FluxDash

US newsGhost riding the whip - an introductionBy the time the mainstream American media started condemning the practice of ghost-riding the whip, one of its original advocates, the Californian rapper Too Short, was already bemoaning the fact that it wasn't what it used to be. "It's all about dancing," he told one online interviewer, seeming rather exasperated. "You have got to have style when you are ghost-riding your whip." In any moral panic over hazardous fads among teenagers, everyone has his or her role to play, and ghost-riding the whip has proved no exception.

Elijah McClainOfficer acquitted in Elijah McClain death gets job back and $200,000 in back payNathan Woodyard was suspended for two years until jury found him not guilty of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide The Colorado officer who stopped Elijah McClain in 2019 and placed him in a neck hold was reinstated to the Aurora police department and will receive $200,000 in back pay, city officials said on Monday. Nathan Woodyard’s “reintegration” into the police force comes weeks after a jury found him not guilty of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

Notes and queriesLife and styleThe long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts Can you be a Buddhist as well as a Christian? Can a non-theist and theist perspective operate together hand in hand? Anna M St Clair Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Readers replyI don’t see why not. Western society expects us to believe six dozen contradictory things at once already, so what’s one more?

Mid-life ex-wifeOnline datingI tried to get him to play Q&A before our date but he didn’t want to answer my questionsThe following day I heard from Lee, the Austrian. Perhaps we should meet, he said, though he felt he had to be upfront and say he had reservations about me. Oh, I said. What are those? Is my sense of humour not feminine enough? It’s true that I was deterred by your apparent offer of sex on our first date, he said, and though you assured me you were joking, I’m not sure that you were joking, entirely.

Australia culture blogBooksReviewHenshaw’s first book in 25 years is not only a novel about mysteries, but a metaphor for the nature of storytelling One night in Paris, in 1989, retired inspector Auguste Jovert receives a letter from a woman in Algiers claiming to be his daughter. A chance encounter with a stranger – Tadashi Omura, former professor of law of the Imperial University of Japan – suddenly finds him entwined in the stories of Omura’s best friend, the arrogant and brilliant novelist Katsuo Ikeda, and the lives of three Japanese women, Fumiko, Mariko and Sachiko.

Premier LeagueChris Wood hat-trick fires Nottingham Forest to victory at struggling NewcastleFor two years the mantra “intensity is our identity” served Eddie Howe and his Newcastle players extremely well but in recent weeks that creed has, almost imperceptibly, become a problem rather than a solution. Howe’s exhaustive high‑pressing game is now producing so much fatigue and resulting in so many injuries that a change of philosophy seems essential if he and his team are to rescue a season that, until recently, promised so much.

The Q&ALife and styleInterviewHayley Atwell: ‘I won't give my body dysmorphia a voice’Rosanna GreenstreetThe actor on crying on stage, good legal advice and suffering from Fomo Born in London, Hayley Atwell, 36, went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and, within months of graduating, was cast in Woody Allen’s film Cassandra’s Dream. Her roles include Agent Peggy Carter in the Avengers films, and Margaret in Howards End. She stars in BBC One drama The Long Song on 18 December at 9pm.

John Oliver recapJohn OliverFor Halloween, the Last Week Tonight host delves into the long-lived child labor practices in the world’s chocolate supply On the eve of Halloween week, John Oliver focused his main segment of Last Week Tonight on the abuses of the chocolate industry, which rakes in about $140bn a year. Oliver acknowledged that a segment on chocolate sounds like it could be pleasant: “You might be sitting at home thinking ‘Hold on, I’ve seen this show before, this feels like this could be one of those fun stories but is it about to take a turn?

The ObserverFictionReviewA viral sensation in the early 00s and now in print, this raw, groundbreaking tale of a teenager’s sex life revels in the language of Black Londoners In 2005, the then 13-year-old Jade LB wrote Keisha the Sket (originally called Keisha Da Sket) – a sprawling narrative about a 17-year-old girl from inner London whose life consists of sex, predatory men, parties and tragedies. LB uploaded the tale on to a blog site called Piczo and the story spread around London schools before social media was really available on phones.