From Vietnam to the Balkans, Donald Trump’s family has launched a global dealmaking blitz since his re-election

A crusading prosecutor in the Balkans comes under pressure to drop a big case. Vietnamese villagers learn they are to be evicted. A convicted crypto kingpin in the Gulf receives a pardon.

All have one thing in common: they appear to be connected to the Trump family’s campaign to amass riches around the world. Since Donald Trump’s re-election a year ago, warnings that his use of presidential power to advance personal interests is corroding American democracy have grown ever louder. What is less understood – and perhaps even more dangerous – is the damage this is doing everywhere else.

Big deal-breakers are all very well, but the seemingly small things often tell in the end. How do they feel about sell-by dates? Will they walk out of a bad film? Not asking will come back to haunt you

A friend of mine once declined a date with a kind, funny, clever man because she hated his shoes. When she relayed this to our group of twentysomethings, it didn’t warrant comment or discussion, because it was such a rational decision, which we all would have made. I mean, come on – you can’t go out with someone with bad trainers, can you?

Fortunately for the continuation of the human race, today’s daters appear to be a little less fastidious. A recent report on relationships by the dating app Plenty of Fish not only failed to mention footwear, but showed that people are keen to skip the small-talk phase, so weighty conversation topics such as life goals and dealbreakers are now brought up straight away.

Two new books analyse what makes the ‘perfect pub’ and both come to a sobering conclusion: Irish pubs are in trouble

Like triple-distilled whiskey, Irish pubs appear to have timeless appeal. They are staple setting in films, books and plays, draw tourists to Ireland, replicate themselves around the world and induce social media quests for the perfect snug and the perfect pint.

Scholars have now bestowed academic imprimatur on this cultural treasure status by examining – and celebrating – pubs through the lens of history, sociology, architecture, psychology, design, art and literature.

It is good that you are getting expert counselling, but seeking support from other solo mums might be helpful too

I am a very lucky person who has a huge amount to be happy and grateful for. But although I have many excellent friendships, I have had very few romantic relationships. I am now 36 and after 10 years of giving dating a real “go”, I have decided to become a single mum by choice. This has been a very positive decision for me and I am excited about the journey.

During a pre-screening psychological counselling session, the psychologist spoke about the grief many women in my shoes experience as a result of not having the family they’d hoped for. Although I was aware of this and have worked extensively on self-acceptance with my own therapist, I now feel deep sadness and regret at being unable to have formed a relationship with someone who wanted to have children with me. In my friends and colleagues groups, this sets me apart from most women my age. I am envious of the companionship and support my peers receive from their partners.

Photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer capture the families, farmers and fishers who have been forced to leave their homes by extreme weather – and the landscapes they left behind. Introduction by Dina Nayeri

In 2009, Swiss photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer set out to document the people suffering the first shocks of the climate crisis. They had just returned from China, where rapid, unregulated development has ravaged the natural landscapes. Back home, though, the debate still felt strangely theoretical. “In 2009, you still had people who denied climate change,” Braschler recalls. “People said, ‘This is media hype.’” So the couple, working with the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva and supported by Kofi Annan, began The Human Face of Climate Change, a portrait series that showed the people on the frontline of a warming world.

Sixteen years later, climate change is no longer up for debate; the urgent discussions now revolve around solutions. Braschler and Fischer, too, have shifted their focus. “This is going to be one of the central issues for humanity,” says Braschler, “and we want to make sure that people know that the major effect of climate change will be displacement.”

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

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

Rescue teams find more bodies in burnt-out buildings of Wang Fuk Court complex after Wednesday’s fire

The death toll in Hong Kong’s apartment complex fire has risen to 146 after investigators discovered more bodies in the burnt-out buildings. A steady stream of people placed bouquets of flowers at an ever-growing makeshift memorial at the scene of the disaster, among the worst in the city’s history.

The Hong Kong police’s disaster victim identification unit has been going through the buildings of the Wang Fuk Court complex meticulously and has found bodies both in apartment units and on the roofs, the officer in charge, Cheng Ka-chun, said on Sunday.

