Each character uses a different method of communication in Adam Wong’s drama, which benefits from the chemistry of its lead performers

An incisive film-maker with a keen eye for contemporary youth culture, Hong Kong director Adam Wong has returned with another sensitive ensemble drama. The film follows three twentysomething friends as they navigate various degrees of deafness. Alan, played by first-time deaf actor Marco Ng, is a cochlear implant (CI) user. He is also an ambassador for the surgery, which can help restore sound perception for those with hearing loss. Wolf (Neo Yau), his childhood friend, is a staunch user and supporter of sign language, which at one point was prohibited in local deaf schools; such institutions prioritised speech training, then believed to work better for hearing-impaired students. Sophie (Chung Suet Ying) is at a crossroads: she is a CI user who cannot sign, but yearns to learn.

It would, of course, be simplistic to portray these different forms of communication as inherently at odds with one another; instead, Wong’s film emphasises that, whether it is CI surgery or sign language, deaf people must be granted the autonomy to make these decisions on their own. Besides posing these thought-provoking questions, Wong also constructs rich inner worlds for these characters, in which deafness is only one thread of a whole tapestry. Wolf’s passion for the sea, for instance, is felt in the smallest of details, such as the ocean-themed trinkets that line his study desk. It’s the kind of visual attention that renders his dismissal from a diving school due to a lack of sign language interpreters even more heartbreaking.

Unicef UK found they were over twice as far from target of 75% of pre-schoolers reaching ‘good level of development’

Children in the most deprived areas of England are less likely to achieve good developmental goals by the age of five, according to the aid agency Unicef UK, which has urged ministers to lift the two-child benefit cap.

A report by the UN agency mapped every local authority area across England measuring its level of deprivation and a range of early childhood health and educational outcomes such as oral health, weight and A&E attendance.

Health service issued amber alert last year over blood stocks for hospitals and wants to hit target of 1 million donors

The NHS needs to fill a shortfall of more than 200,000 blood donors in England to avoid a threat to public safety, officials have said.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) wants to hit a target of 1 million blood donors to meet growing demand as just under 800,000 people – 2% of the population in England – kept the nation’s blood stocks afloat last year.

Exclusive: Scientists also say any reduction in Foreign Office funding for vaccine alliance Gavi would harm UK’s soft power

Any cut in UK funding to a global vaccination group would damage soft power and could make Britain less resilient to infectious diseases, as well as causing avoidable deaths among children, leading vaccine and aid experts have warned.

Scientists including Sir Andrew Pollard, who led the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, said a major cut in money for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) could also make the UK less able to respond to a future pandemic.

A strike would harm patients and the NHS, write John Oldham, Clare Gerada, David Colin-Thome, Prof James Kingsland, Dr Fiona Cornish and Prof John Ashton

We write about the call for a strike by resident doctors (Report, 22 May). We do so as fellow experienced professionals and potential patients. There was a genuine case that pay for resident doctors had fallen behind, but a 22% increase last year and an above-inflation offer this year seems to us to go a long way to addressing that. It’s certainly far more than many of our colleagues, other professional groups and patients are getting, and it cannot have been easy to persuade the Treasury in such resource-constrained times.

There remain significant problems around working conditions and training. They need firm resolution but this will not be achieved through strikes.

Exclusive: Letter from six top figures says more walkouts by junior colleagues would help those who oppose the NHS

• Letter: Resident doctors should vote against strike action

Six senior figures in England’s medical profession have criticised potential strikes by resident doctors as “a futile gesture” that will harm patients and help those who oppose the NHS.

The move is the first public evidence of the significant unease many senior doctors feel about the possibility of their junior colleagues staging a new campaign of industrial action in England.

Dr Katherine Severi calls for a national alcohol strategy that adopts Scotland’s minimum pricing and Dr Giota Mitrou highlights the role of alcohol in causing cancer. Plus a letter from Laura Willoughby

You are right to argue that rising alcohol harm must be addressed in the government’s 10-year health plan (The Guardian view on alcohol and public health: the drinks industry must not control the narrative, 1 June). If ministers are “staking their reputation on economic growth”, they need to deal head-on with one of the biggest drivers of premature death and lost productivity, while ignoring spurious claims made by alcohol companies whose profits have for too long trumped public health.

Alcohol harm costs England at least £27bn a year – almost double what the Treasury collects in alcohol duty. These harms aren’t incidental to the alcohol market; they are intrinsic to it. While the industry promotes “moderate drinking”, evidence shows that its profits and growth depend on the heaviest drinkers. It’s no coincidence that Diageo’s CEO recently described moderation as the industry’s “biggest disrupter”.

Seventeen years ago Nathan Dunne was locked out of his body, or at least that’s how it felt. He talks about his battle with depersonalisation disorder – and his sudden fear of water

On a cold winter’s night, in a “fit of spontaneity”, Nathan Dunne and his girlfriend went for a midnight swim on Hampstead Heath in London. They had been living together for a few months and, although it was dark and chilly, they “had a summer feeling in that first flush of the relationship”, Dunne says. They shed their clothes and waded into the shallows. After diving into the icy water, Dunne’s girlfriend put her lips to his cheek, and as they pulled apart, his life changed beyond all recognition. “It was like being struck. Like something came down,” he says, slicing the air with his hand. “The flip of a switch.”

