Damning testimony from the crew of one longline tuna-fishing boat has lifted the lid on the treatment of workers in the fleets supplying fish to the UK and EU

Abdul was the first to fall sick, in February 2025, four months into his first ever stint on a longline tuna fishing vessel in the Indian Ocean. Told he was “weak” and “overreacting” by other crew members, he forced himself to keep working, even when he could barely stand, his legs swollen and bruised.

In the months that followed, other crew members of the Tai Xiang 5, a Chinese vessel belonging to Shandong Zhonglu Oceanic Fisheries, a large state-owned fishing company, allegedly began to suffer similar symptoms: swollen, painful limbs and debilitating weakness, with some becoming very short of breath. They were offered no proper medical care, claims Abdul, 36, nor rest from the gruelling 16-hour days, for which they earned 4.6m Indonesian rupiah (about £198) a month.

In her new book, New York Times investigative journalist Jodi Kantor has set her mind to helping young people find their life’s work. What should they, or anyone else who feels lost and overwhelmed right now, do to get started?

Early last year, the investigative journalist Jodi Kantor was asked to give the commencement address to students at Columbia University in New York. The place was in chaos – amid continuing pro-Palestinian protests students were expelled, or arrested and detained by immigration officials, while President Trump had ordered a $400m withdrawal of federal funding (which was later reinstated as part of a settlement with the administration). Kantor was “horrified” to see what had happened at Columbia – her alma mater, where she was sacked from her first journalism job at the student paper– “a place and campus I loved, a place that stands for discussion and ideas and progress. I said: ‘I’ll do it if I can speak to the students first.’”

She spoke to several. They didn’t want to talk about Israel or Gaza, or Trump, or what was happening at the university and its implications for free speech. “They said: ‘Our class, despite all of its political differences, is united in anxiety over one question. When everything feels so broken, how do we start? How do we find our life’s work in this environment?’”

Lawrence Bishnoi has been in high-security custody for more than a decade. During that time, he has been linked to multiple high-profile killings, both in India and as far afield as Canada. What explains his seemingly undimmed power?

The border that separates India from Pakistan is lined with 50,000 towering poles that hold 150,000 floodlights, which at night create a glare that is visible from outer space. Passing through the towns on the Indian side of the border, it can be difficult to tell, even in daylight, where one ends and the other begins. Curving along the rolling fields of wheat are nameless dirt roads where men sit on rope benches, whiling away their afternoons, staring as you pass by.

Dutarawali, right by the highway, is slightly different: here, the houses are big, with spacious courtyards. One of the houses – three storeys, painted white with red accents – has a 7ft boundary wall topped with barbed wire and four CCTV cameras overlooking the unpaved street. The symbol of Om is curled on its brown iron door, which has no nameplate. It is the house of Lawrence Bishnoi, who is today, at the age of 33, India’s most notorious gangster.

We’re being sold a world where there’s no room for reflection or spontaneity. This is the Black Mirror stage of capitalism

How fast do you have to strike a match to get it to light? Not the chemistry of the ignition, but the actual speed, in metres per second, that the little piece of wood and its bulbous head have to move to spark the chain reaction behind the flame.

It was a question born of insomnia. And there, in the dark, I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, if your goal is to fall back asleep: I opened my phone. Before I knew it, 3am had become 5am. I learned about the composition of the friction strip (red phosphorus, pulverized glass), and of the match head (potassium chlorate, antimony trisulphide, wax), and that a safety match struck against anything else will not light. I found slow-motion videos of a match strike captured at 3,500 frames per second. But nothing about the speed.

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now

Art festivals can fill abandoned buildings with new life – or clear a path for property developers. Coimbra’s Anozero is trying out a more confrontational approach

If you decide to spend a night at Coimbra’s Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova in the near future, do bear in mind that the place is almost certainly haunted. Disembodied children’s voices echo around the first floor of the 17th century convent perched atop a hill in the Portuguese university city, overlooking the medieval centre from across the Mondego river.

In the garages, dry foliage has been arranged in geometric shapes, as if in preparation for a wicca ritual. You need the nerves of a ghost-hunter to walk through the pitch-black ground-floor corridor of the dormitory wing, lit only by a neon strip at either end, where tortured wails ambush you from the monkish cells. Sung in Albanian, Chinese, Kurdish, Kyrgyz and Turkish, these laments are part of an installation by US artist Taryn Simon, but they feel like spectral reminders of the nuns who lived in these quarters for two centuries.

The UN has officially designated Jakarta the world’s largest city, home to 42 million. We explore a day in the life of the ‘big durian’.

In December, the United Nations officially designated Jakarta the world’s largest city, hosting a staggering 42 million inhabitants. Michael Neilson speaks to several people who call the ‘big durian’ home – about the positives and the negatives – and how community and the city’s infamously dry humour get them through.

PM under increasing pressure over Mandelson vetting scandal as sources say ministers spoke up at tense meeting

Keir Starmer is looking increasingly isolated over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal with divisions emerging in cabinet over his decision to sack the Foreign Office civil servant Olly Robbins.

On another difficult day for the prime minister, the Guardian learned of concerns around the cabinet table, a senior minister refused to say the dismissal was fair and several mandarins called for him to be reinstated. One Labour MP called on Starmer to quit.

Iran says two seized ships transferred to its coast; US navy secretary exiting post ‘effective immediately’, says Pentagon

• ‘Impossible’ to reopen strait of Hormuz amid ‘flagrant’ ceasefire breaches, Iran says

The Pentagon abruptly announced that the secretary of the US navy, John Phelan, would be leaving his job yesterday. No reason was given for the unexpected departure of the navy’s top civilian official, who had addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the navy’s annual conference in Washington just a day before the announcement.

People familiar with the dynamics at the Pentagon told the Guardian Phelan was fired. Phelan had an increasingly rocky relationship with the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other senior staff.

Campaign is said to be first time Labour-affiliated Unison is lobbying en masse against a key party policy

Migrant workers and the UK’s largest union will carry out a mass leafleting campaign in Shabana Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy.

The Labour-affiliated Unison union says the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.

Government advisers call for review of rules that cause loss of household income when a child takes up job training

Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are abandoning valuable job training opportunities because of a little-known welfare “apprenticeship penalty” that can leave their families out of pocket by as much as £340 a week.

The problem is caused by benefit rules that classify a 16-year-old apprentice as an “independent worker” who no longer requires parental support. As a result, the parents’ child benefit and child and disability elements of universal credit are withdrawn.