What happened
Former priest Chris Brain has been convicted of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women while leading the Nine O'Clock Service (Nos), a high-profile evangelical group in Sheffield during the 1980s and '90s. Brain, 68, was cleared of 15 other counts, with jurors still considering four additional indecent assault charges and one of rape. He showed no visible reaction as the verdicts were read out at Inner London Crown Court.

Who said what
Prosecutor Tim Clark KC said Brain recruited women to what he called a "homebase team", who performed domestic tasks and were sometimes assaulted. Dubbed the "lycra lovelies", they also gave him massages, which Brain admitted to, but he insisted that it involved consensual "sensual touching".

Brain's group was initially seen by the church as a huge "success story" that attracted between 500 and 600 people to worship at 9pm, said Sky News. Nos was "celebrated for its ability to draw crowds of young people", said the Church Times. But the movement "collapsed in 1995 over allegations about Mr Brain's behaviour".

What next?
The jury is expected to continue deliberations on the outstanding charges today. Brain denies all allegations.

What happened
Three months after his election as the first American pope, Leo XIV, is planning his move into the Vatican's papal apartments, which he reportedly wants to "turn into a flat share", said The Times.

The unusual move would reflect his background as a member of the Augustinian religious order, "where friars live in communities and value their spirit of fraternity", said the paper. The Pope will share his apartment with three Augustinian friars, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Who said what
Speaking to The Times, Father Ian Wilson – who has known Leo since their student days in Rome – said, as an Augustinian, the pontiff "believes in the significance of community", adding: "I can see that he would miss that," he said.

What next?
The Vatican has been "tight-lipped about the latest restructure", said The Telegraph. But if confirmed, the move would likely "mark the first time in modern history that a pope would share his official living quarters". Father Edgard Rimaycuna, the pope's Peruvian personal secretary, is among those expected to be invited.

For thousands of years the practice of alchemy – chemically transforming minerals into gold – has been attempted and failed. While it is generally considered a pseudoscience by modern standards, recent developments have some researchers reopening the potential golden door. At the heart of this resurgence in alchemy is nuclear power, which itself has seen significant advances in the 21st century. But will it make alchemy possible, or is this just another pipe dream?

Several ideas have been proposed with the intention of turning minerals into gold using nuclear power. The most notable comes from Marathon Fusion, which released an action plan detailing its purported ability to "synthesise stable gold from the abundant mercury isotope". Known as transmutation, this is "essentially the process of turning one element into another by tweaking its nucleus", said Gizmodo.

Marathon's research "suggests that it would be possible to make five metric tons of gold a year for every gigawatt of power generated", said The Times. If this nuclear technology is successful, the "3,500-odd metric tons of gold currently mined every year could soon be dwarfed by the amount produced by fusion".

There are "lots of reasons to be sceptical about this claim of abundant gold", said The New York Times. But despite the challenges – including the lack of fusion reactors and the expense of running them – scientists remain hopeful. Gold is "that sweet spot", Dan Brunner, a former chief technology officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and an adviser to Marathon, told the Financial Times. From a "purely scientific perspective, it looks like it all hangs together ... I think the challenge comes" with "actually engineering it into a practical system".