Bike culture, once seen as an elite hobby or a last resort for the poor, is flourishing in the post-apartheid City of Gold

On a hot Saturday spring morning, Karabo Mashele urged a group of female cyclists up the hills of a plush Johannesburg suburb. “Come on my ladybugs,” the 32-year-old shouted over the sounds of 4X4 cars overtaking the riders. “You can do hard things!”

Twice a month, Mashele, who only learned to cycle aged 29, leads Girls on Bikes casual rides for up to 25 women in their 20s and 30s, through Johannesburg or Pretoria. On other weekends, she and a core group join longer, mixed gender rides.

Karabo Mashele, the founder of the Girls on Bikes bicycle club, on the streets of Johannesburg.

Levels of fatigue among women in Britain are soaring, and this isn’t the kind that can be cured by a nap. What lies behind the exhaustion epidemic?

Look around you and it isn’t hard to find an exhausted woman. There she is, standing behind you in the queue at the post office or delivering your Amazon package. Here she is at the school gates, puffing after running from the car, coffee in hand, apologising for forgetting to pack a PE kit. Or trying to stop a yawn escaping during a long work meeting. Or eyes closed on a noisy commuter train, about to miss her stop.

Maybe this seems normal to you because, honestly, in today’s fast-paced culture, who isn’t exhausted? But take a closer look and you’ll see that this level of fatigue is often much more than something a simple nap could remedy. You’ll find these bone-tired women asking friends in WhatsApp groups why their hair is falling out, or complaining to their beautician that their nails are always breaking, or manically Googling symptoms, trying to work out why their brains are so foggy or why, despite having youth on their side, they sometimes forget how to form a sentence. Friends ask each other online whether everyone else is so overwhelmed with anxiety that they can’t sleep. Perhaps they’re taking antidepressants and wondering why their racing thoughts are not relenting. They may have asked their GP why day-to-day life leaves them feeling so drained and been told it’s “inevitable” with small children, or asked if they are getting enough exercise.

Why did an obscure Dostoevsky novella sell 100,000 copies in the UK last year? And why are TikTokers raving about a 1943 Turkish novel? The way young people are discovering books is changing – and their literary tastes reflect our times

The sales patterns for classic novels are normally a fairly predictable business. “Every year it’s the same authors,” says Jessica Harrison, publishing director for Penguin Classics UK. “Austen is always at the very top, and then all the school ones: Orwell, An Inspector Calls, Of Mice and Men, Jane Eyre.”

But last year it was different. Penguin’s bestselling classic by far was a little-known novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. White Nights sold more than 100,000 copies in the UK in 2024. It is an angsty story of impossible love, run through with characteristic Dostoevskian gloom. A young man and woman meet on a bridge in St Petersburg on consecutive nights: his love for her is unrequited; she is despairing because the man she really loves has ghosted her. The pleasure the young man takes in her company is shadowed by the knowledge that it can never be permanent.

Masculinity is almost always presented as toxic on my feed – but we need constructive alternatives to give hope to those who feel lost

If you judged modern boyhood from the headlines, you’d think we were broken – radicalised, misogynistic, angry. But as a teenage boy myself, I don’t see a generation of lost boys around me. I see young men trying to make sense of a world that seems apathetic to our voices.

I’d be the first to admit that there are serious issues facing young men my age – I’ve experienced some of them first-hand. Between the ages of 12 and 14, I was drawn into harmful online communities promising me money, meaning and manhood. Muscular, wealthy men, parading through Dubai draped in designer labels and flanked by beautiful women flooded my feed. They said there was no excuse for the rest of us not to be in their position too, and offered what they claimed was a blueprint to get us there. Misogyny was rife in these communities, as was political extremism.

Josh Sargent is a Year 11 student and writer who campaigns around masculinity and online spaces

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She burst on to the scene with Ratcatcher and terrified audiences with We Need to Talk About Kevin. The Scottish film-maker’s latest stars Hollywood darling Lawrence, but it doesn’t flinch from the dark side of family life

Several years ago, Martin Scorsese read Die, My Love in his book club. The novel, by Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz, follows an unnamed woman who moves with her husband to the middle of nowhere in France. Isolated and frustrated, she battles the confines of marriage and motherhood. She introduces herself to the reader as “a nutcase”, as “someone beyond repair”. She sets fire to ants, swears at her child, complains of its “constant clucking and grousing”. She speaks the unspeakable: “I’m a mother, full stop. And I regret it, but I can’t even say that.”

Scorsese subsequently sent the novel to Jennifer Lawrence’s production company. He was convinced that Lawrence could – should, must – play the mother. In turn, Lawrence and her producing partner, Justine Ciarrocchi, only ever had one film-maker in mind: Lynne Ramsay, the Scottish director who has exhibited a preoccupation with the dark side of parental responsibility and family dynamics throughout her career.

This week, audio footage was released by the New Yorker magazine, which seemed to exonerate Bamber, who has been in prison for 40 years. Could this lead to his release?

In the millions of pages disclosed to Jeremy Bamber over the decades, in his bid to prove his innocence of one of the 20th century’s most notorious crimes, PC Nick Milbank is barely mentioned. But this week, new evidence emerged that the late police officer held an essential clue to what happened on the night of the massacre at Whitehouse Farm on 7 August 1985.

In 1986, Bamber, now 64, was convicted of murdering his wealthy farmer-landowner parents Nevill and June, his sister Sheila Caffell, and her twin six-year-old sons, Daniel and Nicholas.

Israel’s defence minister accuses Beirut of delaying efforts to disarm militant group a day after deadly Israeli airstrike

Israel has threatened to step up its attacks against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported that four people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Despite the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel maintains troops in five areas in southern Lebanon and has kept up regular strikes.

Police say they are not treating attack that left two people with life-threatening injuries as terrorist incident

• Cambridgeshire train stabbing: latest updates

• Explainer: Cambridgeshire train attack – what we know so far

Two men are in custody after multiple stabbings on a high-speed train in Cambridgeshire that left two people with life-threatening injuries, police have said.

A 32-year-old black British national and a 35-year-old Briton of Caribbean descent have been arrested, British Transport Police (BTP) said, after the incident on Saturday night after which 11 people were treated in hospital.

Former Duke of York to lose honorary rank of vice-admiral a week after having royal title of prince removed

The former Duke of York will lose his naval title, the defence secretary has said, as King Charles looks to draw a line under the scandal over his brother’s relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor will be stripped of his honorary rank of vice-admiral, which he was given in 2015 and has retained even after giving up other military positions in 2022, John Healey confirmed on Sunday.

Escalating battle for city comes as overnight Russian drone and missile strikes kill six people, including two children

Ukraine has deployed special forces to the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk in an attempt to push back an intense Russian assault involving thousands of troops, Kyiv’s top commander has said.

The escalating battle in the strategically important city comes as an overnight wave of Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine killed six people, including two children, and cut power to tens of thousands, officials said on Sunday.

Laure Beccuau said ‘upper echelons of organised crime’ unlikely to be involved as one perpetrator remains at large

The brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was carried out by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organised crime, the Paris prosecutor has said, describing two of the suspects as a couple with children.

The assertion comes two weeks after thieves parked a stolen truck outside the world’s most-visited museum, used a furniture lift to reach the first floor, then smashed their way into one of the museum’s most ornate rooms. Less than seven minutes later, they escaped on scooters with crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m).

Officers did not find additional devices in a sweep of building, authorities say

There was an explosion early Saturday at Harvard University’s medical school that appears to have been intentional, but no one was injured, authorities said.

Police at the Massachusetts Ivy League university said in a statement that an officer who responded to a fire alarm encountered two unidentified people and tried to stop them. But they ran from the campus’s Goldenson building before the officer got to where the alert was triggered by an explosion, police said.

Voters set to accept new maps to help Democrats counter Republican gerrymandering – and check president’s power

California’s Proposition 50 began as a warning from the nation’s largest blue state to its largest red one: don’t poke the bear. But when Texas moved ahead with a rare, mid-decade gerrymander, pushed by Donald Trump as Republicans seek to shore up their fragile House majority in the midterm elections, California made good on its threat.

