I tried 10 laundry baskets to find the best hamper in the US – these are my favorites after at-home testing

With days’ worth of laundry, I trudged plastic, fabric, lidless and wheeled baskets up and down stairs and found winners

• The best bath towels in the US, from fluffy to quick drying – tested

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

A laundry basket is one of those household objects that you might not notice until something goes awry. Depending on the layout of your home and your laundry situation, you might use it to transfer clothes from room to room, up and down multiple flights of stairs, or just to collect items for the wash in one location.

But if you have a bad laundry basket – one that buckles under the weight of a full load of laundry or makes the task of transferring folded clothes more cumbersome than it has to be – you start noticing fast. Nothing makes the task of getting laundry done less pleasant than fighting with the container that’s supposed to be helping you.

Best overall:
Sterilite Ultra 2 Bushel Basket

Best collapsible laundry basket:
Sammart Collapsible Laundry Basket

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:15 pm

‘I’m still processing how awful it was’: your zero-star screen disasters

From a Dustin Hoffman performance less witty than a stunned mollusc to the worst piece of garbage ever inflicted on TV viewers, here are Guardian readers’ most atrocious watching experiences ever

• Our roundup of all 18 of the Guardian’s past zero-star reviews
• Peter Bradshaw picks three films that deserved the big 0

Playmobil: The Movie (2019)

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:21 pm

A refugee’s deportation rattles a deeply conservative town: ‘What Trump has done is not Christlike’

Binod Shah, a refugee from Bhutan, went to church, got married and started an auto shop in Twin Falls, Idaho. But an arrest record got him caught in the ICE dragnet

Stephanie Shah kept her eyes on the winding road as rain streaked across the windshield. Her husband, Binod Shah, sat in silence beside her, staring out the window. It was late evening in Washington state on 23 March, and they had been driving all day, trading shifts, barely speaking, while their nine-month-old son dozed beneath a blanket in the backseat. The sky hung low and gray, and evergreens, soaked and still, stood witness along the road. Inside the car, a Nepali-Christian folk song played quietly on repeat. At some point, Binod reached over and rested his hand on Stephanie’s leg. It wasn’t reassurance. It felt more like a final touch.

When the baby started to cry, Stephanie pulled over and together they changed his diaper, working without words. Then Binod leaned down, kissed his son’s forehead, and began to cry.

Published: November 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

Jannik Sinner v Alexander Zverev: ATP Finals tennis – as it happened

A routine 6-4 6-3 win for Jannik Sinner saw him qualify for the semi-finals, while Alexander Zverev must beat Felix Auger-Aliassime to join him

It’s almost time … and out they come, the crowd going wild for Sinner. This arena is proper, steeply banked so it feels like everyone is on top of the action, and it makes a right racket.

Sinner, by the way, has won 27 indoor hard-court matches in a row. The predictable bounce is perfect for the way he moves and hits and in Turin, the thinner air is also helpful, giving the ball even greater pace. Zverev, though, quite likes all of that too, so we’ll see.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:38 pm

The five best juicers in the US with the least mess, noise and cleanup

With machines from $150 to $770, I used 30lbs of fresh produce to determine the juicers most worth the squeeze

• The best blenders in the US: five favorites for smoothies, soups and frozen drinks

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

If you’re sick of spending $12 a pop for a daily juice on the way to work (or $20, if you’re hooked on Erewhon’s viral smoothies), let me take your hand and gently say: life doesn’t have to be this way. You can sip antioxidant-packed juice without leaving the house and even customize the recipe to your liking … if you invest in the right home juicer.

Home juicers can conjure images of clunky machines with huge countertop footprints, jammed parts, countless components to clean and – perhaps most onerous – hefty price tags. But many models trade these pitfalls for graceful, efficient and minimalist designs, little mess, low noise and few, easy-to-clean parts.

Published: November 11, 2025, 8:15 pm

Gen Z’s ‘first lady’: how Rama Duwaji, Mamdani’s wife, is reshaping political fashion

The 28-year-old artist’s style steers clear of the political wife cosplay of pastel skirt suits in favor of something more playful and youthful, yet still elegant

It is the most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters.

Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

In messages released by House Democrats, Epstein wrote ‘of course [Trump] knew about the girls’

• US politics live – latest updates

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.

The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:07 pm

Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein

Karoline Leavitt defied the laws of moral physics to insist that the true wrongdoers were Biden and the Democrats

Donald Trump was described as “that dog that hasn’t barked” in email by Jeffrey Epstein. Don’t tell Kristi Noem, who has a way of dealing with troublesome hounds.

The US president would love nothing more than to let sleeping dogs lie, but that hope was dashed on Wednesday when Democrats released emails suggesting that Trump was aware of Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors and had spent hours with one victim.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:54 pm

Trump calls Epstein emails a Democratic deflection after correspondence alleges president ‘knew about the girls’ – live

Trump says release of Epstein emails is a distraction from Democrats’ performance during shutdown; White House says they ‘prove absolutely nothing’

• Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

• Analysis: Epstein emails thrust Trump back into spotlight over past ties

In a new batch of emails released by Democrats on the House oversight committee, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald Trump knew about the late financier and sex-offender’s conduct. In the three emails released, Epstein apparently told his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump “spent hours” at his house with one of Epstein’s victims.

In two other emails to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote that “of course he knew about the girls”, referring to the now-president. According to the exchanges, Epstein also solicited Wolff’s advice about how he should handle Trump discussing their friendship in an interview with CNN. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff writes. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:35 pm

Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva sworn in after seven weeks in move that could force Epstein vote

Mike Johnson, the House speaker, had prevented the representative from taking her seat after a special election

Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in by Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, on Wednesday, ending a seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming congresswoman from taking her seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

House Democrats burst into applause on the House floor when Grijalva took the oath of office during a ceremonial swearing in, shortly before the chamber was poised to take up legislation that would end the longest federal government shutdown in US history. The ceremony comes 49 days after Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:26 pm

Epstein emails thrust Trump back into spotlight over past ties

Newly released emails from Epstein’s estate reignite scrutiny of the US president’s old links to the sex offender

The release of previously unseen emails sent by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has thrust Donald Trump back into the center of the long-running Epstein controversy that has plagued his administration for months, inflamed parts of his own political base and offered Democrats an ongoing line of political attack.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House oversight and government reform committee released email exchanges from 2011, 2015 and 2019 that they say were provided by the estate of the late Epstein, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:11 pm

US House to vote on bill that could end longest-ever government shutdown

Democrats have vowed to vote against the proposal after a faction of Senators broke with party to pass a compromise

• US politics – live updates

The House on Wednesday was poised to vote on legislation that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, as Democrats voice fury that the Senate-brokered compromise fails to extend expiring healthcare subsidies.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has instructed lawmakers to return to Washington after keeping the chamber out of session for more than 50 days.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Judge orders release of hundreds arrested during Chicago immigration raids

Trump officials also cannot pressure detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while cases are pending, says judge

A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of people who were arrested over the last few months in the Chicago area amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids across the city.

On Wednesday, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the justice department to produce a list showing which of the 615 possible class members are still in custody by 19 November, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:42 pm

Al Gore wonders if ‘bullying’ Trump prompted Bill Gates to backtrack on climate

Exclusive interview with ex-US vice-president at Cop30 also reveals his hope around much-maligned climate summit

Fear of being bullied by Donald Trump may have prompted Bill Gates to row back on the climate crisis, Al Gore has speculated, as he slammed the billionaire’s new position as “silly”, and the US president for his anti-climate stance.

Trump, “the most corrupt president in American history”, was “badly damaging the US economy” by pulling away from renewable energy and promoting fossil fuels, the former US vice-president warned.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:05 pm

Waymo announces that its robotaxis will drive freeways for the first time

Google subsidiary to offer services on San Francisco, LA and Phoenix freeways as it scales expansion amid competition

Alphabet’s Waymo said on Wednesday that it will begin offering robotaxi rides that use freeways across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, a first for the Google subsidiary as it steps up expansion amid global and domestic competition in the self-driving industry.

