Love & War: From frontlines to family life. Pulitzer-winning conflict photographer Lynsey Addario on the five stories that defined her career

Iraq 2003-2004

Published: November 7, 2025, 7:00 am

Readers on Zohran Mamdani’s victory: ‘It was a collective exhale’

Hundreds from New York City, across the US and beyond share their optimism, joy and more on the mayoral election

Zohran Mamdani was elected the next mayor of New York City this week and Guardian readers had a lot of feelings to share about the news.

Winning with more than 50% of the vote, the 34-year-old democratic socialist and state assembly member from Queens defeated the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

Published: November 7, 2025, 11:00 am

Pluribus review – the audacity of the Breaking Bad creator’s new TV show is incredible

It takes some chutzpah to make television like this. Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn is the only US citizen immune from an alien virus that makes everyone in the world supremely happy – and it’s a bleak, blackly comic watch

Even with the name of Vince Gilligan attached as creator, Pluribus – neatly styled Plur1bus on screen, to further evoke the unofficial motto of the US “E pluribus unum” (“Out of many, one”) – looks at first like a bit of light relief. The man who has spent the past two decades immersed in the harrowing world of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and El Camino, you reckon, has probably earned it.

Perhaps he is returning to his X Files roots with this tale of an alien virus that sweeps the globe, turning everyone happy and content, literally uniting minds (everyone’s thoughts, knowledge and memories are available to all – people no longer refer to themselves but as “this individual” when they speak) and causing them only to be kind to each other. Peace in our time! But what, kids, are we going to do about Carol (Rhea Seehorn)? She’s a middle-aged, bestselling writer of romantic fantasy novels, fantastically rich, adored by hundreds of thousands of fans – and as furiously miserable as only a misanthrope can be in such conditions. And Carol appears to be the only person in America immune to the virus. Hilarity must surely ensue!

Published: November 7, 2025, 5:00 am

Meet gen X: middle-aged, enraged and radicalised by internet bile | Gaby Hinsliff

Who is driving the populist insurgency? It’s not grumpy pensioners or vulnerable teenagers – it’s my generation

If in doubt, we used to talk about the weather. Or if not that, then why the trains were late again, or how sweet someone’s baby was: the kind of routine bland nothings you exchange with strangers on the street. But something about the way we speak in public is changing.

A few days ago I was in Aldi, making the usual small talk at the checkout. When the cashier said she was exhausted from working extra shifts to make some money for Christmas, the man behind me chipped in that it would be worse once “she takes all our money” (in case Rachel Reeves was wondering, her budget pitch-rolling is definitely cutting through). Routine enough, if he hadn’t gone on to add that she and the rest of the government needed taking out, and that there were plenty of ex-military men around who should know what to do, before continuing in more graphic fashion until the queue fell quiet and feet began shuffling. But the strangest thing was that he said it all quite calmly, as if political assassination was just another acceptable subject for casual conversation with strangers, such as football or how long the roadworks have gone on. It wasn’t until later that it clicked: this was a Facebook conversation come to life. He was saying out loud, and in public, the kind of thing people say casually all the time on the internet, apparently without recognising that in the real world it’s still shocking – at least for now.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Published: November 7, 2025, 6:00 am

‘I was the only out queer guy in rock’: Faith No More’s Roddy Bottum

The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner

When Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”

The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined”. Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he says. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his cruising public toilets and parks as a teenager are recounted unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he writes. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Fuck off.”

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:13 pm

Experience: I escaped East Berlin in the boot of a car

‘Tonight or never,’ the men helping me said. ‘Meet us in the alley. Eight-thirty’

In 1965, I was 19 and living in East Berlin. West Berlin was glamorous. They had ­everything: shoes, cars, food. But we had almost nothing. When bananas were imported once or twice a year, the queues stretched further than I had ever seen.

My brother and I were desperate to get out. We’d hang around the checkpoints, hoping to befriend a West Berliner. Occasionally, they took pity and sent us packages. But escaping was rare – and expensive. Most who managed it had paid thousands of marks.

Published: November 7, 2025, 5:00 am

Passengers face global disruption as flights cut amid US government shutdown

Travellers forced to adjust their plans as longest shutdown on record continues with no sign of a resolution

• US politics live – latest updates

A US government order to make drastic cuts in commercial air traffic amid the government shutdown has taken effect, with major airports across the country experiencing a significant reduction in schedules and leaving travellers scrambling to adjust their plans.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the move is necessary to maintain air traffic control safety during a federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution, where air traffic controllers have gone without pay.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:23 pm

How thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists got access to UN climate talks – and then kept drilling

Exclusive: Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action

More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion, new research reveals.

Lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries – which are mostly responsible for climate breakdown – have been allowed to participate in the annual climate negotiations where states are meant to come in good faith and commit to ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 pm

Who are the contenders for Nancy Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat?

After nearly 40 years in the Congress, the former House speaker is stepping down, reigniting interest in the race

Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.

The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 pm

Deep red and swing states making election flip to Democrats indicate Trump’s plunging popularity

Results in smaller districts may offer even greater insight into the US political landscape heading into the midterms

The 2025 off-year elections proved to be a major success for Democrats, as candidates at state and local levels managed to make inroads into and even flip several Republican strongholds across the country.

Much of the national spotlight was centered on Zohran Mamdani’s landmark win in New York, along with Democratic victories in the gubernatorial races of New Jersey and Virginia. And in both Virginia and New Jersey there were several precincts or voting blocs that voted for Trump in 2024 that then voted for Democrats this year.

Published: November 7, 2025, 11:00 am

Seven people hospitalized after package with ‘white powder’ opened at Joint Base Andrews

Investigation ongoing after package was sent to the home of the US president’s Air Force One

Seven people were briefly hospitalized after a suspicious package containing “a white powder” was sent to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, home to the US president’s Air Force One, on Thursday.

According to a spokesperson for the base, someone opened the package sometime in the afternoon, and it was cleared up by early in evening.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:41 pm

Orbán to visit US to try to broker another Putin summit but questions raised over motives

Hungarian PM also seeking exemption on US sanctions on Russian oil as he faces domestic challenge before elections

Viktor Orbán will visit the White House on Friday as Hungary’s far-right prime minister tries to broker another summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Orbán’s advisers claim could help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Orbán, who has proposed hosting the summit in Budapest, will also seek an exemption from US sanctions against Russian energy in what will be a major test of Trump’s tougher line on the Kremlin after he accused Putin of slow-rolling negotiations to end the conflict.

Published: November 7, 2025, 9:03 am

US judge orders Trump administration to fully fund Snap benefits in November

Ruling comes in response to a challenge to administration’s offer to only partly fund US food benefits amid shutdown

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to find the money to fully fund food stamps for 42 million low-income Americans in November by Friday, in a rebuke to the government’s plan to only provide reduced aid during the shutdown.

US district judge John J McConnell Jr criticized the administration’s plan to partly fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits in November, saying it had failed to comply with an order he issued on Saturday requiring the government to ensure Americans received full or partial benefits no later than Wednesday.

Published: November 6, 2025, 10:55 pm

Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik announces run for New York governor

Self-styled ‘ultra-Maga’ Republican representative has recently ramped up attacks on Democrat Kathy Hochul

• US politics live – latest updates

Elise Stefanik, a Republican New York representative and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, has officially launched her long-anticipated campaign for governor.

Reports indicate that Stefanik has already been working behind the scenes to secure endorsements from key Republican figures and local officials.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:10 pm

Trump pardons Tennessee Republican convicted of federal public corruption charges

Glen Casada and his ex- chief of staff were accused of running scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers

Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee state House speaker and a onetime aide of public corruption charges after the White House said the Biden administration justice department “significantly over-prosecuted” both for a minor issue.

Glen Casada, a former Republican state representative, was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:22 pm

Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

President jets in to speak at ritzy American Business Forum as millions see their food aid slashed – crisis, what crisis?

