The singer CMAT dances around a retail centre in a video for her new album. It is the elegy those of us who grew up in the post-Celtic tiger recession have been craving

You wouldn’t know it to look at the tourist board ads, but the emblem of modern Ireland is probably a shopping centre. And now that emblem has found its bard, in the form of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, the Irish pop star and songwriter better known as CMAT. She is a woman wielding a creative energy that is completely her own, but which is also profoundly shaped by her experiences coming of age in a post-Celtic tiger, recession-era Ireland. This has never been clearer than on her new single, Euro-Country, from the forthcoming album of the same name – a project that reminds us that pop culture has the power to illuminate political and social realities that are otherwise being ignored. It is the elegy that we, Ireland’s post-recession generation, needed – and it references at least two shopping centres.

The Euro-Country album artwork is a send-up of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Truth Coming Out of Her Well, with CMAT emerging from the fountain in Blanchardstown shopping centre, beside a giant euro coin. In an interview with the Guardian before her spectacular Glastonbury performance in June, Thompson observed that while Ireland is “a little more fetishised and trendy than it’s ever been”, it’s also “a really hard place to live, a really hard place to grow up, unless you have money, which we didn’t. So yeah, magical, beautiful, mystical Ireland: it’s a shopping centre – that’s what I grew up with.”

Tighter family reunification laws are causing long separations, traumatising children, and can push people towards traffickers, campaigners say

Standing outside Germany’s parliament in June, Ahmad Shikh Ali fought back tears as he held up a blurry photo of his three-year-old son. Since fleeing Aleppo more than two years ago, Shikh Ali had done all he could to secure his son a safe future: moving to Hanover, getting full-time employment and wading through endless paperwork so that his wife and son could join him.

He was close to reuniting with his family, with just two cases in front of his in the queue. That was, until Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill in June to suspend family reunifications for migrants like him for at least two years.

The Netflix phenomenon has shot relative unknowns to stardom, and inspired kids and parents alike. Bertin Huynh explains it to Nick Evershed

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OK, so what actually is KPop Demon Hunters? I’ve heard it mentioned by parents at school, by kids and randomly on social media but I am too lazy to Google it. Also, Google is terrible now.

It’s been touted by Netflix as the platform’s most-watched original animated film ever. It tells the story of three hunters who use music’s power to move and connect hearts to create a barrier – the “golden Honmoon” – that will keep the forces of evil demons at bay. But probably just as importantly, it has everything: characters that grow, gorgeous animated visuals and a soundtrack I’ve been playing on repeat.

The site in Fukuoka is only the second power plant of its type in the world, harnessing the power of osmosis to run a desalination plant in the city

Japan has opened its first osmotic power plant, in the south-western city of Fukuoka.

Only the second power plant of its type in the world, it is expected to generate about 880,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year – enough to help power a desalination plant that supplies fresh water to the city and neighbouring areas.

Two-day pre-sentencing hearing at Victorian supreme court comes after Patterson was found guilty of triple murder and attempted murder on 7 July

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‘I only feel half alive’ without wife Heather, Ian Wilkinson tells court

Wilkinson says a “very important member of our family is missing”.

The greatest impact on Erin’s actions on me has been to deprive me of Heather’s company and Heather’s important place in our family …

The silence in our home is a daily reminder.

She was a compassionate, intelligent, brave, witty, simply a delightful person who loved sharing life with others …

She was generous in her attitudes and with her resources. If she could help somebody, she would.

Together we faced life as a team and we delighted in each other’s company.

• Tour Championship win comes in his 164th start on PGA Tour

• ‘I’ve never looked at it as just trying to win once,’ says Englishman

Tommy Fleetwood insisted he is ready to write a fresh chapter of golfing success after ending his wait for a victory in the United States after 11 years.

Fleetwood’s three-stroke win at the Tour Championship in Atlanta came in his 164th start on the PGA Tour. While determined to enjoy the moment, the 34-year-old from Southport has no plans to rest on his laurels. Fleetwood had been probed time and again about his series of near misses in the US.