Touted as a cure for everything from wrinkles to autism, the treatment has been hyped by Robert F Kennedy Jr and various celebrities. Experts say it needs to be regulated

• Warning: this article contains distressing content

It was the kind of cold, damp morning that makes it hard to get out of bed, much less get a child out the door. The sun had not even risen when five-year-old Thomas Cooper and his mother, Annie Cooper, arrived for an appointment on 31 January at the Oxford Center in Troy, a northern suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

Thomas was an exuberant child with a button nose and pinchable cheeks – a little kid who loved running fast, playing Minecraft and watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, according to a GoFundMe set up by his family. He had just received money in a special red envelope for lunar new year, and he planned to spend it later that day with his little brother. But first, he was going to receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy for his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and sleep apnea.

Calls for disenfranchisement rest on a single assumption: that women’s citizenship is partial and conditional

Sexism can be very modern and tech savvy. Misogyny is an ever-evolving idiom, and men and women alike have found particularly of-the-moment ways to operate within the genre. Think of the apps that take images of women and remove their clothes, or the AI bots that men and boys can use to generate pornography or depictions of graphic violence against women and girls for the crime of going to the same school as they do or running for office. Think of the influencers of the so-called “womanosphere” who tell their female audiences that women who seek out friendship or equality with men are morons or cows, all through the gleam of a TikTok filter. Sexism may be the world’s oldest prejudice and its first unjust hierarchy, but it is continually innovating, adapting to new technologies and the most recent rhetorical needs of male supremacy.

But some of the forms of misogyny that have been bubbling up in American political discourse lately can seem a bit retro. I don’t just mean the tradwives, who dress alternately like June Cleaver or like Ma Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie – evoking bygone eras, or at least the ways those eras are depicted on television. And I don’t just mean the pro-natalists, either, who don weird bonnets and propose national breeding medals for prolific mothers. Since last month’s massive election victories for Democrats, some on the right have looked to revive a form of sexism that has been out of fashion for more than one hundred years: the idea that women should not have a right to vote.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

At 88, the Canadian reflects on a golden era of underwater discovery and how shipwrecks and the cruel sea are the ‘greatest of all teachers’

Joe MacInnis admits there are simply too many places to begin telling the story of life in the ocean depths. At 88, the famed Canadian undersea explorer, has many decades to draw on. There was the time he and a Russian explorer and deep-water pilot, Anatoly Sagalevich, were snagged by a telephone wire strung from the pilot house of the Titanic, trapping the pair two and a half miles below the surface.

Another might be the moment he and his team stared in disbelief through a porthole window at the Edmund Fitzgerald, the 222-metre (729ft) ship that vanished 50 years ago into the depths of Lake Superior, so quickly that none of the crew could issue a call for help. MacInnis and his team were the first humans to lay eyes on the wreck.

MacInnis diving in Lake Huron, off Tobermory, Canada, in 1969. Photograph: Don Dutton/Toronto Star/Getty Images

• Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha practises for four to five hours each day

• Indian boy beats multiple adults to secure record-breaking status

India’s Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has become the youngest player in chess history to earn an official Fide rating at the age of three years, seven months and 20 days.

The chess prodigy edged out the previous record of compatriot Anish Sarkar, who was three years, eight months and 19 days when he reached the milestone in November last year.

TikTokers say it will show the health of your relationship. Does it really show how we think about romance?

What would you say if your partner told you they saw a bird today? Would you mumble noncommittally, or ask a follow-up question?

You might be surprised to know that thousands of people on TikTok and Instagram would judge you if you chose the former.

The actor on playing Draco Malfoy, all-night fishing with his brother and taking a beating from Chadwick Boseman

Who is your favourite other school bully: Donovan from The Inbetweeners, Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, Heather Chandler from Heathers, Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons or Gripper Stebson from Grange Hill? Dr_J_A_Zoidberg
I have so much compassion for Draco [Malfoy], knowing that he is the result of piss-poor parenting on his father’s side. I know James Buckley from The Inbetweeners very well. His character is an example of a comedic bully. But as a lifelong fan of The Simpsons, I’m going to have to say my favourite is Nelson Muntz.

What’s the biggest fish you’ve ever caught? TopTramp
A 37lb 4oz common carp caught on the St Lawrence river in New York state 15 years ago. Chris, my older brother, got me into fishing, while he was my chaperone on Harry Potter. My mum chaperoned me for the first film, and my grandfather for the second. He looked so much like a wizard that [director] Chris Columbus cast him at the teachers’ table next to Dumbledore. Then my brother was commandeered. He was one of the worst chaperones in history – all he seemed to do was sleep the entire day – but that’s probably because we’d been up all night, fishing. Some days we’d leave set at 6pm, drive two hours back to Surrey where we lived, go straight to a lake, cast our rods, set up a tent, sleep – barely – for a few hours, wake at 6am, pack up, and head straight back to Hogwarts. It was a great introduction to a lifelong passion of being outdoors, fishing and walking the dogs.

Strike comes amid congressional turmoil over legality of US attacks on suspected drug smugglers

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.

Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization”.

Der Spiegel quotes leaked call in which European leaders voice doubts about Washington’s approach to peace talks

Emmanuel Macron has reportedly warned Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “there is a chance that the US will betray Ukraine on territory, without clarity on security guarantees”, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, quoting a leaked note from a recent call with several European leaders.

Der Spiegel said it had obtained an English summary of Monday’s call, featuring what it said were direct quotations from European heads of government in which they expressed fundamental doubts about Washington’s approach to the talks.

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands pull out after decision not to hold vote on Israel’s participation

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision after Israel was given the all-clear to compete in the 2026 song contest despite calls by several participating broadcasters for its exclusion over the war in Gaza.

No vote on Israel’s participation was held on Thursday at the general assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that organises the competition.

Death of commander of Popular Forces is blow to Israel’s efforts to confront Hamas through proxy groups

The leader of an Israeli-backed militia in Gaza has been killed, dealing a major blow to Israel’s efforts to build up its own Palestinian proxies to confront Hamas.

Yasser abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in the Israeli-held zone of the devastated territory, is thought to have died from wounds sustained in a violent clash with powerful and well-armed local families, according to local media and sources in Gaza.

Former EU foreign policy chief to also stand down as head of diplomatic academy at centre of investigation

The EU’s former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has resigned from her role as head of the elite College of Europe after being indicted in a corruption investigation.

In a statement sent to college staff on Thursday, Mogherini announced that “in line with the utmost rigour and fairness with which I always carried out my duties, today I decided to resign as rector of the College of Europe”.

Legislation is needed to stop leftwing politicians ‘bringing drag queens and porn actors into schools’, minister says

A restrictive sex education bill backed by Georgia Meloni’s far-right government and intended to crack down on “gender ideology and the woke bubble” has provoked fury in Italy.

Italy is one of the few EU countries not to have compulsory sex education in schools despite evidence showing that comprehensive relationship and sex education helps to prevent violence against women and girls.

Delhi visit gives Russian leader a chance to reduce Moscow’s isolation but both countries need each other to negotiate Trump’s US and a powerful China

When Vladimir Putin last set foot in India almost exactly four years ago, the world order looked materially different. At that visit – lasting just five hours due to the Covid pandemic – Putin and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, discussed economic and military cooperation and reaffirmed their special relationship.

Three months later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would turn him into a global pariah, isolating the Kremlin from the world and restricting Putin’s international travel.

Ruling will impact elections as soon as the March primaries

• US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps

Among the beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s pardons and commutations, there is a group that legal experts and political scientists see as some of the clearest evidence of how such actions undermine the rule of law: those who were released from prison and again arrested for different alleged crimes.

During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency – including to someone who was a predatory lender and drug smuggler and to another who ran a Ponzi scheme. Since taking office again, Trump has issued more than 1,600, most for people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress.

Five families around the world share their struggles to keep their children away from UPFs

• Parents and young people: share your concerns about ultra-processed foods (UPFs)

The scourge of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is global. While their consumption is particularly high in the west, forming more than half the average diet in the UK and the US, for example, UPFs are replacing fresh food in diets on every continent.