It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.

But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 pm

US supreme court lets Trump block passport sex markers for trans and non-binary people

Decision by high court’s conservative majority is Trump administration’s latest win on emergency docket

The supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports.

Published: November 6, 2025, 9:47 pm

Trump news at a glance: administration reduces US flights as shutdown stretches on

Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled at dozens of major airports – key US politics stories from 6 November 2025

As the record-breaking federal government shutdown stretches toward day 38, US airspace is about to get a little less busy. The same cannot be said for US airports.

Donald Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said flights are being reduced to maintain air traffic control safety during the federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution between Republicans and Democrats to end the federal budget standoff.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:08 am

Heritage Foundation leader apologizes for backing Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist

Kevin Roberts, whose group pushed Project 2025, had defended ex-Fox News host’s talk with Nick Fuentes

The leader of the conservative thinktank behind Project 2025 apologized for supporting a white nationalist amid turmoil on the right over the mainstreaming of extremist ideology, but is resisting calls to resign.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, previously defended the former Fox host Tucker Carlson for having Hitler fan Nick Fuentes on his podcast without pushing back on his white supremacist views.

Published: November 6, 2025, 3:40 pm

‘Drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping’: the lawless rush for rare earth minerals in Venezuela

Guerrilla groups have seized control of mining areas, exploiting Indigenous people and fuelling environmental ruin on the border with Colombia

For months, Brig Gen Rafael Olaya Quintero, commander of the Orinoco naval force, has been chasing tin and coltan traffickers across the waterways at Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

His mission has become more urgent since the global shift towards clean energy has generated an unprecedented rush for rare earth elements and critical minerals. These materials are vital components in electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, fighter jets and guided missiles, with demand also driven by increased defence budgets in the EU, US and China, and throughout the world.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 pm

Former Canada coach convicted of sexual assault not included on public sanctions lists

Bob Birarda, jailed in 2022 for assaulting players, is not listed by Canada Soccer or BC Soccer. The country’s new Safe Sport director says the omission exposes a major gap — and is calling for a global registry of banned coaches.

Two years after receiving an 18-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting players under his care, a former Canada women’s national team coach is yet to appear on any public sanctions list published by Canada Soccer or BC Soccer, the regional governing body for soccer in British Columbia, where the crimes took place.

The revelation has prompted the executive director of the Canadian organization newly appointed to manage reports of abuse and misconduct to call for an international registry of offenders to track individuals who have been banned from sports for misconduct.

Published: November 7, 2025, 10:00 am

‘We’re sick of the OnlyFans model’: Stella Barey’s porn site lets gen Z sex workers have a life

The 28-year-old’s platform, Hidden, offers a Tumblr-like sensibility in an industry roiled by slop and lets adult content creators earn without burning out

Stella Barey has an hour for lunch. At 1.30pm, she loads her banged-up Tacoma with her three Belgian malinois and drives to a secret Los Angeles hiking trail. There, she gulps down a tapioca pudding and laces up her sneakers. After checking over her shoulder for foot traffic, she pulls down her brown sweatpants and jiggles her bare ass for the camera. Then come the undies. Her coiffed landing strip hovers above the rocks as a rush of urine floods the trail. Every mile she walks, she films another video: a flash, a moon, a finger up the ass.

When Barey decided in 2020 to pursue porn full-time, she did not imagine that at 28 she would spend more time hunched over a desk – not in the fun way – making flow charts, scheduling Zoom calls, and sending pitch decks. “I’m at my happiest when I’m making a video like putting a strawberry in my butt and pushing it out,” she says. “Now I’m on calls all day and I have tech neck.” Known online as the “Anal Princess”, with large, blinking Shelley Duvall eyes and an American Girl doll pout, she will try anything once – even the title “tech founder”.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘If there’s a free alternative, I’ll eat healthily’: how Sweden devised brilliant school meals

A pilot scheme where students eat nutritious breakfasts using donated surplus food builds on the ‘folkhem’ welfare model to boost health and sustainability

Students at Mariebergsskolan, a secondary school in Karlstad, Sweden, make their way to the canteen to grab a juice shot. This morning’s options include ginger and lemon, apple, golden milk, lemon and mint, or strawberry and orange. There’s also the choice of overnight oats with caramelised milk.

It’s just after 9am and the space is usually empty, but thanks to a project launched in 2018 by Vinnova, Sweden’s national innovation agency, students are starting their day with a boost from the energy bar. All the ingredients are donated by local supermarkets which are giving away surplus fruit and vegetables to minimise food waste.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:27 pm

‘At long last we can begin’: first five minutes of Stranger Things 5 revealed

Ahead of the hit show’s final chapter, Netflix has unexpectedly dropped a clip of the opening episode – and a surprise flashback will send chills up spines

The fifth and final series of Netflix’s supernatural smash hit Stranger Things is set to be one of the biggest shows of the year. The first part airs on 27 November, but a clip of the chilling opening five minutes has been shared online.

The episode, The Crawl, takes fans back to the start of the series in 1983, after the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:01 pm

The artist Luke Jerram on the tree-planting project he’ll never see finished

It may be a midlife crisis, says the man behind seven-metre installations of the Earth, moon and Sun who has planted 365 trees in a 100-year project in Somerset

Luke Jerram, whose art installations have travelled the world, is philosophical about his latest project bearing fruit beyond his time on Earth.

Known for his Play Me I’m Yours street pianos project and his Museum of the Moon artwork – a seven-metre diameter sculpture of the moon featuring detailed Nasa imagery of the lunar surface – Jerram is now working on Echo Wood, a living, breathing installation made of native British trees.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:01 pm

Elizabeth Olsen believes she will die old and alone in a foggy English coastal town. Here are her options

While promoting new film Eternity, the actor outlined a specific end-of-life scenario that should be cold, wet and include one cheese shop

Over the last few years, the promotional circuit for movie stars has transformed entirely. Where once you could expect sit-down interviews and hagiographic magazine profiles, now any time an actor makes a film they have to be subjected to a flurry of YouTube parlour games; eating weird sweets and trying to remember lines from their old films or, in the case of Hot Ones, willingly giving themselves diarrhoea.

Now the goalposts have shifted again. Elizabeth Olsen was recently at the premiere of her new movie Eternity, about a woman who has to pick a partner for the afterlife. And rather than hitting the usual circuit, Olsen has decided to promote the film by expressing her belief that she’s going to die alone.

When I was in high school, I dreamt of being a very old lady on the coast of England, alone actually. I might have had an animal, and it would be like foggy and wet and kind of cold, and I would go on long walks and I would be in a small town that had like one of each thing you need like one bakery, one coffee shop, one fishmonger, one cheese shop, one like community centre, one theatre. It was always just me because I like meeting new people and I like being a part of a community, and I always imagined I would die alone.

Published: November 7, 2025, 11:46 am

Week in wildlife: a toxic newt, a rescued gibbon and baby flying foxes

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: November 7, 2025, 8:00 am

The food stamp fight signals an era of unprecedented cruelty in America | Katrina vanden Heuvel

US leaders have long shown some responsibility to help poor people meet basic nutritional needs. That era appears over

In October, millions rallied across America to remind Donald Trump that this nation obeys no kings. Last week, however, a scene worthy of Versailles unfolded: While Trump built his $300m ballroom, the US prepared to face widespread hunger.

With Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) funding scheduled to run dry due to the government shutdown, the Trump administration not only refused to prevent the crisis – it fought in court to deprive 42 million Snap recipients of their grocery money. Thankfully, a federal judge ruled against the government and ordered that Snap payments proceed. On Monday, the administration said it would fund just half of recipients’ typical benefits. And 2.4 million people soon risk losing their benefits nonetheless, as the $186bn Snap cuts in Trump’s benighted budget bill begin taking effect.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times

Published: November 6, 2025, 1:00 pm

Airline chaos is coming to America. If only Democrats had less of a backbone | Dave Schilling

If this stretches to Thanksgiving, we’ll be facing a nightmare. The obvious solution: move back in with your parents

In our modern age, the only thing worse than flying – cramped seats, bad food, someone potentially calling you a racial slur – is not flying at all. I will suffer all manner of indignity, up to and including a drunk puking up Jersey Mike’s on to my trousers, but if you dare say that I might not be able to board the Flying Nightmare Tube at the scheduled date and time, I will throw the kind of fit you only see in YouTube videos of people that are actually on airplanes.

This is why the United States Federal Aviation Administration potentially cancelling 10% of air traffic at 40 airports chills me to the bone. Whether I like it or not, I have to be in Pittsburgh this month. Would you keep me from enjoying the epic sights and sounds of Pittsburgh? Maybe so, if the alternative is a sleep-deprived air traffic controller suggesting my pilot take a nosedive into the Grand Tetons.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Published: November 7, 2025, 11:00 am

Mamdani’s mayoral race was marred by unhinged Islamophobia. It’s not going away soon | Arwa Mahdawi

The racist abuse that Zohran Mamdani is still facing proves how normalized bigotry is. We need to keep calling it out

Pack your bags and flee, infidels: New York City has fallen to a cabal of socialist jihadists. With Zohran Mamdani to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, many are celebrating the democratic socialist’s historic win. Billionaires, Islamophobes and Republicans, however, are in the throes of hysteria. But what’s new? The New York mayoral race has been marred by bigotry so unhinged it’s almost impossible to parody.

Far-right activist and unofficial Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X, for example, that “there will be another 9/11 in NYC” under Mamdani. New York City councilmember Vickie Paladino called the 34-year-old a “known jihadist terrorist”. Actor Debra Messing, meanwhile, has been having a Mamdani-induced meltdown on Instagram, posting story after story about how the puppy-eyed politician is a threat to civilization. She recently posted: “In Judaism and Christianity, we are commanded to speak the truth. In Islam, they are commanded to lie if it means spreading Islam … Now, take a look at Mamdani … He’s revealing their goal: mass conversion.”

Published: November 6, 2025, 5:22 pm

Net zero is an insidious loophole that distracts from the scientific imperative to eliminate fossil fuels | Joëlle Gergis

History tells us that polite incrementalism and political kowtowing will prevail at Cop30 – even as catastrophe unfolds around us

As world leaders gather in Brazil this year for Cop30 – the first Amazonian Cop – it’s worth doing a quick reality check on how we are collectively tracking to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite 30 years of UN climate summits, about half of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted since 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the global authority on climate change science – released its First Assessment Report confirming the threat of human-caused global warming. As scientists all over the world prepare the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, we do so knowing that our work is still being overshadowed by politics. Despite all the well-intentioned half-measures, the truth is that the world is still disastrously off track to limit dangerous climate change.

Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer from the University of Melbourne. She served as a lead author on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on the Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report

Published: November 6, 2025, 11:01 pm

Trump is weaponizing the welfare state to attack healthcare | Moira Donegan

The proposed withholding of Medicaid and Medicare to restrict gender-affirming care follows the same logic as attacks on abortion care

In United States v Skrmetti, a supreme court decision issued this summer, the rightwing justices made it legal for states to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors, in a ruling whose reasoning strained logic, claiming that state laws banning the treatment did not discriminate on the basis of sex. The ruling upheld laws in 27 states, all of them passed since 2021, which banned the treatment outright; according to the Human Rights Campaign, about 40% of trans minors live in states where treatment for them is against the law. Now, the Trump administration seems to be looking to cut off access to care for the other 60% of those kids.

In a proposed rule leaked to NPR, the administration plans to ban gender-affirming care for minors from being covered by Medicaid or by the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or Chip. In a second, more sweeping proposed rule, the Trump administration looks to ban hospitals, clinics and providers from receiving any Medicaid or Medicare reimbursements at all if their practice provides transition-related pediatric care.

Published: November 6, 2025, 3:00 pm

The Guardian’s view on Gaza’s future: the ceasefire brought relief, but the world must not look away now | Editorial

Palestinians are being born amid the rubble. They need not only immediate relief but long-term justice

What future is there for Palestinians in Gaza? The announcement of the ceasefire brought profound relief, shaded by an equally deep sense of trepidation. Almost a month later, the picture looks bleaker. The Israeli offensive abated, Hamas has returned the surviving hostages and the remains of some of those who have died, and Israel has released some Palestinian detainees and the remains of others.

But more than 200 Palestinians, including children, have reportedly died in strikes that Israel says are in response to Hamas attacks. Thousands of bodies are still believed to be trapped beneath the ruins ­– debris which, it is estimated, would take a fleet of more than a hundred lorries seven years to shift. Aid is flowing again, but remains wholly inadequate, with NGOs warning that Israel’s new registration system is obstructing delivery. Israeli demolitions continue in the half of Gaza that its forces still hold. Unicef warned this week that the education system – in so far as it survives after two years of war and the destruction of more than 90% of school and university buildings – is on the brink of collapse. New babies are born literally in the rubble, to mothers who have neither homes nor working hospitals.

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.

Published: November 6, 2025, 6:53 pm

Denver defense delivers as Broncos edge Raiders to keep NFL’s best record

• Broncos squeeze past Raiders 10-7

• Defense racks up six sacks in win

• Denver extend NFL-best home streak

Denver’s defense bailed out the Broncos in a 10-7 squeaker over the reeling Las Vegas Raiders on Thursday night, sacking Geno Smith six times to atone for spotty performances on offense and special teams.

The Broncos (8-2) own the league’s best record, but they didn’t look anything like it on a windy night in the Rocky Mountains.

Published: November 7, 2025, 5:08 am

NWSL playoffs 2025 predictions: can anyone stem the Kansas City Current?

Our panel breaks down the parity-packed season, the state of the league, the dark horses and danger teams – and why everyone is still chasing the Current

… Kansas City’s dominance. The NWSL, like all US sports leagues, is usually built on parity. The Current made a mockery of that notion, winning 21 and drawing two out of their 26 games to finish 21 points ahead of second-place Washington. Their goal difference was an absurd plus-36, scoring seven more goals than any other team and conceding 12 fewer than anyone else. Beau Dure

Published: November 7, 2025, 9:00 am

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Everton need more edge in attack, Potts lifts West Ham’s leaden midfield and Liverpool face a rampaging Haaland

• Premier League top scorers: the latest standings

Time is running out for Richarlison. Injuries to Dominic Solanke and Randal Kolo Muani gave the Brazilian a consistent run in Thomas Frank’s starting XI but, with just one goal since the first league game of the season, he has not taken his opportunities. Now, with Kolo Muani fit, the former Everton striker has had to make do with a place on the bench and failed to impress against FC Copenhagen in midweek, missing a penalty that another striker, Dane Scarlett, won. Competition is fierce, even for a Spurs side that registered 0.1 xG in the defeat to Chelsea – the lowest by any Premier League team this season – and speculation has already begun before the January transfer window. Both Ivan Toney (who played under Frank at Brentford) and Dusan Vlahovic (whose contract at Juventus is up next summer) have been linked. Tottenham have money to spend so Richarlison must make the most of his minutes if wants to have a future at the club, as well as keep himself in contention for Carlo Ancelotti’s Brazil squad with the World Cup coming up next summer. Michael Butler

Tottenham v Manchester United, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Everton v Fulham, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Burnley, Saturday 3pm

Sunderland v Arsenal, Saturday 5.30pm

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:00 am

Florida’s 7ft 9in Oliver Rioux becomes tallest player in college basketball history

• World’s tallest teenager debuts for national champs

• Rioux, 19, plays two minutes in Florida’s 104-64 win

Florida coach Todd Golden had people yelling at him at halftime Thursday night to get 7ft 9in center Olivier Rioux in the game.

