Methanol, a cheap relative of ethanol, is entering the supply chain, causing thousands of deaths around the world

For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down – she wasn’t detecting a strong vodka flavour through the veil of Sprite she had mixed it with.

All in all, Clarke remembers drinking about five of those shots, sitting with her best friend, Simone White, and a crowd of others at the hostel’s happy hour. CCTV footage shows the group laughing in the warm air of the open bar in the town of Vang Vieng, green and red lights dancing over their shoulders.

Endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, suicide and gaslighting … they are all laid bare on the singer-writer’s new album. But just as she finished recording it, she got a shock diagnosis. She explains why it’s made her determined to be in the moment

You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler having struggled to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.

Survey data suggests more and more girls can’t imagine getting married, while their male counterparts are keener. That disparity holds a clue

According to recent data, marriages in England and Wales are down by nearly 9% after a post-pandemic spike, while civil partnerships have risen by almost the same percentage. This downward trend is also reflected in the US. The Vatican has piped up in defence of the institution, releasing a 40-page doctrinal note, Una Caro (One Flesh): In Praise of Monogamy: Doctrinal Note on the Value of Marriage as an Exclusive Union and Mutual Belonging. Sworn celibates would not be my personal first port of call when seeking relationship advice, but to each their own – exclusively and indissolubly, if the Catholic church is to be believed.

Among the younger crowd, gendered expectations about marriage are changing, at least according to a survey by the University of Michigan, which found that only 61% of high-school girls want to be married one day, compared to 74% of the boys. Perhaps this is behind the burgeoning genre of opinion pieces in which a rightwing man complains that women don’t want to date him. Often enough, he is an avowed libertarian, leaving it a mystery why he does not simply accept the workings of the free market.

Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer and the author of Exciting Times and The Happy Couple

The first autopen was patented in the 1800s and has been used by many American presidents

On Friday, Donald Trump claimed that he will reverse everything that Joe Biden has signed with an autopen.

The automated signature machine has been a tool used by presidents at the White House for decades.

Sarah, 53, a psychologist, meets Russell, 61, a behaviour officer

What were you hoping for?
A romantic connection. Failing that, getting to know someone I might not otherwise have crossed paths with.

The Daily Mail owner has the Telegraph titles in his sights as part of a long-held ambition to create a dominant stable of rightwing newspapers

Waiting two decades for another chance to snaffle a prized business acquisition is a luxury not afforded to many executives. The Rothermere family, however, takes a more relaxed approach to time.

While most business boards draw up five-year plans, the Rothermeres, having compiled a feared media empire over more than a century, are used to thinking in terms of generations.

Account of visit to Gaza by French professor describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting convoys

A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organisation in the southern coastal zone of al-Mawasi.

Trump administration says decisions paused until government can ensure ‘every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible’

The Trump administration has announced it is halting all asylum decisions in the wake of the National Guard shooting in Washington DC, according to a senior immigration official.

Joseph Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a post on X on Friday that asylum decisions would be paused “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible”.

More than 100 still missing on Sumatra island, where authorities to start cloud seeding to reduce rain, as Thailand sees one of worst floods in a decade

The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in south-east Asia climbed past 350 on Saturday as clean-up and search and rescue operations got under way in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

Heavy monsoon rain overwhelmed swathes of the three countries this week, killing hundreds and leaving thousands stranded, many on rooftops awaiting rescue.

Immediate software change on ‘significant number’ of jets to result in disruption to half the worldwide fleet

Airlines around the world cancelled and delayed flights heading into the weekend after Airbus announced on Friday that it had ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its A320 family of jets in a recall affecting more than half of the global fleet.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the main certifying authority for A320 aircraft, issued the instruction on Friday night as a “precautionary action”, adding that “safety is paramount”.

Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

Vast swathes of Europe’s water reserves are drying up, a new analysis using two decades of satellite data reveals, with freshwater storage shrinking across southern and central Europe, from Spain and Italy to Poland and parts of the UK.

Scientists at University College London (UCL), working with Watershed Investigations and the Guardian, analysed 2002–24 data from satellites, which track changes in Earth’s gravitational field.

Families are combing hospitals hoping to find their loved ones as about 200 people still listed as missing, and at least 128 killed

An outpouring of grief was set to sweep Hong Kong on Saturday as an official, three-day mourning period began with a moment of silence for the 128 people killed in one of the city’s deadliest fires.

City leader John Lee, along with senior ministers and dozens of top civil servants, stood in silence for three minutes on Saturday morning outside the government headquarters, where the flags of China and Hong Kong were flown at half-mast.

Dawn Butler leads calls for humanitarian visas and fee waivers for vulnerable relatives of UK nationals affected by storm

British MPs have joined campaigners calling for more aid and humanitarian visas for Jamaicans to enter the UK after Hurricane Melissa demolished parts of the country, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into a humanitarian crisis.

The UK has pledged £7.5m emergency funds to Jamaica and other islands affected by the hurricane, but many argue that the country has a moral obligation to do more for former Caribbean colonies.

The PM becomes the first Australian leader to celebrate a wedding while in office with a private ceremony followed by a reception at his official residence, the Lodge

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The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has married his partner, Jodie Haydon, in Canberra, making him the first Australian leader to tie the knot in office.

The ceremony took place on Saturday afternoon at Albanese’s official residence, the Lodge, witnessed by a small group of close family and friends, including Albanese’s son, Nathan, and Haydon’s parents, Bill and Pauline.

Welsh government grants used to fund football club even though it is owned by wealthy movie stars

Wrexham AFC has risen meteorically through the English football leagues thanks to the deep pockets of Hollywood movie star owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Yet the club has also had £18m in help from other, unwitting backers: Welsh taxpayers.

The club has received almost £18m in nonrepayable grants from the Welsh government via the local council, according to UK government state aid disclosures – far in excess of the direct aid listed for any other football club in Britain.

In the wake of the deadly Washington DC shooting, Trump claimed immigrants are ‘destroying everything America stands for’. Here’s what the data shows

Donald Trump’s hateful, falsehood-filled rant on Thursday blaming immigrants for crime, “social dysfunction” and economic hardship is refuted by a wide range of immigration statistics, which show clearly that immigrants dramatically bolster the US economy and commit crimes at far lower rates than people born in the US.

On Thursday evening, Trump condemned immigrants in a broad and vicious invective, painting them as “illegal and disruptive populations” and attacking “those that hate, steal, murder and destroy everything that America stands for”. He vowed to block all migration from “third world countries” to allow the “US system to fully recover”.

Washington’s Putin-appeasing plan for peace in Ukraine has failed, but many heard death knell sounded for European reliance on US protection

Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, asked her officials this week to dig up the number of times Russia had – in its various guises – invaded other states in the 20th and 21st centuries. The answer that came back was 19 states, on 33 occasions. Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, was not just indulging in some form of historical mathematics. She was seeking to make a point that lies at the heart of the dispute between the US and Europe over Ukraine’s future, a dispute that has again revealed the chasm across the Atlantic about the true nature of the Russian regime.

Kallas reads history books as a leisure activity and – drawing on her own country’s history of Soviet occupation – has long maintained that the Soviet Union fell, but its imperialism never did. “Russia has never truly had to come to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions,” she has said, arguing that the nature of the Russian regime means “rewarding aggression will bring more war, not less”: Putin will come back for more.

Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary author

After the ­phenomenal global success, not to mention timeliness, of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale in 2017, Margaret Atwood has been regarded as “a combination of figurehead, prophet and saint”, the author writes in her new memoir Book of Lives. Over 600 pages this “memoir of sorts” ranges from her childhood growing up in the Canadian backwoods to her grief at the death of her partner of 48 years, the writer Graeme Gibson, in 2019, with many friendships, the occasional spat and more than 50 books (including Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace and the Booker prizewinning The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) in between.

The author, who turned 86 last week, always likes to take the long view, often from a couple of centuries’ distance. As Rebecca Solnit notes below, she now has a long view of our times. Age and the freedom of being a writer (as she says, she can’t get sacked) make her fearless in speaking out.