This month, the world’s largest review on the health threats of UPFs was published in the Lancet. It warned that such foods are exposing millions of people to long-term harm, and called for urgent action. Earlier this year Unicef revealed that more children around the world were obese than underweight for the first time, as junk food overwhelms diets, with the steepest rises in low- and middle-income countries.

A foundational figure in the business of soccer and sports in the US is adamant that fans will find a way to attend big events, regardless of political issues

Whenever the modern era of American soccer began (the 1994 World Cup? Or the 1990 appearance by the US men? Or the 1991 World Cup win by the US women?), Alan Rothenberg was a key player.

Rothenberg came up as a lawyer under Jack Kent Cooke, owner of Washington’s NFL team, the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA, the LA Kings of the NHL, and – crucially, the Los Angeles Wolves of the North American Soccer League (NASL), a team that started life fielding mostly players from Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters

Driving down the interstate through the dry Nevada desert, there are few signs that a vast expanse of new construction is hiding behind the sagebrush-covered hills. But just beyond a massive power plant and transmission towers that march up into the dusty brown mountains lies one of the world’s biggest buildouts of datacenters – miles of new concrete buildings that house millions of computer servers.

This business park, called the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, has a sprawling landmass greater than the city of Denver. It is home to the largest datacenter in the US, built by the company Switch, and tech giants like Google and Microsoft have also bought land here and are constructing enormous facilities. A separate Apple datacenter complex is just down the road. A Tesla “gigafactory”, which builds electric vehicle batteries, is a resident too.

Wait, what? You mean … white? Are they trolling us? Emma Joyce explains all to Nick Miller

Hi, Emma! I’m so pumped to find out what colour 2026 is going to be. Fill me in!

Brace yourself, Nick. Every year since 1999 Pantone chooses a colour for the year, a representation of the zeitgeist – from how we’re feeling to what we’re wearing, how we’re styling our homes and even our eyebrows. Last year’s was the darker shade of beige “mocha mousse”, the year before that was the soft, warm “peach fuzz”.

Australian eco community is a sanctuary for native animals and a showcase of sustainable living

Bill Smart has never heard the word “solarpunk”. But the softly spoken 77-year-old lights up when given the definition from Wikipedia: a literary, artistic and social movement that envisions and works towards actualising a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community.

Solar refers not just to renewable energy but to an optimistic, anti-dystopian vision of the future. Punk is an allusion to its countercultural, do-it-yourself ethic.

The Florida-based art gathering is spearheaded this year by artists from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Panama

Whether it’s literally bringing Panamanian soil to Miami, or subverting the messages of Mexican religious cults by appropriating their iconography into tile murals dripping with sexual innuendo, Latin American artists at Art Basel Miami Beach this year are finding ways to reinvent their cultural heritage as surprising and fantastic pieces of art.

The Mexican artist Renata Petersen, originally from Guadalajara, has outfitted her Art Basel booth with three collections that may at first appear disconnected – intricate murals made from tiles and covered slogans and iconography, 80 chrome-blown glass works that look slightly like chess pieces but are actually derived from sex toys, and ceramic vases sporting carefully arranged motifs. For Petersen, these works spring from a childhood lived with her anthropologist mother, where she learned to look at cults and other religious movements with a detached eye.

Late-night hosts discussed outrage over Hegseth’s authorization of extrajudicial killings near Venezuela and Trump’s cabinet meeting naps

Late-night hosts tore into Pete Hegseth’s Venezuelan boat blame game, Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting naps and the annual Spotify Wrapped lists.

From Ewan Roy in Succession to Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons, here are 15 truly unforgettable characters who elevated their shows – when they eventually turned up

Mike Hannigan was the only character to truly feel like a seventh Friend. He was the perfect match for Phoebe, a lightning rod for her kookiness and providing the solid family she’d never had. It wasn’t just the fact that he was played by Paul Rudd that managed to win over the viewers. His profile was nowhere near what it would later become, so the audience weren’t responding to star power in the same way they had, say, to Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck or Reese Witherspoon. Mike had to play the long game, put in the graft and win Phoebe’s trust, and won ours in the process. AJ, London

In the 21st-century imbalance of power, Europe and Nato have neither the arms nor the wealth to impel Russia or the US to take its peace settlement seriously

The failure of this week’s peace talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff fits into a now well-established pattern of standoffs on Ukraine during Trump’s second term. But the dynamic that produced these talks may be becoming more entrenched. The US and Russian interests driving the process have not changed, while the conflict on the ground is intensifying. The lack of progress this week means there will be another attempt to end the war soon, and perhaps another after that, until, one day, there is some kind of US-backed deal to halt the conflict on terms broadly favouring Russia.

The geopolitical algorithm driving this effort is too consistent to ignore. It has been repeated ever since Trump re-entered the White House in January. On the campaign trail, Trump had claimed he could stop the war in a day. That was never going to happen. But from 12 February onwards, when Trump first talked directly to Putin about Ukraine, the intention and approach have not altered. There is no reason to suppose they will do so now. Indeed, Tuesday’s impasse may spur them on again.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Big farmers grab the lion’s share of US government support, and recent cuts have chipped away at small growers’ markets and margins

The most significant food system failure since the pandemic was not a natural disaster: in October, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) was temporarily suspended for the month of November due to the government shutdown

More than 40 million people had to ration food, skip meals and make sacrifices we might associate with the Great Depression, not 21st-century America. Churches, community groups and neighbors sprang into action. They checked on single moms juggling multiple jobs, elderly friends living alone, people with disabilities and large families with children too young for school lunch programs. And though food stamps were restored, the Trump administration is now threatening to pull Snap funds from Democratic-led states.

In a more reasonable, more compassionate country, we would thank Ali Faqirzada for how much he has done on behalf of his people and our own

On 14 October, Ali Faqirzada – an Afghan refugee, a resident of New Paltz, New York, and a computer science student at Bard College – arrived for an interview at a federal immigration office on Long Island. He was applying for political asylum, a designation for which he was – and remains – a perfect candidate.

In his native country, Faqirzada had assisted the American government and Nato with projects designed to improve the lives of Afghan women and help them get an education. But after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the ministry where he, his mother and sister had worked was bombed by the Taliban, and one of its employees was murdered.

Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Twenty years on, the social media-savvy contestants will have greater power. His brutal approach to judging them will have to change, too

There is a moment in the trailer for Simon Cowell’s new Netflix show, The Next Act, that is almost touching in its adherence to the way things once were. Cowell, who we see on a variety of beige sofas primly clutching his knees, talks about how to curate a new boyband, 20 years after the launch of his first TV talent show. “There is a huge risk here,” he says, heavy with drama. “If this goes wrong, it will be: ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’” In fact, as anyone who has an eye on dwindling audience figures for his existing shows knows, for the vast majority of 18- to 24-year-olds – or even for younger millennials – the more likely response will be, “Simon who?”

Which doesn’t mean that a new generation of viewers can’t be lured in by Cowell’s expertise. The question of whether 66-year-old Cowell can tweak a dusty and decades-old model has less to do with current music trends – just as well, since pop music has moved from TV to TikTok, which Cowell says he hates – than the music executive’s extremely well-tested ability to make good TV and bend his persona to align with the times. In the rollout of publicity for the new show, Cowell has made a good fist of expressing regret at how rude he used to be to contestants, apologising in the New York Times, after some cajoling, for “being a dick”, and putting his eye-rolling, grimacing performance as a judge down to the tedium of audition days rather than what most of us understood it to be: the extraction of lolz out of confused individuals who had the misfortune to appear on his shows.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

From income to home ownership and public services, everybody is disgruntled – but for different reasons

The British economy has endured a series of setbacks in recent years: austerity, Brexit, the global pandemic, soaring energy prices and an increasingly fractured and uncertain world. The early optimism that accompanied Labour’s election victory faded quickly, with a recent poll ranking Rachel Reeves as the worst chancellor in modern history.

But is this fair? Is the economy really in as bad a shape as people feel?

