Syrians are awaiting the results of their first elections since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, which authorities hope will represent a new chapter for the war-torn country. But while Sunday’s limited vote was a “historic moment” after the oppressive rule of Assad, said Al Jazeera, the electoral process “has been subject to debate”.

How did the elections work?
In the new People’s Assembly, a third of the 210 seats will be directly appointed by Syria’s interim leader, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, with Sunday’s vote deciding the remainder.

However, only members of electoral colleges appointed by an elections committee to represent the country’s 60 districts were eligible to vote: a total of around 7,000 people. In 10 of those districts, in the Druze-majority Sweida province and Kurdish-controlled areas in the north, the vote was indefinitely postponed due to what the central government in Damascus described as the danger posed by ongoing sectarian violence in the regions.

Were they a success?
With so few people eligible to vote, there were “few signs in Syria on Sunday that an election was taking place”, said The National. “No rallies preceded the poll and there were no election manifestos or campaigns by any parties.” This was “an indirect election using a set of electors who have basically been handpicked by the current rulers”, Syria expert Aron Lund, a fellow at the Century International think tank, told Al Jazeera.

President Sharaa admitted that the process was not perfect but said it “suited the phase Syria is undergoing”. Authorities claim that mass displacement and administrative chaos resulting from 14 years of civil war, and the sudden fall of the Assad regime last December, made holding a nationwide election impossible.

Who will make up Syria’s next government?
Given their close affiliation with the Assad regime, all existing political parties were dissolved when the interim government took power, so every candidate in the election ran as an independent.

While there are no quotas for representation, the majority of seats – 70% – will go to academics and experts, underlining the aim of creating a technocratic government rather than one dominated by members of prominent families.

A dark romance novel that began as Harry Potter fan fiction about a BDSM relationship between two characters from J.K. Rowling’s books has been snapped up in a movie deal worth more than $3 million (£2.2 million). The race to get “Alchemised” to the big screen highlights the soaring popularity of rebranded fan fiction in mainstream publishing.

Textual transfiguration
“Alchemised” started out in 2023 as “Manacled”, a 77-chapter work of Potter fan fiction in the “Dramione” genre, which focuses on forbidden love between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger. Written initially in the Notes app of author SenLinYu’s phone, it quickly racked up 10 million views on fan fiction platform AO3.

SenLinYu then landed a traditional book deal with Penguin – but one that required the removal of all references to Rowling’s characters or universe. As “Alchemised”, it has been “transfigured into a dark romantasy” set in “an alternate world of necromancers and corrupt guild families”, with the leads renamed as Helena Marino and Kaine Ferron, said The Hollywood Reporter. It’s an example of what is known as “pull-to-pub”: removing a fanfic from the internet and then cashing in by publishing a rewritten version.

Dollar signs
Traditional publishers have “seen dollar signs” in “explosively popular fanfics” since the success of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades” series, which started out as a “Twilight” fanfic called “Master of the Universe”, said Harper’s Bazaar. Other recent bestsellers that began life as fan fiction have been inspired by everything from Harry Styles to “Reylo” (Rey and Kylo Ren from the “Star Wars” franchise). And with romantasy “popping off” as a genre, the magical backdrop of Dramione fiction makes “Alchemised” perfectly positioned “to meet the moment”.

The “parched” publishing industry has “wrung some quenching juice” from the world of fan fiction, said Slate, and the movie of “Alchemised” also “likely to be a hit”. Regardless of the origins of the story, people will never stop being “drawn to the idea of men and women who once were polar opposites coming slowly but surely into alignment”.

A child carries food between makeshift tents outside Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Representatives of Israel, Hamas and the US are holding indirect talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh today, in an attempt to agree on a draft peace proposal.

Khames Alrefi / Anadolu / Getty Images

Gen Z and social media are fuelling a “global hot sauce craze”, said Anne Shooter in The Times. YouTube show “Hot Ones”, which features celebrities being interviewed as they eat “increasingly spicy chicken wings”, has almost five billion views.   

The trend is also playing out on supermarket shelves, where countless bottles offer just about every heat and flavour combination imaginable – from smoky, jalapeño-based condiments to super-hot scotch-bonnet-packed sauces. Meri La Bella, a buyer at Ocado, told The Times that sales of hot sauces were “up 90% year-on-year”.

The best hot sauces have some “fermentation going on to round out the chilli heat and balance the flavours”, said Thomasina Miers in The Guardian. “And, as with most things in life, a bit of ageing helps enormously!” Classic Tabasco Pepper Sauce is a safe bet: “deliciously tangy”, the “rounded flavour” gives it a “huge lead in terms of taste”. For something sweeter that makes a “great accompaniment to a burger”, try Lingham’s “moreish” Chilli Sauce.

If you’re after a hot sauce that really packs a punch, El Yucateco Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero “isn’t your average green drizzle”, said Ella Duggan in The Independent. Expect bold, fiery heat that will make your “lips tingle and your tongue do a double-take”.

Selfridges now stocks more than 100 varieties of hot sauce, said Shooter in The Times. My favourite of their swankier offerings is Yellowbird Habanero Hot Sauce. Made with habanero chillies, tangerines, dates, garlic and carrots, it expertly balances spice with sweetness and has a lovely “freshness of flavour”. 

Badenoch has one option. In a world of clowns, seriousness matters
Kamal Ahmed in The Telegraph
The Tories’ polling is “woeful”, writes Kamal Ahmed, and Keir Starmer’s framing of the next election as an existential battle between Labour and Reform risks “squeezing the Tories out of the picture” altogether. “To ‘break through’”, Kemi Badenoch needs to be “different, not a pale imitation of her opponents”. Otherwise, she will join the “long list” of Tory opposition leaders who couldn’t find “a way back to Number 10”.

The next archbishop of Canterbury has no time to waste in making change – this is what she will be up against
Martine Oborne in The Guardian
Sarah Mullally’s appointment as archbishop of Canterbury has been “welcomed not simply because” she’s a woman but because she’s “wise, intelligent, courageous and compassionate”, writes the Rev. Martine Oborne. Although “quite diminutive in stature”, Mullally has “broad shoulders”, which she’ll need to “preside over a church” that still includes “seven serving bishops” who wouldn’t “receive communion from her” and one who doesn’t “believe women should be in authority over men in the church”.

Blessed are the flagmakers as the UK pivots to patriotism
Emma Jacobs in the Financial Times
“It would have been easy to mistake this week’s Labour Party conference for a flag convention,” writes Emma Jacobs. The motives behind the “new competition to prove devotion” to St George’s Crosses and Union Jacks “may be disputed”, but “these are good times for those in the business” of making flags, who are seeing demand soar amid the “broader trend of signalling our tribe and values”.