President made declaration in a social media post, after FAA last week warned airlines of ‘worsening security situation’

The Venezuelan government has responded defiantly to the heightened pressure by the US government, including Donald Trump’s recent statements on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed in its entirety.

In a statement, the Venezuelan government said Trump’s comments are a “colonialist threat” against their sovereignty and violate international law. The government also said it demanded respect for its airspace and would not accept foreign orders or threats.

San Joaquin County sheriff’s office says juveniles were among the victims in possible ‘targeted’ attack on a banquet hall in Stockton

Four people have died after 14 people were shot at a family gathering in northern California on Saturday night, police said.

The victims, who range from “juveniles to adults”, were taken to local hospitals, Heather Brent, a spokesperson for the San Joaquin County sheriff’s office, said. “What we have confirmed at this time is that there was a banquet hall where a family was celebrating.”

Kyiv tries to pile pressure on Russia with attack on empty vessels on way to load up with oil for foreign markets

Ukrainian naval drones hit two tankers operating under sanctions in the Black Sea as they headed to a Russian port to load up with oil destined for foreign markets, an official said on Saturday, as Kyiv tries to pile pressure on Russia’s vast oil industry.

The two oil tankers, identified as the Kairos and Virat, were empty and sailing to Novorossiysk, a major Russian Black Sea oil terminal, the official at the security service of Ukraine told Reuters.

Hundreds of people still missing after heavy rain and mudslides in country’s deadliest natural disaster for years

Entire areas of Sri Lanka’s capital are flooded after a powerful cyclone triggered heavy rains and mudslides across the island, with authorities reporting nearly 200 dead and dozens more missing.

Officials said the extent of the damage in the country’s worst-affected central region was slowly becoming clear on Sunday as relief workers cleared roads blocked by fallen trees and mudslides.

Axing of Maki Otsuki performance in Shanghai the latest in spate of cancelled cultural events involving Asia’s two biggest economies

Japanese “One Piece” singer Maki Otsuki was forced to halt her performance on stage in Shanghai, her management said, one of the latest events hit by a diplomatic spat between Tokyo and Beijing.

Otsuki, known for the theme song of the popular anime, had been slated to perform for two days from Friday at the Bandai Namco Festival 2025 in the Chinese city.

Exclusive: French artist planning to cover bridge over Seine in tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The enigmatic French artist JR will undertake what he says is his biggest ever challenge next year when he “wraps” Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge across the Seine River in Paris, in a tribute to a monumental art project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

For three weeks next June, the 232-metre (761ft) long bridge will be wrapped in fabric, 40 years after the married artists known for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations did the same thing.

Men represent 50% of all infertility cases but poor understanding among GPs means it is often untreated

Couples are needlessly going through IVF because male infertility is under-researched, with the NHS too often failing to diagnose treatable causes, leading experts have said.

Poor understanding among GPs and a lack of specialists and NHS testing means male infertility is often left untreated in couples struggling to conceive, despite men accounting for 50% of all infertility cases.

Trump administration lists reporting it objects to in latest escalation of attacks on US journalism

The White House rolled out a new section of its official website on Friday that publicly criticizes and catalogs media organizations and journalists it claims have distorted coverage.

At the top of the page, the text reads: “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.” The feature names the Boston Globe, CBS News and the Independent as “media offenders of the week”, accusing them of inaccurately portraying Trump’s remarks about six Democratic lawmakers who released of video encouraging military members to not follow illegal orders.

Exit of Zelenskyy’s most powerful aide could also have impact on Kyiv’s negotiating position in talks over ending war

Ukraine’s political system is bracing for a “mini-revolution” as the county’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is forced to adapt to life without his closest adviser, chief enforcer and most loyal associate, Andriy Yermak, who resigned on Friday after his apartment was searched as part of a widening anti-corruption probe.

Yermak’s resignation could have tremendous consequences for domestic governance, as well as for Ukraine’s negotiating position in talks over ending the war with Russia, where he had served as the head of Ukraine’s delegation to peace talks with the White House.