Freeway rides will initially be available to early-access users, Waymo said. “When a freeway route is meaningfully faster, they can be matched with a freeway trip, providing quicker, smoother, and more efficient rides,” it said.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:57 pm

New bridge in south-west China collapses into mountainside

No casualties reported after section of 758-metre structure helping to link Sichuan province to Tibet falls to pieces

A newly opened bridge in south-west China collapsed on Tuesday, sending slabs of concrete and plumes of dust into the mountainside and water below. No casualties were reported.

Videos of the collapse of part of Hongqi Bridge, in the mountainous Sichuan province, were shared widely on Chinese social media. Authorities had closed the 758-metre-long bridge on Monday after cracks appeared on nearby roads. A landslide on Tuesday caused part of the bridge to collapse completely.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:31 pm

Israeli president condemns ‘serious’ attack by settlers on West Bank villages

Isaac Herzog makes rare statement on often-ignored violence as settlers injure Palestinians and attack soldiers

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, injuring four Palestinians and attacking Israeli soldiers in the latest incident of rising settler violence.

The settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, setting vehicles on fire and damaging property belonging to a Bedouin community, with charred remains of cars left behind the next day.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:26 pm

Common cents: US Mint to press its final penny

Last one-cent coin to be pressed in Philadelphia after Trump ordered them to be canceled, citing rising costs

The US Mint in Philadelphia is set to strike its last circulating penny on Wednesday as Donald Trump has canceled the one-cent coin.

The US president has ordered its demise as costs climb to nearly four cents per penny and the one-cent valuation becomes somewhat obsolete.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:01 pm

Northern lights visible across US as geomagnetic storm lights up skies

Aurora borealis reported in over a dozen states, stretching from New York to Texas and Tennessee

A powerful geomagnetic storm lit up skies across much of the US late Tuesday and early Wednesday, giving people in dozens of states a rare chance to see the northern lights, and forecasters say that more auroral activity could be visible on Wednesday night too.

The aurora borealis, commonly known as the northern lights, was reported in more than a dozen states, stretching from New York to Washington state to Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Photos of the glowing colorful skies also poured in on social media from Nevada, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, California, Louisiana, New Mexico, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, South Dakota and more.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:23 pm

Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

Expert says military action may be ‘imminent’ in Venezuela, while others suspect deployment is a negotiating tactic

• Explainer: Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

When Donald Trump started sending warships, marines and reaper drones to the Caribbean in August to torment Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, the US’s former ambassador in Caracas, James Story, suspected the deployment was largely for show: a spectacular flexing of military muscle supposed to force the authoritarian leader from power.

But in recent days, as the world’s largest aircraft carrier and its strike group powered towards the region and the US president continued to order deadly airstrikes on alleged narco-boats, the diplomat’s thinking has shifted.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:38 pm

Trump writes to Israeli president calling for Netanyahu pardon

Isaac Herzog can pardon convicted criminals in some circumstances, but cases against Israeli PM are ongoing

Donald Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial in three separate corruption cases.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:07 pm

Venezuelans sent by Trump to El Salvador endured systematic torture, report finds

Human rights groups accuse Trump officials of complicity and draw comparison with scandal at Abu Ghraib prison

More than 252 Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador under Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy suffered systematic and prolonged torture and abuse, including sexual assault, during their detention, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The report, compiled jointly by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Cristosal – a group investigating violations in Central America – says conditions at El Salvador’s sprawling “terrorist continent center” (Cecot) breached the UN’s standard minimal rules for the treatment of prisoners. It cites “inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged incommunicado detention, inadequate food” and other shortcomings.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

After a controversial trial, an Oklahoma man makes a final plea to avoid execution

Tremane Wood was convicted of a murder his brother had confessed to. Now a Republican governor will decide whether he dies on Thursday

It may be about to execute him, but Oklahoma’s department of corrections hasn’t even spelled Tremane Wood’s name right: it lists him on its official website as “Termane” Wood.

