‘I love when my enemies hate me’: how Hasan Piker became one of the biggest voices on the US left

Every day he broadcasts a marathon Twitch stream, airing his views to his three million followers. It has led to fame – and some fear – in a country ever more politically divided

Hasan Piker calls it the bus driver test: “You get on a bus and you have 30 seconds to explain whatever online phenomena took place to the bus driver without them looking at you and going, ‘Get off the fucking bus.’” Most online discourse, no matter how heated, fails the test, he says – not least an incident last weekend, when someone on a Dublin street asked to take a picture with Piker, then held up a picture of his dog and shouted “Free Kaya!” Never mind the bus driver; trying to explain the significance of this particular event might well take the rest of this article, but the wider point is that there is a jarring overlap, or more often disconnect, between the online and offline worlds.

Piker finds himself in this in-between space more and more these days. Until fairly recently, the 34-year-old was familiar only to the very online, especially Americans in their 20s and 30s, largely thanks to his presence on the streaming channel Twitch, where he has 3 million followers. But since Donald Trump’s election, Piker has become an in-demand voice in “the real world” for his views on the beleaguered political left, and especially that inordinately fretted-over demographic, young men.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 am

The Birth Keepers: I choose this – episode one

The Free Birth Society was selling pregnant women a simple message. They could exit the medical system and take back their power. By free birthing. But Nicole Garrison believes FBS ideology nearly cost her her life. This is episode one of a year-long investigation by Guardian journalists Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne

Published: December 10, 2025, 6:54 pm

‘It becomes like Zoolander’: the podcast making you think differently about clothes

Avery Trufelman is the New York-based radio producer behind Articles of Interest, a fashion podcast that has non-fashion people gripped in their millions

Did you know that the zipper only came about because a Swedish-born engineer named Gideon Sundback fell in love with a factory owner’s daughter? Or that it took longer for it to be developed than it took for the Wright brothers to invent the aeroplane? You probably know that pockets have become a symbol of gender privilege – but were you aware that in the 18th century, women’s pockets were big enough to hold tools for writing, a small diary and a snack for later? Perhaps most surprising is that layering, which has made Uniqlo one of the biggest brands in the world, was in effect invented in the 1940s by a man named Georges Doriot, who was also famous for inventing venture capital.

All these nuggets and more are included in Articles of Interest, a podcast by 34-year-old Avery Trufelman. Listeners tune in for the smarts but also her disarming sense of fun. Not to mention her low, husky voice, which seems made for podcasting. “I don’t take care of it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says over video call from her apartment in New York.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Like a rock star’: the global reverence for Martin Parr’s class-conscious photography

Unfettered love for late photographer in France and elsewhere stands in contrast to occasional reservations in UK

The death of Martin Parr, the photographer whose work chronicled the rituals and customs of British life, was front-page news in France and his life and work were celebrated as far afield as the US and Japan.

If his native England had to shake off concerns about the role of class in Parr’s satirical gaze before it could fully embrace him, countries like France have long revered the Epsom-born artist “like a rock or a movie star”, said the curator Quentin Bajac.

Published: December 11, 2025, 6:00 am

Jared Kushner – and three Arab monarchies – are at the heart of the Paramount-WBD bid | Mohamad Bazzi

The president’s son-in-law is once again at the center of an international business deal that will require administration approval

On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a $108bn takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, the entertainment giant that owns Hollywood movie studios, along with CNN, HBO and other media businesses. The bid is led by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison – a prominent Donald Trump supporter and Republican donor. Netflix had already prevailed over Paramount in a previous bidding competition for the purchase, but Trump announced on Sunday that he would “be involved” in his administration’s review of the Netflix deal. The president suggested the sale “could be a problem” because Netflix is already dominant in the US streaming market.

Paramount left out a significant fact in the press release announcing its offer: the bid includes funding from the private equity firm owned by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, as well as three Arab monarchies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which collectively have billions of dollars in ongoing ventures involving the Trump family business. Those details were buried in required paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

14 unexpected US gifts to give the men in your life this holiday season

From Crocs to indestructible wallets, we rounded up the best guy-approved gifts they won’t know how they lived without

• The 15 US gifts to give the women in your life

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Whether you have been together for years, just made it official, or maybe you’re just shopping for your brother, one thing remains certain: he is going to claim he doesn’t need anything. The special guys in our lives often default to what they’ve always used and loved, from threadbare T-shirts to melted spatulas.

This season, give him the gift of novelty. Introduce him to a new gadget he hasn’t thought of for his man-cave (yes, our respondents still have those). Show him that it’s OK to cry with a personalized keepsake commemorating your shared history. Introduce a little color into his life if his year has been a bit bleak.

Published: December 10, 2025, 8:15 pm

‘Human trafficking behind prison walls’: women jailed in Texas allege rampant sexual abuse

Women at FMC Carswell – long a focus of sexual abuse investigations – say prison officials have turned a blind eye

Eleven women incarcerated at a federal prison in Texas allege they have been subjected to rampant sexual abuse by staff members in the past seven years. The allegations are the latest accusations of abuse within a federal prison system rife with claims of inhumane conditions.

The allegations at FMC Carswell, a federal medical women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, are particularly troubling because the facility has been the focus of sexual abuse investigations for years, with 13 staff members convicted of abuse and misconduct since 1997 and promises of reform at various times.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

US lawmakers voice concerns about Venezuelan tanker seizure: ‘sounds a lot like the beginning of a war’ – US politics live

Republican senator Rand Paul said it was ‘not the job of the American government to go looking for monsters around the world’

Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic senator from Maryland, was among the lawmakers speaking out against the Trump administration and its actions around Venezuela, taking to the senate floor on Wednesday to call on Congress to block Donald Trump from “using taxpayer dollars to launch a regime change war”.

“Last time I checked, the constitution of the United States gives Congress – this body – the power to decide questions of war or peace,” he said.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:02 pm

Sexually explicit letters about exiled Hong Kong activists sent to UK and Australian addresses

Exclusive: Letters with deepfake images of Carmen Lau in UK and targeting of Ted Hui in Australia part of growing harassment

Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony.

Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:30 am

Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

More than 50 organisations report sites being restricted or removed, with abortion hotlines blocked and posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings

Meta has removed or restricted dozens of accounts belonging to abortion access providers, queer groups and reproductive health organisations in the past weeks in what campaigners call one of the “biggest waves of censorship” on its platforms in years.

The takedowns and restrictions began in October and targeted the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts of more than 50 organisations worldwide, some serving tens of thousands of people – in what appears to be a growing push by Meta to limit reproductive health and queer content across its platforms. Many of these were from Europe and the UK, however the bans also affected groups serving women in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

Merz says European leaders had ‘constructive’ call with Trump as he plays down tensions with US – Europe live

German chancellor says conversation focused on ‘what territorial concessions Ukraine is prepared to make’

Nato’s Rutte largely sticks to usual pleasantries, but says the clear political signal from Germany and other European partners is that “Europe is ready to take on more responsibility,” and “a signal that burden sharing is not just a slogan.”

