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!

She and her husband seem keen on their titles and accolades, and less enthusiastic about putting in the work that ordinarily goes with them

Meghan may be a resident of Montecito, California, but she is still the Duchess of Sussex, and she won’t let us commoners forget it. Despite their highly publicised separation from the royal family, Harry and Meghan remain extraordinarily loyal to their fancy titles. They have been asked before why they cling to their aristocratic honorifics and shrugged off the question. “What difference would that make?” Harry told Anderson Cooper in 2023, when asked why the couple didn’t renounce the titles.

The difference, Mr Duke, is that people might stop wondering why you and Megs are so keen on reminding everyone that you’re royals, while living in a country that famously has no monarchy. And this question isn’t going away. It keeps popping up and it’s back in the news now thanks to a Harper’s Bazaar cover story on Meghan.

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Hikers say authorities should have closed popular trail due to horrendous weather conditions, and camp staff offered minimal assistance

About 100 metres below the most challenging summit in a remote nature reserve in Chilean Patagonia, Australian woman Emily Dong was among a group of hikers who thought they were going to die.

Less than a day later, five hikers would be confirmed dead in the Torres del Paine national park after winds hit 190km/h and temperatures plummeted to –5C. Taking into account wind chill, it felt like –20C.

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.”

From picking your guests (always add a random) and your outfit, to coping with drunks and nudity, this is what you need to know

When I was young, I thought the worst thing you could do, as a host, was to run out of booze. Then, when I was less young, I thought it was to not have enough food, and now I am perfectly wise, I know that those things don’t matter at all, because you can always go to the shop. The important thing is not to look harried, and to not look that way, you need to not be that way.

Daniel Craig is joined by a sparkling array of talent including O’Connor, Glenn Close and Josh Brolin in this latest murder mystery with a religious undercurrent

Rian Johnson’s delectable new Knives Out film is a chocolate box: mouthwateringly delicious on the first layer and … well, perfectly tasty on the second. Daniel Craig returns as private detective Benoit Blanc, in a slightly more serious mode than before, with not as many droll suth’n phrases and quirky faux-naif mannerisms, but rocking a longer hairstyle and handsomely tailored three-piece suit.

Blanc arrives at a Catholic church in upstate New York to investigate the sensational murder of its presiding priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a ferocious clerical alpha male played by Josh Brolin, thundering his reactionary views from the pulpit. (That “Monsignor” title can only be bestowed by the pope incidentally: presumably Benedict XVI or John Paul II, not milksop liberals like Francis or Leo XIV.) And prime suspect is the sweet-natured, thoughtful junior priest Father Jud Duplenticy, amusingly played by Josh O’Connor, who was upset by the Monsignor’s heartless attitudes and was caught on video threatening to cut him out of the church like a cancer. Atheist Blanc faces off with the young priest, a worldview culture-clash which leads to an extraordinary encounter with the Resurrection itself.

Three men arrested as 26 rescue teams on site at Wang Fuk Court residential apartment complex in Tai Po district. Follow the latest updates live

• Full report: Death toll in Hong Kong tower block fire rises to 36 with 279 reported missing

• What we know so far about the blaze

• Bamboo scaffolding may be to blame for spread of Hong Kong tower block fire

The death toll has risen again to 44, fire officials say.

Officials said they are still having difficulties proceeding into the upper floors in some of the buildings in the residential complex as the fire continues.

Gunman ‘ambushed’ troops and both guardsmen are being treated for gunshot wounds, says assistant chief of DC’s Metropolitan police department

• Two West Virginia national guard members shot in Washington DC

Bloomberg’s scoop showing how Trump aide Steve Witkoff coached the Kremlin on the best way to get into Trump’s good graces is extraordinary for what it tells us about Witkoff’s dubious loyalties, and the Kremlin’s potential influence over US negotiation efforts. But equally interesting is the leaked material itself and where it may have come from.

The story covers two intercepted phone calls: one between Witkoff and top Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, and another between Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, who has been deeply involved in negotiations with the Trump White House.

Commission president says undermining of sovereign European nation would ‘open the doors for more wars’

The European Commission president has warned against “the unilateral carving up of a sovereign European nation” as Europe scrambles to assert influence over the US’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to European lawmakers in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen said Russia showed “no signs of true willingness to end the conflict” and continued to operate in a mindset unchanged since the days of Yalta – the much-criticised and misunderstood 1945 summit to settle the postwar order.

Venezuela president vows to defend ‘every inch’ of the country amid military buildup in Caribbean

• A visual guide to the US military presence in the Caribbean

Donald Trump has warned Nicolás Maduro he can “do things the easy way … or the hard way” as Venezuela’s authoritarian leader responded to the growing US pressure campaign by urging followers to prepare to defend “every inch” of the South American country.

Clad in woodland camouflage fatigues, Maduro told a rally in the capital, Caracas, it was their historic duty to fight foreign aggressors, just as the Venezuelan liberation hero Simón Bolívar did two centuries ago.

Chancellor unveils action on energy bills, rail fares and two-child benefit cap as she reveals £26bn tax rises

• How does freezing tax thresholds affect your tax bill?

• Budget 2025: key points at a glance

Rachel Reeves has declared her budget will slash living costs for millions including ending the two-child benefit limit and cutting energy bills, but taxes are set to soar by £26bn to plug a gaping shortfall in the public finances.

Major measures in the budget leaked early in a shock accidental release by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), triggering an instant bond market reaction an hour before the chancellor was on her feet in the House of Commons. After months of speculation, Reeves said her measures would put the public finances on a sustainable path while building “a fairer, a stronger, a more secure Britain” by tackling inflation and investing in large infrastructure projects.

Filing contained errors known as ‘hallucinations’, with attorneys arguing prosecutors’ office used AI in other cases

A California prosecutors’ office used artificial intelligence to file a motion in at least one criminal case, which contained errors known as “hallucinations”.

A prosecutor at the Nevada county district attorney’s office in northern California “recently used artificial intelligence in preparing a filing, which resulted in an inaccurate citation,” district attorney Jesse Wilson said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. “Once the error was discovered, the filing was immediately withdrawn.”

In a case echoing the Pelicot trial, dozens of women allege they were given hot drinks mixed with a diuretic to make them urinate. Three of them speak out here

When Sylvie Delezenne, a marketing expert from Lille, was job-hunting in 2015, she was delighted to be contacted on LinkedIn by a human resources manager at the French culture ministry, inviting her to Paris for an interview.