For 16 of his last 21 years in prison, following his conviction for the murder of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf, he has been confined, often alone, to a series of windowless concrete cells in the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, in an underground block that prisoners have compared to a tomb.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:02 pm

Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

Once at the heart of record migration, the Texas border town now faces new fears over Trump’s sweeping deportation drive

Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.

Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

Donald Trump claims military buildup is necessary to stem flow of drugs to US but some believe goal is regime change

• Analysis: Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

The US has deployed the world’s largest warship to the waters of the Caribbean and Latin America in an escalation of the military buildup by the US and Venezuela.

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford has joined other warships and a nuclear-powered submarine in what was already seen as the largest US military presence in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. US airstrikes on boats in South American waters have killed at least 76 people since September.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:05 pm

‘We need an iron fist’: the Trump-inspired favourite to win Chile’s election

José Antonio Kast, 59, is appealing to voters with a hard-right pitch on crime and immigration

Even before José Antonio Kast popped into his high-altitude restaurant for a plate of alpaca ribs, Carlos Valdebenito Pacheco was set on voting for the ultra-conservative favourite to become the next president of Chile.

“Without a doubt – 100%,” enthused the 55-year-old waiter from Visviri, an isolated Andean outpost more than 4,000 metres above sea level on Chile’s triple border with Bolivia and Peru.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Every account is slightly different’: who were the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gambler

There’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line.

“Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:45 pm

Christmas Karma review – Dickens adaptation has as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog

Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducing

Keen though I always am to indulge any and every new riff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and keen also to hear from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, this cynically Christmassy movie is leaden, unconvincingly acted and about as welcome as a dead rat in the eggnog. It’s the worst Christmas film since last year’s Red One, in which Dwayne Johnson played the head of security for Santa Claus and more or less had us all rooting for anyone who could beat up Father Christmas.

In this one, Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar lifelessly and joylessly plays a Scrooge variant called Mr Sood, part of the Ugandan south Asian community expelled by Idi Amin in his childhood, and embittered by early poverty. An early romance soured because of his obsession with money, and he has become a grasping and unpleasant old guy in London (cue stock footage of the London skyline) in the rather quaintly imagined business of moneylending, with his now dead partner Jacob Marley, played by Hugh Bonneville. But after petulant displays of boorish meanness with his nephew, employees and the cheerful Cockney Christmas-jumper-wearing cabbie played by Danny Dyer (surely Mr Sood knows that Ubers are cheaper?), he is visited by Marley’s ghost and then the spirits of Christmas past, present and future (played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter and Boy George).

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 pm

Colbert on Trump ‘building a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis’

Late-night hosts spoke about the president’s latest additions to the White House and his attacks on air traffic controllers

Late-night hosts spoke about the controversial behavior of a small group of Democrats and Donald Trump’s continued destruction of the White House.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:13 pm

The billionaire nanny boom: why gen Z is providing ‘private service’ for the super-rich

Is it time to start channelling Mary Poppins? Some graduates are eschewing entry-level jobs to earn £150k or more looking after the children of the absurdly wealthy

Name: Billionaire nannies.

Age: Mid-20s, or thereabouts.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:10 pm

Did a meteor strike downtown New York? Jeff Mermelstein’s best photograph

‘This image gave me a jolt: his poker face, his grip on the bottle of window cleaner – and the boulder that might be a meteor that struck the flowerbed’

I made this image, Man with Windex, in New York City, in 1996. I was, and remain, obsessed with making photographs on the streets of New York. At that time, I was using a Leica Rangefinder with colour negative film because of its malleability and ease. One of the beautiful things about the Leica is its stealth qualities – it is quiet and small, though for me right now the iPhone is my camera.

I am the son of Holocaust survivors and grew up in suburban central New Jersey, moving to New York in 1979 when I was in my early 20s – which was like landing on Mars. This picture is part of my series and book Sidewalk, made between 1987 and 1999. I would walk the streets of Manhattan daily, ready for surprises. Out on the street you need calm alertness. Pictures that remain strongest for me have a sense of ambiguity, maybe that extra-rare quality of mystery, and that would give me a feeling of euphoria.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:38 pm

Jelly’s back! Here are three worth making – and three that should wobble off to the bin

The traditional treat is all over Instagram and TikTok. But does it always taste as impressive as it looks? And why is it so hard to get it to set rather than slump? Time for a deep dive …

Jelly has a dowdy reputation, but it may well be the perfect food for the Instagram age: when it works, it’s incredibly photogenic, so who cares what it tastes like?