Golden relented with 2:09 to play – and made history in the process – after chants of “We Want Ollie” swept through the O’Connell Center.

Published: November 7, 2025, 6:37 am

Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland dies at age of 24

• Police say player appeared to have taken his own life

• Kneeland had scored first career touchdown on Monday

The Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland has died at the age of 24, the team announced on Thursday.

“It is with extreme sadness that the Dallas Cowboys share that Marshawn Kneeland tragically passed away this morning. Marshawn was a beloved teammate and member of our organization. Our thoughts and prayers regarding Marshawn are with his girlfriend Catalina and his family,” the team said in a statement.

Published: November 6, 2025, 3:20 pm

Taylor Heise shines as USA women rout Canada 4–1 in Rivalry Series opener

• Heise sparks US with goal and three assists

• Murphy nets hat-trick in 4–1 win over Canada

• Edwards shines in Cleveland homecoming

Taylor Heise scored and set up each of Abbey Murphy’s three goals, and the United States women’s national hockey team opened the pre-Olympic Rivalry Series with a 4-1 win over Canada on Thursday night.

Laila Edwards had an assist in her Cleveland homecoming, with her shot from the right point deflected in by Heise midway through the first period. The 21-year-old Edwards is a forward-turned-defenseman from Cleveland Heights, and the first Black female player to skate for Team USA.

Published: November 7, 2025, 3:18 am

Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra returns from game in Denver to find home engulfed in flames

• More than 20 units responded to fire at coach’s home

• No injuries reported as fire crews contain flame

The home of Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was heavily damaged on Thursday morning by a massive fire, officials have said. There were no immediate reports of any injuries and Spoelstra was not home when the fire started.

Miami-Dade County fire officials said the blaze was reported around 4.30am. Spoelstra and the Heat played in Denver on Wednesday night and their charter flight back to Miami did not land until 5.11am.

Published: November 6, 2025, 2:42 pm

Fraught, tense and visceral: there’s never been a football match quite like Maccabi’s visit to Aston Villa | Barney Ronay

Undeniably strange and redolent of wider horrors at one remove, this was a groaning platter of geopolitics with a tiny little sprig of sport dusted across the top

You could almost, almost have played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so bleak, or so profoundly unsettling. But then, this is Birmingham, so there does have to be some gallows humour buried in there.

Either way an hour before kick-off on the streets outside Villa Park it became clear that the 700 police officers present were being asked to keep apart three distinct, and equally energetic factions: pro-Palestine, pro-Israeli and pro YouTubers.

Published: November 6, 2025, 11:57 pm

Death toll from UPS plane crash at Louisville airport rises to 13

Firm released names of the three victims on the plane and investigators confirmed plane’s left wing caught fire

The death toll in the explosion that saw a UPS cargo plane lose an engine and burst into flames, has risen to 13, Craig Greenberg, the Louisville mayor, has confirmed as UPS released the names of the three victims on the plane.

“On my way to the Teamsters’ vigil, I learned of a 13th person that died as a result of the UPS flight 2976 plane crash. My heart is with the families, friends and colleagues of all who were lost in this week’s tragedy. We will get through this together,” Greenberg wrote in a social media post.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:42 am

Immigrant sentenced to time served after judge allegedly helped him dodge ICE agents

Eduardo Flores-Ruiz pleaded guilty to illegally re-entering US and will soon be deported, his attorney says

An immigrant who was arrested after a judge in Wisconsin allegedly helped him dodge federal agents has been sentenced to time served for illegally re-entering the United States and will soon be deported, according to his attorney.

Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, 31, has spent nearly seven months in jail since he was arrested outside the Milwaukee county courthouse. He pleaded guilty in September to illegally re-entering the country after he reached a deal with prosecutors to not fight deportation. Prosecutors in exchange agreed to recommend a time-served sentence.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:49 pm

US strikes another alleged drug boat bringing death toll from campaign in Latin America to 70

US strikes have destroyed at least 18 vessels, but Washington has yet to make public any concrete evidence that its targets posed a threat to America

US forces struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing three people, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has said, bringing the death toll from the Trump administration’s controversial campaign to at least 70.

The US began carrying out such strikes – which some experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers – in early September, taking aim at vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Published: November 7, 2025, 4:25 am

China poised to lift ban on chips exports to European carmakers after US deal

Dispute began with Dutch government takeover of Nexperia and China halting exports, threatening car production

The vital flow of chips from China to the car industry in Europe looks poised to resume as part of the deal struck last week between Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

The Netherlands has signalled that its standoff with Beijing is close to a resolution amid signs China’s ban on exports of the key car industry components is easing.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:51 pm

European Commission mulls AI Act delays after Trump and business pressure

Spokesperson says ‘reflection is still ongoing’ over whether to postpone ‘targeted parts’ of legislation

• Business live – latest updates

The European Commission is considering plans to delay parts of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, after intense pressure from businesses and Donald Trump’s administration.

The commission confirmed that “a reflection” was “still ongoing” on delaying aspects of the regulation, after media reports that Brussels was weighing up changes with the aim of easing demands on companies.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:27 pm

Belgian drone sightings could be linked to talks on using frozen Russian assets, says German minister – Europe live

Boris Pistorius warns that Russia continues to seek to ‘sow doubt, divide us and influence elections’ in Europe

The 35-year-old French man suspected of ramming his car into pedestrians and cyclists on Île d’Oléron earlier this week have been charged with attempted murder, French media reported.

The local prosecutor’s office has also asked for him to be detained ahead of the trial.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:29 pm

Undercover police officer fabricated gun plot by animal rights activists, inquiry told

Spycops inquiry hears James Thomson lied to superiors and deceived two women into relationships

Managers of an undercover police officer believed he had concocted a plot in which animal rights activists purportedly sought to obtain a gun to inflict a revenge attack on a political opponent, the spycops public inquiry has heard.

The officer, James Thomson, claimed he had uncovered the plot while he infiltrated animal rights groups. But his managers later came to doubt whether it was genuine, with one of them appearing to call it “bollocks”.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:22 pm

Woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann found guilty of harassing family

Julia Wandelt faces deportation to her home country of Poland since she has already served more than the six-month sentence available for harassment

A Polish woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann is facing deportation after being found guilty of harassing the missing girl’s family.

Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lubin in south-west Poland, waged an extensive campaign, including making calls, leaving messages and turning up at the home of the family of Madeleine, who disappeared in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007, Leicester crown court heard.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:21 pm

UK rejected atrocity prevention plans for Sudan despite warning of possible genocide

Exclusive: British government adopted ‘least ambitious’ option months before RSF’s massacres in El Fasher

Britain rejected atrocity prevention plans for Sudan despite intelligence warnings that the city of El Fasher would fall amid a wave of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

Government officials turned down the plans six months into the 18-month siege of El Fasher in favour of the “least ambitious” option of four presented.

Published: November 7, 2025, 6:00 am

Weather tracker: Thunderstorms and heavy rain hit Iberian peninsula

Severe conditions caused by deep area of low pressure to north-west of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean

Severe thunderstorms developed across the Iberian peninsula on Wednesday, with Aemet, the Spanish meteorological service, issuing an orange weather warning across much of the country.

These thunderstorms were triggered by a cold front passing eastward across Iberia, due to a deep area of low pressure situated just to the north-west of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean, which at its lowest had a central pressure of 989hPa.

Published: November 7, 2025, 12:11 pm

‘Politicians actually taking action’: six world mayors defying climate-sceptic populist leaders

From Sierra Leone to Milan, cities are introducing their own rules and innovations in the face of rising temperatures

Wooden stakes bearing pictures of young men were driven into the yellow sands of Copacabana beach this week, opposite Rio de Janeiro’s swanky hotels on Avenida Atlântica where 300 mayors and their entourages were staying during the C40 World Mayors Summit.

