From marching bands to TikTok takedowns, employees are resigning in spectacular fashion. While going viral seems risky, some find it opens new doors ...

In 2011, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco had been working in room service at a luxury hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, for nearly four years, whisking delicacies on demand to guests’ rooms, when he reached breaking point. He was paid a measly $5.50 (£4) an hour, made to work punishingly long shifts and, to top it off, had managers taking a cut of his hard-earned tips.

The poor treatment ratcheted up after DeFrancesco and colleagues tried to unionise workers at the hotel. In response, managers would berate those involved for making tiny mistakes. Things got so petty that workers on shift who had to take calls from guests were banned from sitting down.

What began as a nasty Twitter spat seven years ago has led to a peculiar metamorphosis for the comedy writer

It was as he was lying on a hospital trolley, after surgery to treat testicular cancer in 2018, that Graham Linehan picked up his phone and first definitively waded into the issue of trans rights.

According to his memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, and subsequent media interviews, the Irish-born comedian could not remember quite what he wrote in those groggy early tweets but it nailed “my colours to the gender-critical mast”.

Suddenly mixed heritage Britons are being obliged to explain ourselves and our families. We will not be pushed to the margins

My sister is an amazing aunty to my baby son. She is obsessed with him. So much so, she recently used some of her annual leave to take him on a day out. She was excited to show him off, proud to push him in his buggy and have people assume he was hers for a few hours. She never expected to be met with hostility and suspicion.

Like me, my sister is a Black mixed-race woman. My son is, at a glance, “white-presenting”, with blond hair and blue eyes. As they travelled together on the London underground, a woman looked at my son, looked at my sister and asked coldly: “Are you child-minding?” It was humiliating and invalidating. My sister scrambled to answer, not knowing what would happen if her status as blood relative wasn’t believed. Later, she told me she wished she hadn’t answered – why does a stranger have the right to question her in this way? – but in the moment, she felt rattled.

Dialects are powerful identifiers, especially when you’re from an ethnic minority

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There are times on The Long Wave desk when a conversation sparks a sort of group therapy session. A few weeks ago, Jason came back from a reporting trip to Barbados and made a comment about how some Bajans thought he was from the Caribbean, because his accent changed when he was there. This was fascinating to me. The ensuing discussion made me realise that all of us had shifted our accents at various times, which got me thinking about all the unconscious ways in which we “code switch”, alternating between different identities.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from a must-read graphic history to a tale of lost love

At 16, I fell for Giacomo when I was on holiday in Italy. Our young love didn’t survive my move home to Scotland, but years later, quite unexpectedly, we found each other again

Grownups often roll their eyes at young love: at how all-consuming it is for the teenagers involved, and how predictably doomed it is to fail. But my holiday romance changed the course of my life.

I was 16 when I met Giacomo at a bar in Atina, the tiny Italian mountain town where my parents grew up. There was a local festival one evening and tables were scarce, so our two friendship groups ended up squished around the same one. At more than 6ft tall, Giacomo was hard to miss. He was also friendly, smiley and, while he didn’t speak a word of English, I loved that he spared me the whole ciao bella swagger usually reserved for “foreign girls”.

Exclusive: Deputy PM refers herself to ethics adviser as confirmation puts her position under threat

• Read Rayner’s full statement

• Explainer: how damaging is the Rayner flat controversy?

• UK politics live – latest updates

Angela Rayner has admitted she underpaid stamp duty on her £800,000 seaside flat, after coming under intense pressure to be more transparent about her property arrangements.

The deputy prime minister has referred herself to the prime minister’s ethics adviser after confirming she will have to pay more of the property tax. She incorrectly paid the lower rate on the flat in Hove, she said. Experts have said the bill could run to as much as an extra £40,000.

Jamie Raskin says Farage is ‘a Trump sycophant’ before UK politician addresses the House judiciary committee in Washington

Kemi Badenoch is probably hastily redrafting her PMQs script in the light of Angela Rayner’s statement about underpaying her stamp duty. She has got less than half an hour to craft the right questions. And she will probably want to ask about the economy, and hate speech laws, too.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Russian president questions legitimacy of Ukrainian government as Zelenskyy ramps up diplomatic efforts in Denmark and Polish president prepares to meet Trump

Putin was also asked about the prospect of more EU sanctions against Russia or its allies, including China and India.

He said the leaders did not discuss this during their recent conversations.

“I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We will see.

Otherwise, we will be forced to resolve all our objective objectives through military means.”

North Korean leader invited to visit Russia as Zelenskyy says Putin is displaying ‘impunity’ with new Ukraine strikes

• Europe live – latest updates

Vladimir Putin has invited Kim Jong-un to visit Russia during a lengthy meeting in Beijing on the sidelines of China’s biggest military parade, as Kim promised to do “everything I can to assist” Moscow.

The invitation, made through interpreters and shown in a video published by the Kremlin, came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused Putin of demonstrating his “impunity” with fresh strikes on Ukraine overnight.