In his opening remarks, Merz says that Nato plays “a key role in a time of great geopolitical upheaval,” as he recalls his numerous meetings with Rutte in recent months.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:01 pm

Afghanistan war veteran arrested after ICE protest prepares for trial

Bajun Mavalwalla, who maintains his innocence, will take case to jury even as others strike plea agreements

An Afghanistan war veteran arrested on felony “conspiracy” charges a month after he participated in a protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains his innocence and is preparing for a jury trial, even as others arrested the same day strike plea agreements to avoid long prison terms, his father said.

Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining an anti-ICE protest in Spokane, Washington.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘Ruined my Christmas spirit’: McDonald’s removes AI-generated ad after backlash

Commercial in Netherlands depicting festival-season chaos at ‘most terrible time of year’ prompted flurry of criticism online

McDonald’s says it has removed an AI-generated Christmas advertisement in the Netherlands after it was criticised online.

The ad, titled “the most terrible time of the year”, depicts scenes of Christmas chaos, with Santa caught in a traffic jam and a gift-laden Dutch cyclist slipping in the snow. And the message? Retreat to a McDonald’s restaurant until January and ride out the festive season.

Published: December 11, 2025, 2:01 am

‘She was very, very thin’: witness tells of Ukrainian journalist’s final days in Russian prison

Soldier’s account corroborates reports Viktoriia Roshchyna was taken to prison deep inside Russia, where it is believed she died

Details of the last days in captivity of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died last year, have emerged with the witness account of a soldier who was with her when she was transported to a prison deep inside Russia.

Roshchyna was seized while reporting from behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine in the summer of 2022, one of an estimated 16,000 civilians detained by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:46 am

Disappointing Oracle results knock $70bn off value amid AI bubble fears

Weaker-than-forecast quarterly data for Larry Ellison’s tech company shows slowdown in revenue growth but big rise in spending

• Business live – latest updates

Oracle’s disappointing results have knocked more than $70bn off the value of software and data company co-founded by Trump ally Larry Ellison, adding to fears of a bubble in AI-related stocks.

Shares in the company fell by 11.5% overnight after it reported a lower-than-expected 14% rise in revenues to $16bn (£12bn) in the latest quarter while revealing it was boosting its AI spending by about $15bn.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:19 am

‘The whole thing disgusts me’: Australians ditch US travel as new rules require social media to be declared

Visitors will have to reveal at the border all social media activity over the past five years

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Australians are abandoning travel to the US, and boycotting World Cup matches there next year, as the Trump administration flags new rules that will soon require visitors to hand over their social media history when applying to enter the country.

In a notice published on Tuesday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said tourists to the US from 42 countries including Australia would have to reveal all of their social media activity over the past five years under the new rules, which are up for a 60-day review before coming into effect. It would be a part of the application for a visa waiver under the ESTA application process.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:56 am

Senate to vote on dual bills on looming expiration of Obamacare tax credits

Republicans to oppose Democratic proposal that would extend subsidies until 2028 for about 21.8 million enrollees

The US Senate will vote Thursday on competing bills to address the imminent expiration of subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans, but neither measure is expected to pass, greatly increasing the chances that healthcare costs will soon rise to unaffordable levels for many Americans.

The votes, part of a deal brokered between Republican majority leader John Thune and the Democratic senators who agreed to reopen the government after a historically long shutdown last month, come as premium tax credits for an estimated 21.8 million enrollees of the plans are set to expire at the end of the month. Health policy research group KFF estimates that annual premiums will more than double if the subsidies are allowed to expire.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

Trump launches $1m ‘gold card’ visa scheme amid immigration crackdown

Wealthy immigrants will be able to buy residency, and $5m ‘platinum card’ will exempt holders from some US taxes

Donald Trump launched a new program that will allow wealthy foreign individuals to buy a US “golden visa” for $1m, and trailed a “platinum” version for $5m.

“A direct path to Citizenship for all qualified and vetted people. SO EXCITING! Our Great American Companies can finally keep their invaluable Talent,” Trump wrote on Wednesday on social media.

Published: December 10, 2025, 9:30 pm

US signs nearly $140m deal to purchase six Boeing 737s for use in deportations

Funds for contract signed with Daedalus Aviation will come from $170bn allocated for Trump’s border policy

The Department of Homeland Security has signed a nearly $140m contract to purchase six Boeing 737 planes for deportation operations.

The contract, signed with the Virginia-based firm Daedalus Aviation, was first reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday and later confirmed by DHS.

Published: December 10, 2025, 9:10 pm

The Birth Keepers: how the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world – video

The Free Birth Society (FBS) is a multimillion-dollar business that promotes an extreme version of free birth, meaning women giving birth without medical assistance. The Guardian can now reveal that the organisation has been linked to dozens of cases of maternal harm and baby deaths around the world. After a year-long investigation, Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne explain why some women they interviewed found FBS’s views so appealing, and why medical professionals say their claims about birth are dangerous

• The Birth Keepers: I choose this – episode one

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:00 am

The town on the banks of the Nile that turned floods into fortune

After record flooding submerged Bor in South Sudan in 2020, the emergency response ended up turning it into a beacon of climate crisis adaptation

The three friends fill yellow jerrycans and help each other lift them on to their heads for the short walk home. Nyandong Chang lives five minutes from the water kiosk and is here up to six times a day. “It’s still hard work,” she says, “but at least nowadays water is available and clean.”

Until last year, women and children in Bor, the capital of South Sudan’s Jonglei state, faced a much tougher chore – going all the way to the filthy stretch of the White Nile that runs near the town to draw the family’s drinking, washing and cooking water and carry it back.

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:00 am

‘Somalis are the scapegoat’: fear rises as Trump targets Minneapolis community

Residents have had to adjust how they’re living – staying home, carrying passports – since Trump launched his attack

On Tuesday morning, just a few stalls were open among the dozens that normally sell food, rugs, clothing and jewelry at Karmel mall, a Somali community hub in Minneapolis. Longtime Minnesotans said they had never seen the mall as quiet as it has been in recent days, almost jarringly still.

The bustle was replaced by unease and fear over the Trump administration’s menace toward Somalis and increased immigration agents in the city, tasked with targeting Somalis for deportation.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:00 pm

Chrissie Hynde: ‘I pierced Johnny Rotten’s ear in a toilet with an earring and a bar of soap’

The Pretenders bandleader answers your questions on her friendship with Morrissey, her love of Van Gogh and why her cameo on Friends ruined her school run

Wondering if you saw the [music-filled 1996 comedy drama] film Grace of My Heart and whether it influenced your decision to record an album of duets? GiniMarie
I didn’t see the film – Duets Special came about after a conversation with Rufus Wainwright’s husband when I impulsively suggested doing an album with Rufus. Rufus wanted to do Always on My Mind, and I looked at the list of nine other songs I’d sent him and thought: why don’t I ask some other people? Like, Low are one of my all-time favourite bands and when I first met Mimi Parker she immediately seemed like someone I’ve known all my life. I told her I’d done one of their songs with Debbie Harry and she looked at me and said: “Why didn’t you ask me?” I thought: touché, Mimi. I suggested [Cass McCombs’s] County Line but she wasn’t well. I told Mimi I’d wait as long as it takes. Then she died. Alan [Sparhawk, Parker’s husband] sang it instead and it’s absolutely amazing.