The singer on going solo, bringing back George Michael, and why a dog made her rethink motherhood

Born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, 39, was in the duo Slow Club. After 10 years, she went solo as Self Esteem and received Mercury prize, NME and Brit nominations for her second album, 2021’s Prioritise Pleasure. This year, she won the Ivor Novello Visionary award and released a book and album, both called A Complicated Woman. In March, she stars in David Hare’s Teeth ’n’ Smiles at the Duke of York’s theatre, London. She lives in London with her partner.

When were you happiest?
Five to 10, when I was just playing out and I didn’t realise I was a girl. Before my boobs came in, basically.

One line from Ridley Scott’s classic movie was the shove I needed to walk out on my husband after years of his controlling behaviour

It was 1991, I was in my early 40s, living in the south of England and trapped in a marriage that had long since curdled into something quietly suffocating. My husband had become controlling, first with money, then with almost everything else: what I wore, who I saw, what I said. It crept up so slowly that I didn’t quite realise what was happening.

We had met as students in the early 1970s, both from working-class, northern families and feeling slightly out of place at a university full of public school accents. We shared politics, music and a sense of being outsiders together. For years, life felt full of promise. When our first child arrived, I gave up my local government job to stay at home. That’s when the balance between us shifted.

She made a short, and much-ridiculed, trip to space. She tried to buy a house and fell foul of public opinion. And she’s found love, apparently, with Justin Trudeau. Time to get up to speed before this singer next hits the headlines

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? No? Just Katy Perry then. Seven months since her sense-defying jaunt into space, life on planet Earth hasn’t let up for the embattled hitmaker. She’s back in the headlines this week, implied to be raiding the pockets of a “disabled veteran” while facing scrutiny for her somewhat inexplicable new romance with Justin Trudeau. Yes, that Justin Trudeau. Shall we?

1. Perry wins in court, but loses online
By one metric, such as “relative to the rest of 2025”, this might have been a good week for Katy Perry. Since 2020, she has been embroiled in a legal battle against Carl Westcott, who sold her an eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom mansion in Montecito for $15m. Westcott then attempted to renege on the deal, claiming to have been incapacitated by painkillers (prescribed after a back operation) when signing the paperwork. A judge ruled in Perry’s favour in May last year, finding that Westcott was sound of mind when the sale went through. This week, another judge ruled that Perry was owed $1.8m in damages. This sounds like a win, you might think – except Perry had pushed for Westcott to pay $4.7m, and it’s been widely written up as Perry money-grubbing from an “85-year-old disabled veteran”. To give military.com’s headline, from earlier in the dispute in 2023: “Katy Perry Is Fighting a Dying, Elderly Veteran to Force Him to Sell His Home.” It is true that Westcott served in the 101st Airborne Division, is 85 years old and seriously ill with incurable Huntington’s disease. But the insistent framing may say more about Perry’s unenviable position as pop culture’s preferred punching bag.

​In this week’s newsletter: The turn-of-the-2000s produced a frenzy of cultural crystal-ball gazing​. Two decades on​ those bold forecasts reveal as much about us as they do about the era itself

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I love revisiting articles from around the turn of the millennium, a fascinatingly febrile period when everyone – but journalists especially – briefly lost the run of themselves. It seems strange now to think that the ticking over of a clock from 23:59 to 00:00 would prompt such big feelings, of excitement, terror, of end-of-days abandon, but it really did (I can remember feeling them myself as a teenager, especially the end-of-days-abandon bit.)

Of course, some of that feeling came from the ticking over of the clock itself: the fears over the Y2K bug might seem quite silly today, but its potential ramifications – planes falling out of the sky, power grids failing, entire life savings being deleted in a stroke – would have sent anyone a bit loopy. There’s a very good podcast, Surviving Y2K, about some of the people who responded particularly drastically to the bug’s threat, including a bloke who planned to sit out the apocalypse by farming and eating hamsters.

Councils consult on removing former prince’s name as residents report ‘embarrassment’ and ‘smirks’ when giving their addresses

Streets named after Andrew, formerly known as Prince but now plain Mountbatten-Windsor, can be found from Broadstairs to Belfast to Birmingham. Roads, avenues, terraces, lanes, crescents, closes, drives and ways are all afflicted – to the dismay of some residents.

In Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, Prince Andrew Way, celebrating Mountbatten-Windsor’s 1986 marriage to Sarah Ferguson, will be purged after Mid and East Antrim council passed a motion, described by one councillor as “sad but necessary”, to rename. A public consultation is under way.

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Paris Saint-Germain head to Monaco in Ligue 1 today and the hosts’ confidence has been low. The lack of confidence within Sébastien Pocognoli’s side was clear on Wednesday, when Monaco drew 2-2 with Pafos in the Champions League, twice letting the lead slip.

The eight-time French champions have won only one of its past five matches across all competitions, with Pocognoli saying he is still struggling to find the right formula since replacing Adi Hütter in October.

We have too many variations in character and it’s up to me to bring that under control. I’ve been working on it for a month. I’m trying to understand [the team], push it and stimulate it, it’s something that takes time.

Vitinha is growing and the team also. He’s so special, so different. I’m very happy for him because he deserves that. He works so hard, shows such personality.

[Pedri] will play some minutes, but [won’t be in the starting] lineup. If it’s possible, then he will come on in the second half. We’ll see. [Araújo] has a stomach virus, and he’s out for today and also for tomorrow.

I missed [Raphinha]. I see him as one of the most important players in our team … he also has the hunger and the will to show how good he really is.

I really appreciate what I see in training. We’re focused, we have a lot of quality. And of course, players coming back now, Pedri is back … Raphinha, Marcus [Rashford] from the cold he had. We nearly have everyone.”

I was also a player and maybe sometimes I did not show the right reaction. But it’s emotion.

The next step for Lamine must be to show, again, it’s not about this match, forget it. Alavés is now the important thing and he has to show his best level.

There have been many good points – challenging orthodoxies and Ben Stokes talking openly about male emotions – and even when it was bad, it was unignorable

The Life Cycle of a Cult
1. The Big Idea. A charismatic leader or leaders propose a new and transcendent idea that promises a panacea for alienated and vulnerable people.

So here we are then. They’re getting ready to storm the compound down in Brisbane. The gunships are circling. Smoke is rising from the out-houses. A lone figure, naked, shivering, the words HIGH RELEASE POINT smeared across his chest in chicken blood, has come staggering through the lines and is being led away under a blanket towards an inconclusive loan stint at Derbyshire.

Enzo Maresca’s young side face league leaders Arsenal on Sunday on a high but have moved on from the emotional swings of old

The worst way for Chelsea to respond to their demolition of Barcelona would be to believe the hype. The problem is that emotions in football swing from one extreme to another, as the people running things at Stamford Bridge have quickly come to appreciate.

They have faced plenty of ridicule for their alternative approach since buying the club from Roman Abramovich three years ago, so perhaps they are entitled to be a little sceptical now that Chelsea are being praised for their transfer strategy and talked up as potential title challengers before hosting Arsenal on Sunday.

Troubled times at Carrington as the club proud of producing the next generation of stars is in flux under fresh leadership

The standards of Manchester United’s academy have “really slipped” in recent years, according to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. The club is renowned as one of the world’s best schools for young players, so the words of the man at the top of the football operation will have stung those trying to create the next generation of stars.

The academy is in flux after Nick Cox, its long-time leader, left in September to become technical director at Everton. His replacement, Steve Torpey, joined from Brentford and is an ally of United’s director of football, Jason Wilcox. The pair worked together at Manchester City and the introduction of another former employee from there implies a literal blueprint is being followed.

It may not be as glamorous as Monaco, but it was on the raceway where a seven-year-old Norris first caught the eye of motor sport trainers

Monaco, Las Vegas, Singapore. The list of pitstops on Lando Norris’ road to the top of Formula One is like a luxury travel agent’s catalogue.

So when I was asked to trace the young man’s journey ahead of a weekend in which he could become the first British champion driver since Lewis Hamilton, my hopes were high.

