• Wolves insist Norwegian is not for sale

• He signed for £23m this summer after loan

Wolves have rejected a £50m bid from Newcastle for Jørgen Strand Larsen and maintain the striker is not for sale.

Wolves are aware Newcastle identified Strand Larsen as a key target but their stance is they cannot afford to sell the Norwegian before the close of the transfer window on Monday. Wolves deem Strand Larsen irreplaceable owing to the timing and Strand Larsen’s record as a proven goalscorer in the Premier League.

Civic participation is in decline across the English-speaking world. To opt out of the trend, Tom Gill learns to join in

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The idea? That everything has a cost, even if not financial. But I’m at my local Neighbourhood House, one of many community centres found across Australia, breaking bread with strangers and eating a genuinely free lunch. While it cost me time, what I’ve gained feels socially priceless: I’m getting to know my neighbours, something fewer and fewer Australians are doing.

In 2000, Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone warned of declining civic participation and social connection in US society. Americans, he argued, were retreating from clubs, associations and volunteer groups – the building blocks of community connection – in favour of a more solitary existence. As Putnam put it at the time: “We used to bowl in leagues; now we bowl alone.”

I’ve found metaphors that mirror my own journey, phrases that feel like home, and poetry that speaks directly to the soul

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I’ve always carried a deep sense of gratitude for my ability to speak more than one language. It has allowed me to build bridges across cultures, to connect with people from vastly different walks of life and to find a sense of belonging wherever I’ve been: Australia, Germany, Pakistan or Afghanistan. Each language I’ve learned has brought with it a new lens through which to view the world. But nothing has stirred my soul quite like Persian – the language of mystics and lovers.

My recent journey into the Persian language felt less like consciously acquiring a new skill and more like unlocking a secret passage inside myself. It has opened doors not just to new ideas and ways of thinking but to the deepest emotions. For the first time, I’ve found a language that doesn’t just help me navigate time and space in mere practical terms but helps me to express and feel every moment beyond that.

The YouTube series is a lo-fi celebration of cuisine-as-care, starring a disabled rescue bull in regional Victoria who is obsessed with human food, and his best friend and carer

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The YouTube comedy docuseries Cooking for Seamus has an irresistible premise: what if a huge disabled bull named Seamus was a food critic, on a cooking show that catered entirely to his sensibilities and tastes? The result is a show that’s not only eccentric and funny, but an utterly delightful meditation on the importance of food and care and community, featuring a very hungry animal.

Seamus is a disabled bull who lives with palsy; when he was born he was considered too sick to live, but was saved by an animal rescuer, his “mum” BJ, who also pops up through the show. For months Seamus couldn’t even stand up or lift his head to feed, and as a result, quickly became enamoured with “human” food – and in large amounts.

Genetically modified lung functioned for nine days, in latest development in xenotransplantation aimed at solving organ shortage crisis

Surgeons have transplanted a lung from a genetically modified pig into a brain dead human recipient for the first time and found it functioned for nine days, researchers have revealed.

The work is the latest development in a technique called xenotransplantation that is aimed at solving the organ shortage crisis: according to the World Health Organization, only up to 10% of the global need for such transplants is being met.

Famed for intense dramas like Black Swan, the director’s latest film is a riotous retro crime caper. He explains why he’s battling TikTok – but embracing AI

Darren Aronofsky’s new film is a blast from the past; a half-cut retro tour of late-1990s New York. Beetling around the tatty East Village, casually framing the twin towers downtown, it lifts the lid on a time that has been and gone: when the city was a melting pot of miscreants and misfits, when lowly bar staff could still afford Gotham rents,, and when every car came equipped with a cigarette lighter. “Don’t they have those any more?” says Aronofksy, frowning at his untouched cup of herbal tea. “I don’t know, maybe not. It’s been many years since I smoked a cigarette.”

Caught Stealing, he says, could almost be his parallel-universe first movie, given that it’s set in 1998, around the time he was shooting his actual first film, Pi, on the same East Side streets. He was in his late 20s back then, subsisting on pizza and living in a fifth-floor walk-up. He was anxious and ambitious; he had his eyes on the prize. He now thinks he ought to have enjoyed himself more.