Failure by GPs to diagnose treatable causes had huge time, money and mental health costs for these men

After six years of trying for a baby and two failed rounds of IVF, Toby Trice found himself at his “lowest ebb”, feeling “lost, lonely and alienated from society”.

“We were in this dark phase of not knowing where we were at. All our friends and family around us had children and we were constantly reminded we couldn’t. It was soul-destroying.

A country built on agriculture is seeing the sector change as the number of farms shrinks and it becomes harder for young people to buy land

On a farm south of Auckland, Cam Clayton breeds sheep and cattle – working alongside the dogs he’s trained since they were puppies. There, he looks out on knobbly hills and tree-filled gullies in Waikato, close to where he grew up.

“I have the best office, with the best views,” says Clayton.

For a man who insists football isn’t political, the Fifa boss is putting a lot of effort into into courting the most divisive politician on Earth

Gianni Infantino was 18 years old the first time he ran for office. It was a presidential election at FC Brig-Glis, the local amateur football club in the small Swiss town where he grew up. Running against two older men, and with no discernible footballing record of his own, the little red-haired kid with freckles was, unsurprisingly, the rank outsider in the race.

But he had a vision. He had a ferocious work ethic, boundless enthusiasm, well-established networks in the town’s Italian immigrant community. And even at this tender age, he had a flair for an eye-catching scheme. To the shock of many veterans at the club, Infantino surged to victory: partly on the back of his pledge to attract new sponsors and revenue streams, and partly on something more tangible. Infantino promised that if he won, his mother Maria would wash all the players’ kits, every week, for as long as he was president.

For John, group sex is a fantasy he wants to make reality. For Sophie, it is a mistake she does not want to repeat

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

There’s still so much I want to do sexually, and I want to do it now while I still can

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

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

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

Criminals send thousands of texts about an undelivered bargain buy and ask for a redelivery fee in a bid to mine your data and bank details

You have landed a lot of bargains in the run-up to Black Friday and most of your Christmas shopping is done.

So when a text arrives about a delivery, it’s no surprise. A quick click on a link and you have paid the £2 redelivery charge it’s asking for.

For everything from pop music to poetry, overwhelming infatuation offers inspiration and storylines. But when might this tip over into something a little less healthy?

For months after her relationship ended, Anna* couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Each morning she’d wake with a jolt of grief; an intense, almost physical feeling that morphed into thoughts of him that consumed nearly every waking hour.

The US author and orator on leaf blowers and Labubus, the weirdest thing she has done for love and struggling with contemporary novels

I would like to ask your opinion on five things. First of all, leaf blowers.

A horrible, horrible invention. I didn’t even know about them until like 20 years ago when I rented a house in the country. I was shocked! I live in New York City, we don’t have leaf problems. We have every other kind of problem. When I was a kid, we had leaf raking. Which is quiet. Leaf blowers are the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. First of all, they are incredibly noisy. And second of all, 10 minutes after you use it, that big leaf blower in the sky blows them all back. It’s a very stupid invention.

⚽ Updates from the noon GMT KO at Selhurst Park
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Well, isn’t this a novelty: a midday (GMT) kick-off on a Sunday. The roast dinner is gonna have to wait. Selhurst Park is looking replendent in this winter sunshine. For the Palace fans living in south London and beyond, it’s time to go to church.

Let’s see if the United fans make it to the away end, the first train left Manchester Piccadilly on Sunday at 8.05am and arrived at London Euston around the time that this liveblog launched. That gives them just under an hour to make a 45-minute journey, which is almost certain to be longer anyone that needs a snack/drink/the toilet or those that aren’t intimately familiar with London’s public transport. So basically everyone. The unusual kick-off time is a result of TNT Sports choosing it for broadcast (and Palace’s involvement in the Conference League on Thursday). Once again, it feels like the match-going fans have been forgotten about. Hmmm.

• News and discussion as we build up to the day’s action

• Chelsea determined to stay grounded | Get in touch

Krishna gets in touch: “Isn’t the match involving Manchester United no longer about the result but how many minutes before the first misplaced pass, when will Ruben disintegrate looking like a cook who forgot his recipe AND missing a key ingredient and which comic event will lead to the first red card?”

