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MusicalsObituaryRichard Adler obituaryLyricist and composer best known for the hit musicals The Pajama Game and Damn YankeesRichard Adler, who has died aged 90, was the wunderkind of Broadway in the 1950s. In his early 30s, the composer and lyricist had two Tony award-winning musicals with his partner, Jerry Ross, and it seemed as though the pair could do no wrong. After all, shows did not come much bigger than The Pajama Game (1954) and Damn Yankees (1955), sensational hits on both sides of the Atlantic, both running for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway.

SpaceX SpaceX's Starship rocket booster explodes after blast off – video SpaceX’s spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, reached space for the first time on Saturday but was seen in footage experiencing a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'. The two-stage rocket ship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas on a planned 90-minute uncrewed flight into space.

From left: Moonlight, The Handmaiden, There Will Be Blood, Under the Skin Composite: n/aGangsters, superheroes, schoolkids, lovers, slaves, peasants, techies, Tenenbaums and freefalling astronauts – they’re all here in our countdown of cinema’s best movies since 2000 The director of our No 1 reacts Film-makers choose their No 1 Peter Bradshaw on why our No 1 is our No 1 by Peter Bradshaw, Cath Clarke, Andrew Pulver and Catherine Shoard100Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)Quentin Tarantino’s latest jaw-dropper bumps Kill Bill: Vol 1 off the list in gloriously irreverent fashion.

The ObserverPhilosophy booksReviewThough you may need a quiet room to read it in, Matthew Crawford’s study of our distracting modern age is a rewarding one If an attention deficit is the mental equivalent of obesity, perhaps politicians should be more worried about slack minds than flabby waistlines. The bleep of a text message or the flickering image on a TV screen in a communal area may be distracting enough. But public spaces that used to be shielded from unnecessary disturbance are being colonised by the captains of commerce.

WomenMuch has recently been written about young, media-savvy, 'fourth-wave' feminism. But there's a quieter, wider revolution bubbling up beneath, and it's led by mothersWhere should a 20-something feminist go when faced with a online barrage of rape and death threats? Unsurprisingly, Laura Bates turned to an anonymous talkboard to ask for help soon after she founded the Everyday Sexism Project 18 months ago. Less predictably, perhaps, the childless campaigner chose to do so on parenting website Mumsnet.

Archaeology This article is more than 8 months oldFirst records of human kissing may date back 1,000 years earlier than estimatedThis article is more than 8 months oldEvidence suggests ancient Mesopotamians kissed and practice could be more culturally universal than previously thought Humanity’s earliest record of kissing dates back about 4,500 years in the ancient Middle East, 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to researchers. Scientists have highlighted evidence that suggests kissing was practised in some of the earliest Mesopotamian societies and documented in ancient texts from 2500BC that have been largely overlooked.

FujitsuFujitsu gave £2.6m payoff to former UK boss in 2020, filings suggestExclusive: payment was made as the Horizon IT system’s failings at post offices were emerging in court cases The former UK boss of Fujitsu, the technology firm whose flawed IT system is at the heart of the Post Office Horizon scandal, received a £2.6m payoff after standing down from the company in 2019, corporate filings suggest. Fujitsu has come under increasing scrutiny during the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal, which led to thousands of people who owned and ran smaller post offices being falsely accused or convicted of theft or fraud between 1999 and 2015.

The Week in PatriarchyEllen DeGeneres This article is more than 3 years oldHow did Ellen become one of the biggest villains of 2020?This article is more than 3 years oldArwa MahdawiRecently, and not for the first time, the comedian’s public persona has appeared to be at odds with her private actions Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday. Ellen wants everyone to ‘be kind’ – maybe she should rethink what that means“Be kind” Ellen DeGeneres says at the end of every episode of her eponymous show.

CatholicismObituaryJohn Wilkins obituaryEditor of the Tablet whose independent stance infuriated the Vatican and conservative Roman CatholicsJohn Wilkins, who has died aged 85, was the leading secular British Roman Catholic commentator of the last 40 years. As editor of the weekly Catholic magazine the Tablet, one of the oldest periodicals in the country, for nearly 22 years between 1982 and 2003, he was quite capable of infuriating the Vatican and the church’s more strident conservative polemicists with criticism of its reactionary stances on issues such as birth control, the place of women in the church, and ecumenism.