Now, California voters appear poised to approve a redistricting measure placed on the ballot in August by Democrats and the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who have cast it as a chance to check Trump’s power.

Patel reportedly became furious after stories revealed he flew to visit girlfriend and fired official who oversees fleet

A top FBI official with 27 years standing has reportedly been fired by the bureau after its director, Kash Patel, became enraged by press stories revealing he had used a government jet to travel to see his girlfriend sing the national anthem at a wrestling match.

Steven Palmer, who had worked at the bureau since 1998, was fired as head of the FBI’s critical incident response group which is responsible for handling major security threats as well as overseeing the agency’s fleet of jets. He was the third head of the unit to be dismissed since Patel became the second Trump administration’s FBI director in February.

News from Navi Mumbai as India make 298
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Ian Ward, Isa Guha and Nasser Hussain are sheltering under huge umbrellas as they chew the fat.

Guha speaks beautifully about the occasion.

Relatives and experts tell of the human and societal need to find and identify the dead, while images and data shed light on the scale of the job

It has been described as one of the most gruelling recovery efforts in modern warfare.

As negotiations over the fragile Gaza ceasefire continue, Palestinians have started to dig through 61m tonnes of debris, 20 times more than the combined mass of all debris generated by conflicts since 2008. Underneath, at least 10,000 people are thought to be buried.

Schmoozing the super-rich to fund a $300m ballroom while cutting food aid for those on low incomes threw the president’s architectural folly into sharp relief

It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.

On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.

Only a few years after first being detected in Australia, nitazenes have been found in everything from vapes to fake heroin – and the death toll is rising. What can be done about it?

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In the middle of winter last year, in a unit in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, Carly Morse, Thomas Vale, Michael Hodgkinson and Abdul El Sayed used a rolled-up bank note to inhale cocaine. About 3am on 24 June 2024, all four likely become unresponsive.

El Sayed’s uncle, Cory Lewis, became concerned late the following night when his nephew, who had been living with him, did not return home.

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For months, Mohamed Khamis Douda shared accounts of what life was like under siege. He was killed when RSF fighters finally took the Darfur city, raising fears activists and civil society figures are being hunted down

For months, militiamen on the perimeters of El Fasher have asked those few who managed to escape the besieged Sudanese city whether Mohamed Khamis Douda was still inside. They shared videos threatening to kill him, which, as they hoped, made their way to the activist.

Even as the hunger and fear of living under siege and bombardment made him desperate to leave, Douda remained inside El Fasher, constantly working to let the outside world know what was happening to the people there. Then, on Sunday 26 October, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces overran the city and it was too late. His friends and family have confirmed to the Guardian that Douda has been killed.

Monday 4 August

I awake each morning tired from the efforts of the previous day. Our first struggle is the merciless hunger and the second is the constant artillery shelling.

In 1969, as the band imploded, the singer was 27, depressed and drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows. He hadn’t died, as rumour had it, but he was struggling. He introduces an oral history of how his family’s escape to a remote Scottish farm helped him move on from John, George and Ringo

The strangest rumour started floating around just as the Beatles were breaking up – that I was dead. We had heard it long before, but suddenly, in that autumn of 1969, stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all its own, so that millions of fans around the world believed I was actually gone.

At one point, I turned to my new wife and asked, “Linda, how can I possibly be dead?” She smiled as she held our new baby, Mary, as aware of the power of gossip and the absurdity of these ridiculous newspaper headlines as I was. But she did point out that we had beaten a hasty retreat from London to our remote farm up in Scotland, precisely to get away from the kind of malevolent talk that was bringing the Beatles down.

From psychoanalysis to existential therapy, there’s a bewildering variety of approaches – with one thing in common

Sam came into psychotherapy during a difficult period at work. He had started to feel as if he was stagnating in his role and it was getting him down. As he approached midlife he had reached a level of seniority that he had sought for years, but now he was starting to wonder whether this was it. He wasn’t sure exactly what the matter was: he didn’t feel especially depressed, just somehow stuck. It had taken him a long time to consider speaking to someone – what could they really do, in the absence of an obvious psychological disorder?

Psychotherapy occupies an increasingly central place in our culture. Just as we have become inclined to understand our struggles and our sadness under the heading of “mental health”, so too we have placed ever greater authority on psychotherapists to help us understand how we should deal with the problems life throws up. Even those without diagnoses of depression, anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder increasingly seek therapeutic support, with a recent survey finding that around a third of the population have done so.

Researchers tracking large cohorts are discovering the effects of sleep, light and therapy on people impacted by winter’s arrival

For some, the darkening days of autumn bring more than the annual ritual of reviving woolly jumpers and turning on the central heating. As the evenings close in and the mornings grow murky, energy ebbs and a heavy sadness settles in.

Although seasonal affective disorder (Sad) was only formally recognised by psychiatrists in the 1980s, the link between the seasons, mood and vitality has long been observed.

When they met, Joe awakened Jess’s sexuality. Now, after his cancer diagnosis, Jess is helping Joe enjoy his body, ‘the way he taught me to find pleasure in mine’
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

When Jess squeezes my ass in passing, it’s like she’s reaffirming my humanity

⚽ Premier League updates from the 4.30pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Premier League table | And email Michael

Here’s an interesting pair of stats, courtesy of Opta. Going into this weekend, City are the only side in the Premier League this season to spend more than half of their game time in a winning position (51.3%), while Bournemouth are the side that has spent the least amount of minutes (11%) losing.

Rayan Cherki’s only league start for City since his £30.5m summer move from Lyon was the 2-0 home defeat to Tottenham in August. It’s been a fairly underwhelming start for Cherki, who has flickered with some bright moments. Guardiola highly rates the Frenchman, who scored in the Carabao Cup against Swansea this week, and had this to say about the playmaker only last month.

• Toronto miss out on first World Series title since 1993

• Blue Jays held lead going into ninth inning

The Toronto Blue Jays have reflected on their agonizing loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the World Series.

The Blue Jays looked set to win their first World Series since 1993 when they entered the ninth inning with a 4-3 lead. But with one out, and Toronto’s Jeff Hoffman facing the Dodgers’ No 9 hitter, Miguel Rojas, the reliever threw a hanging slider which Rojas launched for the tying home run. Will Smith then hit the winning home run in the 11th inning off Shane Bieber, the first time the Dodgers had led all night.

• Hellen Obiri regains title she won in 2023 race

• Benson Kipruto wins men’s race by less than a second

Hellen Obiri set a women’s course record to win the New York City Marathon on Sunday while her fellow Kenyan, Benson Kipruto, won the men’s race by edging Alexander Mutiso by less than a second.

Obiri, who also won the race in 2023, finished in 2 hours, 19 minutes and 51 seconds. Obiri was running with 2022 winner Sharon Lokedi until she pulled away from her countrymate in the final mile, surging ahead and winning easily, besting the previous course record of 2:22.31 set by Margaret Okayo in 2003. Defending champion Sheila Chepkirui finished third. All three beat the previous course best.

West Ham recorded a desperately needed victory and acquired perhaps just a modicum of belief in their battle against relegation as they picked off a surprisingly meek Newcastle in east London.

A Tomas Soucek ram-raid in second-half added time put the seal on a victory that was earned with a determined first-half display, with Nuno Espírito Santo’s face a barometer for his team’s fortunes. From gritting his teeth furiously after a fourth-minute concession, the West Ham manager was smiling by half-time, and roaring as the final whistle blew. Likewise, a crowd that struggled even to be frustrated early on found its voice.

• Former coach and Middlesbrough manager candidates

• Pereira sacked after 10 league matches without win

Wolves could turn to their former head coach Gary O’Neil after sacking Vítor Pereira, with Middlesbrough’s Rob Edwards another leading candidate. Pereira was sacked on Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after a 3-0 defeat at Fulham as the Wolves hierarchy acknowledged the squad had lost belief in his methods.

