Tributes have been paid from across the political spectrum to Alex Salmond, Scotland's former first minister and champion of his country's independence movement, following his sudden death on Saturday at the age of 69. The former MP and MSP collapsed during a conference in North Macedonia and was pronounced dead at the scene. His party, Alba, said the probable cause was a heart attack.

Keir Starmer described Salmond as a "monumental figure of Scottish and UK politics".

What did Salmond do for independence?
A "Marmite" character, Salmond "divided opinion", said Sky News, but he was "respected as the giant who was instrumental in delivering the 2014 Scottish independence referendum". His death leaves "a giant gap" in the future of the movement.

He served as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) twice, and as first minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014, leading the party to an overall majority at Holyrood in 2011. Although the independence movement lost Scotland's 2014 referendum, by 55% to 45%, Salmond succeeded in "normalising independence as a popular position", said The Guardian.

What will happen to independence now?
Scottish politics is "in flux", said the BBC. After 17 years in power at Holyrood, the SNP under John Swinney heads towards the 2026 Scottish parliamentary election "on the heels of a thumping by Labour in this year's general election". And with the UK Supreme Court ruling that Westminster's approval is needed for another independence referendum, there is "no obvious mechanism" for the SNP to advance its cause in the near future.

Can anyone step into his shoes?
Founded in 2021, Salmond's Alba is now "unlikely to survive as a political force", said The Guardian. The party's only MSP, Ash Regan, is not expected to win a seat at the next Holyrood election.

Uncertainty also faces the wider nationalist movement. With Nicola Sturgeon "now a largely inactive backbencher who may not stand again for Holyrood, Swinney is the only established nationalist leader left". There is a "handful of possible candidates in the younger generation", such as Swinney's deputy, Kate Forbes, and the party's Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn. But until the next Holyrood election, Swinney "will be the last veteran standing".

"We have officially entered a milf-aissance," said Hannah Jackson in Vogue. Since the critical success of "May December" last year, it seems as if "every studio executive worth their salt" is trying to tap into the "movie magic that only an older woman sleeping with a much younger man can create".

The latest release in this hot trend is "Lonely Planet", which stars Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth (pictured above) as a successful "50-something" novelist and a "30-something finance guy" who meet at a retreat in Morocco.

'Romantic heroine treatment'
Some of Dern's fellow "Big Little Lies" cast members have also starred in "schmaltzy" romance movies "opposite younger leading men", said Katie Rosseinsky in The Independent. In 2017, Reese Witherspoon played an interior designer who falls for a much younger aspiring director in "Home Again", while Nicole Kidman plays a widowed writer who began a relationship with a famous young actor (Zac Efron) in recent Netflix release "A Family Affair".

The plots for these films sometimes feel like they could have been "generated by AI", said Rosseinsky, but "I can't help but embrace" this genre, which has started to "challenge our expectations of older women and their visibility". There's something "joyous" in seeing Dern and Kidman "both in their fifties, and absolutely at the top of their game, being given the romantic heroine treatment".

'Expanding the palette'
Judging women who sleep with younger men as "sexual deviants" is just one of the many ways that we objectify females, said Jodi Walker in The Ringer. The more we see older women get "happily, hotly, hornily laid on screen", the more films start to reflect reality: that these women aren't "sad" or "lonely", but are instead still "desired".

It's a notable shift from how women have historically been portrayed in films such as the 2006 classic adaptation of "Notes on a Scandal", said Adrian Horton in The Guardian. Starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, the leading female characters are seen as "strange, self-delusional, at times monstrous creatures".

The wave of lighter age-gap romances isn't massively changing who we see on screen (most of the leading women still look like Hollywood stars), but it's one of the more "interesting forays" into "expanding the palette of women's stories to the still-dreaded middle-aged".

Whether you're looking for culinary inspiration or just enjoy feasting your eyes on fabulous food, there's something addictive about cooking shows. Here are some of the best.

Chef's Table
This is "the ultimate in food porn and the most handsomely filmed culinary show there has ever been", said The Telegraph. Each episode of "Chef's Table" (pictured above) takes viewers to meet a world-renowned chef, delving into their life stories and inspiration behind their cooking. Netflix

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
This "sweet, vibrant cooking show" follows Samin Nosrat in her pursuit of flavour-packed dishes, said Vogue. The Iranian-American chef and bestselling cookbook author explores the four elements of excellent cooking. Netflix

Rick Stein's Food Stories
In Rick Stein's latest BBC food show, the chef and restaurateur is seen "zipping around" the UK to sample the nation's favourite food, said The Times. Despite having had open-heart surgery and nearing 80, Stein "clearly still has a lot of energy in the tank". BBC iPlayer

The Great British Bake Off
This beloved British baking competition has been running for over a decade but in its 15th season, it's still a "pleasure to welcome a dozen fresh bakers to the tent", all of them "sunny and comradely and kind", said The Guardian. Channel 4

MasterChef
"A whopping 20 series in, 'MasterChef', by now, is cooking on gas," said the i news site. Each season brings in another group of "plucky individuals" to sweat in front of the stove. In short, the iconic show is "one of the reasons that British TV is currently and forever obsessed with cookery programmes". BBC iPlayer

In the Netherlands, we're closing our emptying prisons. What can other countries learn from how we did it?
Renate van der Zee in The Guardian
We Dutch have seen our prison population "decrease by more than 40% over the past 20 years", writes Renate van der Zee. Meanwhile, Britain has the highest rate of incarceration in western Europe, and "an unprecedented prisons crisis". The "overall Dutch attitude towards imprisonment could be instructive". In the Netherlands we are "much more aware that a stay in prison does more harm than good" and that "it is not a given that prison populations must always increase".

Only one of these Tories is fit to lead the party
Matthew Parris in The Times
"An air of pantomime clings to the contest to produce a new Tory leader," writes Matthew Parris. Politics is "bedevilled by a process" that has given us party leaders "such as Iain Duncan Smith, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss". Of the options left in this contest, "it has to be" Kemi Badenoch, because "in this age of frightened politicians", her "philosophical courage" is "thrilling". She could "campaign as a team" with James Cleverly and then "learn as she leads".

Why have Americans been moving closer to climate risk?
Rana Foroohar in the Financial Times
Despite the exposure to hurricanes, wildfires and extreme heat, my fellow Americans have been "moving in droves" to southern and western states over the past few years, says Rana Foroohar. The attractions are space, nature, lower taxes and cheaper property. But there is now a "nascent counter-trend" of college-educated young people rejecting the "cold to warm migration patterns" due to their concerns about climate change. "Such are the dystopian calculations of a generation born into a warming world."