Not since 2014 have Liverpool struggled so much, with questions aimed at directors and players such as Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz

“Would you say this is Roy bad or Brendan bad?” was one of the more repeatable questions asked in the Anfield press box in between PSV Eindhoven’s third and fourth goals on Wednesday. The correct answer would have been “Don Welsh bad”, given he was the last Liverpool manager to preside over nine defeats in 12 games, back in 1953-54. But the on-the-spot consensus was “Brendan bad” for reasons that may increase anxiety at Fenway Sports Group as the club’s owners desperately await a recovery under Arne Slot.

The Roy Hodgson era, airbrushed from history by some at Liverpool, is too low a base for comparisons with a Premier League champion. There are, however, some parallels between the current Liverpool crisis and the final 16 months of Brendan Rodgers’ reign at Anfield. The 2014-15 season was the last time confidence in a Liverpool manager or head coach began to drain. It was also the last time the impressive development of a Liverpool team – one that went agonisingly close to an unexpected title triumph in Rodgers’ case – not only came to an abrupt halt but veered into a steep decline with several new signings on board. FSG must hope the comparisons go no further, because that decline was precipitated by self-sabotage in the summer transfer window of 2014 and there is no conclusive evidence so far that it has avoided an expensive repeat in 2025.

• Kangaroos 9.2.56 defeat Lions 2.4.16 in decider at Ikon Park

• Invincible Roos create history as first premiers to be undefeated

Q1: 16 mins remaining: North Melbourne 0.0.0 – Brisbane 0.0.0

The Lions begin the game just as the would have wanted by winning the first centre clearance and locking the ball forward. The Kangaroos defence looks impenetrable from about 30m out.

• Iran among nations under restrictions issued by Trump

• Snub for Washington event deemed ‘unrelated to sport’

Iran are to boycott next week’s World Cup draw in Washington after the president of the country’s football federation was denied a visa to enter the United States.

A spokesperson for the Iranian football federation (FFIRI) described the decision to reject the visa application as “unrelated to sport” and the move raises the prospect of Iran withdrawing from the tournament altogether.

A harrowing US podcast documents a community’s struggle against immigration raids – and warns us about herd mentality

Earlier this year, the Trump administration reversed the convention that nobody would be snatched by immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, by a school, church or hospital. Since then, teachers have reported classrooms a third empty, as parents are too scared to send their kids in – volunteers walk them there and back.

In the Rogers Park area of Chicago, a group of citizens are organising to resist such immigration raids. Sometimes, it’s simple non-violent tactics, such as slowing officers down by walking in front of them. Last month, 50 people rushed to a church, where the congregation was trapped, having got word that there were ICE agents waiting outside. Maybe their most evocative tactic is whistles – coded blasts for when a convoy is suspected to be ICE agents, a different code when it’s confirmed. They have numerous accounts of undocumented migrants warned off driving right into a raid, which is galvanising, but they also see and hear dismaying things all the time: vehicles standing empty, one door open, not robbed, merely relieved of their drivers; landscape gardeners arrested off ladders. Earlier this month, the Protect Rogers Park group got 1,500 calls in a day.

Kyiv and the rest of Europe must stand together to prevent Russia from seizing more territory by force

• Dmytro Kuleba is a former foreign minister of Ukraine

Europe breathed a deep collective sigh of relief on Monday, as the crisis triggered by Washington’s presentation of a new 28-point plan for ending the war appeared – briefly – to have been stabilised. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke of “substantial progress” after Ukraine-US talks in Geneva. On Monday night, Vladimir Putin made his countermove: another massive barrage of missile and drone strikes on Kyiv.

The sequence of contrasting events captured the grim essence of the outgoing year. By day, diplomatic battles are fought: hopeful statements are issued from Washington, London, Brussels and Kyiv. Immense energy is expended on containing Donald Trump’s initiatives. By night, Putin brutally reminds the world that, for him, war remains the primary tool for achieving “peace”.

Dmytro Kuleba was Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs from 2020 to 2024

We live not in a post-Holocaust world of ‘Never Again’ but in the same world that led to the Holocaust, a world of ‘Again and Again’

On 10 October, following two years of Israeli genocide that have turned Gaza into the new benchmark of total destruction, after Israel has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and inflicted on all the people in Gaza “severe bodily or mental harm,” to quote from the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Trump administration imposed a ceasefire, giving rise to the idea that the Gaza war has ended.

The ceasefire, however, seems to be designed mostly to move forward with the business deals of the mega rich in the Middle East, and the fire has never ceased: the Israeli government has continued its assault, killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinians since 10 October, destroying thousands of homes and buildings, and blocking the entry of sufficient aid.

Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide

The war in Ukraine is a crime. But European leaders should be working for peace, not preparing young people to fight and die

When I was growing up, the most German sentence imaginable was: “We’ve lost two world wars and we’re proud of it.” We were so anti-military, we even gave our policemen green uniforms, to make them look more like foresters than soldiers. Now, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wants our army to become the strongest in Europe. I mean, what could go wrong?

After we lost the second world war – or, as we prefer to say, after we were liberated by the allies – we swore “never again”: never again to war, and never again to Auschwitz. Admittedly, Germany rearmed in 1955, but just as “citizens in uniform”, not as soldiers following orders. Mind you, that didn’t mean that you could say “no” to an order; it just meant that we had conscription for most young men until 2011.

Russia’s president is only interested in a deal on Moscow’s terms. Equipping Kyiv with the resources to fight on is the quickest route to a just settlement

As Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day deadline for a Ukraine peace agreement came and went this week, the Russia expert Mark Galeotti pointed to a telling indicator of how the Kremlin is treating the latest flurry of White House diplomacy. In the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a foreign policy scholar close to Vladimir Putin’s regime bluntly observed: “As long as hostilities continue, leverage remains. As soon as they cease, Russia finds itself alone (we harbour no illusions) in the face of coordinated political and diplomatic pressure.”

Mr Putin has no interest in a ceasefire followed by talks where Ukraine’s rights as a sovereign nation would be defended and reasserted. He seeks the capitulation and reabsorption of Russia’s neighbour into Moscow’s orbit. Whether that is achieved through battlefield attrition, or through a Trump-backed deal imposed on Ukraine, is a matter of relative indifference. On Thursday, the Russian president reiterated his demand that Ukraine surrender further territory in its east, adding that the alternative would be to lose it through “force of arms”. Once again, he described Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as “illegitimate”, and questioned the legally binding nature of any future agreement.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Capturing the changing landscapes of the 18th century, the rivals transformed British art. The climate emergency gives new urgency to their work

JMW Turner appears on £20 notes and gives his name to Britain’s most avant garde contemporary art prize. John Constable’s work adorns countless mugs and jigsaws. Both are emblematic English artists, but in the popular imagination, Turner is perceived as daring and dazzling, Constable as nice but a little bit dull. In a Radio 4 poll to find the nation’s favourite painting, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire – which even features in the James Bond film Skyfall – won. Constable’s The Hay Wain came second. Born only a year later, Constable was always playing catch-up: Turner became a member of the Royal Academy at 27, while Constable had to wait until he was 52.

To mark the 250th anniversary of their births, Tate Britain is putting on the first major exhibition to display the two titans head to head. Shakespeare and Marlowe, Mozart and Salieri, Van Gogh and Gauguin – creative rivalries are the stuff of biopics. Mike Leigh’s 2014 film shows Turner (Timothy Spall) adding a touch of red to his seascape Helvoetsluys to upstage Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1832. Critics delighted in dubbing them “Fire and Water”. The enthralling new Tate show is billed as a battle of rivals, but it also tells another story. Constable’s paintings might not have the exciting steam trains, boats and burning Houses of Parliament of Turner’s, but they were radical too.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Far-right minister defends killing of two men who appeared to have given themselves up, saying ‘terrorists must die’

Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.

The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.