Smiling up at the mayors in their hotel suites were photographs of four officers killed in what was the deadliest police raid in Brazilian history, just a few days before the summit. A further 117 people were killed in the operation in two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas – the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha – in what the police said was a clampdown on organised crime.

Published: November 7, 2025, 10:00 am

How could Tropical Forest Forever fund proposed at Cop30 tackle deforestation?

Scheme aims to raise $125bn to invest in bonds, with returns used to reward tropical countries for conservation

As a battle-scarred veteran of the war against nature, Garo Batmanian has spent 45 years trying to defend the Amazon rainforest. For most of that time, the resistance he leads has been outfunded and outgunned by those who profit from destruction. The most Batmanian felt he could achieve was to slow the advance of the chainsaws and tractors.

But the director-general of Brazil’s forest service feels there could be a chance at the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, next week, not just of an even fight, but perhaps a victory. There is one condition: world governments must rally behind an initiative being launched by the host nation – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).

Published: November 6, 2025, 3:21 pm

Lights out: can we stop glow-worms and fireflies fading away?

From night walks with children to switching off streetlights and rewilding areas, naturalists are working to save Europe’s dwindling populations

An hour or so after sunset, green twinkles of possibility gleam beneath the hedgerows of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset. Under an orange August moon, the last female glow-worms of the season are making one final push at finding a mate.

For almost 20 years, Peter Bright and other volunteers have combed the village’s shrubberies and grasslands, searching for the bioluminescent beetles as part of the UK glow-worm survey. Most years, they have counted between 100 and 150, rising to 248 in 2017.

Ben Cooke, a National Trust ranger, places a glow-worm trap near Winspit Quarry in Dorset. Photograph: P Flude/Guardian

Published: November 7, 2025, 7:00 am

Judge to order federal agents in Chicago to restrict force against protesters and media

Judge says agents’ practices amid immigration crackdown violate constitutional rights of protesters and journalists

A judge said on Thursday she will order federal agents in Chicago to restrict using force against peaceful protesters and media, saying current practices violate their constitutional rights.

The preliminary injunction came in response to a lawsuit alleging federal agents have used excessive force in their immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.

Published: November 6, 2025, 6:25 pm

Trump announces plan to cut cost of weight loss drugs and expand access

Injectable versions of GLP-1s from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk will see reduced prices and broader coverage

Donald Trump announced a plan on Thursday to reduce the costs of some weight loss drugs for certain patients and expand access to them for people on public health insurance.

The agreement will make oral versions of GLP-1s, which aren’t yet to market but are expected to be approved in the coming months, available at $150 per month for starting doses.

Published: November 6, 2025, 6:53 pm

New York Post’s anti-Mamdani front page is a hit – with his supporters

‘On your Marx, get set, Zo!’ edition of Murdoch-owned tabloid is a hot property – with one copy selling for $355

The New York Post’s “On your Marx, get set, Zo!” front page published just hours after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York mayor’s race is proving a viral hit, with one vendor on eBay selling a print copy for $355 soon after it was listed for auction.

The Post’s 5 November front page, with “The Red Apple” headline featuring Mamdani holding up a Soviet-style hammer and sickle, is also being sold by the newspaper as a $75 metal print. Ironically – given the rightwing Rupert Murdoch-owned publication’s staunch opposition to the mayor-elect, it’s proving a hit with Mamdani supporters.

Published: November 6, 2025, 4:07 pm

What Tuesday’s elections mean for the future of abortion rights

Democrats’ commanding victories have breathed new life for supporters of the reproductive health fight

Supporters of abortion rights have spent much of the last year trying to fight Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine access to the procedure. Now, Democrats’ commanding victories in the 2025 elections have breathed new life into the fight.

Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill’s respective gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey will shield abortion rights in two states that have become havens for people fleeing abortion bans. In Pennsylvania, voters decided to retain three liberal supreme court justices, maintaining Democratic control of a bench that could decide the future of abortion rights in the deeply purple state.

Published: November 6, 2025, 12:00 pm

Driving competition: China’s carmakers in race to dominate Europe’s roads

Chinese manufacturers are using the electric transition to seize market share, with the UK as their gateway

When Tesla wanted to catch the eye of British buyers, it put its cars and bright signage at a dealership in west London’s prominent Hogarth roundabout. Exposure to half a million drivers every day helped the US carmaker to become the dominant electric vehicle seller in the UK. Yet drivers passing by that site now see something different: twin Chinese brands Omoda and Jaecoo, both owned by the state-controlled manufacturer Chery.

Chinese cars are on a roll across Europe – they outsold Korean rivals in western Europe for the first time in September. That success is highly reliant on the UK. Of the half a million Chinese cars sold in western Europe between January and September, 30% were bought by Britons, according to Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based automotive analyst.

Published: November 7, 2025, 6:00 am

China’s latest aircraft carrier enters service to extend reach into high seas

Experts say hi-tech Fujian will help expand country’s military influence and reach farther beyond its own waters

China’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier officially entered service this week, signalling a new era in Chinese military expansion after a ceremony overseen by the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, state media has confirmed.

The Fujian is China’s first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier, and the third for China’s rapidly expanding navy, which is already the world’s biggest by ship count.

Published: November 7, 2025, 11:02 am

Qantas releases images of ultra long range Airbus that will fly non-stop from Sydney to London and New York

The A350-1000ULR is on the assembly line in France with the fuselage sections, wings and landing gear attached

Qantas has released the “first images” of its specially configured plane that will fly Australians non-stop from Sydney to London and New York from 2027.

The A350-1000ULR is on the Airbus assembly line in Toulouse, France, with its fuselage sections, wings and landing gear now attached, the airline said on Friday.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:06 am

Revealed: Qatar-linked intelligence operation targeted ICC prosecutor’s alleged victim

Exclusive: Woman who accused Karim Khan of misconduct was subject of covert operation involving two British private intelligence firms

The woman who alleges she was sexually abused by the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has been targeted by private intelligence firms as part of a covert operation said to have taken place on behalf of Qatar.

The Guardian can reveal details of the intrusive operation, which has obtained sensitive information about the woman, who works at the ICC, and her family members.

Published: November 6, 2025, 7:03 pm

‘Why don’t you believe Palestinians?’: the Israeli comedian putting the conflict on stage

In documentary Coexistence, My Ass!, Noam Shuster Eliassi uses humor and honesty to turn a one-woman show into something politically radical

In the late 2010s, Noam Shuster Eliassi was working at the United Nations, the latest step in a lifelong effort to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians, when she had an epiphany. In Ukraine, a Jewish comedian named Volodymyr Zelenskyy had made the improbable leap from sitcom about accidentally becoming president to actually becoming president. Perhaps, if she were to take her political career seriously, she should start writing jokes.

It worked. As an Israeli Jew fluent in Hebrew, Arabic and English, Shuster Eliassi could nimbly weave between different audiences, and what started as short comedic videos on social media soon became an invitation from Harvard to develop a full-on stand-up routine skewering the idea of coexistence as it’s often used in the Israeli-Palestinian context. The show would riff on her upbringing in one of the only joint Israeli-Palestinian communities in the country, threading a fine needle with self-deprecating humor and an activist’s edge. The aim, she told the Guardian, was to “unpack” the idea of coexistence, “and say, like, ‘this is how I grew up, there are so many funny kumbayah moments, and I propose something else.’”

Published: November 7, 2025, 10:01 am

‘Erin Patterson remains mysterious to me’: Helen Garner, Sarah Krasnostein and Chloe Hooper on the mushroom murders

Three of Australia’s most acclaimed writers have teamed up to write The Mushroom Tapes, about the weeks they spent at the triple-murder trial, picking apart lies, media ethics and evil

“None of us wants to write about this. And none of us wants to not write about it.”

The profound inner conflict of the three narrators begins on page two of The Mushroom Tapes and never quite resolves, lingering as an ethical tension that colours almost every page.