“It was my dream to work at the culture ministry,” she said.

OpenAI responds to lawsuit claiming its chatbot encouraged California teenager to kill himself

The maker of ChatGPT has said the suicide of a 16-year-old was down to his “misuse” of its system and was “not caused” by the chatbot.

The comments came in OpenAI’s response to a lawsuit filed against the San Francisco company and its chief executive, Sam Altman, by the family of California teenager Adam Raine.

French thriller starring Benoît Magimel has been accused of stealing its story from a 1976 action film

A new Apple TV thriller has been pulled from the schedules because of accusations of plagiarism. French drama The Hunt was due to be released on 3 December, but it has been hit by allegations of similarity to a 1976 film adaptation of a novel, Shoot.

The Hunt stars Cannes and three-time César award winner Benoît Magimel and two-time César winner Mélanie Laurent, who has featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. But press releases about The Hunt, as well as its official trailers, have now been removed from Apple’s site.

Rex is an uber-macho hunter who, together with four equally testosterone-addled buddies, embarks on a hunting trip in the Canadian wilderness. But their weekend is cut short by a rival band of hunters they encounter in the forest, one of whom inexplicably takes a potshot at Rex’s party and grazes the head of one of his buddies. Another of Rex’s friends returns fire, killing the shooter. From there Rex and company scurry off and head back to civilisation. Rex, however, becomes convinced that the dead man’s companions are going to come after him and his friends.

A new feature on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter allows users to see the location of other accounts. It has resulted in a firestorm of recriminations

When X rolled out a new feature revealing the locations of popular accounts, the company was acting to boost transparency and clamp down on disinformation. The result, however, has been a circular firing squad of recriminations, as users turn on each other enraged by the revelation that dozens of popular “America first” and pro-Trump accounts originated overseas.

The new feature was enabled over the weekend by X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, who called it the first step in “securing the integrity of the global town square.” Since then many high-engagement accounts that post incessantly about US politics have been “unmasked” by fellow users.

In dozen of cases officers have used Marsy’s Law, which gives victims of crime anonymity, to shield their names

For months, Ohio police officer Connor Grubb and his department attempted to hide his identity following an incident in which he shot and killed Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn daughter in a Kroger parking lot outside Columbus in August 2023.

Grubb, who on 21 November was acquitted of murder and other charges, claimed that Young, who was stopped for allegedly stealing, attempted to drive over him – which would make him a victim of a crime and eligible to protect his identity from public view through a legal provision called Marsy’s Law. Police footage of the killing shows Young slowly driving the car forward and to the right before Grubb fires through the windshield and into Young’s chest.

As the government, Marineland of Canada and activists remain at loggerheads over whales’ fate, health and freedom of beloved animals hangs in balance

Jelly Bean’s son Bertie Botts is an adorable little “ham sandwich”. Orion – nicknamed “Onion Ring” – is a large but fiercely protective friend. Zephyr has “ants in his pants” and wiggles like a worm. Lillooet is the “biggest cuddle bug” with a heart of gold.

Thirty captive beluga whales in a Canadian amusement park have become pawns in a tussle between a shuttered park, local and national governments and animal rights activists.

The president’s bizarre insistence that the dead Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker series should return resulted in a shock announcement this week. Maybe there’s more to come …

So far, Donald Trump’s control of the media has involved a lot more stick than carrot. Thanks to a combination of outbursts and indiscriminate legal threats, the powerful figures at the centre of a rapidly consolidating industry find themselves with little option but to bend to the president’s every demand. Unfortunately, what he’s demanding is Rush Hour 4.

Just a few days ago, this seemed like a weird overreach, like when Trump used a keynote speech at a McDonald’s to demand more tartare sauce on Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. But in this case it really happened. Trump told majority Paramount Skydance shareholder Larry Ellison that he wished someone would make Rush Hour 4, and now Rush Hour 4 is being made.

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.

‘She wasn’t very fond of Skipper, our jack russell, who loved the hose. But they were dancing together – two beings in the afternoon sunlight, having their own conversation’

I am an only child. My father was killed in a car accident when I was 14 and my mother was 47. We were really tightly bonded after that. She worked at a university and was an artist: she painted and carved birds. She was a wonderful person, who lit up a room and was someone everyone wanted to be around. She was very giving.

Later in life, she developed dementia. I left my teaching position to stay home and look after her. She was very active – she would go outside and rip up bulbs, put the horses in the wrong stalls. It was very stressful to come home – I would enter the driveway and think: “Oh my word!”

Three ICC judges have been put on a sanctions list with terrorists after approving an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister. This is the charade of the ‘rules-based order’

The fate of one French judge is a case study in the west’s long unravelling. Nicolas Guillou cannot shop online. When he used Expedia to book a hotel in his own country, the reservation was cancelled within hours. He is “blacklisted by much of the world’s banking system”, unable to use most bank cards.

Guillou, you see, has been sanctioned by the United States, putting him on a 15,000-strong list alongside al-Qaida terrorists, drug cartels and Vladimir Putin. Why? Because alongside two other judges of the international criminal court pre-trial chamber I, he approved arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Deif, the former commander of Hamas’s military wing. Guillou and his colleagues had “actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel”, the US claimed when imposing the sanctions in June. All are now barred from entering the US – but that is the least of the consequences.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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National news organizations have treated the borough like flyover country. It’s time to change that

As the extraordinary Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani shows, there’s a new bellwether in American politics.

For years, Ohio played that role. In every election from 1964 to 2016, the state voted for the winning presidential candidate, and every four years journalists would travel there to interview voters in Columbus and Cincinnati, Dayton and Youngstown. But in 2020 Biden won without carrying the state, and today Ohio is deeply red, costing it its bellwether status. Several other states once considered battlegrounds – Iowa, Missouri, and Florida – have also turned firmly Republican.

Michael Massing is an American writer based in New York City. He is a former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review

It gets into its twentysomething characters’ heads in a way that’s fresh and real. You either get it, or you don’t

It’s been a while since a TV show came along that people leaned into losing their minds about, but finally, and after a year of otherwise mediocre programming, we have one. I Love LA, the HBO comedy set among wannabe gen Z influencers, is only halfway through its eight-episode run, but it is already comfortably the best show of the year. And more importantly, it has triggered all the signifiers of event TV: obsessive repeat viewings, line-by-line coverage, big platform profiles of its stars and weekly recaps on Vulture, New York magazine’s website. Within days of each episode airing, people have transcribed and uploaded the entire script, which – with the best will in the world – no one’s doing for Riot Women.