Exclusive: London mayor says allegations of teenage racism against Reform leader remind him of being called P-word

• Opinion: Antisemitism allegations against the teenage Farage matter – look at what he went on to do

Sadiq Khan has spoken of his dismay at Nigel Farage’s “desperate” denials of allegations of teenage racism as he described how his experience as a child shaped his life.

The mayor of London said testimony from more than 20 individuals who made allegations about the Reform leader had summoned memories of his own past.

After Jeffrey Epstein abuse victim died intestate, sons reject claim that documents presented by her lawyer and carer represent her final intentions

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An unsigned will has emerged as the crux of the battle over the estate of Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Details of the document surfaced on Friday as hearings began in Western Australia’s supreme court, where her sons, her longtime lawyer and her former carer are all vying for control of the assets.

Bill 9 would outlaw prayer and face coverings in public institutions, sparking fears it targets Muslims in Canada

Quebec says it will intensify its crackdown on public displays of religion in a sweeping new law that critics say pushes Canadian provinces into private spaces and disproportionately affects Muslims.

Bill 9, introduced by the governing Coalition Avenir Québec on Thursday, bans prayer in public institutions, including in colleges and universities. It also bans communal prayer on public roads and in parks, with the threat of fines of C$1,125 for groups in contravention of the prohibition. Short public events with prior approval are exempt.

Starkie has died of leukaemia surrounded by friends and family and ‘listening to Chuck Berry’, his daughter says

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The renowned Australian guitarist Bob “Bongo” Starkie has died at the age of 73, his band Skyhooks has announced.

Starkie died peacefully early on Saturday after a battle with leukaemia, the band’s archivist, Peter Green, said in a post on the Skyhooks Facebook page.

Another 130 missing after heavy rains from Cyclone Ditwah while almost 44,000 evacuated to temporary shelters amid rescue operations

Torrential rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah have killed 123 people across Sri Lanka so far, with another 130 still missing, the Disaster Management Centre (DCM) said on Saturday.

Director general Sampath Kotuwegoda said relief operations were underway with 43,995 people moved to state-run welfare centres after their homes were destroyed in the week-long heavy rains.

Scientists say urban raccoons’ shorter snouts and calmer reactions to people mirror traits found in domesticated animals across species

Raccoons living wild in cities in the United States are beginning to show physical changes that resemble early signs of domestication, according to a recent study.

The study found that urban raccoons had developed shorter snouts than rural raccoons, with the research produced by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and published in Frontiers in Zoology. This is an example of a physical trait that appears across domesticated animals that have adapted to living in close proximity to humans over long periods of time, along with other traits such as smaller teeth, curlier tails, smaller brains and floppier ears.

Paul Brown looks back at his career reporting on the climate crisis, failed summit and nuclear power – and how to do it well

Paul Brown was the Guardian’s environment correspondent from 1989 until 2005 and has written many columns since. He submitted his last column last week after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. From his hospital bed in Luton, Paul offers his reflections on 45 years writing for the Guardian.

We, in the climate business, all owe a great deal to Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Her politics were anathema to me and to many Guardian readers. But she prided herself on being a scientist before she was a politician.

Critics say JH Campbell coal-fired plant in western Michigan is expensive and emits high levels of toxic pollution

Trump administration orders to keep an ageing, unneeded Michigan coal-fired power plant online has cost ratepayers from across the US midwest about $113m so far, according to estimates from the plant’s operator and regulators.

Still, the US energy department last week ordered the plant to remain open for another 90 days.

Leftwing party asks members to pick between Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many

The leftwing party formed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has revealed a shortlist of names for its members to pick from: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many.

Ahead of its first conference in Liverpool this weekend, the party is asking its 50,000 members to choose what it should be called, with the result to be announced by Corbyn on Sunday.

Coastguard says 76-year-old passenger was reported missing from Tui-operated vessel on Thursday morning

A British cruise company has said it is working with authorities after a passenger on one of its ships was seen entering the water in the seas around the Canary Islands.

Marella Cruises, which is operated by Tui UK, said the guest went overboard as the vessel was heading towards La Gomera, the second-smallest of the main islands in the Spanish archipelago off the coast of north-west Africa.

UK had been pushing to join €150bn Safe fund, a loan scheme that is part of bloc’s drive to rearm Europe

Keir Starmer’s attempt to reset relations with the EU have suffered a major blow, after negotiations for the UK to join the EU’s flagship €150bn (£131bn) defence fund collapsed.

The UK had been pushing to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund, a low-interest loan scheme that is part of the EU’s drive to boost defence spending by €800bn and rearm the continent, in response to the growing threat from Russia and cooling relations between Donald Trump’s US and the EU.

Prosecutors cite ‘significant evidential developments’ in decision to end criminal case against Romanian boys

Prosecutors have dropped charges against two Romanian teenagers who were accused of raping a schoolgirl in Ballymena, an allegation that triggered race riots in Northern Ireland.

The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) on Friday cited “significant evidential developments” in its decision to end criminal proceedings against the boys, aged 14 and 15.

Whistleblower tells Afghan leak inquiry those affected were told to move and change phone numbers to protect themselves

The UK left behind sensitive technology allowing the Taliban to track down Afghans who worked with western forces, a whistleblower has told the Afghan leak inquiry.

The woman, known as Person A, said Afghans affected by the data leak were told to move homes and change their phone numbers to protect themselves from the Taliban because it had the resources to track them down.

Trio given leave to stay in their abandoned convent near Salzburg until further notice, church officials say

Three octogenarian nuns who gained a global following after breaking out of their care home and moving back to their abandoned convent near Salzburg have been given leave to stay in the nunnery “until further notice” – on condition they stay off social media, church officials have said.

The rebel sisters – Bernadette, 88, Regina, 86, and Rita, 82, all former teachers at the school adjacent to their convent – broke back into their old home of Goldenstein Castle in Elsbethen in September in defiance of their spiritual superiors.

Airline says 55,000 people signed up to Prime, making €4.4m, but passengers benefited by more than €6m

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Ryanair is shutting its frequent flyers members’ club after only eight months because customers exploited its benefits too much.

The budget airline said on Friday it was closing the scheme, which offered benefits including flight discounts, free reserved seating on up to 12 flights a year and travel insurance.

Advocates are fighting against the $16.7bn global smart-toy market, decrying surveillance and a lack of regulation

As the holiday season looms into view with Black Friday, one category on people’s gift lists is causing increasing concern: products with artificial intelligence.

The development has raised new concerns about the dangers smart toys could pose to children, as consumer advocacy groups say AI could harm kids’ safety and development. The trend has prompted calls for increased testing of such products and governmental oversight.

The supernatural drama inches closer to the end, while Ethan Hawke fully encapsulates Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater’s Broadway breakup drama. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Exclusive: Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund, including unseen letters by Doris Lessing and a note from James Joyce saying that he ‘gets nothing in the way of royalties’, show authors at their most vulnerable

Tobacco, swiss roll, Irish whiskey, Guinness and monkey nuts: that’s the diet followed by one of the foremost poets of the 20th century.

Dylan Thomas’ grocery bill is among a trove of famous writers’ personal documents and letters – many of which are as yet unseen by the public, and have been exclusively shown to the Guardian – discovered in the case files of a literary charity.

François Ozon’s handling of classic novel draws both praise and criticism, including from the author’s daughter

More than 80 years after it was published, Albert Camus’s L’Étranger remains one of the most widely read and fiercely contested French books in the world.

Until now, few attempts have been made to adapt the novel, published in English as The Outsider, for television or cinema: it is considered problematic and divisive for its portrayal of France’s colonisation of Algeria.

The kids growing up might have changed this show’s appeal, but they manage to go out in a flame-throwing, bullet-dodging blaze of glory – while still being more moving than ever before

Time’s up for Stranger Things. The fifth and last season arrives almost three-and-a-half years after a fourth run that felt like a finale, not least because it seemed the kids had grown up. Having originally aped beloved 1980s films where stubbornly brave children avert apocalypse, the franchise now starred young adults and had adjusted plotlines and dialogue accordingly. Life lessons had been learned. Selves had been found. Adolescent anxieties – as personified by Vecna, the narky telekinetic tree-man who rules a parallel dimension adjacent to the humdrum town of Hawkins, Indiana – had been put aside.