There can be no other explanation for recent claims that savoury jellies – the most lurid and off-putting of dishes, reminiscent of the worst culinary efforts of the 1950s – are suddenly fashionable. This resurgence comes, according to the New York Times, “at a time when chefs are feeling pressure to produce viral visuals and molecular gastronomy is old hat”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

The BBC’s editing error was serious, but the response is way out of proportion | Margaret Sullivan

The broadcaster should not cave to Trump’s demands

You can’t be in the news business and avoid mistakes. That’s why responsible media organizations correct their errors and acknowledge them to the public. It’s why newsroom leaders take steps, internally, to repair broken processes. It’s why they sometimes go so far as to apologize or take stories down.

Some mistakes, of course, are worse than others. A misspelled name is one thing. Sustained coverage that is misleading or false is quite another. And there are plenty of gradations between those two poles.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Yes, New York will soon be under new management. But Zohran Mamdani is just the start | Carys Afoko

Lina Khan outraged corporates and conservatives as head of the Federal Trade Commission. Expect more of the same now she’s with the mayor-elect’s transition team

A relatively unknown thirtysomething parachuted on to the national stage and into high political office. Energising to some of the Democratic base but lacking support from the party establishment. Not Zohran Mamdani but Lina Khan, who Joe Biden appointed to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021 when she was just 32. Khan, who left her role at the FTC when Trump returned to the White House, is now one of five women appointed to the mayor-elect of New York’s transition team.

Khan is the most exciting pick for a few reasons. She entered the FTC with an ambitious mandate to transform the government agency, broaden its focus to increase scrutiny of corporate mergers and do more to protect consumers – and got results. She brought down the price of inhalers (routinely being sold for hundreds of dollars) by tackling price gouging by pharmaceutical companies. She blocked a huge supermarket merger and returned more than $60m to Amazon drivers in unpaid tips. All of her achievements were delivered in four years, while navigating a bureaucracy that was sometimes hostile to her leadership.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Boyfriends are cringe. But is the #boysober trend a feminist reclamation or a neoconservative tilt? | Lisa Portolan

Young women are rejecting the idea of emotional dependence on men. But as with any online feminist movement, it exists in tension

A few years ago, I wrote about the rise of the “soft” and “hard” launch on social media, those curated posts that signalled a new relationship. Online platforms had become an extension of the romance plot, a public stage where intimacy was proof of worth and coupledom was still the ultimate status symbol.

Back then, my research showed that many people felt their lives had not truly begun until they’d met someone. Being single wasn’t just a relationship status; it was an existential pause. To “get a life”, as the old saying went, meant to find a partner. Romance was the scaffolding of selfhood.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Celebrating literature is good – but I’m running out of patience with celebrity book clubs | Emma Brockes

Sarah Jessica Parker swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but is fame the best way to encourage reading?

In these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.

I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There is nothing wrong with an actor involving herself in literary life or using her cultural weight to promote literacy. And – it goes without saying – we are all weepingly grateful to anyone with a platform bigger than that of the dowdy stay-at-home novelist who harnesses her glamour and spotlight for good. That celebrity book clubs have become the natural PR extension of taking up animal charities or becoming a UN goodwill ambassador is, surely, something to be celebrated. Who among us can fail to welcome Mindy Kaling, or Emma Watson, or Jenna Bush Hager in their fight against dwindling attention spans and addiction to screens?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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 12, 2025, 5:29 pm

Covid vaccines may increase the lifespan of cancer patients – this could be a game changer | Devi Sridhar

A study suggesting mRNA vaccines help the body fight malignant cells raises the tantalising prospect of a low-cost, low-risk treatment that could help with all cancers

I’m often asked whether we’re better prepared for the next pandemic. It’s a mixed answer, but the bright spot is scientific progress on vaccines. The Covid vaccines were produced faster than any previous effort, and are credited with saving millions of lives from 2021 onwards. The mRNA vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna – were designed within days of the Sars-CoV-2 genome being published in January 2020, and went into safety trials over the following months before finally being approved in the UK at the end of 2020.