The Pretenders covered [Morrissey’s] Every Day Is Like Sunday and now Duets Special features The First of the Gang to Die. As one of Morrissey’s oldest friends, how often do your conversations reach a philosophical, political or moral impasse? McScootikins
My relationship with him started because we were both vegetarian and he sent me a postcard asking to meet for tea. Thirty-five years ago most of my mates – Linda McCartney and so on – were friends because of vegetarianism. Morrissey does stuff for Peta and he’s an amazing songwriter. A few nights ago I had dinner with a couple of girls he’d worked with. I sent him a picture of the three of us and he immediately sent back a picture of three women from Coronation Street. He’s always true to himself and no, we’ve never reached an impasse.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘Go ahead and sue me, I’m not afraid any more’: South Park’s festive special isn’t afraid of a fight

Trump and Vance head to South Park in Christmas gear for a big showdown – only for Jesus to show up. At one point, you can almost feel Trey Parker and Matt Stone taking a stand against the US government

Coming off its most controversial and highest rated season in years, South Park had high expectations to meet with its season finale. Given how infamously down-to-the-wire its production schedule is – showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker often don’t start writing scripts until the week they’re set to air, working up to the 11th hour to turn in a completed episode (a method that caused them to miss a deadline earlier this year) – there was some question as to whether they would be able to tie everything up at all, let alone in a satisfying manner.

Most viewers were probably anticipating a giant, apocalyptic climax to the various long-running storylines – chief among them Donald Trump’s attempts to kill his and his lover Satan’s soon-to-be-born spawn. Instead, Stone and Parker swerved expectations, delivering an introspective and ultimately melancholy climax, one that managed to balance hope and despair in equal measure, alongside the outrageous shock humour for which they’re famous.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:08 pm

You be the judge: should my wannabe influencer friend stop using me for content?

Marielle says being recorded is part of being her friend, but Beth is fed up of being a muse. Who should reel it in?

• Get a disagreement settled or become a YBTJ juror

Sometimes she films me while I’m eating. I’ll see myself on her Instagram – it’s like a jumpscare

I want Beth to see that the content we make together can get us a foot in the door

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:00 am

‘It’s not going to be some miraculous recovery’: film charts healing of Ukrainian children rescued from Russia

Director of After the Rain, set in animal therapy retreat, says she aimed to portray ‘children as children, not as a statistic’

Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father.

Sasha grew up in Mariupol, the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 am

Film bro finds and ‘crash out cinema’: how Letterboxd became a review haven for the algorithm-averse

The platform’s esoteric watchlists and rating system appeal to cinephiles craving a different mode of discovery

I never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app’s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way – such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.

But after I wrote about my feelgood movie for the Guardian – that would be Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s perfect 1941 satire – I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. “Hey Alaina, we heard you like movies,” one of them said. “What’s your Letterboxd?” I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I’ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer.

Published: December 10, 2025, 7:00 pm

Where to start with: Arundhati Roy

As Foyles names her memoir its book of the year, here’s a guide to the Booker prize winner’s wide-ranging oeuvre of fiction and nonfiction

‘The point of the writer is to be unpopular,” said Arundhati Roy in 2018. Over the last three decades – beginning with her 1997 Booker winner, The God of Small Things, which catapulted her into celebrity – the writer’s works of fiction, nonfiction and essays have indeed been polarising; she has become one of the most prominent critics of the Indian government and Hindu nationalism.

Last year, she was awarded the PEN Pinter prize, given to writers who cast an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world. Earlier this year, she published Mother Mary Comes To Me, an account of her relationship with her mother. The memoir has now been named Foyles book of the year, and was also shortlisted for Waterstones book of the year. Here, Priya Bharadia takes readers through Roy’s essential reads.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

Sean Duffy wants ‘civility’ in air travel … so why is he doing pull-ups at the airport? | Arwa Mahdawi

Transport infrastructure in the US is a hot mess – and the guy in charge thinks ‘wellness spaces’ are going to solve the problem

Sean “Dog” Duffy is a legend in the lumberjack world: a three-time world champion in the 90ft lumberjack speed climb who is renowned for his prowess in mounting and rolling big bits of wood. Not just a lumberjack, Duffy also made waves on late-90s reality TV shows The Real World: Boston and Road Rules: All Stars. And now Duffy is parlaying his experience on Road Rules into his role as US transportation secretary.

Duffy has got a lot on his big lumberjack hands: transport infrastructure in the US is, to use the technical term, a hot mess. More than a third of the country’s bridges need major repair work or replacement. There has been little historical investment in railways and the country lags behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to high-speed trains. Meanwhile, there’s a chronic air-traffic-controller shortage, which was exacerbated by the recent government shutdown when a number of controllers, fed up with the dysfunctional system, took early retirement.

Published: December 10, 2025, 10:07 pm

Born to run: how exercise expanded the landscape of my life and got my mind on track | Joseph Earp

Running tends to get characterised as an entirely physical pursuit, which is probably why I avoided it for so long

For a long time, one of the defining activities of my life has been collecting little facts: I never really grew out of that “show-and-tell” mindset that defined us all as children. There’s nothing I like more than submerging myself in a subject area for a couple of weeks, grabbing as many stories as I can, and then turning to my friends and saying, “Did you know …”

If this makes me sound insufferable, it’s because I probably am, but at least I make up for it by providing little anecdotes about the life of Ludwig von Köchel, the man who invented the system for organising the music of Mozart (he was also an accomplished botanist). It doesn’t even really matter what the area of interest is. Over the course of a couple of weeks this year, I read back to back biographies about Malcolm X before discovering the Swedish band Bob Hund, who sing exclusively in a language I don’t speak, and who I could now deliver a short-ish university lecture on, if anyone was interested (my email’s available on my website).

Published: December 10, 2025, 11:53 pm

What will be the cost of Keir Starmer’s new medicines deal with Donald Trump? British lives | Aditya Chakrabortty

More than £3bn that could have been used for UK patients will go to big pharma for its branded products – money for care siphoned off for profit

Of Arthur Scargill it was said that he began each day with two newspapers. The miners’ leader read the Morning Star of course, but only after consulting the Financial Times. Why did a class warrior from Yorkshire accord such importance to the house journal of pinstriped Londoners? Before imbibing views, he told a journalist, he wanted “to get the facts”.

In that spirit, let us parse a deal just struck by the governments of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. You may not have heard much about this agreement on medicine, but it is huge in both financial and political significance – and Downing Street could not be more proud.

A “world-beating deal,” boasts the science minister, Patrick Vallance. It “paves the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences,” claims the business secretary, Peter Kyle, with the government press release adding: “Tens of thousands of NHS patients will benefit.”

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 11, 2025, 6:00 am

Nicola Jennings on Donald Trump and the ‘civilisational erasure’ of Europe – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: December 10, 2025, 5:00 pm

All of the suspected drug boat killings are murders | Kenneth Roth

There is no rule of law if the president can deem anyone an enemy combatant and order them summarily shot

The largely supine Republicans in Congress had no apparent trouble as Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of suspected drug runners off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia. But suddenly they are up in arms because the Washington Post reported on 28 November about one incident, a double-tap strike, in which the US military finished off two survivors of an attack.

