricks, like the subreddit r/LucidDreaming, which has about 98,000 weekly visitors. Recent discussion topics include “If flying is hard, try giving yourself a Green Lantern ring,” and “Has anyone gone to space in [a lucid dream]?”

Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir lays bare the life-wrecking impact of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes – but it is also the story of how a young woman becomes a hero

• Read an extract

There is a strand running through Nobody’s Girl – a memoir by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died by suicide in April this year – in which the activist and survivor of Jeffrey Epstein grapples with something more insidious than abuse. “I know it is a lot to take in,” she writes after a gruelling early passage detailing how she was sexually abused as a child. “But please don’t stop reading.” After recounting the first time Epstein allegedly forced her to have sex with one of his billionaire friends, she writes, “I need a breather. I bet you do too.”

Throughout the book, Giuffre beguiles, apologises and cheerfully breaks the fourth wall in an effort to soften the distaste she assumes her story will trigger. Make no mistake: this is a book about power, corruption, industrial-scale sex abuse and the way in which institutions sided with the perpetrator over his victims. Epstein hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial in 2019 and Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator, is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, outcomes largely enabled by Giuffre’s testimony. But it is also a book about how a young woman becomes a hero. And yet here she is, having to charm us out of shrinking from her in horror.

Experts say thieves would struggle to find a buyer if the stolen goods remained intact

To break into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grab eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanish into the Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

I had tried elaborate mind games, herbal teas and even a military method. Nothing worked. So I gave in, tuned into some macabre podcasts and had a very surprising reaction

For years I had accepted that sleep, just like the Rubik’s cube and a receding hairline, was one of those things that I personally was not equipped to beat. No matter how much I tried to disarm my mind with an assortment of pills, elaborate mind games and expensive sleep teas, nothing seemed to work. In fact, many of these “solutions” only made my insomnia worse. On the rare occasion that I did catch myself drifting off, a bout of relief and excitement would quickly overtake me, leaving me wide awake and more exasperated than ever. The more pressure I put on myself, the more impossible sleep became.

One night I was in bed trying to replicate a strategy used by the SAS to instantaneously fall asleep by relaxing my body, starting with my facial muscles, and breathing slowly and deeply, when I finally decided I’d had enough. Clearly, trying to sleep was just not something I was cut out for. I had read all the books, done all the research and, still, nothing ever improved. If my brain refused to accept any sort of attempt to shut it down, then why waste so many hours of my day even trying?

Britain has been stripped of the spaces that allow for true social integration. But it’s easier for politicians to blame ‘outsiders’

Every few weeks, another announcement. Immigrants must do this to earn the right to stay in the UK. Others must do that if they are to be allowed to work in the UK. The demands grow more punitive and absurd, like the whiteboard of a meeting where everyone agreed there were no bad ideas. Voluntary work! A decade to receive citizenship! Hear me out: English A-levels!

These are all real policies and pledges. Migrant NHS doctors for example, labouring for long work days beyond what they are paid for will now have to prove that they “contribute to society” to earn permanent settlement in the UK. The benchmark for that contribution is volunteer work (sorry, more volunteer work) in the community. The five-year route to settlement is now being extended to 10, to make absolutely sure that in addition to being in work, paying taxes, making national insurance contributions and paying a hefty charge to use the NHS, you’re not taking the piss. The latest demand is that some migrants must be able to speak English to A-level standard because, according to home secretary Shabana Mahmood, “it is unacceptable for migrants to come here without learning our language, unable to contribute to our national life”.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Andrew hid behind Balmoral’s ‘guarded gates’ to escape court papers, accuser says in memoir Nobody’s Girl

Prince Andrew’s team tried to hire “internet trolls to hassle” his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, while he hid behind the “well-guarded gates” of Balmoral Castle to avoid being served court papers, according to allegations in her posthumous memoir.

Giuffre wrote of the 2022 confidential settlement of her sexual abuse civil claim against the royal, widely rumoured to be $12m (£9m), that her lawyers “were going to ask for the moon” and her team had agreed it “had to be more than mere money”.

Documents indicate they came from Sde Teiman, which already faces allegations of torture and unlawful deaths

• Middle East crisis – live updates

At least 135 mutilated bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel to Gaza had been held in a notorious detention centre already facing allegations of torture and unlawful deaths in custody, officials from Gaza’s health ministry have told the Guardian.

The director general of the health ministry, Dr Munir al-Bursh, and a spokesperson for Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where the bodies are being examined, said a document found inside each body bag indicated the bodies all came from Sde Teiman, a military base in the Negev desert where, according to photos and testimonies published by the Guardian last year, Palestinian detainees were held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to hospital beds and forced to wear nappies.

Katie Lam said move would make UK ‘culturally coherent’ and that a large number of people ‘need to go home’

A Conservative MP tipped as a future party leader has been condemned for saying large numbers of legally settled families must be deported, in order to ensure the UK is mostly “culturally coherent”.

The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has been urged to condemn the comments by Katie Lam, a Home Office shadow minister and a whip for the party. Lam was previously a special adviser to Boris Johnson and is often described as a rising star of the new intake.

Father Ted co-creator to sue force for wrongful arrest after CPS drops proceedings over social media posts about trans issues

The Met police have said they will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents as the Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan was informed that no further action would be taken after his arrest over social media posts.

Five armed officers detained the 57-year-old comedy writer at Heathrow in September on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to three posts about trans issues.