The first criminal trial of a former US president has come to a close following four weeks of dramatic testimony in New York.

The so-called Trial of the Century saw Donald Trump charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 (£102,000) hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels, over an alleged affair in 2006. 

Prosecutors argued that he attempted to influence the 2016 election by having his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pay to bury a story that Trump believed would cost him votes, and then "authorised an illegal reimbursement scheme" to Cohen to "cover it up", said the BBC. Trump denies the charges.

What did the prosecution say?
Cohen was the prosecution's star witness. He claimed that Trump instructed him to "fix Stormy Daniels's account of an extramarital liaison", said The Guardian, and "personally signed cheques that reimbursed him" for the hush-money payment. Cohen admitted that he knew the payment violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. The implication was that Trump must also have believed the money violated election law. 

What about the defence?
Robert Costello, a lawyer called as the last witness by the defence, testified that Cohen had said "numerous times" that Trump knew nothing about payments to Daniels. Costello said Cohen had claimed he "did this on his own". 

What might the jury decide?
The case was "deprived of a big finish" when Trump declined to give testimony, said Sky News's US correspondent James Matthews. So while we "lurch towards a verdict that could brand the presumptive Republican nominee a felon", said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, there is a "strange sense of anticlimax".

Legal experts say the prosecution "did an efficient job", but a conviction is "far from guaranteed", said the BBC. "The pieces are all there," said former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman. "But is it there beyond a reasonable doubt? I don't know." And "it only takes one juror", she added.

Nor would a conviction guarantee prison time for Trump. He would "inevitably appeal", said Goldberg, so there's "little chance" of him being incarcerated before the election. Ultimately, whether Trump "truly gets his comeuppance" isn't up to the jury – it is "up to the voters".

With no approved treatment path for the two million people in England and Scotland with long Covid, some patients have been experimenting with rewiring their minds in an attempt to manage their symptoms.

But critics question whether the science stacks up.

'Complex range of symptoms'
For illnesses where no direct test is available, there is a "history of branding them as being driven by mindset", said the BBC. The "complex range of symptoms" associated with long Covid mean doctors "often treat it as a psychological rather than physical disease", said the i news site.

Recovery is "different for everybody", said the NHS, which advises treating specific symptoms, such as fatigue and mental health concerns. And some people are turning to alternative treatment paths.

A course called the Lightning Process "teaches people they can rewire their brains to stop or improve long Covid symptoms quickly", said the BBC. While it wasn't successful for all, some patients told the broadcaster that the course had helped "a lot". One said she had started to "feel better almost immediately".

'Wild claim to say nothing wrong with body'
There is some evidence that "retraining the brain" through pain reprocessing therapy – a psychological treatment that teaches people to recognise pain signals sent to the brain as less threatening – could be a possible solution for people with chronic pain and for some long Covid sufferers.

A small study at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus found that "66% of participants reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free", compared with 20% of people who received a placebo, said co-author Yoni Ashar on The Conversation. But neuroscientist Dr Camilla Nord told the BBC that while the brain can create physical symptoms of ill health, "it's a wild claim to say there's nothing wrong with your body".

Psychologically focused therapies can "calm the body's stress response and adjust how people react to their symptoms", she said, but even if the symptoms are based in the brain, that's not necessarily "something that you can actively change".

"Dune: Part Two" is the highest-grossing movie of 2024 so far, but fans of the sci-fi epic will have to wait years for the "much-prophecied" Part Three", said Empire.

The good news is that a six-part television series is coming this autumn, set 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet in the films. "There might not be any sandworms or Spice shenanigans", but "Dune: Prophecy" looks set to "satiate" fans of the recent big-screen adaptations.

The prequel will explore the origins of the Bene Gesserit, a sisterhood of women who use their mystical powers and rituals to influence the noble houses of Dune's feudal interstellar universe.

The first trailer, out last week, shows Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen, members of the Sisterhood of Rossak, "sneaking around corners" amongst "glimpses" of "sword master" Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason) and the Fremen Mikaela (Shalom Brune-Franklin). 

A "century-long war between humans and AI" has been won, and victory has re-established "the primacy of humanity, outlawed computers, and made technology an object of suspicion". 

It is an "origin story for why everything is", said Den of Geek, from the Bene Gesserit to Spice and the shape of the future universe. "Dune: Prophecy" will "not only further enrich the hit movies, but also depict humanity embracing religion in the absence of technology".

China's next shock is coming – and Britain and Europe are sitting ducks
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph
Europe will become a "dumping ground for China’s exorbitant overproduction of industrial goods" unless it defends itself with US-style tariffs, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The "deformed" Chinese economy produces more than twice as much as it consumes, and a predicted evening out "has not happened". In the face of the resulting "export tsumani", we "cannot conduct trade on normal terms with a hostile power" that continues to promote surplus capacity.

Sun readers should ignore the graphs and check their bank balances
Rachel Reeves in The Sun
Latest figures show that inflation has fallen, yet "while the line on the graph might be coming down", writes shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, the prices in the shops are "still sky high". A Tory PM who is "richer than the king" might "run to the television studios to tell Brits that they've never had it so good", but "Sun readers just need to look at their bank balances and the price of the weekly shop to know they are worse off".

Who are the real extremists? The people challenging injustices or those trying to shut down our rights?
George Monbiot for The Guardian
The government's "independent adviser on political violence", John Woodcock, is calling for "clampdowns on protest" in a "horrifying" new report, says George Monbiot. As "it happens", the crossbench peer, aka Lord Walney, works for lobby groups that represent arms manufacturers and fossil fuel companies, making him a "bizarre choice" for the role. After all, "a basic qualification for independent advisers is that they should be, ahem, independent".