Tempted as I am to accept whatever it takes to spark some minimal scrutiny of these summary executions, I hope this unexpected opening prompts broader investigation of this entire series of murders, which have now claimed 87 victims in 22 attacks. As Democrats join in, there are some indications that this expanded scrutiny may be finally beginning.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, is published by Knopf and Allen Lane

Published: December 10, 2025, 3:30 pm

Trump plan for World Cup tourists to reveal social media activity described as ‘chilling’

• UK tourists would be among those affected by US policy

• ‘Unacceptable’ and ‘chilling’, says European fan group

A plan to require supporters travelling to the United States for the World Cup to disclose information about their social media accounts has been described as “profoundly unacceptable”.

Tourists from 42 countries, including the UK, which use the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) as part of the visa waiver programme would be obliged to provide information about accounts they have held in the last five years in their applications. Previously it had been optional to provide the information.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:47 am

Pitch Points: will Inter Miami be better next year, and can Nancy succeed at Celtic?

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions on a regular basis. In today’s column, we endeavor to answer three of them

Lionel Messi is a MLS Cup winner. That might rank lowly on the GOAT’s list of career achievements, but it was clear in the Argentine’s celebrations after the 3-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps in Saturday’s championship game just how much this meant. Even for Messi, this was more than just another trophy. This was a ‘mission accomplished’ moment.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

Michigan fire coach Sherrone Moore over ‘inappropriate relationship’ with staff member

• Michigan fire head football coach with cause

• Coach accused of inappropriate relationship

• Moore detained by police after termination

Michigan fired football coach Sherrone Moore on Wednesday after finding evidence of an “inappropriate relationship with a staff member”, a stunning end to his short, up-and-down tenure that saw the Wolverines take a step back on the field after winning the national championship and getting punished by the NCAA.

“This conduct constitutes a clear violation of university policy, and UM maintains zero tolerance for such behavior,” athletic director Warde Manuel said in a statement.

Published: December 10, 2025, 10:15 pm

Real Madrid show fight but another setback leaves Xabi Alonso’s future on knife-edge | Sid Lowe

The hosts battled against Manchester City but a second successive home defeat pushes manager towards exit

On the night they were going to sack him, Xabi Alonso watched his team rise against their fate and perhaps his, but fall again. He listened to the fans whistle and the final whistle, embraced the man who had been his mentor and then, defeated for the second time in four days here, disappeared straight down the Bernabéu tunnel without looking back. Real Madrid had taken the game to Manchester City, going ahead first and chasing another comeback later. But in the end, in the words of Rodrygo, whose first goal in 33 games had given them hope, “it was not enough”.

The question now is whether it will be enough to rescue the coach Rodrygo had run to embrace, a gesture of solidarity on the edge of the abyss. Late last Sunday night in one of the offices here, some in the club’s hierarchy had been determined to get rid of the coach who had presided over two wins in seven. The sentence was suspended but this was set up as something of a final judgment and, having extended that run to an eighth game, there is no guarantee Alonso will be back. Nor though is there any guarantee that he won’t.

Published: December 10, 2025, 11:53 pm

USA women put record 10 goals past Canada in Rivalry Series laugher

• Pannek, Murphy net two each in US blowout

• Americans score 10 v Canada for first time

• US lead series 3–0 ahead of Edmonton finale

Kelly Pannek and Abbey Murphy scored two goals each and the United States bounced back from surrendering a goal in the first minute for a 10-4 win over Canada in the third Rivalry Series game on Wednesday night.

Kendall Coyne Schofield had a goal and two assists and Tessa Janecke, Jesse Compher, Britta Curl-Salemme, Alex Carpenter and Kirsten Simms also scored for the US.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:34 am

‘Dadgummit, let’s freaking go’: 44-year-old grandfather Rivers could start for Colts

• Injuries have ravaged Colts quarterbacks

• Rivers last played in NFL in 2020

The Indianapolis Colts have not ruled out starting Philip Rivers at quarterback after luring the grandfather out of retirement amid an injury crisis.

The Colts lost starter Daniel Jones for the season after he tore his achilles on Sunday, while their first-round pick in 2023, Anthony Richardson, is out with a broken orbital bone he suffered in October. With backup Riley Leonard dealing with a knee injury, the Colts turned to the 44-year-old Rivers, who retired at the end of the 2020 season. Rivers, who has been a high school coach since his retirement and recently welcomed his first grandchild, played for the Colts in his final season after a long stint with the Chargers.

Published: December 10, 2025, 7:41 pm

‘Charge out like Zaire in 74’: how footballers really train for set pieces

I’ve spent too many wet and windy Friday afternoons preparing set-piece routines and it’s not a pretty sight

By Nutmeg magazine

Set pieces, eh, those brief but frequent interludes that sporadically pockmark our weekly sacrament, filling our heads with daydreams and fantasies of intricately worked ruses or 30-yard thunderbolts. Quite often the unintentional birth child of an ugly hacked clearance or theatrical swan dive, they ordinarily result in nothing more than a rudimentary blemish upon hallowed turf canvas but, sometimes, just sometimes, we are treated to strokes of genius that become as entrenched in the memory as is the Lord’s Prayer.

When asked to provide a dose of professional insight detailing the fastidious workings that go into each and every single stoppage in play, it got me to thinking: have we lost an element of ingenuity in the pursuit of perfection? My dad has always warned me against the pitfalls of starting a game slowly so, with that pearl of wisdom well heeded, I’ll get things under way with a bang, a no-nonsense punt into touch from the very first whistle, the sort that’s recently stormed back into fashion within the upper echelons of the English game, as world-renowned coaches such as Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta do their damndest at reinventing a century-old wheel.

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:00 am

Mets all-time home run leader Pete Alonso reportedly agrees $155m deal with Orioles

• Slugger to sign five-year deal with Baltimore

• Mets fans also saw closer Edwin Diaz leave team

For the second day in a row, the New York Mets have seen a beloved star agree to terms with another team.

Pete Alonso, the Mets’ all-time leader in home runs, has reportedly agreed to a five-year, $155m contract with the Baltimore Orioles. The news comes a day after the Mets’ long-term closer, Edwin Díaz, reached a three-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Published: December 10, 2025, 6:40 pm

NHL warns top players will not show up for Winter Olympics if venue is unsafe

• Construction delays have beset ice hockey arena in Milan

• ‘If the ice isn’t ready, we’re not going,’ NHL deputy warns

The NHL says it is “disappointing” that the main ice hockey venue for the Winter Olympics will not be ready until the new year – and warned that its top players will not show up unless the ice is shown to be safe.

The men’s and women’s tournaments are expected to be among the highlights of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games with the NHL stars showing up for the first time since 2014.

Published: December 10, 2025, 7:15 pm

Venezuelan Nobel laureate reunited with family after perilous journey to receive prize

María Corina Machado thanks those who risked their lives to help her make trip to Oslo and says she is hopeful ‘Venezuela will be free’

• Europe live – latest updates

Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, said her arrival in Oslo marked a “historic turning point” that showed Venezuelans “the world is with them”.