The surprising thing about this is not the fact that it’s the first show by Rachel Sennott, the show’s 30-year-old creator and star, or that the action takes place in a tiny world in east LA, but that content about influencers can be watchable at all. To date, millennial and older writers have tended to use social media as a lumbering plot device – oh my God, something’s gone “viral!” – or as a stand-in for the collapse of all known standards. You probably haven’t watched these because nobody did, but take your pick from: HBO’s one-season disaster The Girls on the Bus, in which an old-media reporter covers a US election race only to find that influencers – those pesky kids! – have stolen her patch. Or the equally horrific Netflix flop Girlboss, loosely based on the memoirs of Sophia Amoruso, the early influencer, and which not even a cameo by Cole Escola could save. Or Flack, the deathly Anna Paquin-fronted show about publicists trying to manage their clients’ social media, and an early red flag for which was the use of the word “maven” in the show’s publicity.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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What does it mean to lose a language? And what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently

There’s an Irish saying, tír gan teanga, tír gan anam: a country without a language is a country without a soul. Representatives of some of Europe’s estimated 60 minority languages – or minoritised, as they define them – met in Barcelona recently to discuss what it means to lose a language, and what it takes to save it.

Language diversity is akin to biodiversity, an indicator of social wellbeing, but some of Europe’s languages are falling into disuse. Breton, for example, is dying out because its speakers are dying, and keeping languages alive among young people is challenging in an increasingly monolingual digital world.

Stephen Burgen is a freelance writer who reports on Spain

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Millions of sexual violent survivors will not live a day longer with this torturous injustice

It began as I finished Nobody’s Girl, the torturous and devastating account of Virginia Giuffre’s life. It was what I can only describe as a kind of corporeal attack, an existential clutch followed by days of such powerful anxiety my body was taken in bouts of uncontrollable shaking. A sense of not mattering, a virulent dread and dissolving into an all-encompassing nothingness impossible to shake. How many times as a child, after being abused by my father, had I experienced this sense of erasure and disappearance?

Feeling that no matter what I did, what I accomplished, how hard I tried to lift my head above the parapet I would be cast out forever. This attack lasted days. Perhaps it was Virginia’s story, parts of which felt much like my own. Raped as a child by her father, then raped by her father’s good friend, then raped when she ran away, then the years of being raped by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, then being sexually trafficked to powerful and sadistic men to be raped again.

• Club on worst run since 1953-54 after 4-1 rout

• ‘I have got a lot of support from above’

Arne Slot said it was understandable that questions were being asked over his future as Liverpool head coach, but he insisted he retained the support of the club’s hierarchy following another heavy defeat, this time against PSV Eindhoven.

Liverpool fell to a ninth defeat in 12 games, the club’s worst run since being relegated in 1953-54, as they were picked apart by the Eredivisie champions on a punishing night at Anfield. Liverpool last lost three successive games by a three-goal margin or more in December 1953.

This was billed as a clash of two of the best teams in Europe and for most of a cold evening in north London it felt like it. An absorbing game that ebbed and flowed throughout had Bayern Munich’s rising teenager Lennart Karl cancel out Jurrien Timber’s opening goal from a corner before substitutes Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli sealed a deserved win for the home side. It maintains their 100% record in the Champions League and sends them top of the table.

Harry Kane let it slip in the buildup that scoring against Arsenal gives him “a bit more joy” than any other club. But the England striker with 27 goals for his club to his name this season barely had a sniff as a Bayern Munich side that had also won their first four matches in the Champions League group stage and had been unbeaten in 21 previous games this season were taught a lesson. A place in the knockout stages now seems a mere formality.

There was no shame in this defeat for Tottenham, which represented progress after the north London derby disaster at Arsenal on Sunday. There were measures of encouragement for the crucial Premier League home game against Fulham on Saturday, most notably in the shape of Randal Kolo Muani, the striker who is on loan from Paris Saint-Germain.

Kolo Muani set up Richarlison for 1-0 and scored with a stinging volley for 2-1. There would be another for him before this wild Champions League tie was over. They were his first in Spurs colours, a reminder to his parent club about his quality. After his move to PSG from Eintracht Frankfurt in 2023 for an initial €75m, he endured a difficult 18 months.

• Player ingested a banned stimulant from rubber crumb

• She has been exonerated but talks of ‘terrible moment’

The Norwegian club Vålerenga have called for anti-doping regulations to be strengthened after an extraordinary case in which a player from their women’s team was found to have ingested a banned stimulant from rubber crumb in an artificial pitch.

A seven-month saga concluded on Wednesday when the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) chose not to appeal against the decision of Anti-Doping Norway (Adno) that the player was faultless. But the landmark case has highlighted the risks to footballers of environmental exposure to banned substances and opened up the possibility of further controversies emerging around the thousands of synthetic pitches across Europe.

• Indian city’s organisers promise: ‘We are well prepared’

• Number of sports will increase from 10 to 15-17

Ahmedabad has vowed not to make the same mistakes as Delhi in 2010 and to “lay the foundations for the next 100 years” after being confirmed as the host of the 2030 Commonwealth Games.

Organisers said that 15 to 17 sports would feature in 2030 – up from the 10 that will feature in Glasgow next summer – including athletics, swimming, table tennis, bowls and netball. Twenty20 cricket and triathlon are on a provisional list, with the process to determine the final list of sports starting next month.

• Real Madrid edge home 4-3 in Greece

• Giménez heads home in injury time for Atlético

Kylian Mbappé scored the second-fastest hat-trick in the Champions League as he helped himself to all four goals in Real Madrid’s 4-3 win at Olympiacos.

The La Liga leaders were trailing to Chiquinho’s early strike at the Stadio Georgios Karaiskakis before Mbappé intervened with a seven-minute treble after 22, 24 and 29 minutes.

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It is measure of just how much more shameless and obsequious Fifa has become under the presidency of Gianni Infantino that news of its decision to unsuspend Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal’s first two group games at next year’s Geopolitics World Cup has been greeted with little more than an amused, weary eye-roll at the brass neckery of it all. Issued with a straight red card for violent conduct during a defeat at the hands of the Republic of Ireland, the preening Portuguese showpony was issued with a standard three-match ban, the first game of which he spent on the Naughty Step during his side’s subsequent 9-1 demolition of Armenia. His was an absence that didn’t so much make the heart grow fonder, as the team grow in stature and confidence.

