The BBC have confirmed that the long-running sci-fi show will return to our screens. But with ratings falling and its Disney partnership ending, questions hang over its future

Sometimes the answer to one mystery only prompts more questions. That may well be the case with this week’s announcement from the BBC that Doctor Who will return to BBC One with a 2026 Christmas special and a new series to follow, but that the show’s international streaming partnership with Disney+ will end.

There was no indication of who might play the Doctor in next year’s special, which will be written by Russell T Davies and produced by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios.

Talk of ‘small boats’ may dominate politics and the media, but the cost of living crisis is what most adults spend their time worrying about

Wage increases finally began to outpace price rises in June 2023, so we could technically class the previous month as the height of the cost of living crisis. Certainly, May that year was when the headlines about butter peaked. Lurpak and Anchor, both owned by the same dairy co-op, Arla, had reduced the size of their standard butter pack from 250g to 200g. The price was brought down accordingly, in due course, but for a while, certain supermarkets were still charging half-pound prices for a “what would we even call 200g?” pack.

The problem was, butter units are universal. A half-pound of butter always weighs the same amount in your hand, regardless of the brand. Seeing the small version in a supermarket felt almost sci-fi, like a tiny off-key detail that alerts you to the fact you’ve been kidnapped by aliens into a simulacrum world. They would have gotten away with it, but for that tiny flaw. Forced by the outcry to release a statement, the brand said it was trying to make prices “more accessible” for consumers. One almost feels embarrassed for it, flailing around for cosy equality language that didn’t explain its butter-miniatures at all.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

A Halloween screening doesn’t have to mean being scared witless. From serene sushi-making to a shell with shoes on, we run down the finest films for those of a nervous disposition

Just so we’re all clear on the brief, tomorrow is Halloween. But some people do not like scary films. Some people do not like films where there are any intense emotional moments whatsoever. This is mostly a list of those films. So, for example, Up cannot be included in the lineup because its first 10 minutes are genuinely traumatising. Similarly, Finding Nemo cannot be included because it is a film about a grief-stricken father searching for a son he believes might be dead. But Cars, a film about some cars, can. The scariest that Cars gets is when a car has a near-miss with a train. Other than that, barely any jeopardy at all.

As she releases a new album, the soul and gospel legend answers your questions on Stax Records, duetting with David Byrne and the fight for civil rights

Can you speak about the array of songs and artists on your new record? What kind of message and lyrics do you want to sing at this point in your life? steve_bayley
The first song I got for the album was Human Mind, written by Hozier and Allison Russell, and that really set the tone for the entire record. It starts: “I deal in love baby, in good words from above … and I ain’t giving up.” I cried when I was trying to sing it for the first time. Then the next song was Beautiful Strangers by Kevin Morby. All the songs are part of me and what I’ve been singing about my whole life. There’s some about war, fighting, love … some about hard times, like the farmer whose losing his farm. Things that are going on in the world today, so Sad and Beautiful World is the perfect title.

I loved the documentary Summer of Soul. What was it like to play there [the 1969 Harlem Cultural festival] and sing alongside Mahalia Jackson? Same question for Wattstax [the 1973 Stax Records benefit concert in Watts, LA, to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots]. snak3span

The discovery that affluent neighbourhoods have more diversity of nature has implications for human wellbeing – and sheds light on the structural injustices in cities

For a long time, ecology tended to ignore people. It mostly focused on beautiful places far from large-scale human development: deep rainforest or pristine grassland. Then, in the late 1990s, in the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, scientists shifted their gaze closer to home.

A team of ecologists went out into their own neighbourhood to map the distribution of urban plants in one of the first studies of its kind. Equipped with tape measures and clipboards, they documented trees and shrubs, sometimes getting on all fours to crawl through bushes under the curious watch of local people.

An international study found cool people are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful. At best, I have three of these traits. Could I change that?

Who would you say is effortlessly, undeniably cool? Charli xcx, certainly. David Bowie, of course. Yoko Ono and Fran Lebowitz – or do they just wear a lot of black? I’m not cool and never have been. As a teenager, I was a swot at a school that prized sports. As an adult, I’m always wearing a backpack. I’m garrulous, risk-averse, lazy with my personal presentation and not convinced that any drug beats eight hours’ sleep. “Cool” feels to me like the stock market or Michelin restaurants: none of my business.