Ruben Amorim has been doing his usual Mr Motivator act.

Things do not get any easier for Wolves and Rob Edwards. After being outclassed by Crystal Palace last weekend, on Sunday they face a trip to their in-form Midlands rivals Aston Villa. Then it is Nottingham Forest, Manchester United, Arsenal and Brentford before Christmas. Wolves lost to each of the promoted clubs this season and surely even the most optimistic Wolves supporter can be forgiven for wondering: where are the points coming from? A section of Wolves supporters tempered their anger at Molineux last time out but any grace period afforded to Edwards, a personable former player and coach, will soon fade. Even so he has to maintain belief. “When we take these jobs we all back ourselves – there’s a belief and ego we all have: ‘I can be the one who can stick around for a while,’” he said. “I haven’t joined this club to be gone within a few months.”

As we prepare to launch our eighth edition of our global list we present the members of this year’s voting panel, our biggest ever

After another gripping year of women’s football we are ready to launch our list of the best 100 female footballers in the world in 2025.

Our biggest ever panel includes familiar faces such as the outgoing Kansas City Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski, the new OL Lyonnes head coach, Jonatan Giráldez, and Australia’s Joe Montemurro.

• ‘A series like this, does it need it? I don’t think so’

• Root’s head-to-head with Starc may be decisive battle

It rarely takes much for an Englishman to be accused of whinging in Australia but when Joe Root was asked a simple question on Sunday – whether a series such as the Ashes actually needs day-night Test cricket – he simply gave an honest answer.

“I personally don’t think so,” replied Root, before England began netting at the Gabba before Thursday’s second Test. “It’s obviously very successful and popular here, and obviously Australia have got a very good record [played 14, won 13]. You can see why we’re playing one of those games.

• Norris slips up in final lap to give rival advantage

• Max Verstappen third on grid; Hamilton 18th

Oscar Piastri knew going into the weekend of the Qatar Grand Prix he would have to be at his best to keep his world championship ambitions alive and, with a battling performance, he did exactly that, by claiming victory in the sprint race and then pole position for the grand prix at the Lusail circuit.

Both were significant but pole was crucial in the tense title fight with his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, who lines up alongside him on the front row of the grid, and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who starts from third, with the three contenders set to go head to head into turn one on Sunday.

Top-four seeding shows Fifa prioritising marketing over sporting integrity once again but even best-laid plans can flop

The plastic balls rumble around the glass bowls of destiny. Portentous music plays. There is a sense of possibility, as though the inner workings of the universe have suddenly been laid bare, a door opening to reveal the three Fates sitting by their spinning wheel, measuring rod and shears in hand.

A World Cup draw is a moment of perfection, a platonic vision before reality has had time to intervene. Everybody is fit and in form. Every nation is playing as an ideal version of itself – no injuries, no disputes over bonuses, no concerns about fatigue or the temperature or whether a player might be distracted by a possible transfer; it’s the World Cup as pure potential. With Friday’s draw, next summer will suddenly feel a lot closer.

• Tadeo Allende hat-trick leads Miami to 5-1 win over NYC

• Early Vancouver goals sink expansion San Diego FC

• MLS Cup matchup repeats Concacaf semi-final

Lionel Messi will play for another trophy. Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets clearly aren’t ready to begin their retirements, either.

Tadeo Allande scored three goals – Alba and Busquets, a pair of longtime Messi teammates who will retire when this season ends, had the assists on his first two – and Inter Miami topped New York City FC 5-1 on Saturday night for the Eastern Conference title and a berth in the MLS Cup final.

Not long ago the Norwegian giants were relegated and almost bankrupt – now a first title in 34 years is in reach

There were moments last weekend when Viking’s latest must-win game at Fredrikstad seemed to turn on a coin toss. The chances came thick and fast; both goalkeepers were forced into acrobatic saves; on the stroke of half-time, the Fredrikstad forward Henrik Skogvold unleashed a shot that cracked the underside of the bar and seemed to defy the laws of physics by spinning away.