Surely the benchmark for ‘lamping’ your teammate (yesterday’s Football Daily) was set in January 1979 by ‘Killer Hales’ and Mike ‘Flash’ Flanagan at the Valley. Without the benefit of today’s array of camera angles and pundits to know-it-all, it was difficult to judge who started it, but the football reasoning was that Killer thought Flash had delayed a pass and prevented him scoring. However, there were some mutterings about off-field tensions and they went their separate ways. Five years later, amazingly, they were both back in the Addicks’ front line” – Geoff Williams.

I found it interesting that a slap to the head did not cause Michael Keane to fall to the pitch and roll around in apparent agony. Surely Keane should have been booked for his embarrassingly flagrant act of simulated stoicism?” – Ian Potter.

Idrissa Gueye’s straight red might turn out to be the least of his worries. Apparently his reward for winning this eliminator is a crack at the title against local favourite, Duncan Ferguson” – Allastair McGillivray.

• Newey: ‘I have seen great talent within our team’

• Current chief Andy Cowell to become strategy officer

Adrian Newey, regarded as one of the best engineers in Formula One history, will become Aston Martin team principal next season.

Newey committed his long-term future to Aston Martin in September 2024 after his departure from Red Bull sparked a bidding war for the Briton’s services.

• Verona venue to host Milano-Cortina opening ceremony

• Critics see changes to 2,000-year-old arena as blasphemy

A 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheatre is to be made fully accessible to people with disabilities before the Winter Paralympic Games in Milano‑Cortina, as organisers prioritise legacy with 100 days to go.

The conversion of the Arena di Verona, which will host the Paralympics opening ceremony, includes the addition of a lift and toilets to a structure older than the Colosseum. Described by the Milano-Cortina 2026 chief executive, Andrea Varnier, as “the symbol of our Paralympic Games”, he admits the conversion has also been considered as an act of “blasphemy” by some traditionalists.

Israeli military and security service say ‘broad counter-terrorism operation’ in Tubas to continue for several days

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers supported by armoured vehicles have conducted raids in the Palestinian town of Tubas near Nablus in the biggest such military deployment by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza last month.

Palestinian media reported that a curfew was imposed on Tuesday night on Tubas and some neighbouring communities, roads were closed by earthen barriers and families forced from their homes to allow Israeli forces to use the buildings.

Swimmers aged in their 20s bitten at Kylies beach in Crowdy Bay early on Thursday morning, with woman dying at the scene

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A woman has died after a shark attack on the New South Wales mid-north coast at Kylies beach.

NSW police said the woman, aged in her 20s, had been killed at the beach at Crowdy Bay on Thursday morning.

Officers say they are closing borders and suspending poll as president and main rival both claim victory

Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau have announced they are taking “total control” of the west African country, three days after elections that both the two main presidential contenders claim to have won.

Military officers said they were suspending Guinea-Bissau’s electoral process and closing its borders, in a statement read out at the army’s headquarters in the capital Bissau and broadcast on state TV. They said they had formed “the high military command for the restoration of order”, which would rule the country until further notice.

State prosecutor dismisses charges against US president and others in election interference case

The case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia ended on Wednesday with a filing for dismissal by the state prosecutor who took over after the removal of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney.

Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, confirmed to the Guardian that “it’s over”after superior court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page order on Wednesday dismissing the 2020 racketeering case. Skandalakis said he would be making no further comments about the matter.

Bruna Ferreira, who has a child with the White House press secretary’s brother, is now in custody at an ICE facility

• US politics live – latest updates

Karoline Leavitt’s nephew’s mother has been detained by US immigration agents in Revere, Massachusetts, as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Bruna Ferreira, a Boston-area resident who migrated with her family to the US from Brazil as a child, is now in custody at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana, according to the Boston radio station WBUR, which first reported the arrest.

The Mohana of Pakistan’s Sindh province once thrived on the lake but pollution and drought have caused the fragile ecosystem to collapse, along with their way of life

At the mouth of Lake Manchar, gentle lapping disturbs the silence. A small boat cuts through the water, propelled by a bamboo pole scraping the muddy bottom of the canal.

Bashir Ahmed manoeuvres his frail craft with agility. His slender boat is more than just a means of transport. It is the legacy of a people who live to the rhythm of water: the Mohana. They have lived for generations on the waters of Lake Manchar in Sindh province, a vast freshwater mirror covering nearly 250 sq km. The lake, once the largest in Pakistan, was long an oasis of life. Now, it is dying.

Bashir Ahmed in his boat on the lake, next to simple huts built on top of the right bank outfall drain

EPA had previously said rule reducing fine particle matter from vehicles and industrial sources could prevent thousands of premature deaths a year

The Trump administration is seeking to abandon a rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution, arguing that the Biden administration did not have authority to set the tighter standard on pollution from tailpipes, smokestacks and other industrial sources.

The action follows moves by the administration last week to weaken federal rules protecting millions of acres of wetlands and streams and roll back protections for imperiled species and the places they live. In a separate action, the interior department proposed new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems.

Emotions ran high at the UN climate summit in Brazil, which was hit by its first major protest in four years

It was a tense moment. A group of about 50 people from the Munduruku, an Indigenous people in the Amazon basin, had blocked the entrance to the Cop30 venue in protest, causing long lines of delegates to snake down access roads, simmering in the morning heat.

Drone footage shows Hat Yai in southern Thailand inundated by flood waters. Heavy flooding continued to damage cities and provinces near the Malaysian border, causing dozens of deaths and prompting evacuations with more rains forecast

Mark Damazer says over-assertive board and executives feeling ‘embattled’ played into departures of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness

A “toxic mix” of over-assertive BBC board members and executives feeling under siege contributed to the resignations of its two most senior editorial leaders, an influential former BBC figure has warned.

A bitter row is still raging over the events that led up to the resignations of the director general, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News.

Prime minister says Reform leader’s explanations about alleged comments are ‘unconvincing to say the least’

Keir Starmer has called on Nigel Farage to apologise to his school contemporaries who claim the Reform leader racially abused them while at Dulwich College.

The Guardian reported last week the testimony of Peter Ettedgui, who said a 13-year-old Farage “would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers”.