But Stranger Things now belatedly returns, with the cast all visibly in their 20s. This is a problem. The whole point is that it’s fun to watch kids outrun monsters by pedalling faster on their BMX bikes, or ignoring their mum calling them to dinner because they’re in the basement with their school pals, drawing up plans to bamboozle the US military using pencils, bubblegum and Dungeons & Dragons figurines. If everyone looks old enough to have a studio apartment and a stocks portfolio, none of the above really flies.

This update of the 1995 documentary series is utterly authoritative. And its tweak of the Fab Four’s songs is a thing of wonder – their music absolutely thumps!

It would be wrong to go into The Beatles Anthology expecting another Get Back. Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary did such a miraculous job of recontextualising the glum old footage from Let It Be, by setting it against an ingenious ticking clock device and expanding it out to become a maximalist feelgood avalanche, that it felt like you were watching something entirely new.

But The Beatles Anthology is not new. If you saw the original series on television in 1995, or on YouTube at any point since, you’ll know what you’re in for. It is almost the exact same thing, only the images are sharper and the sound is better.

The Beatles Anthology is on Disney+ now.

The TV equivalent of raiding a bare cupboard, the supposed extra hour here is cobbled together from previous DVD extras – but you can’t miss the tension between Harrison and McCartney

There’s no doubt that the arrival of The Beatles Anthology in 1995 was a big deal. The TV series was broadcast at prime time on both sides of the Atlantic, and ABC in the US even changed its name to ABeatlesC in its honour. The three accompanying albums (the first time the Beatles had allowed outtakes from their recording sessions to be officially released) sold in their millions. Its success helped kickstart the latterday Beatles industry, a steady stream of officially sanctioned documentaries, reissues, remixes, compilations and expanded editions, predicated on two ideas: that the Beatles’ archive contains fathomless bounty; and that the band’s story is so rich there’s no limit to the number of times it can fruitfully be retold in fresh light.

For a while, those ideas seemed to hold true, but recently, it’s been hard not to think the Beatles’ Apple Corps might be trying to feed an insatiable appetite for content from an increasingly bare cupboard. You can marvel at the highlights of Peter Jackson’s TV series Get Back and still wonder whether the director wasn’t stretching his material a little thin; whether nearly eight hours of it – plus a separate Imax film of the Beatles’ final live performance on the roof of Apple’s London HQ, and a reissue of the original 1970 Let It Be documentary – might have been rather too much of a good thing.

Californian singer-songwriter Lukas Frank is picking up rave reviews for his second album’s epic choruses and lush orchestrations

From Los Angeles
Recommended if you like John Grant, Scott Walker, Father John Misty
Up next A cover of Duran Duran’s The Chauffeur is out now, with another single due in February

After several years of perseverance, things are happening for Storefront Church. The audience at this month’s sellout gig at St Pancras Old Church in London included Perfume Genius and members of the Last Dinner Party and the Horrors and their self-released second album, Ink & Oil, is picking up rave reviews. One used the term “emotional flood” to describe the album’s epic, baroque pop, big pianos and drums, sweeping choruses and Travis Warner’s lush, cinematic orchestrations.

(Hyperdub)
The dancefloor producer weaves seductive and steely lyrics with their trademark production in a convincing embrace of pop

Sad represents a total reinvention for Ikonika, the producer, songwriter and singer also known as Sara Chen. Putting their own vocals at the forefront of their music for the first time, Chen becomes a charismatic and haunting pop presence. Sometimes, they play the role of warm R&B vocalist (Listen to Your Heart); at other times, such as on the nervy, hypnotic Whatchureallywant, they’re seductive and steely, commanding the dancefloor over production that draws equally from bass music and South African amapiano.

Ikonika has long been an established presence in underground electronic music. They have been signed to the Hyperdub label for nearly 20 years; muscular, sprightly releases such as 2020’s Your Body and 2018’s The Library Album have contributed to their reputation as a brash, warm-spirited producer. But Sad has the feel of a debut, centring sounds from northern and southern Africa (Chen is part-Egyptian) on tracks like Sense Seeker and Gone. Their lyrics draw on ideas of safety and care, pushing their persona past “party starter” and into more complex territory.

After getting dropped by a major label, the Leonard Cohen-influenced south Londoner kept going, and has now won fans in Rosalía, Sabrina Carpenter and more. But writing for the Bard is the best of all, he says

Three years back, Matt Maltese was in a casual co-writing session with some friends. Out of it came a song called Magnolias, a stripped back piano ballad about imagining his own funeral. “I didn’t think anything of it,” he says. “And then two years later, we heard some quite bizarre whispers that Rosalía had somehow heard it.” It was true: six months ago, Maltese was sent the Spanish pop star’s demo of the song. He tried not to get too excited, even when, a few weeks back, a blurred-out photo of a Rosalía album tracklisting appeared online. “On the WhatsApp group we were like: I think that says Magnolias!”

Magnolias ended up as the final track on Rosalía’s new operatic masterpiece, Lux: one of the most talked-about albums of the year, currently sitting in the UK Top 5. Maltese first heard the finished song the day the album came out, when he’d got back to London from a US tour. “I took a long jet-lagged walk and listened to the whole album to contextualise it. It’s extraordinary.” On Magnolias, Rosalía changed some words, he says, “and dramatised it incredibly. It’s exquisite. It’s a gift from someone, somewhere, that it fell into her lap.” It’s all anyone has wanted to talk to him about since. “I’ve had a lot of follow backs on Instagram,” he smiles.

(Ghostly International)
Sharon Van Etten, Stephen O’Malley, Perila and more transform the duo’s gloomy, sensual songs on an album of covers and remixes

HTRK have been making their gloomy, sensual brand of music, at the intersection of electronic pop and noise rock, for 22 years. To mark the milestone comes String of Hearts, a collection of covers and remixes featuring an all-star cast of friends and collaborators, from next-gen underground favourites like Coby Sey to fellow old-school experimentalists Liars. This brilliant, genre-agnostic record allows you to trace the breadth of the Melbourne band’s shapeshifting sound, echoes of which can now be found all over underground and commercial music, without leaning too hard on nostalgia.

The record spans HTRK’s early hits right up to their most recent album Rhinestones, a period in which they’ve shifted from a darker, industrial palette to warmer territory. Not that you’d be able to tell here: instrumentals are reshaped by Loraine James’s IDM-style glitches and Zebrablood’s atmospheric breaks, while Jonnine Standish’s disaffected vocals are transformed into desperate alien wails by Liars.

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten; Woman in the Pillory by Brigitte Reimann; Iran+100, edited by various; Sea Now by Eva Meijer

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99)
On the last day of his life – how does he know? He just does – Norwegian ferryman Nils Vik takes a final boat trip, alone after a lifetime helping others. He remembers those he has ferried, including actor Edward G Robinson; Miss Norway 1966, who was “declared the most beautiful woman in the nation and won a Fiat 850”; and young gay man Jon, who was bullied by his father, then drowned in a car, channelling the Smiths: “What a heavenly way to die … to die by his lover’s side.” That blend of light and dark runs through the novel, but the person Nils really misses is his late wife Marta. He masks his turmoil (“After the storm … there’s no evidence. Only the calm blue surface”), and tries to remember the happy times. He recalls his daughter taking him to see a play. “What did you like about it?” “Everything.” The reader understands.

The author on Anna Karenina, the brilliance of Anita Brookner and finally getting Nabokov

My earliest reading memory
I acquired from somewhere, in my more or less atheistic family, a Ladybird Book of the Lord’s Prayer, whose every page I can recover in all its lurid 1960s naturalism. “As they forgive us our trespasses against them …” The horrified boy leaves a hand mark on the wall his father has just painted.

