Take five: A news summary for anxious times

Serving up your must-read headlines with a side of positivity

Another week, another barrage of news so overwhelming, even Boris Johnson has chosen to escape – and that’s before you take this morning’s staggering dual by-election defeat into consideration…

I won’t bore you with an intro lamenting the difficulty in distilling things down here. After all, you know the score by now – each week, I try to spare you the terror of rolling news by rounding up the developments you most need to know about.

So, as ever, below you’ll find five critical news stories from the last seven days, five good news stories to counter the negativity, and five columns, essays or long reads from across the internet which have got me thinking deeply.

Ready? Let’s go…