It has been weeks since the ground opened up under Malcolm McKenzie’s prized Mini, leading him into a bureaucratic ‘nightmare’

The first Malcolm McKenzie knew of his problem was when a neighbour banged on his door and told him his beloved Mini had fallen into a hole.

“I went out expecting a small pothole under a wheel or something. But when I went out to take a look, I realised, oh, that really is a proper hole,” he said.

Paul Doyle, who drove into a crowd of celebrating football fans in May, changes plea unexpectedly

A former Royal Marine has pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial to ploughing his car into a crowd at a Liverpool FC victory parade, injuring 134 people including two babies.

Paul Doyle, 54, deliberately drove his Ford Galaxy at football fans after tailgating an ambulance down a packed road that was closed to non-emergency vehicles on 26 May.

Verdict is fresh blow for former French president who was released from prison only this month in connection with separate conviction

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been convicted of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid, after the country’s highest court rejected his final appeal.

Sarkozy, who was the country’s rightwing president between 2007 and 2012, was convicted of hiding illegal overspending for his unsuccessful re-election campaign that was shaped by vast American-style rallies.

MEPs pass resolution to help parents tackle growing dangers of addictive internet platforms

Children under 16 should be banned from using social media unless their parents decide otherwise, the European parliament says.

MEPs passed a resolution on age restrictions on Wednesday by a large majority. Although not legally binding, it raises pressure for European legislation amid growing alarm about the mental health risks to children of unfettered internet access.

Reform UK leader has again denied allegations about his behaviour as a schoolboy but what are the facts?

Nigel Farage has again denied allegations of racism as a schoolboy and repeated his claim that some had been concocted because people disliked his politics.

During a press conference, he snapped at one reporter who asked about the issue, saying: “I think we’ve gone quite a long way towards answering all this, don’t you?”

In a Truth Social post, the president lashed out at journalist Katie Rogers after an article questioned whether he was slowing down

Donald Trump lashed out on Wednesday against a New York Times reporter, calling her “ugly inside and out” in his latest personal insult against female members of the media after last week calling another “piggy”.

In a Truth Social post, Trump criticized the newspaper for an article suggesting he was running low on energy in his 80th year, insisting he had “never worked so hard in my life”.

When the great artist saw a shocking play by Martin McDonagh about the torture of children, she asked him for more dark stories. As the vivid, extraordinary works they triggered go on show, the playwright looks back

In the summer of 2004, Paula Rego wrote to Martin McDonagh asking for permission to name some pictures after his play The Pillowman. His shocking investigation into the relationship between art and life featured two brothers under interrogation for the torture and murder of children. One is a writer whose stories are summarised by an investigator as: “A hundred and one ways to skewer a fucking five-year-old.”

Rego, then a 69-year-old grandmother as well as a world famous artist, had been taken to see the play at the National Theatre in London by one of her daughters, who knew it would resonate with her. “The brutality and beauty and humour rang very true and like something I had known all my life,” she wrote to McDonagh. “I am actually Portuguese, although I have lived in London for 50 years, and our stories are brusque and cruel like yours.”

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.

Oliver Laxe’s Cannes prize winner about a father’s search for his missing daughter starts impressively then descends into Pythonesque perdition

Oliver Laxe leads his audience into a wilderness of non-meaning in this strange and unrewardingly oppressive film that was the joint jury prize winner at Cannes this year and the recipient of all sorts of critical superlatives. For me, Sirāt is the most overpraised movie of the year – exasperating and bizarre in ways that become less and less interesting and more and more ridiculous as the film wears on.

There is a moment of tragic horror halfway through the action that is not absorbed or clarified and whose (presumed) emotional and spiritual consequences are not conveyed. It simply looks coercive and even slightly farcical. The later explosions in the desert are, frankly, Pythonesque. And yet, as with Laxe’s earlier film Mimosas there are some wonderful visual moments and stylish shots of the Moroccan desert landscape. Veteran Spanish actor Sergi López gives Sirāt some ballast.

Underpowered David Michôd film fails to land the story of the groundbreaking 90s female boxing champion and the horrendous abuse she faced at home

An uninspired and undirected performance from Sydney Sweeney means there’s a fatal lack of force in this movie from director and co-writer David Michôd. It manages to be unsubtle without being powerful. His subject is Christy Salters Martin, who under the grinning tutelage of Don King became the world’s most successful female boxing champion in the 90s and 00s but faced a misogynist nightmare outside the ring.

The film fails to deliver the power of the traditional boxing movie, or the real importance of a story about domestic abuse and coercive control, or the sensory detail of true crime. It relies on the simple fact of a woman pioneeringly taking on what had once been solely a man’s sport and relapses into cliche. Christy, with her frizzy hair and brown contact lenses, doesn’t seem to plausibly develop as a character throughout the film, and it sometimes seems as if Michôd is slightly more engaged with her gargoyle of a husband-slash-manager Jim Martin, played by Ben Foster with a standard-issue combover and paunch.

A game cast and some decent twists help to elevate this passably entertaining London-set Christmas offering about a department store robbery

We’re a few weeks into the annual Netflix Christmas dump and standards have already fallen below freezing. In both Alicia Silverstone’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas and Minka Kelly’s Champagne Problems, motions were lethargically, and cheaply, gone through without any seasonal sparkle added, a low bar once again set for the next month and change.

So while there’s nothing all that remarkable about the streamer’s latest festive effort, crime caper turned romcom Jingle Bell Heist, there’s just about enough to give it an edge over its more anemic peers. Rather than being set in Snowflakeville or some other absurdly named small town in Middle America (while clearly being filmed in Canada), it’s shot on location in London during Christmas 2023 (directed by Mike Flanagan’s long-time cinematographer Michael Fimognari). The city does a great deal of heavy-lifting with every pub, caff and high street helping to conjure up a real sense of place usually absent in such territory (it also means no need for increasingly distracting fake CG snow). There are roles for British comedy stars like Peter Serafinowicz and Amandaland’s wonderful Lucy Punch and the soundtrack opts for alternative holiday songs from Low and Run-DMC over yet another easily affordable cover of All I Want for Christmas Is You. There’s also a plot that isn’t quite as rote as we’re used to with no career-minded woman waiting to be tamed by a family-craving hunk. These might not sound like major, applause-worthy diversions but in the hopelessly generic, and at times unforgivably lazy, world of Netflix Christmas fodder, it’s not nothing.