But could they have additional benefits? According to a recent study published in Nature, mRNA vaccines seem to trigger a powerful immune response that increases the median survival time by about 75% for certain cancer patients. These findings – which are being further developed – could indicate the power of repurposing vaccines and medicines that have already passed trials for safety and are available at reasonable cost.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Fit Forever: Wellness for midlife and beyond. On Wednesday 28 January 2026, join Annie Kelly, Devi Sridhar, Joel Snape and Mariella Frostrup, as they discuss how to enjoy longer and healthier lives, with expert advice and practical tips. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

To the cashier who left me absolutely speechless – I salute you | Adrian Chiles

Ours was a highly unusual interaction, and it made me question the way that British people speak to one another

It was Sunday morning and I was grumpy enough, filling up my mum’s car. It was one of those petrol stations which is also a supermarket, so you run the risk of joining a queue of people bearing baskets of slightly overpriced groceries. This is a dreadful thing to happen when all you want to do is pay for some fuel. Dreadful.

I was fourth in the queue. There was only one person serving, a young woman. There was something unusual about her. When the faffer at the front of the queue had finally paid for his Viakal, his sausage roll and his box of eggs, I could have sworn I heard the cashier wish him a wonderful day. Odd. Perhaps I’d misheard, or maybe she did say it and was being sarcastic. I wondered if she could even be an ally in my fight against faff, sharing my contempt for people who hold up simple fuel-buyers like me.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:14 pm

The Guardian view on special Trump treatment for Hungary: roll on the next election | Editorial

As polls suggest that Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian rule is under threat, Brussels can only wait and hope

During the US presidential election campaign of 2016, Viktor Orbán was the only European Union leader to back Donald Trump. Which was hardly surprising. Whether in relation to the the normalisation of great replacement theory, or the bullying and harassment of the media, Mr Orbán more or less wrote the playbook for the Maga movement. The former White House strategist Steve Bannon has eulogised Hungary’s prime minister as the “Trump before Trump”.

Last week, ahead of crucial Hungarian elections in less than six months’ time, the US president returned some political favours. As Mr Orbán seeks a fifth consecutive term presiding over a nation which he boasts of having turned into an illiberal democracy, his Fidesz party trails in the polls. As well as a few signed Maga baseball caps, an Orbán visit to Washington yielded considerably more valuable pre-election gifts.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:25 pm

Lions’ Amon-Ra St Brown apologizes for offense caused over ‘Trump Dance’ during game

• US president attended Sunday’s game at Commanders

• Wide receiver suffered backlash over dance on social media

Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St Brown has apologized to anyone who was offended by his “Trump Dance” during his team’s victory over the Washington Commanders on Sunday.

St Brown performed the dance – which has become popular with athletes over the last year – during the game, which the US president attended.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:50 pm

Susie Wolff: ‘I can be very punchy and pragmatic. If I have to fight for something, I’ll fight’

Head of F1 Academy explains how close she came to a grand prix debut, her quest to produce female drivers, and a frightening knock on her hotel room door by a powerful man in the sport

“There was a deep loneliness to karting, and then definitely in single‑seaters, because no one else was going through the same thing as me,” says Susie Wolff as she remembers her long struggle in motor sport, from racing as a teenager against Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to her determined, but unfulfilled, quest to become a Formula One driver.

“After the whole #MeToo movement, we forget what it was like before. But the way I heard boys talking about girls in the paddock made me think: ‘I never want to be spoken about in that way.’ I realised I’d have to be whiter than white to get through it unscathed.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Off with a bang: Women’s 100m final moved up to LA28 opening day

• Sha’Carri Richardson hails athletics ‘having its moment’

• ‘Innovative schedule also honours tradition,’ says Coe

The women’s 100m final will headline the first day of competition at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics as part of organisers’ plans to “open with a bang”.