Jonathan Swarbrick is a lecturer in economics at the University of St Andrews Business School

A tale of two Yorkshiremen, one keeping England in the series, the other batting without a brain

In the end even the celebration was perfect, out there under that strange deep-blue southern sky, in the frenzy of the game-state – manic Baz energy, England’s lower order scything away death cult-style at the other end, the way even the grass seems lacquered and glazed by the lights.

So yeah. All that stuff. In the middle of this Joe Root guided the ball away through fine leg to complete his first Test hundred in Australia, then marked it with a gentle smile and a wave of the bat, no fist-punching, no monkeys off backs, no angsty and pointed messaging.

Amid all the hoopla circling its Washington backdrop, Friday’s event must be all about firing the starting gun on football’s biggest show

When the sculptor Joel Shapiro created Blue, the piece that stands around the back of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, looking out over the Potomac River in Washington, he wanted to tap into a number of elements. The giant matchstick figure denotes movement and energy, risk and possibility. As Shapiro himself has said, it is supposed to “reconfigure depending on how you look at it”.

It has the perfect home at the Kennedy Center, the vast cultural hub for ballet and opera, stage productions and concerts. And it resonates on a new level now as the venue prepares to host Friday’s World Cup draw, at which the competing nations at next summer’s extravaganza in the United States, Canada and Mexico will discover their group opponents and knockout round pathways. Because from one angle it is plain that Blue is executing a raking pass. From another, it is a spectacular side-on volley. Squint a little and it is Ciao, the Italia 90 mascot.

Until Soungoutou Magassa’s 83rd-minute equaliser Manchester United seemed to be flowering in the cold of winter on the way to a win that would have been their fifth in eight games.

Instead Jarrod Bowen’s flick-on from Andy Irving’s corner from the right had to be cleared off the line by Noussair Mazraoui, only for the ball to go straight to Magassa, who drove home a first goal for the Hammers.

• Lock sent off in Cardiff during Springboks’ 73-0 win

• Suspension covers matches until end of March

South Africa’s Eben Etzebeth has been suspended for 12 matches for eye-gouging against Wales last weekend.

The suspension covers matches for the Durban-based Sharks starting from this weekend to the end of March. The Sharks deregistered Etzebeth this week in anticipation of a lengthy ban.

Aitana Bonmatí has been voted the best female player on the planet by our panel of 127 experts ahead of Mariona Caldentey and Alessia Russo

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Van der Ven may be key for Spurs, Wissa could make Newcastle debut and Dyche deserves warm Everton welcome

Arsenal’s recent memories of Aston Villa are of awkward opponents. Mikel Arteta’s side squandered a two-goal lead at the Emirates Stadium when the teams last met, in January, Arsenal dropping two points, their title charge dented. With such little margin for error, it was the kind of day that boosted Liverpool and crystallised the sense that the Gunners would come up short. Villa also defeat Arsenal in 2023-24, abruptly halting Arteta’s six-game winning streak. Now Arsenal are in a different position, at the summit with a five-point lead – and six clear of Unai Emery’s team. Victory at Villa Park on Saturday, against a side that have lost only once in the league since August, would offer another significant indication that this could be the season Arsenal take the crown. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Arsenal, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Bournemouth v Chelsea, Saturday 3pm

Everton v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Manchester City v Sunderland, Saturday 3pm

• Three members of Iran football federation denied visas

• Iran among nations facing restrictions on entry to US

Iran has reversed its boycott of the World Cup draw, with team representatives now due to attend the glitzy event in Washington DC on Friday.

Last week the Iranian Football Federation (FFIRI) said it would stay away after three members of its delegation were denied visas for entering the United States.

• Coates ‘ready and excited’ to replace Albertin Montoya

• U23 assistant Gemma Davies to join Coates in San Jose

Emma Coates has left her position as the leader of England Women’s Under-23 national team to become the new head coach of the NWSL side Bay FC.

Coates replaces Albertin Montoya, who was the coach of the expansion team when it entered the National Women’s Soccer League two years ago. Montoya announced in September that he would resign at the end of the 2025 season, with the San Jose side finishing 13th in the 14-team table.

Decision comes less than two weeks after judge ruled similar case against New York attorney general unlawful

A grand jury declined to indict Letitia James on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the decision, a decision that came less than two weeks after a judge ruled that a similar mortgage fraud case brought by federal prosecutors against the New York attorney general was unlawful.

The move by the justice department to present the case again to a grand jury was seen as a signal of its determination to prosecute James, who has been one of Donald Trump’s top political foes ever since she successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him in New York.

Judge allows call from manager of Pennsylvania McDonald’s to be made public after press urged its release

An audio recording of a 911 call that led to Luigi Mangione’s arrest has been made public after the press advocated for its release.

The audio recording was played in Manhattan state court this week during a proceeding about evidence gathered during Mangione’s arrest over the murder of senior United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson a year ago. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania in December last year after the restaurant’s manager called 911.

Bombs were placed near Republican and Democratic party HQs in Washington night before US Capitol attack

US authorities on Thursday made an arrest and announced charges in connection with pipe bombs that were planted outside the headquarters of both the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington DC on the eve of 6 January 2021.

The suspect was named on Thursday afternoon by the Department of Justice as Brian Cole, of suburban Woodbridge, Virginia.

‘Information-dense’ AI responses are most persuasive but these tend to be less accurate, says security report

Chatbots can sway people’s political opinions but the most persuasive artificial intelligence models deliver “substantial” amounts of inaccurate information in the process, according to the UK government’s AI security body.

Researchers said the study was the largest and most systematic investigation of AI persuasiveness to date, involving nearly 80,000 British participants holding conversations with 19 different AI models.

Dario Vitale exits after one season, having taken the helm from Donatella Versace

Versace has announced its creative director is leaving, less than nine months after taking on the role and two days after the deal to sell the brand to rival Italian fashion house Prada.

Dario Vitale exits after just one season, having taken the helm from Donatella Versace. Prada said it would announce a replacement “in due course”.

Co-founders’ acquisition of Venture Global shares before key permit granted draws scrutiny as pair deny wrongdoing

Two fossil-fuel billionaires with close ties to Donald Trump bought millions of shares in the company they co-founded just days after a meeting with senior White House officials, who then issued a key regulatory permit that helped expand the company’s fortunes in Europe.

Robert Pender, an energy lawyer, and Michael Sabel, a former investment banker, are the founders and co-chairs of Venture Global, a Virginia-based company that develops and operates liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals.

Study reveals US earmarked billions to stockpile critical minerals for military use, including precision-guided weaponry and AI-driven warfare

The accelerating global arms race is hindering climate action as critical minerals that are key to a sustainable future are being diverted to make the latest military hardware, according to a report

The study from the Transition Security Project – a joint US and UK venture – reveals how the Pentagon is stockpiling huge stores of critical minerals that are needed for a range of climate technologies including solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage.

Nootka lupins, introduced in the 1940s to repair damaged soil, are rampaging across the island, threatening its native species

It was only when huge areas of Iceland started turning purple that authorities realised they had made a mistake. By then, it was too late. The Nootka lupin, native to Alaska, had coated the sides of fjords, sent tendrils across mountain tops and covered lava fields, grasslands and protected areas.

Since it arrived in the 1940s, it has become an accidental national symbol. Hordes of tourists and local people pose for photos in the ever-expanding fields in June and July, entranced by the delicate cones of flowers that cover the north Atlantic island.

Pace of area’s temperature rise, outpaced in US only by Alaskan Arctic, apparently increased in past five years

The US region called New England is widely known for its colonial history, maple syrup and frigid, snow-bound winters. Many of these norms are in the process of being upended, however, by a rapidly altering climate, with new research finding the area is heating up faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.

The breakneck speed of New England’s transformation makes it the fastest-heating area of the US, bar the Alaskan Arctic, and the pace of its temperature rise has apparently increased in the past five years, according to the study.

Lord Evans of Watford and other directors of investment firm deny claims made in lawsuits they say are ‘meritless’

A peer suspended by the House of Lords for breaking lobbying rules is now facing claims that he received at least $1m (£760,000) from an allegedly corrupt deal.