My favourite book growing up
One of my favourites was E Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods. The lives of those Edwardian children seemed as rich as a plum pudding, with their knickerbockers and their ironies, their cook and their sophisticated vocabulary. I didn’t understand, in my childhood, that they were separated from me by a gulf of time and change. Because of books, the past seemed to be happening in the next room, as if I could step into it effortlessly.

This collection of macabre stories set across England explores class, hierarchy and the enduring nature of inequality

Folk horror may have had a dramatic resurgence in recent years, but it has always been the backbone of much of our national storytelling. A new anthology of 10 stories set across England, Bog People, brings together some of the most accomplished names in the genre.

In her introduction, editor Hollie Starling describes an ancient ritual in a Devon village: the rich throw heated pennies from their windows, watching those in need burn their fingers. Folk horror by its nature is inherently connected to class and hierarchy. Reverence for tradition is a double-edged sword – or a burning-hot coin.

The rain stops, the sun shows, another night comes dark and flowing with energy. I don’t sleep; I feel my way through the landscape, the trees that reach and catch my shirt sleeves, holding on to me, saving me from slipping on mossy roots, the unfriendly gorse keeping me at a distance, saying don’t step here, stopping me from tearing my feet on its throne of thorns. Stars alive, alight, I wish you could see them…

First light fattened like a dying star and formed the signature of an industrial town already at toil predawn, its factory stacks belching the new day black, the mills dyeing the forked-tongue river sterile inside that Hellmouth north of Halifax where paternal cotton kings had housed their workers in spoked rows of blind back-to-backs quick to tilt and rot.

In his new book The World in a Phrase, author James Geary shares aphorisms from David Byrne, James Baldwin and more that speak to the modern day

When it comes to aphorisms, the biggest hits are familiar: “a penny saved is a penny earned”, “a picture is worth 1,000 words”, the one about why teaching fishing is better than fish donations. These phrases have been around so long they can feel as old as language itself.

But aphorisms aren’t just historical artifacts. People regularly come up with new ones, and even if they haven’t come from the pen of Confucius or Emily Dickinson, they can shed light on the modern human experience with just a few words. In fact, “the aphorism is, in some ways, perfectly suited to the digital age: the oldest form of literature finds its ideal vehicle in the most modern short modes of communication,” writes James Geary in The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism.

It’s always crushing when a wildly anticipated game turns out to be a dud, but this RPG’s awful story and clunky dialogue gave my son and I something to talk about

It was an exciting November for the Diamond household: one of those rare games that we all loved had a sequel coming out! The original Outer Worlds dazzled our eyeballs with its art nouveau palette and charmed our ears with witty dialogue, sucking us into a classic mystery-unravelling story in one of my favourite “little man versus evil corporate overlords” worlds since Deus Ex. It didn’t have the most original combat, but that didn’t matter: it was obviously a labour of love from a team totally invested in the telling of this tale, and we all fell under its spell.

Well, when I say all of us, I mean myself and the three kids. My wife did not play The Outer Worlds, because none of those worlds featured Crash Bandicoot. But the rest of us dug it, and the kids particularly enjoyed that I flounced away from the final boss battle after half a day of trying, declaring that I had pretty much completed the game and that was good enough for a dad with other things to do.

Two decades on, its influence still lingers, marking a moment when gaming felt thrillingly new again

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Almost 20 years ago (on 1 December 2005, to be precise), I was at my very first video game console launch party somewhere around London’s Leicester Square. The Xbox 360 arrived on 22 November 2005 in the US and 2 December in the UK, about three months after I got my first job as a junior staff writer on GamesTM magazine. My memories of the night are hazy because a) it was a worryingly long time ago and b) there was a free bar, but I do remember that DJ Yoda played to a tragically deserted dancefloor, and everything was very green. My memories of the console itself, however, and the games I played on it, are still as clear as an Xbox Crystal. It is up there with the greatest consoles ever.

In 2001, the first Xbox had muscled in on a scene dominated by Japanese consoles, upsetting the established order (it outsold Nintendo’s GameCube by a couple of million) and dragging console gaming into the online era with Xbox Live, an online multiplayer service that was leagues ahead of what the PlayStation 2 was doing. Nonetheless, the PS2 ended up selling over 150m to the original Xbox’s 25m. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, would sell over 80m, neck and neck with the PlayStation 3 for most of its eight-year life cycle (and well ahead in the US). It turned Xbox from an upstart into a market leader.

Nintendo Switch 2; Bandai Namco/Sora/HAL Laboratory/Nintendo
It takes some getting used to, but this Mario Kart challenger soon reveals a satisfyingly zen, minimalist approach to competitive racing

In the world of cartoonish racing games, it’s clear who is top dog. As Nintendo’s moustachioed plumber lords it up from his gilded go-kart, everyone from Crash Bandicoot to Sonic and Garfield has tried – and failed – to skid their way on to the podium. Now with no one left to challenge its karting dominance, Nintendo is attempting to beat itself at its own game.

The unexpected sequel to a critically panned 2003 GameCube game, Kirby Air Riders has the pink squishball and friends hanging on for dear life to floating race machines. With no Grand Prix to compete in, in the game’s titular mode you choose a track and compete to be the first of six players to cross the finish line, spin-attacking each other and unleashing weapons and special abilities to create cutesy, colourful chaos.

From Minecraft chess and coding for kids to retro consoles and Doom on vinyl for grown-ups – hit select and start with these original non-digital presents

Gamers can be a difficult bunch to buy for. Most of them will get their new games digitally from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation’s online shops, so you can’t just wrap up the latest version of Call of Duty and be done with it. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful accessories and fun lifestyle gifts to look out for, and gamers tend to have a lot of other interests that intersect with games in different ways.

So if you have a player in your life, whether they’re young or old(er), here are some ideas chosen by the Guardian’s games writers. And naturally, we’re starting with Lego …

A controversial Netflix documentary follows an investigation into the truth behind one of the most important wartime photos ever taken

It is one of the most recognizable photographs of the 20th century: a naked girl – arms wide, face contorted, skin scorched and peeling – running toward the camera as she flees a napalm attack in South Vietnam. To her right, a boy’s face is frozen in a Greek tragedy mask of pain. To her left, two other Vietnamese children run away from the bombed village of Trảng Bàng. Behind them, an indistinguishable group of soldiers and, behind them, a wall of black smoke.

Within hours of publication in June 1972, the photo, officially titled The Terror of War but colloquially known as Napalm Girl, went the analog version of viral; seen and discussed by millions of people around the world, it’s widely credited with galvanizing public opinion against the US war in Vietnam. Susan Sontag later wrote that the horrifically indelible image of nine-year-old Kim Phúc in distress “probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities”. Sir Don McCullin, the legendary British photojournalist who covered the conflict, deemed it the single best photograph of what would later be called “The Television War”. Napalm Girl is, “simply put, one of the most important photographs of anything ever made, and certainly of the Vietnam war”, said Gary Knight, a British photojournalist with decades of combat photography experience.

Hollywood megastars hit Leeds this year to make Tinsel Town, a feelgood festive comedy about panto. The 24 star, Rebel Wilson and more talk about their addiction to Greggs sausage rolls – and epic brawls with Danny Dyer

Twenty-odd years ago, I binged a TV series on DVD for the first time. At my mate’s house in a village outside Harrogate, I was glued to Jack Bauer shooting his way through 24. We probably only made it to episode six before surrendering to sleep for school the next day.

Fast forward to the start of this year, and photos are all over the local news of Kiefer Sutherland out and about in nearby market towns Knaresborough and Wetherby. The real Jack Bauer in Yorkshire! He and Rebel Wilson are in the area making Tinsel Town, a British Christmas film about pantomimes. By March, I am invited to a Leeds studio, where they are filming, and find Sutherland dressed as Buttons on a stage. His glittery eyeshadow shimmers as he smiles and dances to Katy Perry’s Roar with the Cinderella cast. He repeats this showstopper scene about 15 times. It’s a surreal full circle moment; I half expect him to pull a pistol out on the ugly stepsisters.

From Michelangelo and Leonardo to Picasso and Matisse, bitter feuds have defined art. But are contemporary artists more collaborative than their renaissance predecessors?

