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Nigel Farage skips budget in Commons over seating ‘altercation’ concerns

Reform UK leader ‘shocked’ by £10bn pledged to Ukraine and doubles down on cutting tax for crypto investors

Nigel Farage skipped the chancellor’s first budget because he was worried he would get in a “physical altercation” with another MP in a row over seating arrangements.

The Reform UK leader was not present in the House of Commons but gave a press conference afterwards in which he said he was “shocked” by the £10bn going to support Ukraine and doubled down on his party’s policies on cutting tax for crypto investors.

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© Photograph: Zeynep Demir Aslim/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Zeynep Demir Aslim/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Zeynep Demir Aslim/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

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Prominent Texas Congregation Votes to Leave United Methodist Church

Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas had waged an unusually public campaign against the denomination’s demands for control.

© Desiree Rios for The New York Times

Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas last month.
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The shocking rise of rib remodelling: ‘I wanted that hourglass shape’

It involves the fracturing of a patient’s ribs, before they spend three months laced into a corset. Some of those who have had this cosmetic procedure say it is like being ‘hit by a bus’. Why is it becoming more popular?

Daniela Cesin was 14 when she began thinking about her looks. “I was a little bit chubby and I started to work out at home and lose weight. I saw the difference in my body: my abs, the muscles in my arms, and I started liking it,” she says. By 31, she had the slim, toned body she had hoped for, but something was still missing. “I wanted to have that guitar hourglass shape.”

In August, Cesin travelled from Miami, where she has lived for the past 15 years, to her native Venezuela for liposuction and a fat transfer to her hips. She met her cosmetic surgeon for the first time the day before the procedure, and he realised she didn’t have enough fat to go ahead with it. Instead, he offered to perform RibXcar: a rib remodelling surgery that would involve fracturing three of her lower ribs on each side and binding them in a corset for three months, to set the ribs in a new position and give her a wasplike waist.

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© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

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Can’t Afford a Home. Can’t Afford a Baby. Can’t Afford Life. This Is 30.

They’re trying to build middle-class lives in New York. But many 30-year-olds in the city feel worse off than their parents. Is it average adult angst? Or something more enduring?

© Todd Heisler/The New York Times

People in their early 30s make up the largest age cohort in the United States. They’re feeling priced out of adulthood.
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Medicare Advantage cuts leave millions scrambling to find coverage

Health care costs are climbing, putting new pressure on millions of Americans and raising questions about the coverage they can afford. The challenges extend to Medicare Advantage. In some parts of the country, insurers are pulling out of markets or eliminating plans that many rely on. We hear from seniors struggling to navigate those changes, and Geoff Bennett discusses more with Dan Weissmann.

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