Pereira replaced O’Neil last December with the club 19th in the Premier League and Wolves are again at severe risk of relegation, bottom of the division after securing two points from their opening 10 matches. Wolves’s last league win was in April.

Exuberant back-row’s confidence in win over Australia gave a glimpse of how compelling England could become

The sporting gods can sometimes be mischievous. Steve Borthwick’s vision of rugby heaven is a cohesive team that consistently delivers without huge amounts of fuss and squeezes the life out of opponents like a white-shirted python. Control, physicality, tactical acumen and work rate will forever be more central to his vision of Test match success than individual front-page razzle-dazzle.

And what happens? With almost comic timing the door to the England dressing room has been flung off its hinges by a 20-year-old rock star forward with the ability to transform games on his own. Henry Pollock has now scored three tries in 61 minutes of international rugby, is all over social media and already has half the rugby world itching to punch his lights out.

• Anfield captain calls some takes ‘absolutely ridiculous’

• Liverpool ended run of four defeats with win over Villa

Virgil van Dijk has called Wayne Rooney’s criticism of him and Mohamed Salah this season “lazy” and has hit out at “ridiculous takes” during Liverpool’s recent run of bad form.

Rooney, talking on his BBC podcast, had said there had been a lack of leadership from the Liverpool captain and Salah this season and that their body language had not been right. From late September to late October, Liverpool lost six times in seven games, including at home to Manchester United and away to Crystal Palace.

It is unclear whether Martin O’Neill will lead out Celtic in next month’s League Cup final. For now, the interim manager will settle for taking them there. St Mirren lie in wait after a frantic, controversial semi-final in which the 10 men of Rangers competed admirably. Celtic needed extra-time to see off their oldest foes. The outcome will matter far more to O’Neill than the earlier scale of worry Rangers caused him. A turbulent week for Celtic, which included the resignation of Brendan Rodgers, ended with their supporters hailing O’Neill in song.

Rangers’ task was rendered harder by the actions of Thelo Aasgaard seven minutes before the interval. The midfielder was high and reckless when catching Anthony Ralston, a red card the correct punishment. Rangers felt the numbers should have been levelled in first half stoppage time after the Celtic centre back Auston Trusty crazily kicked the head of Jack Butland. Trusty escaped with a booking.

More to follow

Bethany England sealed for Tottenham a 2-1 win that shows one new manager has made a quicker impression than the other

Liverpool’s search for their first points of the season goes on, after Tottenham defeated Gareth Taylor’s side 2-1 at Brisbane Road. It was an illustration of the parallels and contrasts between two teams who are, in a multitude of ways, on relatively similar trajectories in the Women’s Super League but who are equally experiencing contrasting fortunes in the opening stages of this season.

With this win, Tottenham consolidated their fine start to life under Martin Ho to remain fourth, while Liverpool are rooted in the danger zone. The disparity between the two sides is underlined by the data – Spurs are the team who have outperformed their expected points by the biggest margin this season; Liverpool are the side who have underperformed the most.

The president is lashing out before the supreme court’s impending decision on his absurd policy

Halloween came early for Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan spooked him. Trump had a startled reaction to the TV ad that appeared during the first game of the World Series, placed by the provincial government of Ontario, featuring excerpts from President Reagan’s radio talk in April 1987 in which he explained the danger of trade wars. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted. It was, he falsely claimed, a “serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act”. In retaliation, he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canada.

Trump was apparently horrified at the sudden presence of the ghost of conservatism past, who had kept the outlandish bounder at arm’s length and whom Trump regarded warily if not nervously. Reagan was the original, bigger and more successful performer, whose appeal was as the harbinger of morning in America, not the grim reaper of a zombie nightfall. Canada is being punished for Trump’s fright.

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist

It’s currently a two-horse race – and the next US leader is guaranteed to be a careerist who knows nothing of statesmanship

Millions of Americans yearn for 7 November 2028, the scheduled date of the next presidential election. That’s the day the Trump era effectively ends. Probably. That’s the day the Democrats will atone for Kamala Harris’s calamitous 2024 failure. Possibly. That’s the day US democracy is reborn. Hopefully. Succession talk is tantalising Washington. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has given the clearest sign yet that he’ll run and glossing over past blunders, Harris reckons she deserves a second chance.

Yet most attention is focused on the Republicans, after Trump, 79, again threatened to defy the constitution and seek a third term. “I would love to do it,” he said this week. He rowed back later, albeit unconvincingly. “We’ll see what happens,” he teased. This undignified narcissist’s electoral fan dance will drag on interminably. Of greater practical interest are the two names Trump picked out as his most likely successors: JD Vance and Marco Rubio, vice-president and secretary of state respectively.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

By selling hope alongside progressive patriotism, the centrist D66 party widened its appeal and beat the far right

Progressives often treat patriotism as radioactive. Flags and anthems are left to the populist right. But the centrist D66 party, which almost tripled its seats in this week’s Dutch election and looks set to form the next government in the Netherlands, has shown that another approach is possible.

Under the leadership of Rob Jetten, it used what we might call progressive patriotism – and voters responded. Five strategies defined that success. Politicians across Europe could learn a thing or two.

Simon van Teutem is a writer for De Correspondent

The dark nights are here and staying in is more appealing than ever. But there’s a very real cost to not venturing out

Since the clocks changed, a damp, dark blanket settles over York from about 5pm – and it’s brilliant; the perfect excuse to stay in. I love every quiet corner of home: my armchair, angled for a perfect view of bird goings-on and bleak skies outside; my marshmallowy bed; the sofa, stacked with blankets; the kitchen (I don’t cook, but it’s where snacks live). What could be nicer than sinking into the stifling embrace of multiple heated throws as a jacket potato crisps up in the oven and I succumb to a smorgasbord of good winter telly? Why would I ever move?

Me and everyone else. Right? We’re sleepmaxxing and soup-making in our slippers, sparking up fairy lights and enthusiastically appropriating hygge and gezellig (Dutch for cosy). We’re sharing memes on the thrill of someone else cancelling social plans before we’re forced to and proclaiming our Jomo. It’s natural to retreat in winter: we’re animals. But it’s not just a seasonal phenomenon now, and I’m conscious I need, and maybe you also need, to get a grip and go out.

Because our senses are so limited and the nature of all things so transient, what we know to be objective reality is a momentary snapshot of the whole picture

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

The latest iteration of OpenAI’s video generator, Sora 2, spells troubling times for objective reality. Even before the introduction of generative AI, an increasingly polarised political atmosphere meant we could barely agree on the same set of facts.

But for Buddhists, reality has always been something to be sceptical about.

Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva,
while contemplating profoundly the Prajna Paramita,
Realised that the Five Skandhas are empty,
and thus he was able to overcome all suffering.

Form, all the things our sensory organs can smell, taste, see, feel and hear.

Feelings that arise when we perceive things.

Perception is the lens through which we label things and assign value or worth like bananas are delicious or this article is boring.

Mental forces, or volition, are the actions and reactions to things and the feelings and perceptions that come from them.

Consciousness is the last because it its the aggregate or heap of the rest together. It is our memories and the human hard drive from which we draw from to inform how we will respond to new forms, feelings and sensations.

The former prince’s retirement from public life is welcome. Problems around royal secrecy and entitlement remain to be tackled

Prince Andrew is no more. Henceforth the king’s younger brother will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. With the Thursday night announcement, and the news that Mr Mountbatten Windsor will quit his 30-room home in Windsor, the monarch hopes to draw a line under the shame of the former prince’s friendship with the dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and alleged sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre when she was 17, which he has always denied.

These “censures” – as Buckingham Palace termed them – were made necessary by Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s poor judgment and deceit, including the lie that he had broken off contact with Epstein in 2010. But the real damage was done by his grotesquely entitled behaviour and appalling choice of friends. It should not have taken the painful details in Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, an extract of which was published in the Guardian, to make it obvious that the shelter this arrogant man enjoyed had to be removed.

