Working remotely from a beach in a far-off land sounds like bliss – and the number of people doing it has soared since 2019. But between bouts of illness, relentless admin and crushing loneliness, many have found comfort in the 9-5 back home

Jason, a 34-year-old American, is stumbling around the pool table, cue in hand. Five Saigon beers later, he will shuffle out, clamber on to a scooter and drive back to his beach hut. I know this because I’ve seen the same routine for the past four nights. Meanwhile, Eloise, 38, a French national, is gyrating on the dancefloor. Earlier, on the beach, she told me about her big bitcoin dreams – although she hasn’t got the funds she needs yet. Then there is Bex, a Briton in her late 50s whose eyes are large and wild because she has just popped a pill. She spends only a month a year in the UK – not because she wants to, she says, just to check in with family who are worried about her.

Here we are together on this paradise island in south-east Asia, laptops closed for the day. This is the digital nomad dream, isn’t it? This is what adventure and freedom looks like, right? We’re happy!

Karin Kneissl made headlines around the world when she invited the Russian president to her wedding in 2018. Five years later, she moved to St Petersburg. The scandal revealed a dark truth about the ties between Vienna and Moscow

The trouble started with a dead cat. For years, the people of Seibersdorf had lived amicably alongside their most famous resident, more or less. True, there had been an incident when a neighbour complained about the smell of her horses. And yes, there had been rumblings about her lack of community spirit, that she was great at giving orders for neighbourhood events but never pitched in to fry a schnitzel or hang bunting. But for the most part, they got along.

Karin Kneissl was a blow-in from Vienna, an hour north. She had lived in Seibersdorf for more than two decades, moving into a rickety old apartment before buying a house near the central square. She had arrived as a junior diplomat, then became a freelance journalist and later began lecturing on international relations at some of Austria’s most prestigious institutions. For a brief period, she also sat on the town’s parish council.

‘There is a big need for theatre to work with existential problems,’ says translator, as Shakespeare productions boom across Ukraine

The Ukrainian Shakespeare festival in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk did not open with a play. Another kind of performance was staged on the steps of the theatre, one that did not deal with sad stories of the death of kings but with tragedy unfolding in real life.

This was theatre in a different sense: a rally involving several hundred people demonstrating on behalf of Ukrainian prisoners of war, thousands of whom are estimated to remain in Russian captivity.

We have laws to deal with crimes linked to protest. What this is really about is a government complicit in the Gaza atrocities seeking to silence dissent

• Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor

Strongly worded emails are not doing it. Appeals to MPs are not doing it. Taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands with banners and placards is not working. Elected representatives from every party in parliament have stood in the Commons and asked the government to act. Some government ministers themselves have condemned Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Every poll of public opinion shows that the nation demands we stop arming Israel, and wants to see an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. But none of these things are working.

Keir Starmer and his cabinet remain impervious to all calls for humanitarian intervention, and Israel is still killing children in Gaza with the support of the British government.

Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor

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Mary Dainton ‘stunned’ when police told her DNA evidence led them to man who raped and murdered Louisa Dunne

• Man, 92, convicted of raping and murdering Bristol woman in 1967

When police officers sat Mary Dainton down last year and told her they needed to talk about her grandmother, she asked at once: “Have they caught him?”

The officer confirmed they had a suspect for the rape and murder of Dainton’s grandmother, Louisa Dunne, almost 60 years earlier.

Not one member of the work and pensions secretary’s party came to her rescue as she laid out the government’s concessions – sorry, measures

It was clear from the start that this was largely a domestic dispute. The Labour benches were as tightly rammed as they are for prime minister’s questions and everyone had come determined to have their say. No longer willing to be sidelined by ministers as “noises off”. No one had just turned up because they had nowhere better to be.

On the other side of the Commons, only a handful of Tory backbenchers had made the effort to show up. Fair enough. Disabled and vulnerable people have never really been their priority. To be charitable, maybe they just found it a bit awkward intruding on the government’s private grief.

MPs including select committee chairs express doubts that concessions agreed last week go far enough

Downing Street’s plans to see off a major Labour welfare rebellion were in chaos on Monday night, amid continued brinkmanship between MPs and the government over the scale of the concessions.

There was significant division between government departments over how to respond to rebels’ demands – with seemingly little idea how to quell continuing anger ahead of the knife-edge vote on Tuesday.

Exclusive: Shabana Mahmood told companies she wanted ‘deeper collaboration’ to tackle prisons crisis

• Analysis: Whitehall’s ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk

Tracking devices inserted under offenders’ skin, robots assigned to contain prisoners and driverless vehicles used to transport them were among the measures proposed by technology companies to ministers who are gathering ideas to tackle the crisis in the UK justice system.

The proposals were made at a meeting of more than two dozen tech companies in London last month, chaired by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, minutes seen by the Guardian show. Amid an acute shortage of prison places and probation officers under severe strain, ministers told the companies they wanted ideas for using wearable technologies, behaviour monitoring and geolocation to create a “prison outside of prison”.

Dealing with very serious blazes means fire and rescue service has limited ability to respond to other emergencies

Firefighters battled wildfires in the Scottish Highlands for a third day on Monday in a situation the first minister has called “extremely serious”.

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA), which has helped tackle the blazes, warned the fires are “becoming a danger to human life” that are leaving “stretched” firefighters unable to attend other incidents.

Offshore wind power boom helps push profit from land and property to more than double what it was two years ago

King Charles is set to receive official annual income of £132m next year, after his portfolio of land and property made more than £1bn in profits thanks to a boom in the offshore wind sector.

Profits at the crown estate – which partly funds the monarchy – were flat at £1.1bn in its financial year to the end of March but more than double their level two years ago, at £442.6m.