Lord Evans of Watford, a longtime Labour peer, was found last week by the House of Lords watchdog to have broken its rules four times after undercover reporting by the Guardian, and will be suspended for five months.

Mohammad Bashir faces one count of preparing terrorist acts and three counts of sharing terrorist publications

A man has been charged with assisting the Manchester synagogue attacker Jihad al-Shamie with earlier reconnaissance on a UK defence facility.

Mohammad Bashir, 31, was charged with four terrorism offences, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Vehicle hire firms have struggled to succeed in London but other European countries offer examples to follow

Rotherhithe Community Kitchen in south London has been delivering hundreds of cooked meals a week for the last two years to pensioners and vulnerable residents. Yet the volunteer group’s plans have been thrown into disarray by the news that they will not have access to cars and vans on New Year’s Day.

The group had relied on Zipcar, the car-sharing company that offered customers the ability to access its fleet of vehicles from the street using an app. The company caused shock across London on Monday when it said it would shut down UK operations from 1 January.

Innocent people were caught up in an assassination attempt on a former Russian spy in Salisbury in March 2018. How did this happen?

The novichok attack on Salisbury in south-west England in March 2018 was an extraordinary event, sending shock waves across the world. The targeted man, the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, recovered from an audacious assassination attempt, but an innocent British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, died. An inquiry was heard in Salisbury and London last year investigating the attack on the Skripals, the response of the emergency services and other public bodies, and how Sturgess was tragically caught up in an international incident. Here are some of the key questions it examined.

A 15-year quest ends with a monument, drawing crowds and nostalgia as Detroit embraces its cult-film past

The statue looms and glints at more than 11 feet tall and weighing 3,500 pounds, looking out at the city with, how to put it … a characteristically stern expression?

Despite its daunting appearance and history as a crimefighter of last resort, the giant new bronze figure of the movie character RoboCop is being seen as a symbol of hope, drawing fans and eliciting selfie mania since it began standing guard over Detroit on Wednesday afternoon.

Global Witness says plan to upgrade railway line to Angola puts up to 1,200 buildings at risk of demolition

Up to 6,500 people are at risk of being displaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project funded by the EU and the US, amid a global race to secure supplies of copper, cobalt and other “critical minerals”, according to a report by campaign group Global Witness.

The project, labelled the Lobito Corridor, aims to upgrade the colonial-era Benguela railway from the DRC to Lobito on Angola’s coast and improve port infrastructure, as well as building a railway line to Zambia and supporting agriculture and solar power installations along the route. Angola has said it needs $4.5bn (£3.4bn) for its stretch of the line.

Swiss bank says bequests made 91 people billionaires, while overall number jumped from 2,682 in 2024 to 2,919 this year

The super-rich are inheriting record levels of wealth as they pass down billions of dollars to their children, grandchildren and spouses, research by a Swiss bank favoured by billionaires shows.

Globally, there are 2,919 billionaires this year, up from 2,682 in 2024, UBS found.

Activists prepare for more targeting of Somali residents by ICE as Trump renews racist tirade

As Donald Trump went on another extended racist tirade against Somalis on Wednesday, Minneapolis activists prepared for more targeting of the community by conducting trainings on their rights and planning how they would protect their neighbors.

In the White House on Wednesday, a reporter asked the president about Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, who has defended the Somali community. Trump responded: “I wouldn’t be proud to have the largest Somalian – look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It’s not even a nation. It’s just people walking around killing each other. Look, these Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country. Billions and billions.”

Some users jump generations in expanded Wrapped review while Taylor Swift tops UK streams for third year

It has given some in middle age dubious hope that they have their finger on the cultural pulse. Meanwhile, some younger users have been told their listening habits suggest they are well into retirement.

Spotify has confected a wave of intrigue over what our musical preferences suggest about our vintage, with its “your listening age” feature causing delight and consternation.

The guitarist for Booker T & the MGs defined the sound of original R&B, co-creating soul anthems and proving himself one of the most influential musicians of the 60s

• Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T & the MGs, dies aged 84

Steve Cropper stood at the side of musical legends and toiled in the shadows of the studio, never a star. But his work with his fellow musicians and singers at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, established him as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 1960s.

Actually, pretty much every rock icon of that fabled decade looked up to Cropper, who has died aged 84. The Beatles seriously considered recording at Stax, and the Stones covered songs he played on and emulated his crisp rhythm and lead guitar playing. As a jobbing musician in 1964, Jimi Hendrix drove from Nashville to Memphis to meet Cropper (they chatted about guitars and jammed), while Janis Joplin insisted her new band play Stax’s Christmas party so as to rub shoulders with Cropper and co. Across the world, garage bands played songs he had helped to shape.

The box office smash of Halloween 2023 gets a shoddily made follow-up written carelessly and devoid of an actual ending

The ghost-possessed family-restaurant animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy’s movies lumber around with such heavy-footed gaucherie that it’s hard to figure out how they’re physically able to move from place to place as quickly as they’d need to for a proper killing spree. In what could be mistaken for a case of form following function, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 moves the exact same way. It’s so ostentatiously awkward that it constantly draws attention to its inept imitations of actions that other movies, even bad ones, intuitively understand – like making transitions between scenes or locations.

For example, when faced with the need to isolate a mean science teacher (Wayne Knight) so that he can be vengefully murdered by one of the aforementioned animatronics, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 bafflingly cuts to him walking down a school hallway (during a science fair that has inexplicably run far into a Saturday evening), having a cellphone conversation about how he needs to visit his office to retrieve his keys. The keys themselves, the location of his office, and the unseen person on the other end of the phone have no meaning in the greater story, not even nominally. They’re just a jumble of elements that the film-makers grasp at, under the assumption that it will add up to something that looks and sounds like a movie should.

Tall, handsome and used to receiving fire emojis on his social media posts, the dancer has, with his partner Mayara Magri, been called ‘the Posh’n’Becks of ballet’. But there is suffering in his art: ‘I kind of enjoy negativity,’ he says

In the expensive hush of a hotel bar over the road from the Royal Ballet and Opera in Covent Garden, London, Matthew Ball asks for a mint tea. I’m having a white wine; Ball’s body is clearly more of a temple than mine, although you don’t need to know our drinks orders to see that: he has an effortlessly straight-backed posture, muscular arms under a white T-shirt. On stage, ballet dancers can seem like mighty gods and goddesses, but often IRL they are petite. Not so Ball, whose tall stature is part of why he’s much in demand for princely roles and partnering. With the fine features and strong angles of his face, and those piercing eyes, there’s a bit of the Robert Pattinson about him. Is he as brooding and romantic in his roles on stage? Certainly. Tortured? We’ll come to that.

At 31, Ball is riding the crest of a career that seems to have gone pretty smoothly so far. Growing up in Liverpool, he didn’t get much stick for being into ballet as a kid (the worst comments came from another girl in his ballet class). Joining the Royal Ballet School at 11, he graduated straight into the Royal Ballet company and was promoted each year, making it to the top rank of principal in 2018. He has loved getting his teeth into meaty dramatic roles, especially the psychological turmoil of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballets: the suicidal Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling or the doomed poet Des Grieux in Manon. As a guest star he was smouldering as The Stranger in Matthew Bourne’s popular Swan Lake and made a virtuoso cameo, spinning in a Paul Smith suit, in the recent Quadrophenia ballet. Plus, he dances at galas all over the world, often with his Brazilian girlfriend and fellow Royal Ballet principal Mayara Magri. He would groan at me telling you that Tatler called them “The Posh’n’Becks of ballet”. “They really went to town on that,” he shakes his head bashfully, “Golden Balls!”

Icy mining magnate Gillian Anderson goes head to head with rebellious rancher Lena Headey in a drama that takes itself so very, very seriously

Angel’s Ridge, Washington Territory, 1854. It’s dusty, there’s a saloon bar, there are horses, an ineffable sense of – I don’t know, let’s call it manifest destiny – about the place, and the only colour settlers have brought with them is sepia. But wait! What’s this? The owner of the local silver mine riding into town? And it’s a woman! In a western?