Cliff, who has died aged 81, took every opportunity that he was presented with, and created plenty more himself. It resulted in a career path like no other

• Jimmy Cliff: A life in pictures

When Jimmy Cliff died, reggae and the music world in general lost one of its most accomplished opportunists. The less sympathetic might have called him a chancer, but from the very beginnings there was little he wouldn’t try if he thought it would advance either himself or the music. Over the years I got to know him, both from interviews and sometimes just hanging out, so many of his anecdotes ended with the words: “Well I wasn’t going to say no, was I?” I wasn’t fully joking when I told him it should be his catchphrase.

But that was Jimmy Cliff, a charismatic combination of charm, bravery, humour and an ability to see beyond what was put in front of him. Throughout his career he frequently shifted away from standard reggae industry practice, often expanding the music’s horizons and options.

Fans and historians have spent 60 years debating what the band means – and which member is greatest. Will the returning Anthology project and Sam Mendes’s planned biopics create new arguments?

The early notion of the Beatles as “four lads that shook the world” has been subject to many shifts in emphasis over the decades. They have been valorised, vilified, mythologised, misunderstood and even ignored. The release this month of the new Beatles Anthology – an expansion of the original mid-1990s compilation with CD, vinyl reissues and the documentary series streaming on Disney+ – is testament not just to their enduring appeal but also to how the constant reframing of their story reveals as much about our changing tastes. The 2025 edition arrives as a full-scale revisitation of the original project, bringing with it a remastered, expanded documentary series and a substantial reissue campaign.

What is more likely to reshape the way we see the band, though, is the addition of a brand-new ninth episode to the original TV series, built from recently excavated footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr working together in 1994–95. Far more intimate and informal than the original broadcast, this material captures the three surviving Beatles rehearsing, reflecting and simply spending time as old friends rather than cultural monuments, albeit still with the “kid brother” tensions between Harrison and McCartney. They work on Free As a Bird and Now and Then, jokingly speculate on a stadium reunion tour and generally talk about their history, loss and their unfinished musical ideas. It’s a rare, humanising coda to the well-worn story. With new material like this, and with more than that axiomatic 50 years of distance since the Beatles dissolved in a blizzard of lawsuits and “funny paper”, are we finally approaching a unified theory of everything fab?

Barbican Hall, London
From ghost-story minimalism to wartime memory, Rani’s two new works, premiered here, shimmer with imagination, although issues of balance diminished the piano concerto

In a crowded post-minimalist world, Hania Rani has carved herself out a respectable niche. The Polish pianist and composer’s erudite yet accessible work often defies genres, appealing to classical, jazz and electronic aficionados alike. This concert comprised two 40-minute premieres and fell pretty firmly into the classical category, yet the lively audience skewed significantly younger than the Brahms and Beethoven crowd. Stylishly performed by the envelope-pushing Manchester Collective, it felt like quite the happening.

Shining occupied the first half, a piece devised for the kind of 12-piece band favoured by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. It’s based on a short story by Jon Fosse; a stream of consciousness tale of a man lost in the woods at night. Opening with sinister discords on bass clarinet, bassoon and horn, its motifs shifted and spun. A pall of smoke and half-lit players conjured images of a ghost story told around a campfire at midnight.

Depot, Cardiff
Twenty-five years on from their first UK tour, the Swedish band are at their cartoonish, snarling best, eager to prove themselves rather than wallow in nostalgia

‘I’m powering clothes, that’s how electric I am,” Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist quips, the trim on his LED-encrusted suit glowing as he climbs into the crowd. It’s funny, but on this evidence, it’s not really a joke. As an exhilarating Tick Tick Boom crashes back into the room, it’s easy to believe that the Hives could prop up the National Grid.

Twenty-five years on from their first UK tour, the Swedish punk’n’rollers are full of piss and vinegar, reinvigorated after breaking a decade-plus recording hiatus with two well-received albums in three years, all while playing some of the biggest shows of their career, from stadium support slots with Arctic Monkeys to an upcoming night at London’s Alexandra Palace.

Working in a bookshop while failing to write a novel, the narrator admits to being a ‘living cliche’ in this bitter black comedy

“I had become a living cliche: the cantankerous bookseller,” the narrator declares a third of the way through John Tottenham’s debut novel. “No book or movie that included a scene set in a bookstore was complete without such a stock ‘character’.” That’s one way to pre-empt criticism, and Sean Hangland is just such a stock figure. Embittered, rude, apathetic, resentful of the success and happiness of others and intellectually snobbish, he’s a 48-year-old aspiring writer who makes ends meet, just about, working in an independent bookshop in a gentrifying part of LA.

He worries about turning 50 having made nothing of his life. He notes, lugubriously, that he barely seems to get any writing done and that – having no gift for plot, characterisation or prose – the novel he claims to be trying to produce will be lousy anyway. He keeps bumping into old friends whose books are being published by hip independent presses or who have acquired nice girlfriends, or both. His teeth are in bad shape.

The anthropologist and father of New York’s mayor-elect offers a revisionist view of modern Ugandan history

Children of Ugandan Indians are having a bit of a moment. Electropop boasts Charlie XCX; statecraft, the Patels: Priti the shadow foreign secretary, Kash the FBI boss. And while the ones who go into politics have tended to be conservative, we now have a counterexample in Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who clinched the New York mayoralty at the beginning of this month.

The anomaly is best explained by the politics of his father, Mahmood Mamdani. The apple, it seems, did not roll especially far down the postcolonial hillside. Mahmood, professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University, has long styled himself as the left’s answer to VS Naipaul. Where the Nobel-winning curmudgeon surveyed postcolonial Africa with disdain, revelling in the wreckage of independence, Mamdani presents a more forgiving view: pathos instead of pity, paradox instead of despair. If independence didn’t live up to the promise, he argues, it was because the colonised had been dealt a losing hand.

Genius and arrogance play leading roles in a new biography of the man who helped uncover the structure of DNA

Most people could tell you that Francis Crick, together with James Watson, discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and shaped our understanding of how genes work. Fewer know that Crick also played a key role in modern neuroscience and inspired our continuing efforts to understand the biological basis of consciousness.

Crick once said the two questions that interested him most were “the borderline between the living and the non-living, and the workings of the brain”, questions that were usually discussed in religious or mystical terms but that he believed could be answered by science. In his new biography of the Nobel prize-winning scientist, Matthew Cobb, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, does an admirable job of capturing the rare thinker who not only set himself such ambitious goals but made remarkable progress in achieving them, radically remaking two scientific disciplines in the process.