Machado, who was forced into hiding in Venezuela by the country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, slipped out of her authoritarian homeland by boat in order to travel to Norway to collect her prize.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:35 am

Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson to return for latest Hunger Games instalment

Currently in production the second prequel in the series, Sunrise on the Reaping, will likely feature the married couple ‘in a flash-forward’

Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are to appear in the new Hunger Games movie, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which is in production.

The Hollywood Reporter said it confirmed the pair’s return to the Hunger Games series, in what is the sixth film in the franchise. Both will play the same characters as in the original set of films – Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark – with the Hollywood Reporter suggesting they will “likely appear in a flash-forward”. At the close of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (released in 2015), Everdeen and Mellark are married with children.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:29 am

Sea urchin species on brink of extinction after marine pandemic

Ecologically important Diadema africanum almost eliminated by unknown disease in Canary Islands

A marine pandemic is bringing some species of sea urchin to the brink of extinction, and some populations have disappeared altogether, a study has found.

Since 2021, Diadema africanum urchins in the Canary Island archipelago have almost entirely been killed by an unknown disease. There has been a 99.7% population decrease in Tenerife, and a 90% decrease off the islands of the Madeira archipelago.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 am

Rwanda-backed M23 rebels say they have captured key city in eastern DRC

Rebel spokesperson claims Uvira ‘fully liberated’ as offensive continues despite Trump-brokered peace deal

Rwanda-backed M23 rebels claimed to have captured a key eastern city in Democratic Republic of the Congo as they continued their march to control more of Africa’s second largest country.

In statements in English and French on Wednesday evening, a rebel spokesperson, Lawrence Kanyuka, claimed the city of Uvira had been “fully liberated, secured and under the control of the liberation forces”.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:58 am

Texas and Florida sue FDA in latest effort to restrict abortion pill access

States’ attorneys general argue agency has failed to properly evaluate mifepristone’s safety since initial 2000 approval

Texas and Florida have launched the latest lawsuit seeking to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, following the US Food and Drug Administration’s recent approval of a new generic version.

In the lawsuit, filed late on Tuesday in federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, the states’ Republican attorneys general argue that the FDA has failed to thoroughly evaluate the drug’s safety and effectiveness since its initial approval in 2000 and disregarded the risks to the women who take it.

Published: December 10, 2025, 9:00 pm

The Rolling Stones give blessing to Fatboy Slim’s Satisfaction sample after 25 years

The mashup Satisfaction Skank was unofficial for years but band allow Norman Cook to remake it using original stems of their 1965 hit

A classic bootleg recording by Fatboy Slim which samples the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction has finally been released, as the band give it their blessing after 25 years.

Satisfaction Skank was a familiar track on turn-of-the-century dancefloors, as Fatboy Slim mashed up his own 1999 hit The Rockafeller Skank with the Stones’ 1965 classic, hurling Keith Richards’ iconic guitar riff into the “big beat” sound of the late 90s.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:15 am

Nasa loses contact with spacecraft orbiting Mars for more than a decade

Space agency is investigating after Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend

Nasa has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade, though the US space agency said it was trying to re-establish a communications link.

Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend. Nasa said this week that the spacecraft had been working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. “Telemetry showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind [Mars],” Nasa said in a statement.

Published: December 10, 2025, 9:22 pm

‘Not normal’: Climate crisis supercharged deadly monsoon floods in Asia

Cyclones like those in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia that killed 1,750 are ‘alarming new reality’

The climate crisis supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse, scientists have reported. Monsoon rains often bring some flooding but the scientists were clear: this was “not normal”.

In Sri Lanka, some floods reached the second floor of buildings, while in Sumatra, in Indonesia, the floods were worsened by the destruction of forests, which in the past slowed rainwater running off hillsides.

Published: December 11, 2025, 3:00 am

Montana youth activists who won landmark climate case push for court enforcement

In 2023, court ruled in favor of 16 plaintiffs that officials violated their constitutional right by promoting fossil fuels

The young Montanans who scored a landmark triumph in the lawsuit Held v Montana are calling on the state’s highest court to enforce that victory.

In a groundbreaking legal decision in August 2023, a Montana judge ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs who had accused state officials of violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. The state’s supreme court affirmed the judge’s findings in late 2024. But state lawmakers have since violated her ruling, enshrining new laws this year that contradict it, argue 13 of the 16 plaintiffs in a petition filed on Wednesday.

Published: December 10, 2025, 10:08 pm

EU proposes loosening rules on AI gigafactories in green rollback

Latest package in dismantling of environmental rules also suggests repealing hazardous chemicals database

• Europe live – latest updates

Datacentres, AI gigafactories and affordable housing may be exempt from mandatory environmental impact assessments in the EU under a proposal that advances the European Commission’s rollback of green rules.

The latest in a series of packages to cut red tape calls for permitting processes for critical projects to be sped up and reducing the scope of environmental reporting rules for businesses.

Published: December 10, 2025, 2:18 pm

Synthetic chemicals in food system creating health burden of $2.2tn a year, report finds

Scientists issue urgent warning about chemicals, found to cause cancer and infertility as well as harming environment

Scientists have issued an urgent warning that some of the synthetic chemicals that help underpin the current food system are driving increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions and infertility, while degrading the foundations of global agriculture.

The health burden from phthalates, bisphenols, pesticides and Pfas “forever chemicals” amounts to up to $2.2tn a year – roughly as much as the profits of the world’s 100 largest publicly listed companies, according to the report published on Wednesday.

Published: December 10, 2025, 6:00 am

Fed cuts interest rates by a quarter point amid apparent split over US economy

Divisive vote to lower rates highlights uncertainty in the Fed as economy absorbs major shakeups, including tariffs

The US Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it was cutting interest rates by a quarter point for the third time this year, as the embattled central bank appeared split over how best to manage the US economy.

The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has emphasized unity within the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the board of Fed leaders that sets interest rates. But the nine-to-three vote to lower rates to a range of 3.5% to 3.75% was divisive among the committee that tends to vote in unanimity.

Published: December 10, 2025, 7:23 pm

No arrests or suspects in mass shooting at toddler’s birthday party in Stockton

California officials predict months-long investigation into 29 November killing of four people, including three children

More than a week after a mass shooting at a toddler’s birthday party in Stockton, California, killed four people and injured 17 others, law enforcement has yet to make arrests or name any suspects. It may take investigators months to figure out what led to the tragedy, authorities said.

As investigators parse through the aftermath of the shooting, they have found at least 50 shell casings and believe at least five firearms were used in the attack, San Joaquin sheriff Patrick Withrow told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday.

Published: December 10, 2025, 11:12 pm

Whoa, baby: San Francisco woman gives birth in Waymo self-driving taxi

Car company said team detected ‘unusual activity’ inside vehicle and called to check on rider and alert 911

Self-driving Waymo taxis have gone viral for negative reasons including the death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat and pulling an illegal U-turn in front of police, who were unable to issue a ticket to a nonexistent driver.

But this week, the company behind the self-driving taxis is drawing attention to the happier news that a San Francisco woman gave birth in a Waymo.

