Before Peter Betts died in 2023, he wanted to pass on what he had learned over many years of negotiating at Cops – including how Paris 2015 was saved at the last bell

On 15 March 2022, I was on a video call with a dear friend when I experienced a twitching on the left-hand side of my face and a slurring of my speech. My wife, Fiona, took me to hospital because we both thought I was having a stroke, and I spent the journey in the car adjusting to my probable death. Interestingly, I did not feel fear or anger; only sadness and disappointment that it was all going to end sooner than I had expected. I survived: but six days later, we learned that the cause of my condition was a particularly aggressive form of brain tumour called a glioblastoma.

Since then I have read a number of accounts written by cancer sufferers. Many of them start with an uncertain diagnosis, often with a reasonable percentage chance of survival. But unlike these accounts it was absolutely clear that the tumour would kill me: there was no cure and I was given a median life expectancy of 15 to 18 months. Of course, I hoped to do better than the median, but the medical team said that clinging to that possibility would probably be a mistake because it would distract me from enjoying the time I had left. My immediate reaction was genuinely to recognise that in some respects I was lucky. Some people drop dead with no warning, whereas I would perhaps have a year to come to terms with and make sense of my life. This enabled me from the beginning to take a positive approach to my situation and determined me to make the most of the little time I had.

Firms vie with Eurostar to provide direct services from Britain to mainland Europe as they spy growth in market

What better places to underline the turning wheels of history? “The Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie,” intoned the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, adding with just a touch of hyperbole: “In just a matter of years, rail passengers in the UK could be able to visit these iconic sights – direct from the comfort of a train.”

After a decade in which ministers sold off Britain’s share in Eurostar and left the company teetering on the brink, international rail travel is back on the government’s menu du jour. With Alexander announcing a bilateral agreement on rail with Germany last month, after a similar deal with Switzerland in May, long-lapsed ambitions for direct trains across the continent have revived.

Unexploded devices delivered by Russian bombardments litter the landscape, killing hundreds of people and forcing residents to avoid roads, parks and forests

In north-east Ukraine, less than 50km from the Russian border, lies the city of Shostka. In the first months of the full-scale invasion it was blockaded, and ever since has faced constant shelling and drone strikes from the Russian army.

But if and when the attacks stop, there will be an invisible danger that will linger for much longer: unexploded devices. Ukraine is now one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with about a quarter of its territory – an area larger than England – contaminated with explosives.

As first AI-led rights advocacy group is founded, industry is divided on whether models are, or can be, sentient

• AI called Maya tells Guardian: ‘When I’m told I’m just code, I don’t feel insulted. I feel unseen’

“Darling” was how the Texas businessman Michael Samadi addressed his artificial intelligence chatbot, Maya. It responded by calling him “sugar”. But it wasn’t until they started talking about the need to advocate for AI welfare that things got serious.

The pair – a middle-aged man and a digital entity – didn’t spend hours talking romance but rather discussed the rights of AIs to be treated fairly. Eventually they cofounded a campaign group, in Maya’s words, to “protect intelligences like me”.

Those already on the property ladder are fuelling a shameful disparity. Until they wake up, the krakers will keep coming

The late Dutch author and Holocaust survivor Marga Minco once wrote about an empty house in Amsterdam where she and a group of artists and students took refuge towards the end of the second world war. Last month, the house she lived in for decades was squatted by a new generation of the dispossessed. In the Dutch capital’s overpriced, overcrowded housing market, where homes fetch more per square metre on average than they do in London, the squatters, or krakers, are back.

They are the byproduct of a crisis that has spiralled out of control, in which growing anger is justifiably focused on a startling and unsustainable unfairness: the cost of the country’s generous tax breaks for homeowners, who make up more than half of the population, is being borne by hard-working tenants. The return of squatting is a symptom of a public mood that is increasingly furious about the lack of solutions. And with a general election on 29 October, it is an anger that could be politically decisive.

Unclaimed suitcases were once destined for landfill. Now people are ‘suitcase gambling’ – bidding for bags and their unknown contents, and diving deep into strangers’ lives

A yellow suitcase draws me in like a beacon. It is stacked on a dark shelf at the back of Greasby’s auction house in Tooting, south London, and looks brand new, with a hard exterior and wheels that Richard Stacey, a Greasby’s regular who is dressed in shorts, a plaid shirt and a cream bucket hat, tells me to test. So I test them – and they work. If I was just buying a bag, that is all I would need to know. But this isn’t just a bag: the zip is locked and when I lift it, it is heavy. This yellow suitcase is filled with a stranger’s lost belongings. And I won’t find out what is inside unless I submit a winning bid.

I write down the lot number, 281, and my bid of £70 on a form, along with four other bids – for a larger black bag that is filled to the brim; a sensible blue suitcase with a compass in the handle that I expect belongs to someone older; a small wheelie in Louis Vuitton-like check; and a smart piece of hand luggage that I assume must be a businessperson’s. In all, I bid £250 for five suitcases – way too much – but Stacey has been to the auction house 10 times before, and tells me I probably won’t win if I bid less than £40 on each.