Equal Earth projection, adopted by the UN last week, provides an alternative to 16th-century Mercator display

Three cartographers have spoken of their astonishment at the UN’s near-universal adoption of a map they created to more accurately show the sizes of Africa and Europe, even though they have received a few complaints from some disgruntled diplomats.

The creators of the Equal Earth projection aimed to provide an alternative to the dominant 16th-century Mercator display, which critics have long faulted for giving the impression that northern hemisphere nations are larger than they are – and therefore subtly reinforcing perceptions of where global strength lies.

After ​the writer was stabbed in a horrific attack, his wife started making a video diary of his recovery. The clips are featured in a new film from Alex Gibney, who drew on Dennis Potter to create a powerful portrait of Rushdie’s tumultuous life

Eliza Griffiths was at home in New York, drinking a second cup of coffee one August morning in 2022, when her phone rang. She answered it to a frantic friend, who told her the man she had married just a year earlier, and who had set off the previous night for a speaking engagement nearly 400 miles away, had been hurt. “What kind of hurt?” she panicked. Turning on the television, she was assaulted by blurry images of chaos on stage as audience members surged to the rescue. Her husband, Sir Salman Rushdie, had been stabbed multiple times and was fighting for his life.

Within days of desperately chartering a plane to fly her to Rushdie’s hospital bedside, not knowing if he was alive or dead, Griffiths – a poet and photographer who works under her full name Rachel Eliza Griffiths – had begun to make a video diary recording his treatment and recovery. “When it had become likely that I was going to survive,” says Rushdie drily, “I said to Eliza we need to make a record of this. By which I meant something very modest: maybe she would take a picture of me on her iPhone every couple of days just to document the recovery, but Eliza had bigger ideas.”

Switch to ‘business attire’ is a sign of the times, but formal neckwear still has its place, say some of Savile Row’s finest-dressed

The House of Lords has long been derided as a stuffy relic of the past. But now its benches, usually filled with haughtily dressed men, could soon resemble something more akin to “dress-down Friday”.

One of the nation’s most storied chambers of power has enacted a rule change: men are no longer required to wear a tie in the House of Lords. Instead, they should opt for “business attire”.

I was at the mercy of the mountain, heading towards a 20-metre drop, about to discover what it felt like to die

Growing up in Sweden, I was as comfortable on skis as I was walking on my feet. As a teenager, I became a professional free skier, a style that features jumps and tricks. In my 20s, I moved into content creation. Now, at 38, I spend the winter months filming extreme ski videos with my photographer wife, Sofia.

In March this year, we’d been staying at the base of the Lyngen Alps, northern Norway. Nonstop rain had prevented us from filming but, finally, we had fresh powder and clear skies. The plan was for me to go up the mountain with a friend, Lovisa, and make our way down as the sun was setting. Sofia would film us from the bottom using a drone.

This Guy-Ritchie-directed gangland drama is deathly dull. It’s a charm-free watch with awful characters and humour so genital-based that at one point Helen Mirren yells a penis joke at a sausage

MobLand. It sounds like a regional nightclub. Or a boyband. But it’s not. It’s a Paramount+ crime drama starring Pierce Brosnan as an Irishman unable to speak in a convincing Irish accent. This is his tragedy. His cross to bear. And now it’s ours, too, because MobLand is back for a second series, with Brosnan – as the veteran gang boss Conrad Harrigan – once again battling other gang bosses while attempting to say things like “Oi love ye loike a tramp loves paraffin” without his vowels shrivelling into tiny raisins of pseudo-Hibernian shame. Does he succeed? Oi tink not! But there are bigger problems afoot, to be sure.

Created by Ronan “Top Boy” Bennett and directed by Guy Ritchie, the first series of the London-set MobLand (feel the width of that capitalised L!) was a sustained roar of nothing much; a rumble through every possible modern gangster drama cliche in the Every Modern Gangster Drama Cliche book. You know the sort of thing: car chases through suspiciously empty city streets; convoluted drug deals with mumbling eastern Europeans; tiny-eyed endomorphs in flat caps bellowing “Oi” in slow motion as they hurtle through the air to the strains of something unconscionable by Kasabian.

Spurs and Villa meet in desperation derby and Andoni Iraola faces test on south-coast return

• Premier League top scorers: check the latest standings

Chelsea have not won this west London derby since Brentford’s first Premier League season. Each visit since October 2021’s 1-0 win, Ben Chilwell the scorer, has been a draw. This season has continued the divergence between the clubs’ respective approaches, Brentford’s solidity and continuity contrasting with Chelsea attempting their latest reboot. Kevin Schade, after two well-taken goals at Bournemouth, will fancy facing a defence not yet attuned to Xabi Alonso’s configurations. Only one team has won a Premier League title with a defensive trio: Chelsea’s last title team, in 2016-17 under Antonio Conte. Alonso’s attack has been rather more successful, presenting another challenge for Jannik Schuster. Replacing Nathan Collins, the 20-year-old central defender had a tough examination from Bournemouth’s Evanilson on his first Premier League start, emerging with credit. For Chelsea, João Pedro has three goals and three assists, but doubts surrounding his fitness could lead to Danny Welbeck’s first league start. John Brewin

Brentford v Chelsea, Friday 8pm (all times BST)

Tottenham v Aston Villa, Saturday 3pm

Shabana Mahmood says she wants to distinguish between far-right extremism and legitimate local concerns over asylum sites

Shabana Mahmood has described the anti-asylum activist Daniel Thomas as “a far-right and outright racist” who will feel “the full force of the law” if his organisation commits crimes near contested asylum sites such as Piddington.

In an interview with the Guardian, the home secretary also “wanted to reassure” concerned villagers that asylum seekers due to move in to a neighbouring former defence site would not put pressure on local resources because they would be given self-contained facilities.

Exclusive: Sisters of Nicholas Brandram recount 44-year-old’s deteriorating mental health in days before he took his life

Days before Nicholas Brandram, the man suspected of being the “Putney pusher”, killed himself, he told his family that the police investigation was “murdering him”.

He had “no fight left” in him, he told his sisters, Alexia Hicks and Sophie Voelcker, and could not see an end to the Metropolitan police investigation, or the online abuse.

Efra committee calls for emergency legislation enabling government to take public control of the company

Andy Burnham is under further pressure to take control of ailing Thames Water from a cross-party group of MPs who are calling for ministers to break off talks with the US hedge funds who are effectively running the company.

Adding their voices to demands that the prime minister takes public control of the company, which has debts of £20bn and is being controlled by a group of 100 hedge funds and distressed-debt investors, the MPs said in a report that ministers should consider emergency legislation to take control of its financial affairs to stabilise the company.

When Mohammad Abdul Zinati, 15, rushed to help a man wounded in a bomb attack, he had no time to react before he too was hit

Mohammad Abdul Zinati was walking home from school through the rubble of Salah Khalaf Street, in northern Gaza City, when he stopped at a supermarket where a group of classmates and friends had gathered.

Shortly before 3:30pm, an explosion tore through the air. Along with several others, Mohammad rushed into the street to see what had happened.