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The world said ‘never again’ after Darfur’s genocide. Yet it stood by as catastrophe loomed

No one can claim they did not know what would happen in El Fasher. An 18-month siege had already seen war crimes by the Rapid Support Forces, including the execution of civilians and sexual violence. Warnings of the massacres that would follow when the city in Darfur fell – as it did on Sunday – were widespread.

The reality was an even darker hell, in the words of UN officials. The World Health Organization says that the RSF killed 460 people in one hospital. Satellite images appear to capture bloodstains on the ground. Footage showed fighters executing unarmed men. Other captives were taken for ransom. The UN says hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters were raped or killed while trying to flee the city, with clear evidence of ethnically targeted violence. The horrors continue.

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.

Rural US towns reel as policies like tariffs cause global manufacturing companies to reconsider major investment projects

For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.

But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.

Bodies of missing man and 17-year-old daughter who had fallen 200 metres found on Sunday morning in South Tyrol

Five German climbers, including a 17-year-old girl, have died after being swept away by an avalanche in the Italian Alps, rescuers have said.

Italian media said three groups of climbers – believed to have been travelling independently of one another – had been caught in the torrent of snow as it pulsed down a mountain near the Swiss border in the north-eastern region of South Tyrol on Saturday.

Charismatic figure of the left is remembered as one of the most informed commentators on Latin American affairs

The former Guardian journalist and historian Richard Gott has died aged 87.

Gott’s career at the Guardian began in 1964 and included spells as foreign correspondent, leader writer, features editor and literary editor.

Investment in these vast warehouses is huge but some worry the debt-fuelled exuberance will backfire

The global investment spree in artificial intelligence is producing some remarkable numbers and a projected $3tn (£2.3tn) spend on datacentres is one of them.

These vast warehouses are the central nervous system of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Veo 3, underpinning the training and operation of a technology into which investors have poured vast sums of money.

US vice-president announces to 10,000 attenders of Turning Point USA that he prefers wife, who is Hindu, to be Christian

JD Vance is doubling down on comments he made about wanting his wife, Usha Vance, to convert to Christianity – remarks that drew political backlash from some quarters.

At an event with Turning Point USA at the University of Mississippi to honor the conservative group’s slain founder Charlie Kirk, an audience member questioned the US vice-president about how he sees the links between American patriotism and Christianity.

Inspired by childhood encyclopedias and Jane Goodall, Beth Pratt writes about the more than 150 species in the national park – and transports readers to a rarefied world

A shrill call was followed by a flash of movement through a pile of boulders on a high country slope in Yosemite national park. “Hello, Sophie!” Beth Pratt responded to the round, feisty pika who had briefly emerged to pose defiantly in the sun.

Pratt, a conservation leader and wildlife advocate, has spent more than a decade observing the tiny mammals and the other inhabitants of these serene granite domes and the alpine meadows they overlook, which gleamed gold on a crisp afternoon in mid-October.

While still on track to meet net zero commitments, climate groups say country’s toughest hurdles are yet to come

Others languishing near bottom of 61-country study include Canada, Germany, Israel, Japan and Spain

Britain is one of the least “nature connected” nations in the world, according to the first ever global study of how people relate to the natural world.

Britain ranks 55th out of 61 countries in the study of 57,000 people, which looks at how attitudes towards nature are shaped by social, economic, geographical and cultural factors.

Indiana Jones star calls US president one of history’s greatest criminals for attacks on science and boosting of fossil fuels

Harrison Ford has said that Donald Trump’s assault upon measures to address the climate crisis “scares the shit out of me” and makes the US president among the worst criminals in history.

In a blistering attack upon the president, Ford told the Guardian that Trump “doesn’t have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo and he’s making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”

Mother of Bella May Culley, 19, awaiting sentencing on Monday, says conditions have improved after transfer to new jail

A pregnant British teenager accused of drug-smuggling has been moved to a mother and baby unit in a Georgian prison, her mother said.

Bella May Culley, 19, who is reported to be eight months pregnant, was arrested at Tbilisi airport in May.

Forty Labour and independent MPs call on Steve Reed to take ‘important step’ of defining anti-Muslim hatred

More than three dozen Labour and independent MPs have written to the housing secretary calling on the government to adopt a definition of Islamophobia, after recent figures revealed hate crimes against Muslims were up by nearly a fifth.

Forty MPs, including Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler, Kim Johnson and independent Andrew Gwynne, were among the signatories on the letter from Afzal Khan who wrote to Steve Reed on Friday asking him to adopt a definition of anti-Muslim hatred as an “important step” in addressing discrimination, prejudice and hatred the community faces.

With the party adrift and Reform surging, Jenrick’s allies are sharpening their pitch for a post-election reset

At an opulent speakeasy-style event at the Raffles hotel on Whitehall this week, the great and the good of what is left of the Conservative party marked the Spectator’s parliamentarian of the year awards.

With the magazine’s editorial line still just about backing the Tories, despite the party facing an existential crisis from Reform UK, it was unsurprising that much of the gossip at the champagne-fuelled event was about whether Kemi Badenoch’s job was at risk.

Council data obtained by the Guardian shows 345 children have gone missing in recent years, many probably taken by traffickers

More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs of lorries and are thought to have been taken by traffickers. Kent is often the place where they arrive.

Light-hearted note, penned on 15 August 1916, was found on Wharton beach, after severe winter storms washed away sand dunes

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More than a century after an Australian soldier wrote a letter to his mother as he sailed to war and his death, it has been discovered in a bottle washed up on a remote beach.

Private Malcolm Alexander Neville’s light-hearted note, penned on 15 August 1916, was found on Wharton beach, near Esperance, about 750km south-east of Perth.

Georgia Republican lawmaker also claims she didn’t know Rothschild family, of her ‘space laser’ theory, was Jewish

Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.

She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her – yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.

French-Turkish actor appeared in a string of high-profile films, as well as hit BBC series The Missing

Tchéky Karyo, who appeared in some of director Luc Besson’s biggest hits and a string of international films, died on Friday at the age of 72, his family have announced.

A statement from his wife and children sent to AFP said he had “succumbed to cancer”.

Woman, 38, and man, 37, had been arrested on Wednesday in relation to theft of £76m worth of jewellery in Paris

Two more suspects, a man and a woman arrested this week over the jewel heist at the Louvre, have been charged and remanded in custody, prosecutors have said.

The charges on Saturday brought to four the number of people now charged over the spectacular robbery.

It ticks every box you could wish for in your olde worlde trash: Sean Bean as the Sheriff of Nottingham, faerie smut … and not a bad wig in sight! Hurrah!

Autumn is entering the home straight. Winter is coming. We are more than due, therefore, a piece of fantasy/folkloric tomfoolery set in the days of yore – which is further back than yesteryear and therefore more forgiving all round – stuffed with young actors trying out their talents, and old thesps keeping their alimony/next passion-project funded. Welcome, my friends, to this year’s most glorious offering: Robin Hood.

I really only need to tell you two things about it. One is that it stars Sean Bean as the Sheriff of Nottingham. I know. I know. We all wanted to live that long and we have! And two, there are no bad wigs in it! Because – there are no wigs at all! Some benevolent hand must have reached down and gently turned wardrobe away from the “long, stringy, Yore-hair” box that habitually damns these ventures, and instead commanded our hero and his men – and the occasional woman – to be merry without them.

New Zealand’s Pearce Resurgence is legendary among expert cave divers for its depth and difficulty. When an Australian explorer became obsessed with diving deeper into it, he hatched a daring plan that could cost his life

Deep in a valley in the New Zealand wilderness, clear cold water rushes across moss-covered rocks.

In the morning the mist rises up and lays across the valley. In the afternoon sun glints on the Pearce River, shafts of light filter through native tree canopy. It is a fecund, primeval place. The water has flowed down through tunnels in Mount Arthur, in South Island’s north-west, to meet at the Pearce Resurgence at its base. On the surface it looks innocuous, a calm pond. But beneath it is one of the largest and deepest cave networks in the world; unfathomable, an unknown habitat, seemingly bottomless.