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:00 pm

In Your Dreams review – Netflix dreams up solid sub-Pixar adventure

Echoes of Inside Out and Coco in streamer’s engaging enough caper about a brother and sister journeying through their dreams

Once upon a time, Pixar had the kind of winning streak that most companies could only dream of. The studio didn’t just maintain a robust production line that won over both critics and crowds, they also managed to change our concept of what animation could achieve as an art form. Radically expansive visuals were matched with surprising, weighty ideas, conjuring the kind of magic that had been largely absent from Disney’s output in the years prior.

While many blamed the ensuing fade on Covid, in truth it had already started before then. Like the rest of the industry, the company had become overly reliant on sequels, with the four years before 2020 seeing one original versus four follow-ups and as cinemas shuttered, their latest offering Onward was middling enough to suggest that even superfans should be concerned about the future. It’s been a case of ongoing underwhelm ever since, a low point reached by this year’s Elio, a patch-worked mess that had the lowest opening ever for a Pixar film (their only bright spot Inside Out 2 has left their upcoming slate looking predictably sequel-heavy).

Published: November 7, 2025, 2:00 pm

Giving a review zero stars sets a dreadful precedent. But here are the one-star shockers I’d downgrade | Peter Bradshaw

A singularly horrendous TV show has crashed the star-rating review economy. But if zero stars is the new benchmark for critical rage, three films deserve the big 0

Kim Kardashian’s world-historically horrendous TV show All’s Fair has detonated a firestorm of critical horror which, as well as everything else, may have undermined the currency of the star-rating review economy. My colleague Lucy Mangan gave Kardashian’s show an all-but-unprecedented zero stars and zero stars are in fact very rare on this paper.

Yet perhaps in the post-Kardashian world they will become more commonplace. I actually have the distinction of giving the first zero star review in the Guardian’s history — for Cuba Gooding’s terrible comedy Boat Trip back in 2002. But it’s weird. There have been worse films than that which didn’t get zeroed. Not many. But some.

Published: November 6, 2025, 4:47 pm

Alex Winter on fame, AI and reuniting with Keanu Reeves: ‘Sometimes we’re on a groove and go, ‘God damn, that was good!’

Midway through the Broadway run of Waiting for Godot with his Bill & Ted co-star Keanu, the actor-director talks about his new film, Adulthood, overcoming the abuse he endured as a young performer, and why we’re wrong about artificial intelligence

Six weeks ago, Alex Winter was on stage at the first night of previews for Waiting for Godot – the latest Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, in which Winter plays the puttering Vladimir to Keanu Reeves’s equally aimless Estragon.

Winter is an old pro at live performance: he spent almost all of his middle and high school years on Broadway, eight shows a week. He and Reeves, his longtime friend and most righteous co-star of the Bill & Ted movies, had the idea for the revival three years ago and have been prepping ever since.

Published: November 7, 2025, 8:00 am

Is Kim Kardashian’s legal drama All’s Fair really the worst TV show of all time?

Ryan Murphy’s glossy, star-packed new show has received some of the most shocking reviews we’ve seen for a long time, including many zero-star takes

• Giving a review zero stars sets a dreadful precedent. But here are the one-star shockers I’d downgrade – Peter Bradshaw

If you get a secret thrill from reading bad reviews, this week has basically been your Christmas. This is when the embargo dropped for Ryan Murphy’s new Kim Kardashian-starring Hulu legal drama All’s Fair, and hoo boy. Lucy Mangan’s zero-star extravaganza was a classic of the form, starting with the line “I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad,” and only getting more despairing from there.

But then something incredible happened. More All’s Fair reviews started popping up, and they were just as scathing. Every last one of them, without exception, absolutely hated it. In his zero-star review, the Times’s Ben Dowell observed that the show felt like it had been written “by a toddler who couldn’t write ‘bum’ on a wall”. USA Today’s Kelly Lawler wrote: “It’s so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.” The Wrap said: “One wonders if Murphy is engaged in some sort of social experiment to see if he can get away with making the most transparently terrible show on Disney’s dime.” In his one-star review (comparatively a rave), the Telegraph’s Ed Power called the show a “disaster zone of soapy plotting and reeking dialogue”.

Published: November 6, 2025, 10:02 am

‘It’s impossible not to have contradictions in a contradictory world’: Catalan pop visionary Rosalía on critics, crisis and being ‘hot for God’

With a towering new album about female saints in 13 languages, she’s pop’s boldest star – and one of its most controversial. She revisits her spiritual breakthroughs, and explains why we need forgiveness instead of cancel culture

Rosalía Vila Tobella is just as bored as you are of pop music functioning as gossip column fodder, with lyrics full of hints of rivalries and betrayal. “I’m tiring of seeing people referencing celebrities, and celebrities referencing other celebrities,” she says. “I’m really much more excited about saints.”

The 33-year-old Catalan musician and producer’s monumental fourth album, Lux, draws on the lives of dozens of female saints, inspired by “feminine mysticism, spirituality” and how lives of murder, materialism and rebellion could light the way to canonisation. Rosalía reels them off. Her gothic, operatic new single Berghain borrows from the 12th-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (cited like Madonna these days by experimental female musicians). “She had these visions that would pierce her brain. There’s also Vimala, who wrote poetry but was a prostitute, and she ended up becoming a saint because she was one of the first women who wrote in the Therīgāthā,” an ancient Buddhist poem collection written by nuns.

Published: November 7, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Sinners was a blast’: Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, the blues prodigy serving up electrifying riffs in the year’s biggest film

He was mentored by Buddy Guy as a teen and played for Michelle Obama in the White House. Now, the 26-year-old Mississippi guitar hero is bringing the blues back into the spotlight – and taking it to the top of the box office

Founded in 1848, Clarksdale, Mississippi, soon earned the title “the Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt”, a place where enslaved Africans and their descendants picked cotton by the tonne. But mechanisation in the 1960s changed things. Today, the small city’s median household income is $35,210, with 40% of the populace living below the poverty line. And 80% of Clarksdale’s 14,400 residents are African American. Just another left-behind town in the poorest state in the Union? This is how Clarksdale appears to many outsiders.

Or it did until one of the biggest movies of 2025 opened with the words: “Clarksdale, Mississippi – October 16, 1932”. Why was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners set in Clarksdale? Because this forgotten settlement is also a blues mecca. The crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly “sold his soul to the devil” is here. Bessie Smith, shattered after a car crash on Highway 61, drew her last breath in Clarksdale. WC Handy, Muddy Waters, Robert Nighthawk, Junior Parker, Ike Turner and Sam Cooke are just a handful of the celebrated blues and R&B musicians who were either born or based themselves in Clarksdale at some point across the 20th century. Now, after decades of neglect, Clarksdale is using its musical heritage to re-establish its place on the map – and one of the city’s native sons, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, is bringing the blues back to the centre of American culture.

Published: November 6, 2025, 8:00 am

Hatchie: Liquorice review – dizzying dreampop with welcome flashes of depravity

Eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of her earlier work, the Australian’s third album is both more mature and less immediately palatable

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Almost all of Hatchie’s music could slot frictionlessly into a coming-of-age film. Her songs, mostly, are misty-eyed ruminations on puppy love and its ensuing devastation; they yearn for a redamancy that feels both fated and vexingly out of reach. You can imagine Harriette Pilbeam’s mille-feuille harmonies soundtracking a high school prom dappled with a disco ball’s refractive glimmer, or picture her fleecy guitars over a montage of light teenage debauchery. These are tracks prefabbed for telegraphing big feelings; everyone knows the outsize melodrama of a first, second or 20th crush.