Viking knew anything other than a win would allow Bodø/Glimt, Norwegian champions in four of the past five seasons, to dethrone them at the top. In the 71st minute, as the massed ranks of away fans in dark blue held their breath, the odds finally went in their favour: Zlatko Tripic, the captain, arced an inch-perfect cross to the back post, where Henrik Falchener, Viking’s towering centre-back, nodded in to set off an explosion of noise and send thousands of fists into the air in unison.

• Dortmund hold on to beat Bayer Leverkusen

• Leão strike gives Milan 1-0 win over Lazio

Barcelona recovered from an early setback to secure a 3-1 victory over Alavés, with first-half goals from Lamine Yamal and Dani Olmo and a late second for the latter sealing the win at the Camp Nou.

The win lifts the defending La Liga champions to the top of the table on 34 points, two ahead of second-placed Real Madrid, who have a game in hand at Girona on Sunday.

The US hasn’t just left Ukraine vulnerable; it is also provoking Xi’s intensifying attitude towards what he considers a renegade province

Sheer ignorance, fed by malign intent, historical prejudice and mutual misunderstanding, is often the crucial spark that ignites simmering international conflicts. If Adolf Hitler, remarkably ignorant of the US, had grasped the true extent of American industrial might, would he still have fatefully declared war on Washington in 1941?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it evidently had no idea what it was getting into. Humiliating defeat contributed greatly to its subsequent disintegration. In 1990, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, convinced he had a green light from the White House. In all these cases, stupidity produced disastrous misjudgments that proved fatal.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Rosa Park’s story is about courage. But, lest one forget, it is also a story about breaking the law

It was 70 years ago when four African Americans were sitting in the fifth row of a bus in Montgomery. As one white man had to stand towards the front, the driver asked the four to get up and move towards the back of the bus. Three did; one did not – the rest is history. Or so many American kids might think when they first read the story of Rosa Parks in school.

It is a story of courage, but, lest one forget, it is also a story about breaking the law. And the question for us today is what civil disobedience means in an era when the federal government is signaling its readiness severely to punish even perfectly legal dissent.

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

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

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

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

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.

Trump has a disconcerting tendency to attack the press – but especially female reporters, whom he holds in particular ire

There was a time when it would have been a scandal for the president of the United States to call a journalist “ugly” or a politician “retarded”. Now it’s just another day in America. During a holiday when many Americans were gathering with family and reflecting on what they were grateful for, Trump was crouched over his keyboard slinging insults at his perceived enemies.

On Thanksgiving day, for example, Trump posted a rant on Truth Social about immigration. He called Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, an ableist slur, and then made an Islamophobic jab at “the worst ‘Congressman/woman’ in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab”.

The high-value council tax surcharge may only raise £400m but it’s the best opportunity for a bigger, fairer tax on wealth

Rachel Reeves won little credit last week for lifting the lid on one of the most heated tax debates of the past three decades.

Who in their right mind would consider engaging in the fight that would inevitably lead to some of the richest people in the land calling for your head?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Committee highlights allegations including dog attacks and sexual violence, raising concern about impunity for war crimes

Israel has “a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture”, according to a UN report covering the past two years, which also raised concerns about the impunity of Israeli security forces for war crimes.

The UN committee on torture expressed “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence”.

Former oversight officials alarmed by dismantling of DHS system that oversees complaints about civil rights harms

The federal watchdog system at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that oversees complaints about civil rights violations, including in immigration detention, has been gutted so thoroughly that it could be laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to “abuse people with impunity”, experts warn.

Former federal oversight officials have sounded the alarm at the rapid dismantling of guardrails against human rights failures – at the same time as the government pushes aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

Border Patrol agents in Arizona forcibly removed a detained man from a cell, handcuffed him and then injected him with ketamine to sedate him in 2023, according to a CRCL document confirming the watchdog’s investigation into the allegation. A Guardian reporter had saved that document just weeks before it was scrubbed from the DHS’s website.

Guards at a privately owned Louisiana detention center systematically mistreated detained immigrants, according to a CRCL document. This included an investigation into a 2024 incident during which correctional staff pepper sprayed around 200 detained immigrants who were staging a hunger strike in protest of detention conditions. Guards then allegedly locked the men in the unit and cut the power and water for hours. A majority of the men were allegedly denied medical care, the original complaint, submitted to the CRCL by RFK Human Rights, said.