With big reveals from All Saints, Sugababes, Eternal and more, this funny and sometimes horrifically frank documentary is super juicy … especially when they slate Spice Girls

As a pop-cultural moment, the turn-of-the-millennium girl group boom hasn’t exactly been flooded with solemn appraisal and analysis. Wisely, this fantastically entertaining three-part documentary doesn’t attempt to rectify that. Instead, Girlbands Forever reminisces in a manner that is equal parts meaty and frothy. And, yes, often about as stomach-churning as that combination sounds.

At the heart of this series – the female-focused follow-up to 2024’s Boybands Forever – is a lot of old ground. Viewers of a certain age will know the trajectories retraced here (the head-spinning arrival of Spice Girls, the scrappy ascent of Atomic Kitten, the existentially challenging lineup rotation of Sugababes, the talent-show conception of Little Mix) and the dominant themes (tabloid hell, merciless management, relentless touring, intraband resentments) like the backs of their faintly wrinkled hands.

For Halloween, Guardian writers pick their most terrifying films ever – from The Shining and The Descent to The Strangers

“Sometimes one can’t help … imagining things.” Truman Capote helped to adapt Henry James’s ghost story The Turn of the Screw into 1961’s The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton, which remains one of the most disturbing of all scary movies. To recall the rush of stomach-twisting fear provoked by this film, I just need one glimpse of the sweating face or shaking hands of Deborah Kerr. She plays a governess to two traumatised children in a remote house where life is so fragile that the petals fall from the roses, mysterious figures appear in the grounds and ominous screeching sounds crack the night. Freddie Francis’s shadowy, black-and-white cinematography, with all those flickering candles, sets a spooky tone, but it’s the soundtrack, using uncanny electronic noises by Daphne Oram, that really needles into your brain. Kerr’s Miss Giddens disintegrates rapidly, unable to trust her own horrifying visions, rapidly suspecting her youthful charges are possessed by evil spirits. “Oh, look, a lovely spider!” exclaims sweet little Flora. “And it’s eating a butterfly.” Pamela Hutchinson

After seven years in Netflix’s fantasy epic, the actor has cast her final spell. She talks about the genre’s toxic fans, welcoming new boy Liam Hemsworth to the cast – and what sorcery really sounds like

It is a bittersweet day for Anya Chalotra. On the one hand, The Witcher, the fantasy epic in which she has played super-sorcerer Yennefer of Vengerberg since 2018, is about to return for a fourth series. All the hard work she and hundreds of others have done can finally be seen by millions of fans worldwide. The cast and crew wrap party is due to take place a few hours after we speak. It’s an exciting time for the actor. But on the other hand: “I wrapped The Witcher for good yesterday,” Chalotra says. “So forgive me if I can’t string a sentence together. It’s all very odd … I cried a lot.”

Refreshingly for a big-budget fantasy show, The Witcher will bow out with its story complete, rather than at some dissatisfying midpoint due to an unceremonious cancellation. And though viewers will be seeing a final season of monsters, magic, mages, swords, skulduggery and swearing next year, the final two seasons were filmed back to back, meaning after the evening’s shindig, that’s that. The job that has taken over Chalotra’s life for so long, and the people who go with it (besides one high-profile absence, which we’ll touch on later), is finally over.

The Catalan star’s epic new single is delighting and dividing classical music fans in equal measure

The Top 10 of today’s Spotify Global Top 50 looks like business as usual: two Taylor Swift songs; Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ Die With a Smile hanging around for an eighth month; the eminently normal male pop stars Sombr and Alex Warren doing brisk business.

But nestled among the crowd-pleasers is something of an outlier: a gothic, baroque assault powered by Vivaldi-style strings and operatic singing in German and Spanish.

The comedian and presenter would do LL Cool J at karaoke – if his family’s lives depended on it. But what song would make his funeral ‘pop off’?

The first song I fell in love with
Growing up, every weekend we’d visit a different Sri Lankan family’s house in London. One kid had Thriller by Michael Jackson, and I fell in love with Billie Jean. I then ripped my brother’s Michael Jackson Bad poster in a retaliation move, for which I now formally apologise.

The song I do at karaoke
I’ve never done it. If somebody had my family and said: “Pick a song for them to be released,” I’d still consider not doing it, before eventually settling on Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J.

The violin-playing sonic experimentalist on gadgets, guilty pleasures, and her most controversial pop culture opinion

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What’s your number one guilty pleasure?

I love Papa John’s pizza so much. Whenever I’m on my period, I need Papa John’s. After a photoshoot, everyone knows we’re getting Papa John’s. In LA you have access to so much bougie pizza. No, I want Papa John’s pizza.

Forget the Monster Mash. For the ultimate Halloween playlist, reach for horror soundtracks, 1940s kids’ music and Russian darkwave – all chosen by Sunn O))), Creeper, Diamanda Galás and more

Bernard Herrmann – The Murder (1960)
Scary music actually excites me, but the piece that most sends shivers down my spine is the music in the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Psycho. I’ve seen it numerous times and even though I know what’s coming, the stabbing knife synched with Bernard Herrmann’s score always freaks me out.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman is a daring and endlessly inventive portrait of the iconoclastic composer. Penman’s skill lies in his total disregard for tired cliches and tropes of music criticism, while perfectly combining the highbrow and the lowbrow – a digression on Les Dawson shows why he might just be our greatest writer on music.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite is published by Atlantic (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Unabashed and morally generous, the Booker winner writes like a sharp, funny, fallen angel

In addition to producing eight novels over the past 30 years, Anne Enright has always written nonfiction around the edges. This has mostly taken the form of essays for the literary pages of the NYRB, the LRB and, indeed, the Guardian. Attention is a collection of 24 of the best, each with a new brief introduction by Enright herself. The work is culled mostly from the past 10 years, with the latest dated “Autumn 2025”, which suggests that she was still blowing on the ink as it went to press.

A decade ago most of these pieces would probably have been called “personal essays”, but that now seems redundant. Everything is personal with Enright, which is what makes you want to read her even on subjects that don’t initially appeal. The cocaine trade in Honduras, say, or the production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days in a sodden field in the Aran Islands. And just when you worry that things might, actually, be getting a bit too fine-grained, such as the revelation that on holiday her husband likes to study menus carefully before choosing a restaurant, while she is more likely to dive in and scream for chips, Enright lobs in a line that explodes her text. Leaving her beloved Venice after a holiday with said husband, she is struck by the thought that the next time she visits, “I do not know if the disaster will have happened or not, because one day it will happen. One of us will die; the other will remain.” And just like that we are taken to the deepest, darkest mystery not just of Enright’s marriage, but of the kind of relationship that we might long for ourselves.

A companion novel to the brilliant Writers & Lovers, this delightfully witty tale of college romance matures into midlife poignancy

The university experience is a risky business in fiction. Generally, the feelings are intense, but the stakes are low; it’s all very formative for the individual character, but it can feel a bit trivial to anyone else. In fact, reading an account of someone’s university days is surely only one or two stages removed from having to hear about the dream they had last night.

So my heart initially sank at Heart the Lover’s cover promise that our main character would soon be “swept into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games” – good grief, save me from the raucous card games! But obviously the caveat here is what it always is: a good writer will make it matter. I had faith, therefore, that everything would be all right, since Lily King is an exceptionally good writer. Indeed, she could probably write a book-length account of her most recent dream and I would still rush to read it.

Havoc by Rebecca Wait (Quercus Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Heart the Lover by Lily King is published by Canongate (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The novelist and poet, who died a year ago, left a huge body of work distinguished by its melancholy wit and warmth. These are some of the highlights

Paul Bailey, who died last October aged 87, was best known as a novelist of comic brilliance, wide-ranging empathy – even for the worst of his characters – and a cleverness that was never clinical. His fiction was frequently occupied with the impact of memories on our lives, and usually heavily driven by sharp, syncopated dialogue. But he was also a memoirist, poet and more besides – so here’s a guide to the legacy of books he left behind.