Yessir, it is. Not only that but she is played by Gillian Anderson (in full ice mode, despite the dust) and is clearly trouble. Not only that, but there is a second woman about to go toe-to-toe with her and do battle for the town’s soul over the eight episodes that comprise The Abandons, the latest venture from Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter. Its joint lead is Lena Headey as Fiona Nolan, a devout Irish Catholic woman who has gathered a misfit ragtag bunch of motley orphan crew outcasts about her and lives with this patchwork family in Jasper Hollow. Jasper Hollow, alas, is full of silver that Constance Van Ness (the local mine owner, played by Anderson) wishes to bring under her control to placate one of her investors.

She literally skips through a Christmas tree farm, serves food that looks like animal droppings and cooks a meal that Prince Harry hates. Assume the crash position before watching

In the top corner of the screen as With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration opens is its age rating: “U – no material likely to offend or harm.” This may be true in the traditional sense. But I would advise any viewers who are British, not in the acting profession and/or not married to the Duchess of Sussex to take as many anti-emetics as medically advisable, then assume the crash position.

We open with Meghan literally skipping through a Christmas tree farm. “Once a year you get to do the tree thing!” She then decorates it, which she loves because it allows you to “encapsulate your family’s story!”. She likes to position the baubles “so they find their light”. Once she has done that, it’s time to fill a 24-pocketed Advent calendar with – no, not chocolates, you fat English pleb, but “small gestures” and “little findings” for your children. “I’m writing notes that say ‘I love you because you are so kind!’ and ‘I love you because you are so brave!’” Do the children leave notes in return, I wonder? “Should we give up hope of the occasional Freddo here?” “Morning trans fats are the tradition to start, Mother.”

He’ll be forever known for his festive hit, but Wood was virtually the face of 70s glam rock – writing and performing stomping hits with the Move, ELO and Wizzard

Roy Wood occasionally wrote for others – psych fans should check the Acid Gallery’s splendid 1969 single Dance Round the Maypole – and the single he made with girlfriend Ayshea Brough, an early 70s TV presenter, exemplifies his idiosyncratic pop skills and his kitchen-sink approach to arrangement: kettle drums! More oboe!

The Nash Ensemble
(Onyx)
The chamber group’s all-Ravel CD is an impeccable farewell to its much-missed founder

This all-Ravel recording by the Nash Ensemble was the final project of Amelia Freedman’s extraordinary 60 years as artistic director, and it’s a fitting farewell to the group’s much-missed founder, who died in July. It includes all three larger chamber works plus the composer’s own two-piano arrangement of his orchestral masterpiece La Valse: Alasdair Beatson and Simon Crawford-Phillips are a polished team in this, sounding wonderfully louche early on and then dispatching fistfuls of notes and long glissandos with seeming ease, all while catching the music’s increasingly sinister nature.

The 1905 Introduction and Allegro was a commission from a harp manufacturer, intended to make their instrument sound good – which it duly does as played by Lucy Wakeford, although what is most striking is the way the seven instruments coalesce and separate to create kaleidoscopic textural interest. Indeed, as confirmed by their quicksilver, sometimes excitably fierce String Quartet and especially by their vibrant performance of the Piano Trio, it’s the attention to the details of colour and tone that really makes these performances take flight, the instruments combining to catch the dazzling light and intriguing shade that are such intrinsic features of Ravel’s music.

This year’s outstanding tracks – from post-punk rap to indie-disco and operatic pop – as voted for by 30 Guardian music writers

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A flock of Father Christmases share the seasonal songs that capture the magic, merriment and occasional heartbreak that comes with donning the red suit

My father was a Santa and my wife got me into doing it. It’s the best thing I ever did. I do schools, universities, supermarkets, Christmas lights switch-ons … As soon as Santa comes along, everybody melts. One little girl brought her guinea pig, who leapt off her hand and dived straight into my Santa beard. The parents were in stitches while we tried to get him out. My favourite Christmas songs are Eartha Kitt’s sultry version of Santa Baby, because it gets all the adults in the mood to get up and have a boogie with Santa, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because the lyrics are so pure. No Christmas songs drive me mad. It’s Christmas: they’re all great. Paul Fessi

Anthony Hopkins and Kathy Burke on acting, Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon on politics, plus Margaret Atwood on a life well lived

Not all memoirists are keen to share their life stories. For Margaret Atwood, an author who has sold more than 40m books, the idea of writing about herself seemed “Dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up blank sheets of paper?” Happily, she did it anyway. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Chatto & Windus) is a 624-page doorstopper chronicling Atwood’s life and work, and a tremendous showcase for her wisdom and wit. Helen Garner’s similarly chunky, Baillie Gifford prize-winning How to End a Story (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is a diary collection spanning 20 years and provides piquant and puckish snapshots of the author’s life, work and her unravelling marriages. Mixing everyday observation and gossipy asides with profound self-examination, it is spare in style and utterly moreish.

In Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me (Hamish Hamilton) and Jung Chang’s Fly, Wild Swans (William Collins), formidable mothers get top billing. In the former, The God of Small Things author reveals how her mother, whose own father was a violent drunk, stood up to the patriarchy and campaigned for women’s rights, but was cruel to her daughter. Describing her as “my shelter and my storm”, Roy reflects on Mary’s contradictions with candour and compassion. Fly, Wild Swans is the sequel to Chang’s bestselling Wild Swans, picking up where its predecessor left off and reflecting how that book was only made possible by the author’s mother, who shared family stories and kept her London-dwelling daughter apprised of events in China.

Space-travelling telepaths, LGBTQ+ activism, a war-torn Britain, online alter egos and feminist trailblazers

Torchfire
Moira Buffini (Faber)
In her 2024 YA debut Songlight, Buffini plunged young adult readers into a dystopian landscape inspired by John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, with nations bitterly divided by attitudes to telepathy. The second in the trilogy pits the Brightlanders, who persecute those with “songlight”, against the Aylish, who prize them – and the Teroans, spacefaring telepaths who see ordinary humans as disposable. As multiple finely drawn protagonists – including Elsa, searching desperately for sanctuary, Nightingale, forced to appease a terrifying captor, and Rye, trying to understand an extraordinary discovery – fight to find love, acceptance and safety, the book blazes like its title, consuming the reader more fiercely with every page. Fans will find it hard to wait for the final instalment.

We Are Your Children
David Roberts (Two Hoots)
“Words, when hurled like stones, wound deeply,” asserts Roberts, introducing his bright, brilliant history of LGBTQ+ activism by describing his own childhood experience of homophobic bullying. The power of words to wound, but also to tell of authentic living, courage and change, delivered via sit-ins, marches and protests on every scale, is apparent throughout this book, which chronicles queer activism in the UK and US from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Though it contains many stories of violence and suffering, from the assassination of Harvey Milk to the ravages of HIV/Aids, the prevalent mood, emphasised by Roberts’s bold, colourful, expressive artwork, is of defiance, joy and proud hope – from Quentin Crisp’s flamboyance to the iterations of the Pride flag, Julian Hows wearing a skirt as a London Underground worker in the 70s to the first same-sex pre-watershed kiss. An outstanding achievement, setting out via individual, accessible narratives the hard-won rights that remain continually under threat.

A tricky age gap, a dose of wedding day drama, literary love affairs, office rivals and the sexy side of Brexit

Consider Yourself Kissed
Jessica Stanley (Hutchinson Heinmann)
Clever and contemporary, this modern romance between short king single dad Adam and magazine writer Coralie accrues depth as it jumps from initial meet-cute to a decade-long romance, all the while embracing stepmotherhood, work and politics. (You didn’t think you could get Brexit into a romance?) The writing is wonderful, and the book has genuine heft – which might dial back the escapist fun, but it’s no less enjoyable for that.