The moon becomes the witty image of an isolated and contemptuously neglected elderly relation

Missing You

Slow Puncture by Miles Burrows (Carcanet Press, £12.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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 …

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the markets in Japan and the US. But in Europe, a technologically superior rival was making it look like an ancient relic

There’s an old maxim that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as it is anywhere else. Nowadays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you were brought up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this chunky contraption essentially was the only game in town – the company had Mario after all, and its vice-like hold on third-party developers created a monopoly for major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers ruled the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior rival.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the autumn of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based around the famed Z80 CPU (used in home computers such as the Spectrum, Amstrad and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it boasted 8kb of RAM, a 64-colour palette and the ability to generate 32 sprites on screen at one time – making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

The artist and his wife, novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave, lost seven pregnancies before their daughter was born. They explain how his nude paintings of her helped them process their grief – and eventual joy

‘The subject comes with huge baggage and I like that,” says Tom de Freston. The painter and I are in his studio in a village outside Oxford, surrounded by nude portraits of his wife, the novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave. “I wanted to ask, ‘What does it mean as a male artist to be looking at the female figure? And where does the agency sit?’”

We have been talking about Titian’s Poesie series, how those paintings – commissioned by the most powerful man in the world at the time, King Philip II of Spain – fetishise the naked female body. “Obviously there’s other things going on in them … I think Titian’s often prodding at morality and power,” De Freston says.

Brett Ratner, accused of sexual misconduct by several women, will bring his hit franchise back to the big screen

Rush Hour 4 is reportedly a go at Paramount – after Donald Trump intervened on behalf of the movie.

The studio will now release the next sequel by Brett Ratner, the director, who had retreated from Hollywood after numerous allegations of sexual misconduct during the #MeToo movement.

A Shakers-inspired exhibition has united the three-time Oscar winner and conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra

A small-town police chief of plainspoken decency in Fargo. A working-class mother driven to seek justice for her daughter in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A modest, resilient woman finding dignity in life on the road in Nomadland.

The actor Frances McDormand’s three Oscar-winning performances display rare versatility but have empathy at their core. But qualities were on display last week when she joined the conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra at the opening of an exhibition featuring adult-sized cradles.

It’s not the sexiest of garments. It arguably looks more like a discarded fishing net. And yet it has cast a spell over the internet

Name: Elphaba’s sex cardigan.

Age: Elphaba is a character in Wicked: For Good – Jon M Chu’s fantasy film, the sequel to last year’s mega hit Wicked Part 1, which was adapted from the 2003 stage musical, and has just been released. That was loosely based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, which was a reimagining of L Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland.

As I watched the news about Australia’s devastating bushfires in 2020 I felt compelled to help. It was the start of a new relationship with nature, and a reminder of my childhood joie de vivre

As hookup sites go, it was in another league. I was looking for a different kind of soulmate and I was spoilt for choice. Would it be Floyd, “a stylish poser and a winner of hearts”? Or Bobby, “who loves cuddling and is a bit of a showoff”? Or could it be the “beautiful and incredibly sweet Morris with a gentle nature”? One stood out. Not only was he “very affectionate” but he was also “a bit of a troublemaker – always exploring and often found sitting on the rocks”. Just what I was looking for; I swiped right. That’s how I met Jarrah. My koala.

A month before, in 2020, I’d seen a newsflash about the bushfires in Australia. The effect on the continent’s wildlife was devastating. An estimated 61,000 koalas had been killed or injured among 143 million other native mammals. There were two things I felt I could do from the UK: one was to make koala mittens to protect their burnt paws (following a pattern I found online); and two, I could adopt a koala and send monthly donations to protect them in the wild. So I joined the Australian Koala Foundation, which is dedicated to the marsupials’ survival.

Eke out that last stubborn scrape of Marmite and turn it into a dream glaze for crisp roast potatoes

I never peel a roastie, because boiling potatoes with their skins on, then cracking them open, gives you the best of both worlds: fluffy insides and golden, craggy edges. Especially when you finish roasting them in a glaze made with butter (or, even better, saved chicken, pork, beef or goose fat) and the last scrapings from a Marmite jar.

These iced Danish pastries stuffed with nuts and jam are a speciality of Tim’s hometown of Racine, Wisconsin

Kringles are a kind of pastry that’s synonymous with my home town of Racine, Wisconsin. Originally introduced by Danish immigrants in the late 19th century, they’re essentially a big ring of flaky Viennese pastry filled with fruit or nuts, then iced and served in little slices. Even bad kringles are pretty delicious, and when out-of-towners try them for the first time, their reaction is usually: ”Where has this been all my life?”

We eat kringles year-round, but I mainly associate them with fall, perhaps because of their common autumnal fillings such as apple or cranberry, or perhaps because of the sense of hygge they provide. I also associate kringles with Thanksgiving – and with uncles. And I don’t think it’s just me; Racine’s biggest kringle baker, O&H Danish Bakery, operates a cafe/shop called “Danish Uncle”. But I also think of Thanksgiving as the most uncle-y American holiday, geared towards watching football and snoozing on the couch.

Tim Anderson is the author of the 24 Hour Pancake People newsletter and Hokkaido: Recipes from the Seas, Fields and Farmlands of Northern Japan, published by Hardie Grant at £28. To order a copy for £25.20, go to guardianbookshop.com. Rachel Roddy is away.

Layer after luscious layer of spuds, smoked trout and cavolo nero in a herby cream and topped with bubbly cheese, and crisp roast potatoes tossed in a buttery wine reduction

A deliciously decadent gratin with layers of potato, smoked trout and cavolo nero all smothered in herb-infused cream and finished with a grating of gruyere. It’s the ultimate cosy potato main course. Then, for a flavourful twist on everyone’s favourite part of a roast dinner, crisp roast potatoes tossed in a lightly spiced and herby butter emulsion.

It’s love at first bite for diners. From cheese puffs to tuna eclairs, chefs are putting some of their best ideas on the snack menu

Elliot’s in east London has many hip credentials: the blond-wood colour scheme, the off-sale natural wine bottles, LCD Soundsystem and David Byrne playing at just the right decibel. The menu also features the right buzzwords, such as “small plates” and “wood grill”.