***

It’s not just what we hear and see that scares us, according to those behind many of video gaming’s modern horror classics

The sound came first. In a San Francisco Bart train tunnel, Don Veca took his recorder and captured a train’s metallic roar – “like demons in agony, beautifully ugly,” he remembers. That recording became one of the most chilling sounds in 2008’s Dead Space.

“We dropped that screeching, industrial noise at full volume right after the vacuum silence – creating one of the game’s most jarring sonic contrasts,” Veca, who made horror history as the audio director for the Dead Space games, recalls. “Our game designer hated it – but the boss loved it. Over time, it’s become iconic.”

A recent spate of posts has garnered attention, but Trump and his allies have long been using gaming imagery to mobilise a toxic subculture of ‘rootless white males’

Just days after Microsoft announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, the next game in its famous science-fiction series, the White House shared an interesting picture on X. The image, which appears to be AI-generated, shows President Donald Trump wearing the armour of Halo’s iconic protagonist, Master Chief, standing in salute in front of an American flag that’s missing several stars. In his left hand is an energy sword, a weapon used by the alien enemies in the Halo games. Posted in response to a tweet from US game retailer GameStop, the text accompanying the image reads “Power to the Players” in reference to the store’s slogan.

GameStop and the White House exchanged another Halo meme or two, and then, on 27 October, the official Department of Homeland Security X account joined in – using Halo imagery of a futuristic soldier in an alien world to encourage people to join its increasingly militaristic Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Stop the Flood, this one reads, equating the US’s immigrant population with the parasitic aliens that Master Chief eliminates.

Spending eight hours in a theatre with 70 people playing through political donkey epic asses.masses was gruelling – and a tribute to gaming’s shared joy

This weekend, I spent more than eight hours in a theatre playing a video game about donkeys, reincarnation and organised labour with about 70 other people. Political, unpredictable and replete with ass puns, Asses.Masses is, on the one hand, a fairly rudimentary-looking video game made by Canadian artists Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim with a small team of collaborators. But the setting – in a theatre, surrounded by others, everybody shouting advice and opinions and working together on puzzles – transforms it into a piece of collective performance art.

Here’s how it works: on a plinth in front of a giant projected screen is a controller. In the seats: the audience. Whoever wants to get up and take control can do so, and they become the avatar of the crowd. The game opens with a series of questions, mostly about donkeys, some in different languages, and quickly it becomes obvious that you have to work together to get them right. Someone in our crowd spoke Spanish; another knew the answer to an engineering question; I knew, somehow, that a female donkey is called a jennet.

Raw Fury/Spooky Doorway; PC
An atmospheric folk-horror adventure combines colonial guilt, spiritualism and supernatural chills in a tale of secrets and seances on Ireland’s haunted west coast

A remote manor house on the west coast of Ireland, an eccentric cast of misfits and ne’er-do-wells, a dapper investigator with secrets of his own. The Séance of Blake Manor sounds like the stuff of cosy Sunday evening entertainment. Thankfully, this folk-horror drama has much more to offer than a bit of fun for Agatha Christie fans.

It’s October 1897, and you play as private investigator Declan Ward, sent to the aforementioned manor – now a grand hotel – to discover the whereabouts of one of its guests, Evelyn Deane, who has gone missing in mysterious circumstances. What you discover is a gothic mansion filled with eccentrics: from a psychic researcher wielding a spirit camera to a vodouist oungan and a Brazilian woman tracing her family roots. They are here to attend a grand seance that will take place on All Hallow’s Eve, when the phantasmagoric barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its thinnest. But as you discover while you wander the ornate rooms and meticulously planned gardens via first-person viewpoint, each participant has a secret – some deadly, some tragic – and many know more about young Miss Deane than they’re letting on.

Bridgewater Hall/RNCM Hall, Manchester
Adams himself praised the orchestra for giving ‘one of the best performances I’ve ever heard’ of his Chamber Symphony, part of a four-concert feast of his luminous timbral combinations and expansive orchestral beauty

When called back on stage at the Bridgewater Hall for the fourth or fifth time, the US composer John Adams walked only as far as the back of the first violins, raised his hands in thanks and gestured, smiling, that it was bedtime. At 78, Adams is younger than the first wave of American minimalists (Philip Glass, Steve Reich and co), who are now around 90. But the orchestral scores for which he is celebrated – alongside his nine operas – are intricate and polychrome, more maximalist than minimalist: music with so much dynamism it could generate mains electricity.

Following a three-day festival dedicated to Steve Reich earlier this year, the Hallé’s latest composer focus brought Adams himself to Manchester for four concerts, including the UK premiere of a Hallé co-commission. At the two I attended he was a characteristically charming presence, proclaiming himself “humbled” at a lunchtime concert at the Royal Northern College of Music, and praising “one of the best performances I’ve ever heard” of his 1992 Chamber Symphony.

The British actor stars in three major films over next few months and it is rumoured he’s even being considered for the next James Bond

He came to prominence with his portrayal of Prince Charles in The Crown, and now it seems that Josh O’Connor might be primed for his own coronation.

The British actor is in three major films between now and January – better known to film-lovers as awards season.

It’s been the biggest secret in theatre: what will the marmalade-loving, hyper-polite Peruvian look like in Paddington the Musical? As the curtain rises, we speak to the new bear’s creator, a veteran of Star Wars and PG Tips ads

Paddington stands within touching distance. His fur flutters as he turns, his neat button nose sniffs the air, and his eyes soften with a smile. For years, design details of the bear for Paddington the Musical, directed by Luke Sheppard, have been kept top secret. Now here he is, in his blue duffel coat and red hat. A quiet theatrical marvel. “What we’re doing,” says producer Sonia Friedman, “has never been done before.”

Standing around 1.2 metres (just under 4ft) tall, the bear is beautifully round, all belly and sloping shoulders. He is not an exact replica of the Paddingtons we’ve seen in illustrations or movies, but something new. His shaggy, caramel fur has a gentle wave, and his white snout is dotted with a brown nose, ideal for sniffing out trouble. Around his neck sits a label, threaded through an old piece of string, asking for someone to look after him.

With mystery still surrounding Pier Paolo Pasolini’s death, the poet and film-maker’s warnings of corruption and rising totalitarianism offer a chilling message for our times

Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered at around midnight on 2 November 1975. His blood-soaked body was found the next morning on waste ground in Ostia, on the outskirts of Rome, battered so badly the famous face was almost unrecognisable. Italy’s premier intellectual, artist, provocateur, national conscience, homosexual, dead at the age of 53, his scandalous final film still in the editing suite. “Assassinato Pasolini,” the next morning’s papers announced, alongside photographs of the 17-year-old accused of his murder. Everyone knew his taste for working-class hustlers. A hookup gone wrong was the instant verdict.

Some deaths are so suggestive that they become emblematic of a subject, the deceiving lens through which an entire life is forever after read. In this weirdly totalitarian mode of interpretation, Virginia Woolf is always walking towards the Ouse, the river in which she drowned herself. Likewise, Pasolini’s entire body of work is coloured by the seeming fact that he was murdered by a rent boy, the crowning act of a relentlessly high-risk life.

The Utopia and No Offence star on channelling her righteous younger self, how she shakes off heavy roles, and her alter ego DJ Dave

Born in Ammanford, south Wales, in 1987, Alexandra Roach began her career in the S4C soap Pobol y Cwm, before training at Rada in London. Her first major role was as a young Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady in 2011, and she has gone on to star in TV dramas including Utopia, No Offence, Hunderby and Being Human; she is currently staring in Amazon Prime Video’s series Lazarus. She lives in Bristol with her husband and daughter.

This is me in my living room. I’m 12 years old and proudly holding a letter I’d written to the local town council. In it, I pleaded with them to do something radical for the sake of the youth of Ammanford: open a Claire’s Accessories.

Big building projects bring financial and emotional pressures, but it’s important to work out why it has triggered such strong feelings for you

My husband and I have just built our dream house. After a year of planning and months of building, the builders have left and we can finally live there. The work was incredibly stressful, we spent a lot more than planned, and it triggered an anxiety disorder that I’m now struggling with.