Published: December 10, 2025, 8:33 pm

Washington state governor declares emergency amid heavy rains and floods

Bob Ferguson says he has also activated the state’s national guard to respond to the flooding

The governor of Washington, Bob Ferguson, declared a statewide emergency on Wednesday in response to heavy rain in the Pacific north-west state since an atmospheric river smacked the region a day earlier with rains that triggered mudslides and washed out roads and submerged vehicles.

The emergency declaration, Ferguson said, “allows us to seek federal funds to cover the cost of this response, which we anticipate will be significant, and also gives us the flexibility we need to respond quickly to keep Washingtonians safe in a fast-moving situation”.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:23 am

Humans made fire 350,000 years earlier than previously thought, discovery in Suffolk suggests

Groundbreaking find makes compelling case that humans were lighting fires much earlier than originally believed

Humans mastered the art of creating fire 400,000 years ago, almost 350,000 years earlier than previously known, according to a groundbreaking discovery in a field in Suffolk.

It is known that humans used natural fire more than 1m years ago, but until now the earliest unambiguous example of humans lighting fires came from a site in northern France dating from 50,000 years ago.

Published: December 10, 2025, 4:00 pm

Half a million evacuated on Thai-Cambodia border as Trump makes diplomatic push to end fighting

At least 15 people killed, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle

Half a million evacuees in Cambodia and Thailand were sheltering in pagodas, schools and other safe havens on Wednesday after fleeing fresh border clashes while US president Donald Trump vowed to intercede to stop the fighting.

At least 15 people, including Thai soldiers and Cambodian civilians, have been killed in the latest hostilities, officials said, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:46 am

Former Bolivian president Luis Arce reportedly detained by police

Ally claims former Mas president ‘illegally kidnapped’ and suggests arrest linked to fund for Indigenous Bolivians

Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday.

His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police.

Published: December 10, 2025, 10:16 pm

NHS ‘facing worst-case scenario’ as hospital flu cases jump 55% in a week

Number of people in England being treated remains at record level for this time of year with daily average of 2,660

The NHS is facing its “worst-case scenario” for flu cases this month across England, as the number of people in hospital with the illness increased by 55% in a week.

An average of 2,660 patients a day were in an NHS hospital bed with flu, up from 1,717 last week and the highest ever for this time of year. By comparison, in the same week last year the number of patients in hospital with flu stood at 1,861, compared with 402 in 2023.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:20 am

The 50 best movies of 2025 in the US

From astonishing docs and biopics to madcap adventures and emotional sucker punches – our critics pick the best from a spectacular year on the silver screen

• Read the UK cut of this list
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 11, 2025, 11:57 am

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘What a child he is’

Late-night hosts discussed a planned UFC fight on the White House lawn for Trump’s 80th birthday and his empty reassurances on the economy

Late-night hosts dug into Donald Trump’s back-pedaling over footage of the controversial Venezuela boat strikes and a White House UFC fight for his 80th birthday.

Published: December 10, 2025, 4:42 pm

Ella McCay review – James L Brooks returns with a sorry mess of a movie

Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Rebecca Hall and Woody Harrelson are among the stars lost in the writer-director’s baffling misfire

Ella McCay, a new comedy drama written and directed by James L Brooks, feels like a relic, and not just because it’s set, seemingly arbitrarily, in 2008. Broadly appealing, well cast, neither strictly comic nor melodramatic, concerning ordinary people in non-IP circumstances, it’s the type of mid-budget adult film that used to appear regularly in cinemas in the 90s and aughts, before the streaming wars devoured the market. Even its lead promotional image, turned into a life-size cardboard cut-out at the theater – Emma Mackey’s titular Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken block heel – recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality or Little Miss Sunshine, that would now go straight to streaming.

To be clear, I miss these types of movies, and want to see more of them. I want to see a lighthearted but realistic portrait of a 34-year-old woman serving as lieutenant governor of an unnamed state that is, judging by the college football paraphernalia and the vibe, probably Michigan. I want to still believe in the possibility of smart and sentimental popcorn fare whose low-stakes drama insists on the inherent inconsistencies and decency of people. I especially would like to say that Ella McCay is an admirable final salvo (or so) for Brooks, the 85-year-old writer/director/producer whose prolific career includes both iconic sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore show, Taxi and the Simpsons), and now-classic films (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets).

Published: December 10, 2025, 5:00 pm

Charli xcx, Natalie Portman and Salman Rushdie lead 2026 Sundance lineup

The festival says goodbye to both founder Robert Redford and its longtime home of Park City, Utah, with a selection of provocative documentaries and starry new films

New films starring Charli xcx, Natalie Portman and Salman Rushdie will all receive their world premieres at next month’s Sundance film festival.

The festival will be held for the last time in Park City, Utah, before it moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027. Over the years, it has been home to the first screenings of films including Get Out, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Blair Witch Project, Past Lives, Napoleon Dynamite, Precious and Little Miss Sunshine.

Published: December 10, 2025, 5:00 pm

‘The bullying can’t go on’: the film-maker following Filipino fishers under siege by China

Baby Ruth Villarama’s documentary Food Delivery depicts those struggling with the superpower to retain their trade. The director describes capturing their boats getting rammed by the Chinese coast guard

During a televised debate in 2016, populist presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte made a typically belligerent statement that he himself would jetski to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and plant a Philippine flag there. Duterte claimed that he was ready to die a hero to keep the Chinese out of the bitterly contested maritime territory.

“That made millions of Filipino workers and fishers vote for him because of that one promise,” says film-maker Baby Ruth Villarama. As her new Oscar and Bafta-contending documentary Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea reveals, it wasn’t a promise Duterte kept. “He would make excuses that the jetski has broken down. Eventually there was an official pronouncement that it had just been a campaign joke. From then on, the fisherfolk were really enraged.”

Published: December 10, 2025, 2:47 pm

The 50 best albums of 2025

From a pop star who will drag you to the club to a UK rapper like none before her, here are the year’s finest LPs as decided by 30 Guardian music writers
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 10, 2025, 1:58 pm

Ever Since We Small by Celeste Mohammed review – a big-hearted Caribbean tale

This Trinidadian family saga blurs the line between real and imagined to create a multilayered history of an island and its people

Ever Since We Small opens in Bihar, India in 1899. Jayanti dreams of a woman offering her bracelets. Within days, her husband becomes sick and dies. Widowhood is not an option and Jayanti prepares for her own sati. Determined to apply the “godly might of English justice” and uphold a law banning the practice, an English doctor and magistrate muscle in to stop her. In an 11th-hour volte face, Jayanti, desiring life over the afterlife, allows herself to be saved. Triumphant, the magistrate suggests she become his mistress, but instead she opts to be shipped off to Trinidad. The island, she’s told, is a place where the shame of her choice will be forgotten.

Ever Since We Small, Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, is a more cohesive work than Pleasantview, which won the Bocas prize for Caribbean literature in 2022. The opening chapter follows on from an academic introduction and Mohammed’s style is more reverent, less ballsy and humorous, than the warts-and-all portraits drawn in Pleasantview; but casting characters from the distant past often has that effect on novelists. The tone is appropriate, however; Mohammed here is the sober observer taking in the fate of women like Jayanti, who if they have choices at all, they are between bad and worse.