Problematic Summer Romance
Ali Hazelwood (Sphere)
Hazelwood, a behemoth of current romantic fiction, specialises in funny and sharp hot-nerd affairs. Despite highlighting its own issues in the title, this novel got a rather mixed reception from the more judgmental corners of the internet on account of the age difference between the lovers. The gap between Maya and Conor, her big brother’s best friend, is 15 years – she is 23 to his 38. Depending on your generation and point of view, this is either completely and absolutely fine, or intensely concerning, despite the heroine insisting valiantly on her own agency and a reluctant romantic hero who resists the affair for this very reason. The book itself is typically charming and incredibly enjoyable, full of one-liners and cheek. (Far less controversially, she has followed it up with Mate, about a vampire bride falling in love with a werewolf. Sex with an actual animal is notably less problematic than an age gap in 2025.)

From the trauma and triumphs of Olympic cyclist Bradley Wiggins to the secret life of a match fixer

The Chain
Bradley Wiggins, (HarperCollins)
The Tour de France winner’s autobiography begins with him sneaking into his walk-in wardrobe and doing a line of coke off his Olympic gold medal: the final emblematic descent from his crowning summer of 2012. And yet for all the personal lows chronicled here – addiction, self-harm, the collapse of his marriage, the haunting memories of his difficult father and of a coach who sexually abused him – this is not your classic misery memoir. Disarmingly honest and roguishly humorous, it is a journey of rediscovery: a man knocked sideways by the toxic winds of sport and celebrity, finally learning to stand straight again.

The Escape: The Tour, the Cyclist and Me
Pippa York and David Walsh (Mudlark)
In a previous life Robert Millar was one of this country’s greatest cyclists: a stern Glaswegian who won the King of the Mountains jersey at the 1984 Tour de France. Now known as Pippa York, she returns to the race in the company of the journalist David Walsh. It’s a freewheeling, fascinating read that defies genre: part travelogue and part memoir, it dances between present and past, sporting observation and self-reflection, drugs that help you cheat and drugs that help you live. And for all the pain and anguish that gets unlocked here, this is a book without a bitter or hateful bone in its body.

As the Grand Theft Auto co-writer launches a new project, he reflects on his hugely successful open-world adventures and where game design might go next

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It is hard to think of a more modern entertainment format than the open-world video game. These sprawling technological endeavours, which mix narrative, social connectivity and the complete freedom to explore, are uniquely immersive and potentially endless. But do they represent a whole new idea of storytelling?

This week I met Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar and lead writer on Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, who has been in London to talk about his new company, Absurd Ventures. He’s working on a range of intriguing projects, including the novel and podcast series A Better Paradise (about a vast online game that goes tragically wrong), and a comedy-adventure set in an online world named Absurdaverse. He told me that, 15 years ago, he was doing press interviews for the Grand Theft Auto IV expansion packs when he had something of a revelation about the series.

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Eyes Out/Blumhouse Games
Psychedelic visuals and a promising premise are let down by tired game design in this first-person horror with an appearance from the synthpop pioneer

Video games have delivered a feast of singular and wondrous sights in 2025: ecological fantasias teeming with magical beasts; stunning, historically obsessive recreations of feudal Japan. But here is an end-of-year curio: psychological horror game Sleep Awake serves us synth-rock pioneer Gary Numan stepping into what is perhaps the schlockiest role of his life – a gigantic floating head named Hypnos.

This late-stage cameo is not quite indicative of the game as a whole; the handful of hours prior to Numan’s arrival are more mournful than madcap. Mostly, you explore the dilapidated, tumbledown streets of what is thought to be the last city on Earth. This setting is a magnificent work of imagination. You see it through the eyes of a young woman named Katja, who moves along rooftops, gazing out upon a barren, lifeless hinterland, into labyrinthine streets whose darkness and arcane logic recall the stirring subterranean etchings of Italian artist Piranesi.

As the Xbox 360 turns 20, we celebrate its most influential and memorable games – both exclusives, and those that came to the console first

Originally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade.

Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (version tested); Retro Studios/Nintendo
The bounty hunter – Nintendo’s most badass and most neglected hero – returns in an atmospheric throwback sci-fi adventure that’s entirely untroubled by the conventions of modern game design

In a frozen laboratory full of cryogenically suspended experimental life forms, metal boots disturb the frost. A lone bounty hunter in a familiar orange exosuit points her blaster ahead. Making my way towards the facility’s power generator, scanning doors and hunting for secret entrances, broken hatches and hidden keys, I suspect that I know exactly what’s going to happen when this place begins to thaw; every clank and creak sounds as if it could be a long-dormant beast busting out of one of those pods. And yet Samus Aran delves deeper, because she has never been afraid of anything.

This section of Prime 4 is classic Metroid: atmospheric, eerie, lonely, dangerous and cryptic. Samus, Nintendo’s coolest hero, is impeccably awesome, equipped here with new psychic powers that accent her suit with pulsing purple light. (I have taken many screenshots of her looking identically badass all over the game’s planet.) She is controlled with dual sticks, or – much better, much more intuitive – by pointing one of the Switch 2’s remotes at the screen to aim. Or even by using it as a mouse on a table or your knee, though this made my wrist hurt after a while. She transforms into a rolling ball, moves statues into place with her mind, and rides a futuristic shape-shifting motorcycle across lava and sand between this distant planet’s abandoned facilities, unlocking its dead civilisation’s lost knowledge.

Hardish Virk uses photography, film, music and his family’s memorabilia to tell a wider story of migration and community resilience

As you enter the living room at the Stories That Made Us exhibition, a stereo plays the Hindi anthem Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge. It is a ballad celebrating friendship and love from the epic film Sholay. Beside the stereo sits a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a red glass decanter. On the table are copies of the Punjabi newspaper Des Pardes, which translates as “home and abroad”.

The scene, which depicts the childhood home of the Coventry-born curator and artist Hardish Virk, is one of several spaces in an immersive exhibition at the city’s Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. It traces four decades of the experiences of south Asians as they arrived and adapted to the social, political and cultural changes in modern Britain.

As the band celebrate their 60th anniversary, a California exhibition draws attention to the unique psychedelic artwork that has long told their story

Artist Bill Walker is one of those guys who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Having met Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead bassist and avant-garde classical composer, as a student at Nevada Southern University (now the University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Walker was invited in 1967 to make an album cover for the band’s second album, Anthem of the Sun. This experience led to an epic LSD and ayahuasca trip in the Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas over New Year’s Eve and when Walker returned to San Francisco, he painted Anthem of the Sun, complete with figures he came across in the desert.

The Anthem of the Sun painting visually demonstrates the intense innovation that happened in the psychedelic revolution, when music was electrified and LSD became central to the burst of culture that defined the 1960s. The Grateful Dead encapsulated this spirit in their music and came to be considered the most American band of all time for being at the center of the psychedelic movement and its transition from the Beat generation that preceded it.

The imposing concrete buildings that defined British postwar architecture held a vision of the future – but many fell into disrepair. A new book finds the finest examples

Whitney thinks Haile would be happier in a relationship. Haile says she’s fine by herself. You decide who’s being too single-minded
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I’m being treated like a sad case, but I am fine by myself. I’m not interested in dating at the moment

Haile’s happiest when she’s in love. I’m glad she’s found peace, but I worry she’s closing herself off

A new overnight bus service in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland offers comfort and sustainability

I feel my travel-scrunched spine start to straighten as I stretch out on the plump mattress, a quilted blanket wrapped around me and a pillow beneath my head. As bedtime routines go, however, this one involves a novel step – placing my lower legs in a mesh bag and clipping it into seatbelt-style buckles on either side; the bed will be travelling at around 50mph for the next 12 hours and there are safety regulations to consider.

Last month Swiss startup Twiliner launched a fleet of futuristic sleeper buses, and I’ve come to Amsterdam to try them out. Running three times a week between Amsterdam and Zurich (a 12-hour journey via Rotterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg and Basel), with a Zurich to Barcelona service (via Berne and Girona) launching on 4 December, the company’s flat-bed overnight sleeper buses are the first such service in Europe.

From homemade puddings to neighbourly tipples, the quiet exchange of festive treats reveals a world of kindness

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A guest at our restaurant recently told me about her mother’s seasonal side hustle, though no one would have dared call it that out loud: in the weeks before Christmas, she became a quiet merchant of puddings. The proper kind of pudding, too: all dense but not leaden, heavy with prunes and warm with careful spicing.