Liquorice, the title of Pilbeam’s potent third album, winks at her 2018 breakout EP, Sugar and Spice. That formative work was a candy blast of dreampop, emphasis on pop – indebted as much to Carly Rae Jepsen as Cocteau Twins, whose co-founder Robin Guthrie ended up providing a remix of Pilbeam’s single Sure. Liquorice, meanwhile, is more mature and less immediately palatable, eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of Pilbeam’s earlier work.

Published: November 6, 2025, 2:00 pm

Danny Brown: Stardust review – hyperpop-rap powered up with post-rehab positivity

(Warp)
The Detroit rapper feared his music would get dull after he went sober, but no-one could be bored by this guest-stuffed, chaotically swaggering new album

When Danny Brown spoke to the Guardian in 2023, he was promoting the near simultaneous release of two albums, his own Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, a collaboration with Jpegmafia that commenced with perhaps the year’s most diverting opening lyric: “First – fuck off, Elon Musk.” Both albums had been recorded in what sounded like desperate circumstances.

Brown had long played on his image as a drug-guzzling maniac, too crazed to be contained by any of hip-hop’s standard generic boundaries: posing for photographs with his hair wildly backcombed, his missing teeth on full display, his tongue out and his fingers in devil’s horns, telling interviewers “I’m just waiting to die – everything after this point is, like, whatever”; referring to his songs as “trauma dumps” and calling them things like Adderall Admiral, White Lines, Dope Fiend Rental, Need Another Drink and Die Like a Rockstar. By the time he made Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, however, he was in serious trouble: “blackout drunk” when recording the latter, “in pain all the time, throwing up and shit” during the making of the former. By the time of the interview, he’d been to rehab and got sober: ostensibly a happy ending, but Brown struck a note of caution. “I’ve seen so many artists get sober,” he said. “And their music sucks.”

Published: November 6, 2025, 12:00 pm

In Love With Love by Ella Risbridger review – a sexy celebration of romantic fiction

From Pride and Prejudice to Fifty Shades, a writer’s paean to the literature of desire

Eva Ibbotson, a doyenne of 1980s romantic fiction, once said self-deprecatingly that her books were aimed at “old ladies and people with flu”. To which Ella Risbridger, who is in her early 30s, sniffle-free and a devotee of Ibbotson’s “sexy and sweet” novels, has this cracking comeback: “If love is the most important thing, and to me it was and is, I want books that think that too.”

From here Risbridger plunges into what she charmingly calls “a field guide to delight”. Jane Eyre rubs shoulders with Ice Planet Barbarians (the bright blue aliens who inhabit the ice planet turn out to be sexy in a Mr Rochester kind of way). Pride and Prejudice makes its inevitable appearance, flanked by its many modern iterations, including the ones with dragons. Mills & Boon novels of every stripe are accorded the kind of sustained attention more usually given to Proust, while Judith Butler’s theories of gender are buttressed by a deft analysis of Rupert Campbell-Black, caddish hero of the Rutshire chronicles by the late, great Jilly Cooper.

Published: November 7, 2025, 7:00 am

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen review – a hypnotic tale of the sea cow’s extinction

This hit debut from Finland is intensely readable, but could have delved more deeply into the links between human progress and environmental destruction

In November 1741 Georg Wilhelm Steller, “theologian, naturalist, and curious man”, was shipwrecked on an island between Alaska and Russia. There he found, floating in the shallow waters, a vast sirenian, Hydrodamalis gigas, nine feet long and soon to be known as Steller’s sea cow. Having made it through the winter, largely by eating the sea cows, the following August Steller and the remaining survivors of the Great Northern Expedition left the island. Within 30 years, Steller’s sea cow was hunted to extinction.

Having described these events, Finnish author Iida Turpeinen’s debut novel goes on to describe the lives of other historical figures, each of whom are touched in some way by the sea cow, now reduced to bones. There is Hampus Furuhjelm, governor of Alaska, in search of a complete skeleton, and his sister Constance, who finds peace and intellectual autonomy among her taxidermy collection. Later, there’s Hilda Olson, a scientific illustrator, and John Grönvall, specialist in the reconstruction of birds’ eggs, who is tasked with preparing a sea cow’s relics for exhibition.

Published: November 6, 2025, 7:00 am

Fortnite’s The Simpsons season is a worthy tribute to one of the most celebrated shows of all time

Crammed with cameos, this recreation of Springfield in Fortnite’s evolving virtual playground is a delight for long-time fans of the show. Shame it’s not here for long

After years of collaborations with Disney on Marvel and Star Wars, it’s finally happened: The Simpsons have arrived in Fortnite. Whereas most of these crossovers comprise themed skins and emotes, this is a complete takeover, with an entire stylised map based on Springfield to explore. It’s a smart way of introducing American TV’s longest-running sitcom to a younger audience – especially with news of a second movie on the way – but for millennials, this is the culmination of a year-long campaign to catch our attention, if previous collabs with Power Rangers, Scream and Mortal Kombat are anything to go by.

Though this could have been a quick ploy for those who grew up on a diet of afterschool BBC Two repeats to open their wallets, it’s no lazy cash-in. The familiar sights of Springfield you’d expect are here: there’s the Simpsons home on Evergreen Terrace, the sloping lawns of Burns Manor, and a town square with Moe’s Tavern and a statue of Jebediah Springfield, detachable head and all. Towards the edge of the map is the nuclear power plant, pumping cartoon steam into the sky, featuring meltdowns that you can avert by tapping a control console to the tune of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”. Cletus’s farm and a Slurp factory (the game’s spin on Duff – no beer on tap here) sit on the corners of the island, and every match starts with a charming recreation of the show’s intro, complete with parting clouds, title card and iconic theme song, before you thank Otto as you leave the battle bus and descend on to the map.

Published: November 6, 2025, 10:40 am

The ‘Kelvin-verse’ is history. Where do the Star Trek movies go from here?

One of the new Paramount ownership’s first acts has been to end the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto series of Trek movies. But surely they can’t stop making them forever?

There have been many Star Treks over the decades. First up we had a 1960s morality play performed on cardboard sets; then it became a billion-dollar movie saga about space diplomacy. More recently we’ve been gifted an ever-expanding collection of streaming spinoffs, each one more determined than the last to prove itself the true keeper of the sacred flame. Now we have a franchise that no longer has any idea what to do with itself. According to Variety, its producer Paramount has shelved the most recent film trilogy, known unofficially as the “Kelvin-verse”, that starred Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. What comes next is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the more pertinent question here might be whether this grand old sci-fi saga is now really suited for the big screen at all. The recent films – 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond – won critical plaudits, yet were also criticised by fans for trying to turn a utopian thought experiment about empathy, cooperation and the perils of militarism into a knockabout space opera.

Published: November 7, 2025, 1:52 pm

Rockstar Games delays Grand Theft Auto VI – again – to late 2026

The hugely anticipated sequel was due to arrive in May of next year but has been pushed back to November 2026

Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto VI, which was due to release on 26 May next year, has been delayed again – this time to the end of 2026. It has now been nearly two years since the game was announced, and more than 12 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V.

“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026,” reads Rockstar Games’s statement on X. “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”

Published: November 6, 2025, 9:49 pm

High and low: the spontaneous joy and drama of New York City – in pictures

Street photographer Daniel Arnold searches out the candid human moments of NYC, capturing a complex city alive with characters and contradictions

Published: November 6, 2025, 7:00 am

Share your zero-star cultural disasters

The Guardian has only ever published 18 zero-star reviews. Now’s the chance to share yours …

A zero-star review is very rare. The Guardian has only published 18, which we listed following Lucy Mangan’s zero-star review of Kim Kardashian’s new Disney+ divorce drama All’s Fair.

There’s lots of great culture out there, but sometimes you can be left bitterly disappointed, so we’d like to hear about your worst ever cultural experiences. What’s the most unforgivable TV show, film, play or gig that you have ever seen and would award zero stars to? Now’s your chance to spill.