Published: December 11, 2025, 7:00 am

Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy review – fear and loathing in New York

This sharp, bleak debut satirises the current cultural moment through the life and loves of a cynical young writer

There is a long tradition of stories about artists that are also about the question of how to represent life in art; novels about artists with toxic female friendships are more unusual.

Enter Anika Jade Levy’s slim and sharp debut Flat Earth, which shares its title with a film made by a woman whom Avery, the narrator, identifies as her best friend. Frances is a rich and beautiful twentysomething who becomes a “reluctant celebrity in certain circles” after her film, “an experimental documentary about rural isolation and rightwing conspiracy theories” in the modern-day United States, premieres to critical acclaim at a gallery in New York. Avery, meanwhile, is struggling to write what she describes as “a book of cultural reports”.

Published: December 10, 2025, 9:00 am

As AI floods our culture, here’s why we must protect human storytelling in games

Buying the Zombies, Run! studio wasn’t part of my plan, but our post-apocalypse ​game has a story that makes people feel seen

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A few days ago, I clicked a button on my phone to send funds to a company in Singapore and so took ownership of the video game I co-created and am lead writer for: Zombies, Run! I am a novelist, I wrote the bestselling, award-winning The Power, which was turned into an Amazon Prime TV series starring Toni Collette. What on earth am I doing buying a games company?

Well. First of all. Zombies, Run! is special. It’s special to me – the game started as a Kickstarter and the community that grew up around it has always been incredibly supportive of what we’re doing. And it’s special in what it does. It’s a game to exercise with. You play it on your smartphone – iPhone or Android – and we tell stories from the zombie apocalypse in your headphones to encourage you to go further, faster, or just make exercise less boring. Games are so often portrayed as the bad entertainment form, but I made a game that fundamentally helps people to be healthier.

Published: December 10, 2025, 3:00 pm

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – how a tiny studio developed the Belle Époque-set gaming blockbuster

What started as Guillaume Broche’s personal project has been nominated for 12 Game awards, sold more than 2m copies and been praised by Emmanuel Macron as a ‘shining example of French audacity’

The record-breaking 12 nominations at the Game awards this year was beyond the wildest dreams of Guillaume Broche when he first began inking out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a personal project while working at Ubisoft.

Before selling more than 2m copies, the narrative-driven roleplaying game with “a unique world, challenging combat and great writing” was a technical demo called We Lost. It was Broche’s appetite for risk and a few hopeful Reddit posts that would create the game’s world of Lumiere and its struggle against the Paintress.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Nnena Kalu was ready for this – nobody else was’: how her Turner prize victory shook the art world

As the first learning-disabled artist to win the UK’s most prestigious art award, Kalu has smashed a ‘very stubborn glass ceiling’. Her facilitator reveals why her victory is so seismic – and the secrets of her party playlist

The morning after the Turner prize ceremony, the winner of the UK’s most prestigious art award, Nnena Kalu, is eating toast and drinking a strong cup of tea. Everyone around her is beaming – only a little the worse for wear after dancing their feet off at the previous night’s party in Bradford, and sinking “a couple of brandies” back at the hotel bar. I say hello to Kalu, offer my congratulations, and admire the 59-year-old’s beautifully manicured creamy pink nails. But the interview is with her facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead, who has worked with the artist since 1999. Kalu has limited verbal communication skills; she has learning disabilities and is autistic.

As for Hollinshead, she is struggling to encapsulate the enormity of the win: for Kalu herself; for ActionSpace, the organisation that has supported her for 25 years; and for the visibility and acceptance of artists with learning disabilities within the wider art world. “It’s unbelievably huge,” she says. “I have to think back to where we started, when there was absolutely no interest whatsoever. I’d sit at dinner parties with friends in the art world. Nobody was interested in what I did, or who we worked with. We couldn’t get any exhibitions anywhere. No galleries were interested. Other artists weren’t interested. Art students weren’t interested. We have had to claw our way up from the very depths of the bottom.”

Published: December 10, 2025, 5:22 pm

Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman to co-chair Met Gala with Anna Wintour

Co-chairs will preside over gala theme of Costume Art, with Beyoncé attending for first time since 2016

The co-chairs of the Met Gala, which is held every year on the first Monday in May in New York City, have been announced as Beyoncé, Venus Williams, Nicole Kidman and, of course, Anna Wintour.

The gala is known as “fashion’s biggest night out” or “the Superbowl of fashion”, and it will be Beyoncé’s first time in attendance since 2016, when she wore Givenchy to attend a Met Gala themed Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.

Published: December 10, 2025, 5:49 pm

Russell Crowe says makers of Gladiator II did not ‘understand what made the first one special’

The actor has criticised the creative team behind the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic, saying it lacked the moral core that defined the original Oscar-winning film

Russell Crowe has said that the makers of Gladiator II did not “understand … what made that first one special”.

In interview excerpts posted on social media by Australian radio station Triple J, Crowe said that the Gladiator sequel, which starred Paul Mescal and was released in 2024, was let down by “the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made that first one special”.

Published: December 10, 2025, 11:23 am

Confessions of a Shopaholic novelist Sophie Kinsella dies aged 55

The ‘queen of romantic comedy’ has died 18 months after announcing her brain cancer diagnosis

Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55.

Wickham, dubbed “the queen of romantic comedy” by novelist Jojo Moyes, wrote more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which have sold more than 45m copies.

Published: December 10, 2025, 12:53 pm

Get the cheap wine glasses: how to spend less on a dinner party in the US – and impress people more

With goods such as a nice crémant and some tinned fish, you can host a lovely dinner without breaking the bank – here’s how to start

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Chelsea Fagan thinks we should all be hosting more. “We are losing the act of casually having people in our lives and in our homes,” the writer said. “I think young people now have an idea of entertaining that it’s something that only fancy or rich people do.”

Fagan co-founded The Financial Diet, a media company centered on personal finance. She’s proven you can throw a dinner party in nearly any scenario: on weeknights, in small spaces, even when your guests are all introverts. And, she says given how lonely and polarized people in the US are, bringing people together is as important as ever. Her new book, Having People Over: A Modern Guide to Planning, Throwing, and Attending Every Type of Party, is a call to invite people over – and make it a lovely time without breaking the bank. (Hint: shop secondhand whenever possible.)

Published: December 10, 2025, 3:15 pm

A moment that changed me: my train crashed – and then I heard a little girl crying

I waited for the carriage to roll over and burst into flames, but the sound of a child brought me out of my trance, and showed me how important it is to look outwards in a crisis

The moment I knew I was about to die came a couple of years into my 20s, when life was really just starting out. My best friend, Helen, and I were on our way to Blackburn to catch up with an old university friend who had recently moved there for work. Thrilled to see each other, and basking in the prospect of the party weekend ahead, we chatted nonstop as we made our way by train from York.

We stashed our bags – full of essentials such as bottles of wine and my new pair of black clogs – above our heads and settled down in a cosy two-seater. About 50 minutes into our journey, I was dimly aware of a bang. Then came another, this time impossible to ignore. A woman screamed as our carriage was thrown up into the air in what felt like slow motion. Suddenly, Helen and I were somehow on our feet in the middle of the aisle, hugging each other. Head down, eyes screwed shut, I waited for the carriage to roll over and burst into flames, as I’d seen in films. I remember thinking about our families and friends getting the news. Then I heard the little girl crying.