In a Florida jail, a 33-year-old immigrant woman with mental health problems was forcibly stripped naked, strapped to a restraint chair and mocked by male guards, according to a CRCL complaint submitted by the ACLU of Florida and RFK Human Rights. The woman was allegedly left with “contusions and marks on her body” after hours in the restraint chair. The whistleblower declaration said the CRCL had launched an investigation into the case.

Agents violated due process during the arrest and detention of Palestinian student and Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, according to the whistleblower complaint.

Tensions grow after research in England finds there may not be enough water for planned carbon capture and hydrogen projects

• Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown

Tensions are growing between the government, the water sector and its regulators over the management of England’s water supplies, as the Environment Agency warns of a potential widespread drought next year.

Research commissioned by a water retailer has found water scarcity could hamper the UK’s ability to reach its net zero targets, and that industrial growth could push some areas of the country into water shortages.

NSW police arrest 141 people as campaigners demand federal government cancel planned fossil fuel projects and tax existing operations at 78%

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Activists have blocked two more coal ships from entering the Port of Newcastle on the fourth day of the Rising Tide protest, bringing the total number of ships turned around by campaigners this weekend to three.

Thousands of people have gathered at Rising Tide’s annual climate protest at the world’s largest coal port. The blockade began on Thursday and will continue until Tuesday. Hundreds have kayaked into the port, with many more watching on from the beach.

Sultana skips Saturday’s proceeding in solidarity with delegates expelled over links to other parties

Zarah Sultana has boycotted the first day of Your Party’s inaugural conference, throwing the party’s first official gathering into chaos amid disagreements with co-founder Jeremy Corbyn over how the party should be run.

Corbyn confirmed to journalists on Saturday that he preferred a single leader and is likely to stand for the role but Sultana said she would vote for collective leadership and that she did not believe parties should be run by “sole personalities”.

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

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

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

Destruction wrought by swine-borne disease is thinning the canopy of bunya pine forests and the problem is getting worse, experts say

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High up in an ancient conifer rainforest, at what was once the largest Indigenous gathering place in eastern Australia, there is sunlight where there shouldn’t be.

Among the eponymous pine trees of the Bunya Mountains, in south-east Queensland, a deadly disease has taken root. Walking through the forest, Adrian Bauwens, a Wakka Wakka man, says pockets of sunlight have replaced what is “usually quite a dense canopy where’s it’s quite heavily shaded”.

Family ‘saddened’ by minister’s response to London coroner’s concerns over police database access

• Georgia’s story: how a domestic abuse victim’s suicide was ruled an unlawful killing by her partner

The family of a woman judged to have been unlawfully killed by her partner after she took her own life following years of domestic abuse has said “lessons have still not been learnt” after the government indicated it would not make changes to how officers use the police national database.

An inquest earlier this year found that Georgia Barter, 32, experienced years of abuse at the hands of Thomas Bignell.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Labour knows it needs to win over the ‘sea wall’ cohort of coastal voters in the next election. But as anger over inequality grows, time is running out

It is a lovely sunny autumn day in Ramsgate on Britain’s Kent coast, and quintessential seaside chippy Peter’s Fish Factory is doing a roaring lunchtime trade. Across the road, at the entrance to the town’s pier, local MP and chair of the newly reformed coastal parliamentary Labour party (PLP), Polly Billington, is having her photo taken.

In between shots she shows us the community art project that adorns the fence along the entrance to the pier. It is made up of pictures, drawn primarily by local children and young people, of the 65 little ships that set sail earlier this year from Ramsgate to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation.

Staff at human rights body said to be ‘desperate for regime change’ over inertia after court’s legal definition of a woman

The ongoing impasse over guidance from the UK’s human rights watchdog on access to single-sex spaces is distracting from other pressing issues, including the rise of the far right, insiders have told the Guardian.

Some members of staff at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are described as “desperate for regime change” ahead of the new chair, Mary-Ann Stephenson, taking up her post in December.