But first comes “snacks”. There are classics: focaccia, olives, anchovies on toast. But more creative options include potato flatbreads with creme fraiche and trout roe, mangalitsa saltimbocca with quince, and what became (and has stayed) the Hackney restaurant’s signature dish since around 2012, Isle of Mull cheese puffs: plump, gooey croquettes filled with Scottish cheddar and comté, deep-fried until crisp and topped with yet more grated cheddar. Only two other dishes have never left the menu: fried potatoes with aïoli and cheesecake.

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.

Worn by everyone from Tyler, the Creator to Cole Palmer and Joe Wilkinson, duffels are back in demand

It’s the coat most associated with a beloved children’s character, so it makes sense that the duffel is a familiar sight in playgrounds across the country. But this year it is also – once again – quietly enjoying a moment on grownups.

In the Christmas advert for Waitrose, comedian Joe Wilkinson wears a duffel coat while in the supermarket with Keira Knightley. Footballer Cole Palmer wore one in 2024’s Burberry campaign, subtitled “It’s Always Burberry Weather”, and Tyler, the Creator wears a short one in the recent video for Darling, I.

It is a little weird that beauty culture is convincing people to surgically saw off their facial skin and sew it back on tighter

• Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

Dear Ugly,

I’m 36 and I don’t need or want a facelift – but lately I feel like I’m being made to want a facelift. Is it weird that facelifts are becoming normalized for women my age, or am I being too judgmental?

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

I want to ignore beauty culture. But I’ll never get anywhere if I don’t look a certain way

From joint bank accounts and pooled savings to mortgages and tax allowances, talk about money for a happy financial future together

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for whether you should manage your finances jointly, separately or somewhere in the middle.

It is said to be harder to make friends as you age. But I found that a mix of apps and other tools, as well as a happy attitude, led to a world of potential new pals

Tonight, Rachel, Elvira and I will meet for dinner. A year ago, none of us knew the others existed. Six months ago Rachel and Elvira were strangers until I introduced them. But now, here we are, something as close to firm friends as is possible after such a short time.

If you’ve ever consumed any media, you would be forgiven for thinking that life after 35 is a burning wasteland of unimaginable horrors: the beginnings of incessant back pain, an interest in dishwasher loading, the discovery that you’re ineligible for entire industries billed as “a young person’s game”, and, apparently, an inability to make friends.

When Lynda Leigh and David started dating, his small, silent gesture spoke volumes about how much he cared

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2013 I was a divorcee in my early 40s in need of some financial advice. I was living in Canberra and a friend recommended a polite, plain-speaking accountant who came to town from time to time. That’s how I met David. He was a handsome, jovial fellow with sparkling blue eyes, not quite a silver fox then, but a few years my senior. At 6 foot 3 and dressed in a smart suit and tie (a weakness of mine), he certainly made an impression.

At some point between sorting out my taxes and asking where I wanted to be financially in 10 years, he noticed I was wearing hearing aids and went on to tell me what a hard time his ex-wife and stepson gave him about his hearing, and anyway, wasn’t I far too young to need them? I explained, perhaps a little curtly, that I’d worn them since I was eight so he shouldn’t be so silly as to think they’d make him look old. I had an appointment coming up with my specialist and somehow it was arranged that he’d join me.

They probably underestimate the cost to you of keeping this secret, writes Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Before you tell the husband, could you talk to your ex?

• Read more Leading questions

I left my ex-husband two and a half years ago. He told me the day we broke up that he had feelings for a married woman and she for him. I knew. It was part of the reason I wanted to leave him, along with a very long list of ways in which our marriage was no longer serving either of us.

A few months later he started actively (but covertly) pursuing this woman, who is a mum in my son’s sports team. Apart from my ex and this woman, I am pretty sure I am the only person who knows.

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

• Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

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.

Are you ready to ‘go zombie’ in your relationship, lowering your expectations of it, forging your own separate life, but staying wed? You’re just one of many who are ‘subconsciously uncoupling’

Name: Quiet divorce.

Age: Ancient, probably.

From the top lollipop person to the most dedicated convenience store managers, we celebrate the winners of the year’s most unusual accolades

Michael Leech, from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, has been named the UK bus driver of the year

Here’s what you should know before getting an epidural – and why it might not provide full pain relief as expected

The first time I got an epidural, it was too late.

I’d heard it was best to wait, for fear the medication would run out mid-labor (I later found out this is a myth). So I gritted my teeth through hours of contractions, and when I finally told the nurses I was ready, the anesthesiologist was with another patient.

At Maple Farm, nature is returning in droves: nightingales, grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects. All due to the vision of a group determined to accelerate its recovery

The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders, pointing to the woodland around us. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba, the group’s engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

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.

Trump has suggested on at least 28 occasions over past eight years that a national TV network’s license be revoked – even though it doesn’t work that way

Facing aggressive questioning from Mary Bruce, an ABC News White House correspondent, about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, Donald Trump last week suggested a form of punishment he thought would be appropriate for her “crappy company”: the Federal Communications Commission should revoke ABC’s license, the US president declared.

It wasn’t the first time he has done so. As he has sought redress for what he has considered to be unfair reporting about him and his administration, Trump has suggested at least 28 times over the last eight years that a television network should lose its license, according to analysis by the Guardian.

As casualties mount, recruitment is expanding. Three women talk about why they signed up for a brutal combat environment

Women have been involved in Ukraine’s drone operations since the early months of the full-scale invasion, but as shortages in the military increase their presence has grown, particularly in FPV (first-person-view) attack units.

Casualty figures are not disclosed but widely understood to be high, and Ukraine is becoming reliant on civilians to fill roles that once belonged to trained military personnel. A short but intensive 15-day course is given to a trainee operator for frontline deployment, a turnaround that reflects the urgent need.

Indoor and outdoor training courses set up for trainee pilots at a drone school

Evidence that the whales and other marine animals are particularly vulnerable to sound is driving calls for quieter vessels

The delicate clicks and whistles of narwhals carry through Tasiujaq, locally known as Eclipse Sound, at the eastern Arctic entrance of the Northwest Passage. A hydrophone in this shipping corridor off Baffin Island, Nunavut, captures their calls as the tusked whales navigate their autumn migration route to northern Baffin Bay.

But as the Nordic Odyssey, a 225-metre ice-class bulk carrier servicing the nearby iron ore mine, approaches, its low engine rumble gives way to a wall of sound created by millions of collapsing bubbles from its propeller. The narwhals’ acoustic signals, evolved for one of Earth’s quietest environments, fall silent.

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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