Published: December 10, 2025, 6:55 am

How neurodivergent households design ‘a home that knows your brain’

From dark, sound-proofed rooms to clever storage solutions, families with autism and ADHD are finding inspired ways to adjust their environments

In the middle of Cherie Clonan’s bright Melbourne home sits a room in total darkness “for our son to retreat to”, she says. “It’s all black in there. You wouldn’t believe it’s the same home!”

The space, lined with sound-blocking panels, is a sanctuary for her autistic son: a quiet cocoon for decompressing after school. “He loves to go in there to game online with his mates,” Clonan says.

Diagnosed autistic at 37, Clonan lives in a weatherboard cottage with her husband, Chris, and her two neurodivergent teenagers. Since buying the house five years ago, she has been reshaping it around their needs. “Our family’s split half-half – 50% sensory-seek versus sensory-avoidant,” she says. “I chase light. I love light-filled everything. But my son really is the opposite.”

Published: December 10, 2025, 2:00 pm

From ‘glacier aesthetic’ to ‘poetcore’: Pinterest predicts the visual trends of 2026 based on its search data

If search interest holds, glitchy glam, cool blue, aliencore and gummy bear aesthetics are among the vibes set to rock the creative world next year

Next year, we’ll mostly be indulging in maximalist circus decor, working on our poetcore, hunting for the ethereal or eating cabbage in a bid for “individuality and self-preservation”, according to Pinterest.

The organisation’s predictions for Australian trends in 2026 have landed, which – according to the platform used by interior decorators, fashion lovers and creatives of all stripes – includes 1980s, aliens, vampires and “forest magic”.

Published: December 10, 2025, 6:58 am

1 Granary: the influential platform holding the fashion establishment to account

Olya Kuryshchuk’s publication is a rare – and increasingly powerful – voice advocating for the people behind the scenes in an industry that loves a star. Its new awards celebrate the ‘teams who never get to walk a red carpet’

At the Fashion awards – a lavish event at the Royal Albert Hall this month – Jonathan Anderson was named designer of the year for a third time for his work at his own namesake brand and Dior, Anok Yai was named model of the year and Delphine Arnault, the CEO of Dior and scion of fashion’s wealthiest family, gained a special recognition award for her work supporting new talent through the LVMH prize. Think of it as fashion paying tribute to its biggest stars.

Since the night, there has been praise for the British Fashion Council’s new CEO Laura Weir but also criticism. The anonymous Instagram account boringnotcom, which often shares strong opinions on the industry, wrote: “As predicted, the same names got rotated and won the fashion awards … how utterly boring.”

Published: December 10, 2025, 8:00 am

My petty gripe: why do we have to review everything now? | Ellen Smith

I don’t really believe that companies would love my feedback, nor that my opinion matters to them. So why do they keep asking for them?

• Read more petty gripes

“Your experience matters to us, Ellen.”

“We’d love your feedback.”

Published: December 10, 2025, 2:00 pm

Rudolph at the Christmas market: cute festive attraction or damaging reindeer’s health?

Keeping reindeer in pens for public enjoyment can cause them physical and mental harm, charities warn

With their fluffy coats, big brown eyes and reputation as Santa’s helpers, reindeer are a common and popular attraction at Christmas markets around the UK.

But being stuck in a pen and approached by hordes of adoring fans is harming the mental and physical health of Rudolph and his brethren, animal charities have warned.

Published: December 10, 2025, 2:33 pm

How to use a spent tea bag to make a boozy, fruity treat – recipe | Waste not

Save a used teabag to flavour dried fruit, then just add whisky for a boozy festive treat

A jar of tea-soaked prunes with a cheeky splash of whisky is the gift you never knew you needed. Sticky, sweet and complex, these boozy treats are wonderful spooned over rice pudding, porridge, yoghurt, ice-cream or even panna cotta.

Don’t waste a fresh tea bag, though – enjoy a cuppa first, then use the spent one to infuse the prunes overnight. Earl grey adds fragrant, citrus notes, builders’ tea gives a malty depth, lapsang souchong brings smokiness, and chamomile or rooibos offer softer, floral tones. It’s also worth experimenting with other dried fruits beyond prunes: apricots, figs and/or dates all work beautifully, too.

Published: December 10, 2025, 1:00 pm

The Christmas vibe shift: forget beige – the Home Alone look is all the rage

This season calls for a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate, traditional baubles on the tree and a host of wooden nutcracker soldiers. ‘Ralph Lauren Christmas’ has gone viral, and gen Z has fallen hard for nostalgia and the 1990s

It is December, which everyone knows is the time to get your Christmas on. So what is it to be this year? An ironic wreath made from brussel sprouts? Oh-so-zeitgeist decorations in the shape of Perelló olive tins or Torres crisp packets? Or are we thinking a minimalist all-white theme?

Wrong, wrong and wrong again. My front door wreath – it went up two weeks ago because I’m a Christmas superfan – is huge and trad, with a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate. There are wooden nutcracker soldiers the size of toddlers by the fireplace. When I put my tree up this weekend, it may well collapse under the weight of old-fashioned round baubles.

Published: December 10, 2025, 10:00 am

Sounds like activism: musicians who fight for change – in pictures

Photographer Janette Beckman and curator Julie Grahame have organized a one-time fundraiser for the ACLU that showcases images of musicians who have recorded protest songs or are known for their activism. Forty-three photographers have donated images of 50 artists, from John Lennon to Nina Simone to Bad Bunny, and 100% of the profits will go towards the ACLU and their efforts to protect equality, freedom and rights. In addition to the images there is a playlist of songs for the fundraiser.

Published: December 10, 2025, 8:55 pm

‘The patriarchy runs deep’: women still getting a raw deal in the workplace as equality remains a dream

Women work longer and per hour earn a third of what men are paid, in figures that have changed little in 35 years, UN report shows

“Gender inequality is one of the most entrenched and significant problems of our time,” says Jocelyn Chu, a programme director at UN Women, responding to the stark figures contained in this year’s World Inequality report, which labels gender inequality a “defining and persistent feature of the global economy”.

Women work longer and earn just a third – 32% – of what men get per hour, when paid and unpaid labour, such as domestic work, are taken into account. Even when unpaid domestic labour is not included, women only earn 61% of what men make, according to the report.

Published: December 10, 2025, 7:00 am

Tell us: how important are your pets during Christmas?

We’d like to know more about your how much your pets feature in your life during the festive period

We’d like to find out more about you and your pets at Christmas.

Do you spend more on buying Christmas gifts for your pets than your family and friends? Or do you skip party plans altogether to stay with your animal companion?

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:49 am

Tell us your favourite new podcast of 2025

We would like to hear about your favourite new podcast you’ve been listening to this year and why

We would like to hear about your favourite new podcast you’ve been listening to in 2025 and why. Let us know and we’ll run a selection of your recommendations. Tell us your favourite using the form below.

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Published: December 10, 2025, 10:07 am

A snow patrol, Dior dresses and Storm Bram: photos of the day – Wednesday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: December 10, 2025, 1:45 pm