“He has been here and fired a gun,” John Constable said of JMW Turner. A shootout between these two titans would make a good scene for in a film of their lives, but in reality all Turner did at the 1832 Royal Academy exhibition was add a splash of red to a seascape, to distract from the Constable canvas beside it.

That was by far the most heated moment in what seems to us a struggle on land and sea for supremacy in British art. It’s impossible not to see Tate Britain’s new double header of their work this way. For it is a truth universally acknowledged, to paraphrase their contemporary Jane Austen, that when two great artists live at the same time, they must be bitter and remorseless rivals. But is that really so, and does it help or hinder creativity?

The late Australian artist ‘wanted to challenge orthodoxy in everything he did’, says Sue Cramer, his wife and co-curator of a new survey of his playful, rigorous career

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John Nixon, the late Australian avant-garde artist, would sometimes save the shells from his boiled eggs and sprinkle them across blank paint, creating his own starry night. Other times he’d set himself rules, such as painting only in orange for five years. It was 1996 and he was becoming a father, so he wanted a streamlined practice – plus, what other artist was associated with orange?

These anecdotes – just two among many – reflect not only Nixon’s lifelong frugality, idiosyncrasies and strategies, but his steadfast blending of art into everyday life for more than 50 years. His hardline minimalism never feels stifling or overwrought, but rigorous and playful, critical yet fortuitous.

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The online banker sounds concerned, as if he’s trying to keep me on the line until the ambulance arrives

Certain contractual terms oblige my oldest sons to periodically appear at their places of employment. On rare occasions they both go in on the same day. On this particular day, my wife and the dog are also out. I’m alone in the house.

I’m lingering over lunch – because, why not? – when my phone pings in my pocket. It’s a text from my bank.

A stunning but simple festive vegetarian centrepiece for the whole table to enjoy

Last year I wrote about how I lost my food fandango, got it back, and now simplify matters, especially in the kitchen. This means I no longer do feasts with lots of elements, even at Christmas, but I still adore a showstopper, especially one that the whole table, irrespective of dietary requirements, can enjoy together. This year’s offering is such a centrepiece, an aubergine timbale (timbale means drum) packed to the gunnels with vegetables, rice, nuts, fruit, spices and, should you wish it (you should), one of the finest cheeses to come out of Normandy: Boursin.

Don’t panic if you’ve left it late to plan your gathering – follow these tips for whipping up an instant party atmosphere

At this time of year, when there’s enough going on to make the most vivacious person occasionally look forward to the financial and social drought of January, it’s all too easy to forget things. I cannot be the only person who’s ever been shocked back into consciousness at my desk by a message from a friend asking, “What time do you want us later?” Fear not; whether you’re absent minded, or just prone to last-minute invitations, I have your back.

Firstly, and I cannot stress this enough, whether you’ve been planning for a year or 15 minutes, the best parties are the simplest. All anyone is hoping for is a good chat, something to drink, and enough to eat that they don’t feel like gnawing an arm off on the bus home. Unless you’re Jay Gatsby, no one expects a full bar, Michelin-starred catering or a live band.

That said, a theme is helpful for disguising the fact you’ve just thrown this thing together on the way home from work … And by theme, I mean something like, for instance, Christmas. Getting slightly more specific (Scandinavian Christmas, say, with glögg, spiced punch, smoked fish and rye crackers, Nordic beats playlist; or Mexican Christmas, with ponche navideño, cold beers or margaritas, and heaps of tortilla chips, salsa and guacamole, and Luis Miguel on the stereo) will focus your options on the inevitable supermarket sweep.

A festively fizzy, rosy-red aperitif based on a rustic Italian strawberry liqueur

Earlier this year, we launched a range of tiny cocktails in collaboration with drinks writer Tyler Zielinski to reimagine Italian classics in miniature form, all designed to serve as light, pre-dinner tipples. This one’s suitably red, to go with the festive season.

Matteo Pesce, head of beverage, with Tyler Zielinski for Bar Lina, London and Manchester

Make all the individual elements ahead of time, then, on the day, as if by magic, you can conjure up this amazing tower of choux buns and smother it in boozy chocolate sauce

Christmas is the perfect time for something a bit more extravagant and theatrical. And a very good way to achieve this is to bring a tower of puffy choux buns to the table and pour over a jugful of boozy chocolate sauce and coffee caramel while everyone looks on in awe. To help avoid any stress on the day, most of the elements can be made ahead: the chocolate sauce and caramel can be gently reheated before pouring, while the choux shells can be baked the day before and crisped up in the oven for 10 minutes before filling.

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.

The folding of the progressive youth-focused magazine into Vogue comes at turbulent time for journalism and the crumbling of feminist media

In late 2016, just a few weeks after Donald Trump won his first presidential election, Teen Vogue published a story that set the internet ablaze: “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America.”

The story garnered more than 1.3m hits, making it the magazine’s most-read story of the year. Elaine Welteroth, then the editor-in-chief, told NPR that the day it published, Teen Vogue sold “in that month, more copies of the magazine than we had that entire year”. It was a transformative moment for the publication: proof that a magazine long associated with Disney child stars and headlines like “Prom Fever!” could shine light on the political dimensions of young people’s lives.

Shaped by lockdown and two Trump presidencies, gen Z are grappling with a lot in love, dating and the bedroom

The sex lives of gen Z are of great interest – to politicians, to parents, to influencers and dating app executives and to you, apparently. Are gen Z so lonely they are falling in love with AI robots? Are they forming polycules across the US? Are they having enough sex? Are they having sex at all?

Gen Z is defined roughly as young Americans aged 13 to 28. This generation came of age with information about sex readily available to them, for better (the internet provides both sex education and community) and arguably for worse, too (in 2022, 54% of US teens reported first seeing online pornography at age 13 or younger). They are more likely to embrace non-traditional identities and are progressive on issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage – especially gen Z women.

From ICU meet-cutes to holiday sparks, readers share the unexpected moments that brought them lasting love this year

Ask someone who is single about their dating life, and the answer might sound like Oliver singing “Where is love?”

According to the headlines, nobody knows how to flirt, dating is dead, sex is over, and so is love.

It’s important to express your disagreement: for their sake as much as yours, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But first decide on what you aim to accomplish

• Read more Leading questions

How do I respond to someone who contributes to a conversation with “I’m not racist, but … ” and then inevitably proceeds to say something racist, such as talking about immigrants on benefits or getting priority for housing?

I’m referring to social occasions with people that I am not necessarily close to but rather acquaintances I may bump into semi-regularly. I feel myself getting simultaneously angry and tongue-tied and I mostly sit with my frustration to maintain some sense of harmony in the group.

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If you aren’t getting the quality time or intimacy you need, try these connection experiments to shake up interactions

Lately, life has felt like Groundhog Day: work, gym, sleep, repeat. Between a punishing work schedule, the grim weather and my desire to hibernate, my social life has suffered. I feel dissatisfied, restless and isolated. But I have plenty of friends and active group chats – I can’t be lonely, surely?

Wrong!

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?

Experts unpack the common myth of menstruating people’s cycles synchronizing when they’re in close proximity for long enough

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To be someone who menstruates means continuously trying to untangle fact from fiction. Is it true that you can’t swim on your period? No. Does the scent of a person menstruating attract bears? Also no.

There is one period rumor I’ve always kind of enjoyed, though: when women are in close proximity for long enough, their menstrual cycles will eventually sync up, also known as “menstrual synchrony”. I’ve had several friends over the years claim that my period had yanked them on to my cycle.

Body composition: a high BMI is associated with irregular cycles, says Kling.

Age: “Menses can be irregular in adolescents and as people approach menopause,” says Jensen.

Psychological stress: depression can disrupt a person’s cycle.

Medication, such as birth control.

Medical conditions, such as thyroid disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome or menopause.

Lifestyle factors, such as smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, diet and physical activity.

Our muscles, bones and organs are held together by a network of tissue that influences our every move. Is there a way we can use it to our advantage?