Published: November 6, 2025, 5:13 pm

‘A sign of who I am, right here on my hands’: meet the artists behind the new-school henna boom

The traditional artform of henna – applying intricate and floral designs to the hands and body in natural inks – is seeing vivid new life as a means of progressive social and political expression, led by a wave of young designers and artists

The night before Eid, plastic chairs line the pavements of busy British high streets from London to Bradford. Women sit elbow-to-elbow beneath shopfronts, hands outstretched as artists swirl cones of henna into intricate curls. For £5, you can walk away with both palms blooming. Once confined to weddings and living rooms, this centuries-old ritual has spilled out into public spaces – and today, it’s being reimagined entirely.

In recent years, henna has travelled from family homes to the red carpet – from actor Michaela Coel’s Sudanese motifs at the Toronto film festival to Katseye singer Lara Raj’s henna decor at the 2025 Video Music awards. Younger generations are using it as art, political expression and cultural affirmation. Online, the appetite is increasing – UK searches for henna reportedly rose by nearly 5,000% last year; and, on social media, creators share everything from faux freckles made with henna to five-minute floral design tutorials, showing how the dye has adapted to modern beauty culture.

Published: November 7, 2025, 6:00 am

Beans, beans, the magical fruit: how healthy are they really?

Research shows beans are good for the body and for the planet. Here’s what to know about getting more in your diet

Beans are affordable, accessible and versatile – delicious in dense salads and creamy sauces alike.

They grow worldwide and are good for the planet, enriching the soil they sprout from with nitrogen while emitting fewer greenhouse gases and requiring significantly less land and water per gram of protein than any animal source. Thanks to enormous diversity, more than 400 varieties are used in culinary contexts, some of which are gorgeous to boot.

Published: November 6, 2025, 5:00 pm

Gifts for the entrepreneur in your life

From CEOs to designers, 25 entrepreneurs told us the best type of gifts for these visionary and creative folks

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Everyone knows someone who’s self-employed. Whether it’s the stylist who cuts your hair, the passionate home cook now slinging the world’s best grilled cheese from the food truck down the street, or the former HR pro turned consultant, entrepreneurs come in all stripes.

What can you give these visionary and creative folks when the holidays roll around? I’ve been self-employed since 2018 as a writer and a business owner, and I’ve discovered that the right gift can both lift your spirits, and make work easier and more fun all year round. To gather gift ideas for every type of entrepreneur, I went to the source and spoke to 25 of them, from CEOs to designers. Here’s what they told me, plus a few of my own favorites.

Published: November 6, 2025, 8:15 pm

Need a page-turner or gift? Book recs from our e-reader tester

Plus: a guide to better sleep, slow cookers and plane essentials

• This piece was originally published in the Filter US newsletter on buying fewer, better things. Sign up here to get early access to it

Each week, we cut through the noise to bring you smart, practical recommendations on how to live better – from what is worth buying to the tools, habits and ideas that actually last.

Raise your hand if fall inspires fantasies of cozying up by the fire with a good book. Now raise your hand if you have a fireplace and space for a home library. Because e-readers are often more practical, I just spent more than a month testing six e-readers to find one that didn’t make me miss turning paper pages, and I think I found a model most people will love.

Published: November 6, 2025, 3:49 pm

I seem to put out a strong ‘new-best-friend’ vibe, then I back off. Should I dial it down?

Sometimes we feel threatened by bids for closeness, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. It can help to consider if you’re being true to yourself

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When I was 17, I was quiet, an observer on the fringes. That was often mistaken for being wise. Now 70 (and, by the way, gay), I am chatty and opinionated with a tendency to talk over others in conversation. I have come by the changes honestly, so I don’t whip myself over it because I am enjoying expressing myself. But I do wonder if this is a normal progression, the loss of filters with ageing, or if I am simply losing my sociability – going off the rails in some way.

While I like being friendly to all and enjoy the company of women especially, I recognise how easily they can be hurt. I seem to put out a strong “new-best-friend” vibe but then sometimes, when they step close, I feel crowded and back off. The flip-flop clearly offends, and I don’t want to be doing that, but I frame it as being true to myself. Is this a destructive habit and, if so, should I dial down the friendliness?

Eleanor says: How responsible are we for the ways other people see us?

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Published: November 6, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘Fabulous 50s dresses and even a kilt’: readers’ favourite vintage shops and markets in Europe

Our tipsters rummage through thrift stores and markets from Budapest to Bologna

• Tell us about a lesser known corner of Italy or a winter stay in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

W Armstrong in Edinburgh is a true institution. There are several locations, but the Grassmarket spot is a treasure trove. Frequented by locals, students and tourists alike, there is a price point for all. Whether I’ve been on the hunt for vintage cashmere, denim, fabulous 1950s dresses, garb for a fancy dress party or even a kilt, this store has sorted me out. It is always a favourite for when friends visit the city, and whether you are looking to buy or not, it is worth a visit just to see its eclectic collection.
Amy

Published: November 7, 2025, 7:00 am

‘I look deranged, but my baby looks happy!’ Nine writers on their favourite photo booth picture

This year marks a century since the birth of the photo booth, and friends and families are still squeezing into them for fun and unflattering snaps - capturing the highs, lows and loves of their lives

I didn’t find early motherhood easy. It wasn’t my daughter’s fault – she was, mercifully, a wonderful and cheerful baby – but I underestimated what a huge shift it would be at an already stressful time. When I was pregnant, we moved to a new town, to a wreck of a house we planned to do up. My mum, who was ill, moved in with us, and then I was the carer of a newborn and a dying parent – at the two extremes of life, but sharing many of the same needs, and often at the same time.

Published: November 6, 2025, 5:00 am

When company’s coming, these simple, cosy ideas hit the spot

Autumn may be the most social season of all, and these elevated but not exhausting ideas make every get-together a small celebration

The golden light lingers a little longer now, and somehow the evenings are full again. Autumn feels like the true social season of the year: the guest bedroom (for which we have an informal booking system) is full through to the end of the year, and suddenly every weekend and many weekday evenings are wrapped around company. Even if it’s just dinner at home for house guests, the rhythm has changed.

When it’s just us for dinner, anything goes – it is very relaxed and informal, and the emphasis is on ease of execution and speed of service. For a dinner party, meanwhile, we go all out: trips to the butcher and speciality deli, and as much time in the kitchen as is needed. But cooking for, and indeed with, house guests falls somewhere delightfully in between: cosy and welcoming, elevated but not exhausting. The kind of food that says: you’re here, you matter, let’s linger.

Published: November 6, 2025, 1:00 pm

You be the judge: should my best friend stop calling me by a nickname?

Priscilla knows that when Chioma calls her ‘Pris’ she means no harm – but finds it very annoying. You get to name the offending party
• Take part in the Guardian’s You be the judge live event
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I hate being called Prissy – my cousins used to call me that when I was a kid and I’d get upset

Her nickname was born out of love. I feel hurt she’s framing it as if I’ve been disrespecting her

Published: November 6, 2025, 8:00 am

As Japan experiences a surge in bear attacks, survivors share grisly stories of blood, bites and broken bones

A record 13 people have died in bear attacks in Japan this year – with experts blaming food shortages as the animals venture further into residential areas

Loud conversations, whistles and, when all else fails, a plastic bottle are among the precautions authorities in Japan are urging people to take to counter a surge in bear attacks.

It was a bell that Billy Halloran had to hand during a confrontation in the foothills of Myoko, northern Japan, last month. The 32-year-old New Zealander was settling into an 8km run when he spotted two Asiatic black bears about 30 metres ahead.

Published: November 6, 2025, 5:45 am

Share your favourite photo booth picture

This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. We would like to see your favourite pictures

This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. Guardian writers have shared their favourite photo booth pictures – now we’d like to see yours. You can share your photos, old and new, and the stories behind them, below.

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Published: November 6, 2025, 12:15 pm

Hurricane salvage and an ex-president’s release from jail: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: November 7, 2025, 9:25 am