As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. At 76, Mansoura’s most precious possession is the key to her former home

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

The flat-bed truck is open to the hot summer air, its metal frame covered on two sides by draped tarpaulins, the rear by a pegged-up bedsheet. On the tin floor lies a squab mattress and pillow with a yellow frilled cover.

Last night, I stayed awake until 2am. I barely sleep during the night because of the mosquitoes and the heat. I fall asleep for a short while, I wake up early in the morning, pray to God, and wait to hear the call to dawn prayer. When I wake up, I call for my grandson to bring over the white plastic chair that I need to climb in and out of the truck.

When I moved to York I thought everyone sounded like a cross between Sean Bean and Mel B. But now the north’s linguistic richness really is being flattened

At our wedding reception 15 years ago, my new father-in-law stood up, pint in hand, looked me squarely in the eye and welcomed me to the family – and to Yorkshire. He acknowledged my obvious defect – my London roots – before offering a note of comfort. “Don’t worry, Zahaan,” he said. “You’ll fit in here eventually. It’ll just take 50 years.” He added that if I’d been from Lancashire, there’d have been an extra zero on that 50.

Not long after the wedding, my wife and I relocated from our first place together in London to her beautiful home city of York. The quality of life and the glorious scenery on our doorstep have made the move more than worth it – but over the last decade and a half, it’s felt like the people of Yorkshire and I haven’t always spoken the same language.

Move over ready salted, salt and vinegar and cheese and onion. Gourmet crisps are everywhere, but which are actually worth trying?

It seems the era of the “holy trinity of flavours” – ready salted, salt and vinegar, cheese and onion – is over. Gourmet crisps are everywhere. Caviar and truffle flavours are on corner-shop shelves, while supermarket brands now include everything from glazed meats to blue cheese. We tasted 100 of the strangest crisp options available to find out which are worth coming back to and which should have stayed in the test kitchen.

100. Grouse and whinberry, Taste of Game
For someone who has tasted neither grouse nor whinberry before, after eating these crisps I never want to. Smelling as meaty as a butcher’s but tasting sweet, this is truly the worst of all worlds.
Taste: 0/10, texture: 2/10, novelty: 10/10

This year’s shortlist for the Booker prize was announced last night. Our books editors are here to answer your questions about the contenders, the judges and literary fiction.

Alex42 asks: Do we need a single winner at all? Once you’re down to the shortlist – or even possibly the longlist - you’ve hopefully already got a collection of excellent books to cover a range of tastes. What do we really achieve by picking one of them out? This could apply to any award really, but the idea of ranking works of art in any medium always strikes me as quite odd.

Liese: I agree that - looked at one way - ranking works of art is obviously ridiculous. (We had the same conversation around our 100 greatest novels of all time. Given how subjective reading is, there’s something silly about saying that White Teeth is better than A Farewell to Arms or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie beats David Copperfield). But I would say that the point of that exercise and of the Booker prize too is to spark a conversation and draw attention to great literature. For that reason, I’d argue that it is well worth doing. And from my point of view, there absolutely has to be a winner because otherwise the whole exercise is a bit pointless – and it gives one author a huge boost to their career.

When the judges refused to follow the rules and insisted the prize be split between Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood in 2019 I think the general consensus was that rather than sharing the glory it detracted from both of their achievements (Atwood said afterwards “I kinda don’t need the attention”).

Justine: It’s a crazy job, but someone’s got to do it - and you only have to do it once. When I was on the judging panel in 2024, the year Orbital won, I took a sabbatical from work which helped and just made reading my number one priority for nine months – what a privilege! My day job is looking at novels and deciding what we should review and who we should send the book to so – uniquely – all that reading is what I feel I should really be doing every year anyway. What readers have in common is that the TBR pile never diminishes.

Undeniably, Booker judging is a strange way to read – at great speed, and then repeatedly, up to three times at least for the shortlist – but it does mean you’re considering novels in the round, in a snapshot of the publishing year, in a really interesting and fertile way. I’ve been on judging panels where the books are shared out, so not everybody reads everything, and the Booker USP is definitely the fact that there are five minds directed on every submission.

Whether it’s streamlining shoes or being strict with toiletries, we asked the experts for the home organisation hacks they swear by

• How to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill

Few things conjure a sense of achievement quite like a clearout or bringing order to that cupboard of doom you’ve been ignoring for months. But how best to tackle this beast of a job?

To help you make a start, we asked professional organisers and declutterers for their tips and tricks, as well as the products they recommend to help streamline the areas everyone struggles with. From never buying round storage containers to getting the kids to help tidy up, these are the solutions they swear by.

As experts fear for future of UK capital’s bus network, some commuters are giving up entirely. London is not alone – with worrying implications for the poorest in society

Experts warn that slower buses risk driving passengers away: research cited by Transport for London (TfL) suggests a 10% fall in speed leads to a 6% drop in demand.

Passenger journeys in London have already fallen by more than 300m a year, or 16%, since 2013, despite the city’s population growing by almost a million people.

Defence secretary places annual payments to Mauritius on hold as UK government reviews deal over Diego Garcia base

• UK politics live – latest updates

Wes Streeting has said annual payments worth at least £120m to Mauritius are on hold as the government reconsiders its deal over the Chagos Islands, after Donald Trump refused to back the agreement.

The defence secretary said the payments would not be made “at this stage” and confirmed the deal “can’t go ahead without US support”.

PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information Defence

Security chiefs will set up a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia, Andy Burnham has announced, saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.

The National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks by foreign powers, many of which are enabled by AI, bringing together the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies.

NHS England initiative to reduce cut-off period to three months ‘disproportionately affecting’ most deprived areas

An NHS policy to remove “ghost patients” from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England without vital healthcare, analysis has found.

Under previous NHS rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to respond to outreach. But under NHS England’s accelerated list validation timeline, introduced last October, patients now have only three months to reply.

Richard Clayton KC had undergone operation for ruptured achilles tendon day before hearing optician’s appeal

A judge was wrong to hear a case from his bed via video link while recovering from surgery, the court of appeal has said.

Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, heard an optician’s appeal against a finding of serious misconduct from bed the day after returning from hospital where he had undergone an operation for a ruptured achilles tendon.