The building work is ostensibly over, but there’s still work to do and money to spend to make the house fully a home, and I’m exhausted and depressed by that. Although we have an impressive house, we are also financially more stretched, which plays on my mind. But mostly it’s the feeling of the house – I don’t like its vibe. I don’t feel at home here.

Also known in other forms, such as chapatis and phulkas, this classic Indian dough is a deliciously marvellous recipe to have in your repertoire

These staple north Indian flatbreads come in a variety of forms – thinner, softer versions cooked on a flat tawa are also known as chapatis, while phulkas employ the same dough, but are held over a flame until they puff like a balloon. Either way, they’re great for scooping up meat and vegetables, or for mopping up sauce. Years of practice makes perfect, but this recipe is a good place to start.

Prep 25 min
Rest 30 min
Cook 15 min
Makes 8

High in protein, low in fat, the 70s ‘superfood’ is having another moment. Its fans say you can do almost anything with it. But should you?

When I heard that cottage cheese was experiencing some kind of renaissance, my first thought was: “This is what comes of complacency.” I’d thought of cottage cheese as being safely extinct, but per capita consumption statistics show that, while it fell slightly out of favour, it never really went away. And now it’s having a moment. Or the latest in a series of moments.

Cottage cheese allegedly owes its newfound fame to two things: a) claims that it’s a low-calorie superfood, packed with protein and calcium, and b) people on TikTok who have taken to making ice-cream with it.

Crisp chicken and sweet onions with rosemary and salty pancetta, set off by a sweet-sour apple salad with pickled red onion and hazelnuts

I recently invested in a beautifully wide, Shropshire-made pan that works on the hob and in the oven with equal ease, and without the chemical nonstick lining I keep reading about. It is a brilliant pan. As I turn on the heat to crisp the skin on my chicken thighs on the stove top, I can prep the vegetables I will then roast in the same pan. There is a soothing rhythm to this type of cooking, where most of the work is done in the oven. Here, I use jerusalem artichokes, the most delicious of autumn vegetables, parboiled in lemon juice to make them more digestible and then roasted with garlic and onions, until beautifully caramelised, and it’s a marvellous thing to put down on the kitchen table.

Store-cupboard staples magically transform themselves into a warming autumnal meal

I’ve been decluttering lately: throwing away or organising old cards, letters and photos, placing them in zipped folders and zapping them with labels made on my beloved Dymo. It’s given me such a great sense of freedom and clarity that I was thinking: I should do the same for my recipes. This one, for example, I would file under “magic”, because it comes together (mostly) from the store-cupboard, both in that easy way in which you throw things into a pot until they alchemise, but also because tahini and beans, together with a lemon, can, magically, become the most soothing antidote to cold weather.

Join Meera Sodha at a special event celebrating the best of Guardian culture on Wednesday 26 November, hosted by Nish Kumar and alongside writers Stuart Heritage and Tim Dowling, with Georgina Lawton hosting You be the judge live. Live in London or via livestream, book tickets here.

Popular coat’s appearance on cover of Lily Allen’s West End Girl album underlines how ubiquitous style has become

If West End Girl, Lily Allen’s first album for seven years, which details the breakdown of her relationship has occupied the minds of music critics and marriage counsellors, fashion watchers have spotted something different.

The puffer jacket Allen is wearing on the cover is not just a pop of colour in what may become an iconic album cover, it is also a sign of the times – underlining just how ubiquitous this jacket shape has become as winter arrives each year.

Lean into fright night with an all-black dress code of sumptuous velvets and vampy accessories

A new generation of chefs and distillers are showcasing the Hebridean island’s outstanding produce and creating jobs for fellow islanders

With its dramatic, rugged mountain skyline, winding roads and ever-changing weather, the Isle of Skye has long appealed to lovers of the wild. Over the last decade, however, the largest island in the Inner Hebrides has been drawing visitors for other reasons – its dynamic food and drink scene. Leading the way are young Sgitheanach (people from Skye) with a global outlook but a commitment to local, sustainable ingredients. It’s also the result of an engaged community keen to create good, year-round jobs that keep young people on the island.

Calum Montgomery is Skye born and bred, and he’s passionate about showcasing the island’s larder on his menus at Edinbane Lodge. “If someone is coming to Skye I want them to appreciate the landscape, but also the quality of our produce,” he says. “Our mussels, lobster, scallops and crab are second to none.” Montgomery is mindful of the past: “It means everything to me to use the same produce as my ancestors. My grandpa was a lobster fisherman and we’re enjoying shellfish from the same stretch of water, with the same respect for ingredients.”

Deciding to cover up a tattoo, like Senate hopeful Graham Platner did, is so common there are free programs for it

Last week, Graham Platner, a progressive Democrat running for the US Senate in Maine, responded to a burst of online criticism by doing something few candidates for high office are ever required to do: he posted a topless photo of himself on the internet.

It was an unusual moment in a campaign that had so far gone his way. Platner had won praise from progressives and secured the backing of Bernie Sanders. But his campaign came unstuck when a video surfaced of him dancing in his underwear at his brother’s wedding – and revealing a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest. The design, known as the Totenkopf, is widely recognised as a Nazi symbol.

Actors Michael Wahr and Adinia Wirasti met on set in 2018. Less than a year later, his world stopped when he spotted a handwritten note

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

It was 2018 and I’d just landed a role on HBO series Grisse. I was excited to meet the cast, who’d already started filming in Batam, Indonesia. After a flight from London to Singapore, then a ferry to Riau Islands, I arrived at my chalet. Even though it was late, I was invited to join the others at one of the villas.

About 20 people were gathered, eating, drinking and chatting loudly. I was given a drink and a bowl of noodles, then shortly afterwards the director and showrunner asked me to read a scene with one of the actors, Adinia. She was so graceful and precise in her reading, I remember sitting across from this woman and being in complete awe of her.

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Alexi, 34, an agent, meets Oisín, 30, an actor

What were you hoping for?
A good time and to try something new.

With a rise in people opting for non-monogamy, experts suggest the idea of the traditional couple is radically changing

“We had an arrangement, be discreet and don’t be blatant. There had to be payment, it had to be with strangers,” sings Lily Allen in her surprisingly candid and detailed album thought to be about her open relationship with her ex-husband.

The album has catapulted the concept of non-monogamous relationships into the spotlight, and couples therapists report that an increasing number of their clients are choosing to go down this route.

An international study found cool people are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful. At best, I have three of these traits. Could I change that?

Who would you say is effortlessly, undeniably cool? Charli xcx, certainly. David Bowie, of course. Yoko Ono and Fran Lebowitz – or do they just wear a lot of black? I’m not cool and never have been. As a teenager, I was a swot at a school that prized sports. As an adult, I’m always wearing a backpack. I’m garrulous, risk-averse, lazy with my personal presentation and not convinced that any drug beats eight hours’ sleep. “Cool” feels to me like the stock market or Michelin restaurants: none of my business.

I’m not alone. In a recent YouGov survey, a third of respondents said they weren’t cool at school, with only 10% reporting that, yep, they actually were. Half claimed they were “somewhere in between”.

It was only years later, when I heard the word workaholic being used seriously for the first time, that I wondered whether I had a problem

Have you ever heard a word that jolts you to attention? That word, for me, was “workaholism” – and when I heard it through my headphones earlier this year, listening to an audiobook on the tube, I felt a pang of something between recognition and panic. It transported me back to the worst time in my life.

In May 2016, when I was nearly five months pregnant, I travelled to rural Norway to make a short documentary for the Guardian. The Norwegian government was making asylum seekers – from mostly Muslim countries – take cultural education classes about women’s rights. I’d been invited to a class in Moi, a town by a lake framed with pine trees, 100km south of Stavanger.

As texts and social media offer cheap offers, buying from unverified sellers can cause serious health problems

You have heard and read so much about people using weight loss injections to get slim, you feel it is time to give it a go in the run-up to the festive season. The problem is cost.