As December crept in, forgotten cousins and semi-estranged uncles seemed to find reasons to drop by her place. She never advertised the fact, of course, but everyone knew that if you came bearing even a modest offering, you might just leave with a pudding wrapped in waxed paper and still warm with possibility. The exchanges were subtle. One neighbour would “pop by for coffee” and just happen to bring two dozen mince pies; a friend would promise to collect the Christmas turkey from the butcher and bring it round, saving this lady the schlep across town. Nothing was said, no ledger kept, but the pudding always travelled in the right direction.

Two make-ahead Italian after-dinner treats: a rich chocolate and hazelnut tart, and a traditional boozy dessert that will send nonna to sleep

When you’re the cook of the house, you spend quite enough time in the kitchen on Christmas Day as it is. And, after those time-consuming nibbles, the smoked salmon starter and the turkey-with-all-the-trimmings main event, the last thing you want is a pudding that demands even more hands-on time at the culinary coalface. For me, the main requirement of any Christmas dessert is that it can be made well in advance, not least because, by the time the pudding stage comes around, I’ll be completely knackered and more than ready to put up my feet and finally relax (or, more likely, fall asleep on the sofa).

Love ice-cream, don’t love Christmas pudding? This make-ahead semifreddo, jewelled with dried fruits, might just fit the bill …

Last Christmas we visited my in-laws in Cape Town, where, at over 30C, a traditional Christmas pudding just didn’t feel quite right. But my mother-in-law and her friend created the most delicious feast: a South African braai (barbecue) followed by an incredible ice-cream Christmas pudding made by mashing vanilla ice-cream with a mix of tutti frutti, candied peel, raisins and cherries. This semifreddo is a take on that dessert: a light frozen custard that still carries all the festive flavours.Tutti frutti semifreddo Christmas pudding

We stopped using clingfilm in our kitchen 15 years ago now, because it’s not easily recycled and because of health concerns about the possible transfer of microplastics into our food. Most semifreddo recipes tell you to line the freezer container with clingfilm, but I suggest using no liner at all, or silicone-free, unbleached baking paper instead.

Three Italian light bites to get you started on the big day: pinzimonio crudites, chilled prawns with boozy mayo, and a delicate frittata that you can stud with artichoke, radicchio or celery

I am evolving as a host, and coming to realise that those rich dishes that crown our festive tables shine brightest when surrounded by contrasting and lighter bites – before, around and after, rather than just on the day itself. I do enjoy angels and devils on horseback, devilled eggs, little sausages wrapped in bacon, mince tarts crowned with goose liver, fried breads and cheesy pizzette, buffalo wings, paté en croute, crab beignets, oysters Rockefeller, shrimp tostadas and rich tamales, but, for the most part, I save these for the parties earlier in December. For Christmas day itself, I start with lighter bites, as better preparation for the rich meal ahead. A trio of dainty, grazing canapes served alongside sparkling Alta Langa …

The Guardian aims to publish recipes for sustainable fish. Check ratings in your region: UK; Australia; US.

Amid all the fairy lights and tinsel, an understated getup can look a bit curmudgeonly – you need to add some fashion sparkle

Christmas has begun. Don’t come for me with your pedantry about partridges and pear trees. The lights are lit, the turkey sandwiches are in Pret: ’tis the season, already. For the next few weeks we will be in a bubble that has its own festive rules. This is an alternate universe in which it is perfectly acceptable to have Michael Bublé on your Spotify playlist and to drink at lunchtime (to be fair, it is almost dark by then) and non-negotiable to play parlour games.

Christmas also comes with its own set of fashion rules, some of which are set in stone, and others which are updated every year. So I thought it may be helpful to have a quick refresher on how to dress for Christmas. Not least because one of the ways in which this time of year is its own little world is that even people who don’t like parties go to parties.

If ‘naked dressing’ is a stretch too far, sheer fabrics can provide a real-life friendly compromise

Fashion loves nothing more than an extreme trend, one difficult to imagine transferring to most people’s everyday lives. See naked dressing, where stars on the red carpet wear transparent and sometimes barely there gowns.

This party season, however, there appears to be a real-life friendly compromise. Enter the sheer skirt.

Samuel Lewis had to push his limits for the pop star’s global tour, set to hit his home town Melbourne next week

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It starts in a flood of red: a red-curtained stage, red flashing lights. It’s Lady Gaga, so theatrics are par for the course. As the lights go up it becomes clear she’s not standing on a giant stage but, in fact, wearing it.

A militaristic bodice extends into the swooping velvet drapes of a 7.5-metre-high gown. “It’s not just a dress; it’s a moving piece of art, an engineering feat,” says the Australian-Taiwanese designer Samuel Lewis, who dreamed up its design, and created it in collaboration with the LA-based costume designer Athena Lawton.

The haircut of the moment is ‘The Claudia’, but not everyone has the luscious locks of la Winkleman. Not a problem. Fake fringes are everywhere – and I tried one out

The 70s had “the Fawcett.” In the 90s it was all about “the Rachel.” But now there’s a new era-defining hair cut. “The Claudia.” Yes, the glossy inky-black block fringe that mostly shrouds the face of its owner, the presenter Claudia Winkleman, has become a seminal moment on and off TV screens.

It is a fringe that has spawned memes, online forums dedicated to debating its length and a fan account on X. “Thoughts and opinions from the highest paid fringe on the BBC” reads the bio. Alan Carr has described it, not Winkleman, as a national treasure.

Experts still debate whether ‘love addiction’ appropriately describes destructive romantic fixation

Elizabeth Gilbert was using people like drugs: a point she emphasizes throughout her memoir All the Way to the River, released in September.

In the book, Gilbert describes falling in love with her friend Rayya Elias. Elias’s terminal cancer diagnosis compelled Gilbert to reveal her feelings, despite being married at the time. She admits to enabling Elias, a self-described “ex-junkie”, to access hard drugs and alcohol during her final months as a warped act of care.

There’s a lot of pressure to make a splash, but you can create beautiful festive decor on a budget – just ask the people who do it all year round

It has been Christmas in the retail world for weeks but most of us are only now getting the decorations out at home. How can you reuse and recycle what you already have to create the perfect festive feel? Shop window-dressers – or visual merchandisers, as they are also known – share their tips for capturing the magic of the most wonderful time of the year.

A Green-party globalist and a right-of-centre Tory clash over immigration. Would they see eye to eye over reparations?

Peter, 34, London

Occupation Former civil servant, now a student, studying public health

I was travelling with my parents and discovered that Don Giovanni was being performed while we were there. I simply had to try to see it

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

At age 20, I fell head over heels in love with opera. It happened after seeing Joseph Losey’s film adaptation of Don Giovanni. Something clicked in me. I became a fervent subscriber to the Australian Opera and saw every opera I possibly could.

A few years later, I was travelling in France with my parents and discovered that Don Giovanni was being performed in Avignon while we were there, with José van Dam, who had played Leporello in the film, starring as Don Giovanni. I simply had to get a ticket to see it.

The minute I had any disposable income, I would spend it on things I didn’t need. Deciding to wait a day before handing over my money changed everything

One day at work two years ago, a notification hit my phone: my paycheck had come through. It was a fair amount for someone still at university, so I did what I always did when payday arrived: I opened every shopping app on my phone. Amazon, Vinted, Etsy, Depop, Zara, you name it. Within the space of an hour, I had spent £90 on clothes, decorative items and a completely useless weighted blanket I never touched.

A few days later, I went online again and bought a hairdryer. I already owned one, but thought another couldn’t hurt. Then I added LED strip lights and two pairs of shoes that weren’t even my size. This wasn’t new behaviour. In fact, I’d been notorious for it ever since I could afford to buy my own things.

Moderate wine consumption may benefit your cardiac health, but foods such as grapes and berries offer similar advantages without the negative effects

“People shouldn’t think that drinking wine is good for you,” says Dr Oliver Guttmann, a consultant cardiologist at the Wellington hospital in London.