I’m not alone. In a recent YouGov survey, a third of respondents said they weren’t cool at school, with only 10% reporting that, yep, they actually were. Half claimed they were “somewhere in between”.

King’s brother will become known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, Buckingham Palace says, in latest fallout from Epstein scandal

• Not in this together: King Charles cuts Andrew loose to save royal family’s repute

• The fall of Prince Andrew – a timeline

Prince Andrew is to be stripped of his royal titles and will move out of his home at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, Buckingham Palace has announced.

King Charles has initiated a “formal process to remove the style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew”, who will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the palace said.

Low number represents a dramatic drop after US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution

The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.

The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.

Prosecutors allege man was conducting training for Ukraine’s army when he was recruited by the FSB, Moscow’s spy bureau. What we know on day 1,346

A British ex-army instructor has been arrested in Kyiv and accused of spying for Russia while posing as an adviser to the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has accused the man of passing information to Moscow about other foreign military advisers in Ukraine and the coordinates of army training centres. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office alleged he arrived in Ukraine in 2024, conducted military training for the army and worked in the border guard before agreeing to collaborate with Moscow.

Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, alleges the Russian FSB spy bureau gave the man instructions on making explosive devices and also provided him with a handgun and ammunition, while the prosecutor general claimed he “attempted to establish access to the command of military units” in exchange for $6,000. He faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty. Britain’s Foreign Office told Agence France-Presse that it was “aware of reports that a British national has been detained in Ukraine … We remain in close contact with the Ukrainian authorities.”

Pjotr Sauer writes that Russian commanders are executing or deliberately sending to their deaths soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine, according to a new investigation by the award-winning independent outlet Verstka, which paints a bleak picture of internal violence within the Russian army. Verstka cited testimonies from soldiers who said commanders had appointed “execution shooters” to open fire on refusers and later dump their bodies in rivers or shallow graves, registering them as killed in action. Other accounts describe commanders using drones and explosives to “finish off” wounded or retreating soldiers.

Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and other targets, forcing nationwide power restrictions and killing seven people including a seven-year-old girl, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday. Regional officials said two energy facilities in the western Lviv region had been damaged. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said its thermal power stations in a number of regions were under attack. “This attack is a bad blow to our efforts to keep power flowing this winter,” said Maxim Timchenko, DTEK’s CEO.

The Ukraine government announced nationwide limits on electricity supplies to retail and industrial consumers. In some regions, water supplies and heating were also disrupted. The attacks hit energy facilities in central, western, and south-eastern regions, Ukrainian officials said.

Regional officials said two men were killed in the south-eastern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, and a seven-year-old girl from the central Vinnytsia region died in hospital from her injuries. The regional governor said a later drone strike on a village south of Zaporizhzhia killed one person and injured another.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said in his nightly video address that a bomb hit a thermal power plant in Sloviansk in eastern Donetsk region, killing two people and injuring others. Prosecutors in Donetsk region said Russian attacks on dwellings in the city of Kramatorsk killed one person and injured three. Zelenskyy said Russia launched more than 650 drones and 50 missiles in the attacks. Most of the drones were neutralised and two-thirds of the missiles were downed, he said. Air defence units shot down 592 drones and 31 missiles, the air force said.

In Sumy, a city near the northern border with Russia, the regional governor said 10 Russian drones attacked the city in an hour early on Friday. Two people were injured when two apartment buildings were hit and pictures posted online showed several apartments ablaze. Air alerts lasted nearly the entire night in Kyiv, where residents took shelter in deep underground metro stations.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had been attacking facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex. Moscow denies targeting civilians and has said its strikes are responses to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian infrastructure; however, Russian missiles and drones frequently, conspicuously and directly hit civilian homes and facilities. Ukraine has launched regular drone attacks on military and oil sites that it says support the war.

“[Russia’s] goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Ours is to preserve the light,” said the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. “To stop the terror, we need more air defence systems, tougher sanctions, and maximum pressure on the aggressor.”

Emergency security council session criticises killings of civilians in El Fasher and external supply of arms to RSF

Diplomats and senior UN figures speaking at the UN security council have condemned mass killings by the Rapid Support Forces in El Fasher after the Sudanese city “descended into an even darker hell” following the paramilitary group’s takeover at the weekend.

Widespread reports of ethnically targeted killings in recent days prompted the UK, as the UN penholder on Sudan, to call an emergency session of the security council in New York on Thursday.