Fascia, the connective tissue that holds together the body’s internal structure, really hasn’t spent all that long in the limelight. Anatomists have known about its existence since before the Hippocratic oath was a thing, but until the 1980s it was routinely tossed in the bin during human dissections, regarded as little more than the wrapping that gets in the way of studying everything else. Over the past few decades, though, our understanding of it has evolved and (arguably) overshot – now, there are plenty of personal trainers who will insist that you should be loosening it up with a foam roller, or even harnessing its magical elastic powers to jump higher and do more press-ups. But what’s it really doing – and is there a way you can actually take advantage of it?

“The easiest way to describe fascia is to think about the structure of a tangerine,” says Natasha Kilian, a specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Pure Sports Medicine. “You’ve got the outer skin, and beneath that, the white pith that separates the segments and holds them together. Fascia works in a similar way: it’s a continuous, all-encompassing network that wraps around and connects everything in the body, from muscles and nerves to blood vessels and organs. It’s essentially the body’s internal wetsuit, keeping everything supported and integrated.” If you’ve ever carved a joint of meat, it’s the thin, silvery layer wrapped around the muscle, like clingfilm.

There are modest benefits to exercising on an empty stomach, but it’s more important to burn more energy than you’re consuming

‘There’s an element of truth to that,” says Javier Gonzalez, a professor of nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath. “When we exercise, we’re always burning a mix of fuels – mainly carbohydrates and fat. If you’ve fasted overnight, you’ll generally burn a bit more fat and less carbohydrate than if you’d eaten breakfast, especially one high in carbs.” But that doesn’t mean fasted workouts are better for weight loss.

“We can only store a small amount of carbohydrate as glycogen in our muscles and liver. Any extra energy – from carbs, fat or protein – eventually gets stored as body fat. So to lose fat, you need to be in an energy deficit: burning more energy than you consume. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter whether you’re fasted or fed – your body balances things out over time,” says Gonzalez.

The actor and crime novelist on telling stories, not slowing down and the lessons his mother taught him

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Bryan Brown gives a barely perceptible nod of welcome after I arrive by ferry at Balmain wharf, as he steps out from under the semicircular roof of the late 19th-century timber shelter here, the last of its kind on Sydney harbour.

“How’s it going?” he asks, his Australian drawl at once familiar from his roles in 80-plus films and television series.

Our student theatre group had the bright idea of using actual knives on stage for authenticity. The blade missed my aorta by about a centimetre

As someone committed to my craft, I’ve always believed that the show must go on. An accident in my second year of university took it to new extremes. It was the Exeter University theatre society’s annual play at the Edinburgh fringe and I’d landed the part of Cassius in Julius Caesar. The director decided that instead of killing himself, Cassius would die during a choreographed fight with his rival, Mark Antony. We also chose to use real knives, which sounds absurd, but we wanted to be authentic. The plan was for the actor playing Antony to grab my arm as I held the knife, and pretend to push it behind my back. We must have rehearsed the sequence 50 times.

We were about halfway through our month-long run, performing to a decently sized audience. Dressed in our togas, with the stage dark and moody, we began the fight as usual. Then something went wrong.

Now a hugely popular photographic genre, many women pay thousands to have intimate portraits taken of themselves by a professional. What do they get out of it?

A few hours into Brittany Witt’s boudoir shoot, with the mimosas kicking in and the music going strong, the photographer asked: “How do we feel about some completely nude photos?” Witt was lying on the bed in lingerie, in a studio in Texas, and hadn’t considered nudity an option. “I was like: ‘OK, we’re on this trust path.’” She undressed. The photographer, JoAnna Moore, covered Witt with body oil and squirted her with water, then asked her “to crawl across the floor with my full trust,” Witt says. “I did so. The pose was nude, and it was completely open. I wasn’t covered with a sheet. It was all out, it was all open, and it brought that worst level of self-doubt. I was terrified.”

Witt, 33, has come to see that terror as an important part of her experience. She used to be a competitive weightlifter. “I had a very masculine aura. I showed up in strength,” she says. At school and work – in the construction side of the oil and gas industry – she was “type A – scheduler, planner, had everything together, kind of led the group”. A turbulent home life when she was growing up led her to develop robust protection mechanisms which, in adulthood, acted as a block to relationships – issues she had been addressing with a life coach. But in that moment, on all-fours in Moore’s studio: “I felt those protections stripped away. There was nothing to hide behind, literally, figuratively.”

The number of rental properties without a lounge is surging, and people are having to eat and socialise in kitchens, bedrooms and stairwells. How can you relax and build community without a communal area?

‘Without a living room, your world becomes quite small,” says Georgie, a 27-year-old climbing and outdoor instructor. When she moved into a house-share with four strangers in 2023, she wasn’t worried about the lack of a living room. “I kind of thought it would be fine – I didn’t have that many options, and the house was by far the cheapest.”

The property she rented was in Leeds, and what had once been a lounge had gradually been turned into an inaccessible storage space. To make things worse, the kitchen was tiny: “By the time you put a table against the wall, you couldn’t sit or stand without getting in the way of the sink or the oven.”

Alan, 87, has devoted his life to trying to defy death, and has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death to be reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days

Up to 1,000 women globally await execution in prison, with mitigating factors such as child abuse and coercion ignored

• Read more in our Women in prison series

There are between 500 and 1,000 women on death row in at least 42 countries, according to a 2023 report by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The countries that execute the most women are also the countries that execute the most people, namely China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

According to Amnesty International, in 2024 an unknown number of women were executed in China, two were put to death in Egypt, 30 in Iran, one in Iraq, nine in Saudi Arabia and two in Yemen. Some countries, including China, North Korea and Vietnam, do not publish accurate data.

She’s the emerging star of this year’s dance show, wowing judges with her pasodoble. The pundit and former footballer talks about gentleness, bullying, her love of the Lionesses and why she’s never been so happy

The qualities that made Karen Carney an unstoppable winger on the football pitch – her speed and attack, and the sheer relentlessness of both – are more of a hindrance in the ballroom, for some of the dances at least. As the emerging star of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, she has had to learn to slow down, stand up straighter, to be softer, and it’s taken a lot of hard work. On week eight, she had just performed the American Smooth, and her pro partner Carlos Gu was tearfully describing Carney’s work ethic. Who could watch her trying to hold back her own tears, chewing on emotion like a particularly tough bit of gristle, and fail to see a woman who was giving it everything?

It was Carney’s dream to be on Strictly. The former England footballer, now TV pundit and podcaster, has just made it through week nine, performing an astonishing pasodoble at the all-important Blackpool week, and something will have gone very wrong if she doesn’t reach the final. The show has been struggling this year – a man described as a Strictly “star” was reportedly arrested in October on suspicion of rape last year, and the announcement from its longtime hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman that this will be their final series has been destabilising. But Carney says that for her, it has been an overwhelmingly positive time. “There’s a team spirit within the cast. Behind [the scenes], the team can’t do enough for you to have the best experience.”

Share a tip on your favourite route at this time of year – the best entry wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

The crunch of frost underfoot, lungfuls of crisp fresh air, landscapes sparkling in shafts of sunlight; a good winter walk is one of life’s simple pleasures. We want to hear about where you love to walk at this time of year in the UK. Perhaps it’s a bracing coastal path, a meandering woodland hike or a riverside trail. If there’s a lovely pub or cafe on the route so much the better!

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

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?

UK tour operators have reported an increase in solo traveller bookings, primarily among older women

Do you enjoy holidaying alone, unencumbered by demands from family, friends or partners?

If so, you are part of a growing number of women opting to go solo.

What prompted this change, and how has it affected you?

Are you bored of AI slop dominating news feeds? Fed up of “enshittification”? Tired out by “advice pollution”? Done with polarising content? Giving up social media and rediscovering the joy of boredom?

One study shows that time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has gone into decline since then, according to an analysis conducted for the Financial Times by digital audience insights company GWI.

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The Hong Kong tower block fire, Russian drone strikes in Kharkiv, floods in Thailand and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists