Ahmed superbly tackles race and identity in his hilarious new show Bait, proving the British-Asian actor truly is the best of this country. I’m happy for him, I swear!

Conflicted feelings for me this week, watching Bait, the new comedy created by Riz Ahmed. I started a career in acting shortly after Ahmed, you see. For a decade, I lost every good job going to him. What made it worse was watching all of those projects and realising exactly how good he was. Anyway, I’m going to try to write the rest of this while suppressing Salieri levels of malcontent. Wish me luck.

Bait is the story of an Asian actor, Shah Latif, who finds himself lined up to be the next James Bond. The series covers the internet’s toxic response to the rumours, using it to dive deep into a conversation about racial palatability, Britishness, ambition and authenticity. It’s funny, surreal, provocative and boasts an incredible array of hot young British-Asian actors. Which reminds me, I must rewatch Sliding Doors.

What is a very private struggle – coming to terms with one’s own appearance – is being reshaped into a site of competition and ridicule

I felt something akin to devastation reading that the actor Barry Keoghan sometimes “doesn’t want to go outside” because of the scale of online abuse about his appearance. It’s not just the viciousness of the abuse, but how difficult I imagine it must have been for him to articulate, as well as what was not said – what parts of his face he’s likely now had to obsess over and scrutinise.

As a man, it is often hard to say out loud that you have been made to feel insecure in yourself, or that there are things that you do not like about your physical appearance. Keoghan’s vulnerability as a grown man is striking, but I have also been thinking about how much harder it is to articulate this as a teenager or boy. I was well versed in the language of bodily dissatisfaction from a young age, though these were thoughts I would keep to myself: that I did not like my thinning hair, how narrow my shoulders were, my large forehead, or the eczema on my right hand that often drew questions like, “Were you in a fire?” I did not like that I was not as tall as my brothers, or even that my voice did not break with a deep manly husk but retained some squeakiness.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

We’re told that sleep is a superpower, making us smarter, healthier and happier. But how much is enough? And is insomnia as bad for us as we think?

‘Once, after I did a presentation, someone came up to me and said, ‘I don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Am I going to die?’” says Prof Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. “And I said, ‘Well, yes, you’re going to die. But, you know, we all die eventually.’”

This exchange is, hopefully, comforting, but it also shouldn’t be too surprising. Over the past decade or so, we’ve been repeatedly told that sleep is everything from a legal performance-enhancer to an actual superpower – and, conversely, that if we don’t get enough shuteye we’re risking an early start to our eternal slumber. But how bad is a lack of sleep, really? And if we seem to be coping fine on six hours a night, is there a chance we’re still setting ourselves up for problems further down the line?

John Cage appeared on an Italian quizshow. Jean Genet stole rare books. Emily Carr reared bobtails. And Kathy Acker did X-rated acts with her boyfriend … we explore the unlikely sidelines of struggling artists

Before he pioneered a new genre of semi-autobiographical writing, the great French novelist and playwright Jean Genet pioneered something very different indeed: a special briefcase for stealing valuable books that he would later resell – after reading them first, of course. “I perfected a trick briefcase,” he later recalled, “and I became so handy in these thefts that I could push politeness to the point of pulling them off under the very nose of the bookseller.”

For as long as young people have dreamed of careers in the arts – as novelists, painters, poets, musicians and other species – they have had to measure their dreams against their economic circumstances. Often they have found a yawning gap between what they hope to do and what they have the means to pay for.

As Sinaloa’s conflict grinds on, firearms traced to recent US sales are increasingly linked to Arizona

When war broke out within the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organisations, people hoped it would last just a few months.

But more than a year and a half later it is still going, fuelled by a flow of firearms from the US – specifically from Arizona, which has surged past Texas to become the top source of guns seized in Mexico and traced to a recent US purchase.

Biscoff-based recipes are breaking the internet – everything from cheesecakes and milkshakes to prawn dishes and salads. A few traditionalists are even enjoying the biscuits on their own. What’s behind this sweet success story?

Around 15 years ago, Ashley Markle was admitted into a secret world, introduced to the treasures of an exclusive supply chain. She was staying at her aunt’s house and, one morning, when her aunt made her a coffee, she placed a little plastic-wrapped biscuit on the side. “I’d never seen them before,” says Markle. She bit into it: “It was a warm flavour that I’d never really had in a cookie. I’m like, what is this?”

Her aunt had discovered the small, gently spiced Biscoff biscuits as an airline snack. She loved them so much that she contacted the maker, Belgian company Lotus, and asked them to ship a box to her in the US. At that time, says Markle, “I think she was the only person who actually had them in her home.” But, as we all know, the world changes rapidly. Last year, Biscoff was the fastest-growing biscuit brand in the US.

Pakistan’s military attempting to broker negotiations between US and Iran

• Pakistan’s army chief attempts to broker Iran peace talks in call with Trump

In Australia, the number of petrol stations running out of fuel continues to climb as the Middle East war drags on, with at least 184 dry across the country’s three most populous states.

On Tuesday, 51 service stations in the state of New South Wales were out of fuel and 164 out of diesel, compared with 38 and 131 respectively the previous day, premier Chris Minns said.

Israel and Gulf states targeted and Iran hit by airstrikes as Tehran denies negotiations are taking place to end war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Violence has continued across much of the Middle East a day after Donald Trump said the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war in the region soon.

Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has threatened the US, is being weighed up as potential interlocutor to help end war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Just as in 1967 when a rank outsider won the Grand National due to a massive pile-up of other horses at one of the final fences, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and Donald Trump’s putative interlocutor, appears to have come to the front as the field around him rapidly thinned.

In the pantheon of Iran’s leaders, ruthlessly reduced by targeted assassinations, Ghalibaf stands out as a survivor, but if the US president hopes he has finally located the Delcy Rodríguez of Iran – a pragmatic leader from within the regime willing to do business with America – he may need to think again.

Chris Parry referred to members of neighbourhood watch group as ‘cosplayers’ after ambulance arson attack

Reform UK has suspended one of its key mayoral candidates after he described members of a Jewish neighbourhood watch group as “cosplayers” and likened them to “Islamists on horseback”.

Chris Parry, who had remained the mayoral candidate for Hampshire despite a previous controversy in which he said David Lammy should “go home” to the Caribbean, made the latest comments on Monday about Shomrim, a volunteer group that safeguards communities including Orthodox Jewish families.