Assisting an ageing loved one can start with small tasks but may lead to full-time caregiving that requires more support

Helping an ageing parent or loved one often begins with easy-to-field requests: Pick up a prescription. Drive them to a doctor’s appointment. Grab groceries.

However, light tasks – just “helping out” here and there – may eventually snowball into the avalanche of full-time caregiving, a phenomenon becoming known as “caregiver creep”. Like “caregiver burnout”, it’s not a formal term, but there is growing awareness about this slow build among healthcare providers and experts.

Technology trained on millions of routine ECGs could fast-track high-risk patients for treatment

Doctors have developed a “superhuman” AI tool that can spot heart disease in less than two seconds.

The groundbreaking technology has been trained on millions of patients and works by extracting more information from a routine electrocardiogram (ECG) than the human eye can typically see.

Technology trained on millions of routine ECGs could fast-track high-risk patients for treatment

Doctors have developed a “superhuman” AI tool that can spot heart disease in less than two seconds.

The groundbreaking technology has been trained on millions of patients and works by extracting more information from a routine electrocardiogram (ECG) than the human eye can typically see.

Exclusive: Labour MPs believe Gordon Brown-era SMC has become ineffective and its work ‘should be a core function of government’

Ministers are considering a shake-up of the government’s social mobility watchdog that could range from giving it more teeth to abolishing it outright.

The move comes amid concerns that the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) – originally conceived under Gordon Brown’s government in 2010 – has become ineffective.

Apparently a dedicated mud room will make you less stressed. But I have a very different approach

I was excited to learn that the latest interiors essential, according to the Washington Post, is a “dirty zone”. I’m ahead of the curve – I’ve already got a dirty zone by each main door (and also one directly outside the back door, where, rudely, a mystery animal has defecated). The fridge drawers are dirty zones thanks to the windfall apples I thought I would cook, but predictably left to liquefy. There’s a dirty zone next to the washing machine and a mildewy one inside it. There’s the festering compost bin I’m too chicken to tackle post-heatwave, plus the cupboard under the stairs, which we don’t talk about. Good luck finding a clean zone, basically.

Does this make me kinda chic? Unfortunately not: the Post is actually preaching the benefits of confining the sordid ephemera of life to carefully delineated and hidden areas: storage benches, monogrammed totes or even a “mud room” (for coats, shoes, skis, lacrosse sticks and dog-washing sinks – I think posh Britons call it a boot room). A 2021 study in the Netherlands found that participants who did chores in chaotic environments had higher levels of the stress marker salivary alpha-amylase. I always wonder what’s brewing in my mouth as I fall over piles of filthy shoes yet again while running to answer the door.

More than two dozen teenagers stuck in the Spanish territory of Ceuta shared their reasons for joining the treacherous mass crossing in July

For Fatin, one of the teenage girls now living in limbo in a makeshift camp in the Spanish city of Ceuta, the decision to leave her home in Morocco began to form when she had to give up school.

She wanted to continue studying, she says, but at home she was expected to take responsibility for the housework instead. As classes and learning gave way to domestic chores, the future she had imagined for herself began to feel increasingly distant.

Checks at pharmacies for people aged 40 to 84 are aimed at identifying those at risk of heart attack or stroke

The NHS in England is to offer free finger-prick blood tests for cholesterol on the high street for the first time under plans to reduce heart disease and stroke deaths by a quarter within the next decade.

The seven-minute tests will be available at participating pharmacies as part of a national rollout to spot “ticking timebombs” earlier.

Will the UK ever rejoin the EU? Who is funding Andy Burnham? And will the bedroom tax be scrapped? In a special episode, Kiran Stacey and Peter Walker answer some of your questions

Please keep sending your comments and questions to Pippa and Kiran at politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com