Dunne’s transformation sounds like a fairytale in reverse: one kiss, and his life turned into a nightmare. Seventeen years have passed since that night, and he still mostly explains the change in himself in metaphors and similes. His eyes filled with soot. His voice was a robot’s. He felt as if he were locked outside his body, which became a sort of “second body”. Any form of water, from a raindrop to a warm bath, made everything worse. His terror and panic were so great that the next day he smashed a vase and used a shard to cut himself. An “attempt to not live any more”, is how he describes it.

Policing and local councils among areas facing real-terms cuts in the spending review on Wednesday

The NHS is set to receive a £30bn funding boost in the spending review next week, at the expense of other public services.

The Department of Health is expected to emerge as the biggest winner on Wednesday with a 2.8% increase to its day-to-day spending budget over a three-year period, amounting to a £30bn rise by 2028.

So far, 79 people have fallen ill from sickness linked to eggs from the August Egg Company

Federal food and health agencies are investigating a multistate outbreak of salmonella infections linked to eggs from a California producer that have sickened 79 people and hospitalized 21.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised on Friday that organic and cage-free brown eggs from the August Egg Company sold to retailers in Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington and Wyoming should be discarded or returned to the store where they were purchased.

Chemicals found in the braiding hair have been linked to increased cancer risk and organ damage

In recent years, personal care products marketed at Black women have received increased scrutiny for their toxicity, specifically chemical hair straighteners. These perms, also known as “relaxers”, have been condemned for causing severe health problems, including fertility issues, scalp irritations and increased risk of cancer.

In light of this, many Black women have turned to natural hairstyles, including braids, as a way to avoid toxic chemicals. But recent research has revealed that popular brands of synthetic braiding hair, human-made extensions that are used in these protective styles, contain dangerous carcinogens, heavy metals and other toxins. Tested brands included in a recent study from Consumer Reports (CR) were Magic Fingers, The Sassy Collection, Shake-N-Go, Darling, Debut, Hbegant and Sensationnel, all mass producers of synthetic braiding hair.

According to the CR study, all tested samples of braiding hair contained volatile organic compounds (VOCs), human-made chemicals found in paints, industrial solvents and other products. Exposure to VOCs can cause health problems, including respiratory issues, nausea and fatigue. Long-term exposure has been associated with increased cancer risk and organ damage.

Campaigners say ‘super-strength subsidy’ puts pressure on the NHS, as some ciders in England cost same as apple juice

Supermarkets such as Tesco, Aldi and Lidl are exploiting a tax loophole to produce and sell cheap cider that harms health and causes social problems, alcohol campaigners have claimed.

Over recent years, ciders – sometimes containing as much as 7.5% alcohol – have become cheaper or barely risen in price, despite the cost of beer, wine and spirits soaring, according to research by Alcohol Change UK.

The Firs in Nottinghamshire closed suddenly in April, exposing shocking failures that underscore the strains on care provision across the country

“If we had known what was really going on, we’d have taken her out of there straight away,” said Greg Gillespie. “It makes you question your decision-making. But the real shame of this is we just didn’t know. It was hidden so well.”

Gillespie’s elderly grandmother lived at The Firs, a Nottinghamshire care home that was dramatically shut down by the Care Quality Commission in April due to a catalogue of shocking failures – everything from meeting nutritional and hydration needs, staffing, equipment, fire safety and governance was found to be lacking.

Every time my mind goes down the ‘optimisation’ route, I’m reminded of my job as a public health scientist, looking into the factors that affect how long we will live

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

For much of the past century, life expectancy continually increased. In most countries in the world, children could hope to live, on average, longer, healthier lives than their parents. This expectation is still true of the mega-wealthy. In fact, tech billionaires and multimillionaires have recently been fixated on finding the secret to longer life, convinced that with enough money, technology and cutting-edge science, they can stave off the inevitable for a few more decades to reach 120 or even 150 years old.

But their efforts aren’t trickling down to the rest of us. The world’s health crises are getting worse, with life expectancy going backwards in several high-income countries, such as the UK and US. In Britain, stagnation started before the Covid pandemic and has decreased by six months, and in the US by 2.33 years. Obesity rates are rising – not just in wealthy countries, but also in places like Ghana, which has experienced a 650% increase in obesity since 1980. Not 65%; 650%. Clean air is a rarity in most places in the world. Mental health conditions like depression are on the rise, worsened by financial precarity and stress.

New test accurately picks up on memory problems by examining two proteins in blood plasma, US researchers find

A new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease can accurately detect people with early symptoms, research suggests.

Experts from the Mayo Clinic in the US have provided further evidence that blood tests can work to accurately diagnose dementia by examining two proteins in blood plasma.