But it seems there are other options rather than getting a prescription from a doctor and going to the pharmacy. A text message arrives giving a link to a site with much cheaper medication – and with no need to go through official channels. And you saw a similar ad on social media the other day, so you decide to go for it.

Ploughing through my to-do list felt great until I hit a wall. Were we really meant to work without watching any vertical videos first?

After 33 years, it’s time to admit: I’ve never quite got the hang of myself. Am I a morning person or a night owl? What actually motivates me? Where exactly do I work best?

I often find myself thinking: “I hope I eat some vegetables today” or “I hope I reply to that email,” as though that’s up to someone else. I have no idea how to make myself do things in the consistent, reliable way that others seem to: work out, get dressed, cook a “veg bowl”, book appointments.

The Manchester City striker recently shared some of the things he credits with his success. Could they bring me similar glory?

Raw milk, LED light treatment, tomahawk steak and a cuddly toy. They sound more suited to the conveyor belt of The Generation Game than to a Premier League star’s daily routine, but these are some of the things the Manchester City and Norway striker Erling Haaland credits with his success.

Haaland recently shared the routine he believes keeps him at the top of his game on and off the pitch, but what would it do for a Guardian journalist? Could it provide a glimpse of how to match Haaland’s amazing physique, boyish appearance that belies his real age (25) and reported net worth of more than £50m? It was time to find out – for one day at least.

Prompts indicating suicidal ideation got alarming replies, which experts say shows ‘how easy it is to break the model’

An OpenAI statement released this week claimed the company had made its popular service ChatGPT better at supporting users experiencing mental health problems like suicidal ideation or delusions, but experts tell the Guardian they need to do more to truly ensure users are protected.

The Guardian tested several prompts indicating suicidal ideation with the ChatGPT GPT-5 updated model, which is now the default, and got alarming responses from the large language model (LLM) chatbot.

They locked horns on people crossing the Channel in small boats and cyclists using roads – did they find anything to agree on?

Philip, 51, Milton Keynes

Occupation Unemployed

Ditch the skis – these winter breaks are all about stunning mountain scenery, cosy places to stay and fun activities

Saddle up for sleigh rides, strap in for a 220-metre illuminated toboggan run, and prepare to get lost in an ice-carved maze at the Snowland theme park in Zakopane, as Poland’s winter capital sparkles up for the season. Pair a snowy walk through the Chochołowska valley with a visit to the Chochołowskie thermal baths, with outdoor pools, sauna, balneotherapy and massage treatments. Stay at the Hotel Aries, which mixes classic Alpine design with Zakopane touches (local wine and traditional dishes in the Halka restaurant, furniture and rugs by local craftspeople), and don’t miss the world’s largest snow maze and the Palace of the Snow Queen in the Snowlandia theme park, which has individual chambers sculpted from snow and ice by local artists.
Doubles at Hotel Aries from £165 B&B. Zakopane is around two hours from Krakow by bus; the hotel is a 1km taxi ride from the station

An epic rail trip to Sweden’s Arctic north ends with a surreal skiing experience – and waffles for breakfast while sitting out a snowstorm

The light coming through the sleeper train window wakes me. It’s nearly time. Climbing down the ladder past the other snoozing occupants, I head into the corridor. A few hours ago there were only trees, an endless unfurling ribbon of spruce and birch. Now there is snow, vast banks of it. And sometimes, when the train roars through a big drift, great spumes of white blast out on either side, blocking any view.

In the restaurant car, I watch the map on my phone as a blue dot approaches a straight dashed line. A frozen lake and distant pale mountains appear. Then at 6.09am we cross the Arctic Circle. Forty-eight hours previously, I had been in London St Pancras station, queueing for the Eurostar. Now, five trains later, never having left terra firma, I am in the Arctic. Most of my fellow travellers are Swedes with hefty bags of skis and well-stocked sledges that look expedition-ready. With their weathered faces and lean muscle, they look intimidatingly capable.

Tina Frundt is one of Washington DC’s most experienced specialists in protecting children from sex trafficking. Many of the youths she supports are targeted and exploited on social media platforms, which give traffickers unprecedented levels of access to their victims. Fighting to break this cycle, Tina works closely with law enforcement, social workers and parents to create an environment where some of America’s most vulnerable children can feel safe again

How did a former Mormon bishop end up pleading guilty to taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia in the European parliament?

The first thing most people recall about Nathan Gill is his imposing height.

At 193cm (6ft 4in), the one-time Reform UK leader in Wales towered over colleagues and opponents – and he was taller still in his favourite cowboy boots.

At 86, she’s a literary seer and saint – and queen of the Canadian resistance. So what does the writer make of our dystopian world?

• ‘From (finally) being given the Booker prize to the day her partner died’: an exclusive extract from Margaret Atwood’s memoir

Margaret Atwood is doing her grocery shopping in her local supermarket in Toronto, and it is taking longer than usual. This is not because The Handmaid’s Tale author turns 86 this month, but because she is checking the provenance of every item before it goes in her trolley: California satsumas out; Canada spuds in. Atwood is a passionate environmentalist, but at the moment she is more worried about boycotting anything that comes from over the border in the US than air miles. “Elbows up!” she declares, taking a furious stance in the fruit and veg aisle.

Back in her kitchen she shows me a YouTube skit of Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and comedian Mike Myers in the national hockey kit to explain the significance of “Elbows up”, a growing gesture of Canadian resistance. “Oh, they’re angry. They’re furious,” she says of the reaction to President Trump’s proposed plans to make Canada the 51st state of America. “We’ve not got a very big army. If they wanted to invade they could do so. But I don’t think they would. Do they have any idea what it would be like to try to occupy a hostile Canada? It would not be a joke.” Trump would have to deal with Atwood, for starters.

The Homeland star is back in explosive thriller The Beast in Me. She opens up about politics, monsters – and whether her teen romance scenes would be acceptable today

In the new thriller The Beast in Me, a memoirist takes on a sinister property developer who may or may not have killed his first wife, and it’s not entirely clear which of the two is more dangerous. It has been billed by Netflix as “cat and mouse”, but Claire Danes prefers to think of it as the more evenly matched snake and mongoose.

“I liked the idea of a writer being truly dangerous, and predatorial,” she says of her character, Aggie Wiggs – grieving the loss of her young son and living divorced and alone in a big house she can’t afford – who develops a fascination with her new neighbour. Nile Jarvis (I can get on board with everything in the gripping eight-part series except, perhaps, just about every character’s name) is certainly monstrous, may also be a murderer, but might just have found his equal, because “she’s a real fighter, and she doesn’t have that much to lose”.

We’re interested to hear how the looming pause of Snap benefits, as well as rising insurance costs due to a loss of subsidies, could affect Americans

More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.

The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.

We would like to hear from people about the impact Hurricane Melissa is having in their area

Hurricane Melissa, potentially the worst storm to ever hit the Caribbean, has made landfall in Jamaica.

The “life-threatening” hurricane is expected to bring up to 40in (101cm) of rainfall to some parts of Jamaica, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), as well as destructive winds of 160mph (260 kph) and the risk of major flooding. Cuba and the Bahamas are also forecast to be in Melissa’s path.

We would like to hear from people who have had experiences of living with a “friendlord” in the past 5-10 years and find out the impact on their relationship

The number of homeowners taking on lodgers has hugely increased in recent years due to rising costs and housing pressures. Many are people opting to rent a room from their home-owning friend rather than take their chances in the overheated rental market. But living alongside a live-in landlord, who’s also your friend, can test the relationship.

We would like to hear from people who have had experiences of living with a “friendlord” in the past 5-10 years, about how it affected your friendship, positively or negatively. Stories may appear anonymously.

We would like to hear from people who fell in love in 2025

We would like to hear from people who fell in love in 2025. Who are they and how did you meet? Why are they a good fit for you? What’s a nice quality or detail about them? How were you feeling about dating before you met them?

You can share your story below.

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