Alcohol consumption is linked to high blood pressure, liver disease, digestive, mental health and immune system problems, as well as cancer.

Venues promoting destruction as stress relief are appearing around the UK but experts – and our correspondent – are unsure

If you find it hard to count to 10 when anger bubbles up, a new trend offers a more hands-on approach. Rage rooms are cropping up across the UK, allowing punters to smash seven bells out of old TVs, plates and furniture.

Such pay-to-destroy ventures are thought to have originated in Japan in 2008, but have since gone global. In the UK alone venues can be found in locations from Birmingham to Brighton, with many promoting destruction as a stress-relieving experience.

It used to be all boozy lunches and late-night carousing. Now it’s hyperbaric chambers and longevity chat. Andrew Carnie, CEO of the private club, explains how life and trends have changed since the Covid era

Friday night in the north of England. On the ninth floor of the old Granada Studios, a very chi-chi crowd is drinking tequila and eating crisps. Not Walkers out of the bag, mind, but canapes of individual crisps with creme fraiche and generous dollops of caviar. A young woman – leather shorts, chunky boots, neon lime nails, artfully messy bob – winks at me from the other side of the silver tray. “Ooh, caviar. Very posh for Manchester.”

Soho House’s 48th members’ club has caused quite the stir. Thirty years after Nick Jones opened the first club in Soho, London, the first north of England outpost of the empire is raising eyebrows. An exclusive club, in the city that AJP Taylor described as “the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery”. (The home, after all, of the Guardian.) An open-air rooftop pool, in the climate that fostered the textile industry because the rain created the perfect cool, damp conditions for spinning cotton. Will it work?

25 questions on notable pop culture, sporting and public figures we lost this year. How will you fare?

Something a little different this week. As the year draws to a close, the Thursday quiz pauses to pay tribute to some of the notable pop culture, sporting and public figures we lost over the past 12 months, with the annual in memoriam edition. No prizes, except the chance to remember the joy they (mostly) gave us – via the medium of trying to recall obscure trivia about them. Let us know how you get on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 226 – annual in memoriam edition

After my dad died, I tried to cope by keeping busy: a day job, a side hustle, socialising and working out. But I kept bursting into tears in public. At a Quaker meeting, it was as if someone had turned down the volume of the world

It was 2022, and my dad had just died from a rare blood disease. In the aftermath, I quit my PhD and moved back to London from Brighton. I coped by keeping incredibly busy. I regularly informed friends “I’m fine, actually”, as I threw myself into a new job in communications, went clubbing every weekend, picked up a side hustle selling secondhand clothes and got suspiciously invested in my gym routine. If I could just keep busy, I thought, perhaps I could drown out the growing tidal wave of grief.

And it worked, until it just didn’t any more. I began to burst into tears randomly – during a work meeting, at the gym, on my commute – and everyone around me would politely pretend they didn’t notice the 28-year-old man weeping on the tube at 8.30am. I tried to push through it, but my ability to keep up with my own life was faltering, and all of it – the clubs, the job, the gym – suddenly felt unbearably loud and overwhelming.

Waitrose has published its annual report on what goes into the middle-class shopping trolley – and the results are spicy

Name: Posh nosh.

Age: We’re talking new food trends here, so – new.

By avoiding the famous hotspots and travelling in December, we enjoy culinary delights and historic charms without the summer crowds

The copper pot is filled with a custard so golden it looks like liquid sunshine. Our waiter carefully ladles the sugary, egg-yolk elixir, zabaglione, into two bowls for dunking warm pansarole doughnuts. Our conversation stops, a silent competition to nab the last one. We are literally living la dolce vita.

This dessert is a tradition in Apricale, a fairytale-like village in Liguria, Italy’s crescent-shaped region that hugs the Mediterranean. It’s a far cry from crowded Cinque Terre and posh Portofino to the east. This western edge, on France’s south-eastern border, feels more authentic and calmer in the winter, with more local people than tourists. Unburdened from competing with others for reservations, you are free to live in the present. Let spontaneity be your guide – or, in my family’s case, our appetites.

Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s driest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities

It borders Brazil, but French Guiana is now a remote outpost of the EU. It is home to Europe’s only spaceport, some of the most biodiverse forest on the planet and a military mission that is testing the limits of western power

Above me, a ceiling of rough wooden branches and tarp. To my right, an officer in the French Foreign Legion types up the daily situation report. In front of me a French gendarme named David is standing in front of a table full of large assault rifles, pointing out locations on a paper map. A generator hums. All around us, splotches of forest dot the hundreds of islands that make up the archipelago of Petit-Saut, a watery ecosystem three times the size of Paris.

Except Paris is 7,000 kilometres away from where I am, in Guyane, or French Guiana, a department of France in South America, just north of the equator.

Terry Ball – renowned shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi – has vowed to spend his remaining years finding ways to cheat authorities he feels have cheated him. His greatest ruse? A tax-dodging snail empire

It is a drizzly October afternoon and I am sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints of Moretti with London’s leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples mafia. We’re discussing the best way to stop a mollusc orgy.

The farmer, a 79-year-old former shoe salesman called Terry Ball who has made and lost multiple fortunes, has been cheerfully telling me in great detail for several hours about how he was inspired by former Conservative minister Michael Gove to use snails to cheat local councils out of tens of millions of pounds in taxes.

Women in Ireland and the UK linked to Free Birth Society among scores around world to have suffered loss or serious harm after births

• Full story: How the FBS is linked to baby deaths around the world

Over a weekend in late June 2024, Emilee Saldaya, the leader of the Free Birth Society, hosted a festival on her 21-hectare (53-acre) property in North Carolina. It was a celebratory gathering for FBS, a multimillion-dollar business that promotes a radical approach to giving birth without medical support.

Promotional footage from the Matriarch Rising festival shows Saldaya dancing beside her private lake, wearing a crown. That same weekend, more than 3,000 miles away, in Dundalk, a town on the east coast of Ireland, Naomi James, bled to death after freebirthing her son.

We would like to hear from people in Hong Kong who have been impacted by the apartment fires

146 people are known to have died, in last week’s devastating fire at an apartment complex in Hong Kong, with about 200 still unaccounted for.

Authorities have arrested 13 people on suspicion of manslaughter related to the fire amid growing criticism from residents about arrests under national security laws of at least two civilians calling for accountability.

We’d like to hear from fans about their experience of buying tickets – and also from those who have decided against doing so

The first two rounds of ticket sales for the 2026 World Cup have opened. Yet even with the draw yet to take place and matchups yet to be determined, fans appear to be flocking to buy them. The dynamic pricing model instituted by Fifa has raised prices sky-high, with many fans offering stories of technological issues with Fifa’s sales platform as well.

We want to hear from you: Have you bought World Cup tickets? How much did you spend? Do you think it’ll be worth it? And did you face any obstacles – technical or otherwise – to getting the tickets you want? And if you haven’t bought tickets yet – why not?

We would like to hear about the best album you have heard this year and why

There have been bold British rap breakthroughs from Jim Legxacy and John Glacier, highly personal grief-stricken albums by Blood Orange, Jerskin Fendrix, Jennifer Walton and the Tubs; breakup albums for the ages by Rosalía, Lily Allen and Cate Le Bon; proof there’s life in Britpop yet from Pulp and Suede; emphatic arrivals on pop’s main stage from CMAT and Olivia Dean.

As the Guardian prepares to count down the best albums of 2025, we’d like to know what your top records were, and why: the returns to form, bolts from the blue, slow-burners and surprises. Let us know and we’ll run the best submissions after the Guardian’s No 1 is unveiled later in December.

We’d like to hear about your favourite recipes that have passed down through generations

Recipes carry stories, and often when they have been passed down from generation to generation, these tales have a chapter added to them each time they are made. Family members concoct elaborate treats and seasoning mixes, which in some cases travel across oceans to end up on our dinner tables.

We would like to hear about the recipes that have stood the test of time for you, and never fail to impress. Who first made it for you? Did you stick to the recipe that was passed down or have you improvised? What are the stories you associate with your favourite family recipe?

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