The rite of passage for many Australian teenagers at Surfers Paradise has changed since the first party at Broadbeach in the 1970s

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It’s 9pm on Friday at Surfers Paradise and a DJ on the main beach is playing a club mix of Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move It as teenage boys wearing sunglasses shuffle enthusiastically on the sand.

This is the last night of schoolies and it’s going to be large. The evening’s official costume theme is “good, evil, iconic”, which is open to wide interpretation. Someone is dressed as the Lorax, another as a Christmas tree.

Night falls over the beach

At a time when distrust of big tech is high, Silicon Valley is embracing an alternative ecosystem where every CEO is a star

A montage of Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, and waving US flags set to a remix of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck blasts out as the intro for the tech billionaire’s interview with Sourcery, a YouTube show presented by the digital finance platform Brex. Over the course of a friendly walk through the company offices, Karp fields no questions about Palantir’s controversial ties to ICE but instead extolls the company’s virtues, brandishes a sword and discusses how he exhumed the remains of his childhood dog Rosita to rebury them near his current home.

“That’s really sweet,” host Molly O’Shea tells Karp.

Lead FDA vaccine regulator announced new approval process after claiming Covid vaccine had killed 10 children

The leading vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a far stricter course for federal vaccine approvals, following claims from his team that Covid vaccines were linked to the deaths of at least 10 children.

Experts suggest the announcement will make the vaccine approval process significantly more difficult.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beatles Anthology is on Disney+ now.

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

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

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

The musical prodigy discovered Stevie Wonder aged two and danced to Brazilian jazz at a Grammys afterparty. But what song does he think is the best in the world?

The first song I fell in love with
So many songs hit me as a child, they were like windows opening up new worlds. But the first I truly loved was Did I Hear You Say You Love Me, by Stevie Wonder, which I remember clearly when I was around two years old.

The first single I bought
I bought an iTunes single by Take 6 when I was 13. They are a six-part a cappella, gospel, jazz group, and they completely exploded my creative imagination. The song, He Never Sleeps, has the most unbelievable harmonic journey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tooth was delighted to capture one of Antony Gormley’s statues on Crosby beach – the dog was an unexpected bonus

Twenty years ago, 100 cast-iron, lifesize sculptures were erected across Liverpool’s Crosby beach. Sculptor Antony Gormley – also the man behind Gateshead’s Angel of the North – had created the figures several years previously, and London-based Roger Tooth had for years wanted to visit the Another Place installation and see them for himself. “I was in Liverpool with my wife and friends for a weekend away, and Sunday was an arty day,” Tooth says. “We began at Walker Art Gallery, and ended with a Guinness in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms. In between we headed the two miles outside the city to the statues. Seeing the rusting figures, all facing the sea amid the moving sands, was stunning.”

This was October 2025 and Storm Amy was in full effect. Tooth notes that it was blowing the sand around, and possibly also this dog. “I was taking a closeup of one of the sculptures when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small white dog bounding towards me,” he says. “I was amazed that an iPhone (and I) could freeze the dog in mid-air.”

When mountaineer Allie Pepper met Mikel Sherpa at Manaslu base camp in Nepal, their romance began with stolen kisses and whispered conversations

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I discovered a passion for mountaineering in 2000 on a technical climbing course in New Zealand. For two decades I dedicated my life to the mountains, climbing some of the world’s highest peaks including Everest.

In early 2022 my marriage ended and I threw myself completely into my dream of climbing the world’s 14 highest peaks without supplemental oxygen. By September I reached Manaslu base camp in Nepal. I was focused on the mountain ahead, not on love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more Leading questions

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

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

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

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

Wrong!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medication, such as birth control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Kanal is 95% complete and on schedule but plans to slash its budget mean conversation around its opening have moved from ‘when’ to ‘if’

A year before its scheduled opening on 28 November 2026, building works at Kanal, a new contemporary art museum in Brussels, are running on time.

Housed in a remodelled former Citroën garage on the north-western edge of the city centre, the centre is 95% complete. Curators are putting the finishing touches to an opening show that will feature works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French have already been signed off.

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

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

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

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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