The surprise decision, which will lead to all three rounds of the 100m taking place on the same day, was welcomed by the US sprint star Sha’Carri Richardson, who said it showed that “track and field is having its moment”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:32 pm

Barcelona make Harry Kane first-choice target to replace Robert Lewandowski

• Kane has £57m summer release clause in Bayern contract

• Lewandowski’s contract with Barcelona expires in June

Barcelona have made Harry Kane their first-choice target to replace Robert Lewandowski. The Spanish champions regard the 32-year-old England captain as the ideal younger replacement for the 37-year-old Pole, whose contract expires in June, and may well be prepared to trigger the clause in Kane’s contract with Bayern Munich that would allow him to leave for £57m in the summer.

Kane has proven a huge success at Bayern since joining them from ­Tottenham for £100m in August 2023, scoring an astonishing 108 goals in 113 appearances. In September, he became the fastest player this century to reach 100 goals for a club playing in one of Europe’s top five leagues. He also ended his trophy drought in May after playing a key role in Bayern reclaiming the Bundesliga title.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:27 pm

Ex-NFL star Antonio Brown gets bail and GPS monitor in Miami attempted murder case

• Brown freed on $25k bail in Florida case

• Ex-NFL star must wear GPS ankle monitor

• Faces up to 15 years if convicted of shooting

Former NFL star wide receiver Antonio Brown will be released on $25,000 bail and must wear a GPS ankle monitor on an attempted murder charge in Florida, a judge ordered Wednesday.

Brown, 37, has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree attempted murder charge, which carries a potential 15-year prison sentence and a fine up to $10,000 if he is convicted. His lawyer, Mark Eiglarsh, said Brown would return to his home in Broward County, Florida, while the case proceeds.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:47 pm

Parking passes at 2026 World Cup will cost as much as $175 per vehicle

• Fifa already under attack for high ticket prices

• Costs are comparable to NFL parking passes

World Cup ticket holders can expect to spend big to park their cars at next year’s tournament, with prices on Fifa’s website reaching as much as $175 per parking pass.

First reported by the Athletic, the figures are significant in the car-dependent United States – one of the tournament’s three hosts, along with Canada and Mexico – where many venues are not easily accessible by public transport.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:58 pm

Trump pardons trail runner convicted after taking shortcut during record run

• Michelino Sunseri briefly ran on closed trail

• Runner received widespread support on social media

Donald Trump has pardoned a trail runner who briefly took a closed trail on his way to a record time on the tallest peak in the Teton Range of western Wyoming.

The pardon for Michelino Sunseri, unlike recent ones for Trump allies, appeared apolitical.

Published: November 11, 2025, 8:12 pm

‘That cloud will follow him’: Djokovic warning to Sinner over doping ban

• Italian served a three-month suspension in February 2025

• Djokovic adds that timing of punishment was ‘very odd’

Novak Djokovic has warned Jannik Sinner that his three-month doping ban will hang over him like a “cloud” – and questioned the timing of the sanction last year.

Sinner served a three-month ban in February 2025 after the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) accepted his explanation that a banned anabolic steroid, clostebol, entered his system accidentally.

Published: November 11, 2025, 11:12 pm

India confirms deadly Delhi car blast being treated as terror incident

Cabinet says explosion near Red Fort that killed 12 is suspected to have been perpetrated by ‘anti-national forces’

India has confirmed it is treating the explosion that killed 12 people outside Delhi’s Red Fort on Monday as a “terror incident” perpetrated by “anti-national forces”.

The statement by the cabinet, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, confirmed mounting speculation that a terrorist attack was behind the blast that took place during peak time in one of the capital’s busiest areas and outside one of India’s major landmarks.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:46 pm

BBC prepared to apologise to Trump to resolve billion-dollar legal threat

The US president has threatened the BBC with a lawsuit over the editing of a Trump speech in an edition of Panorama

The BBC is prepared to formally apologise to Donald Trump as part of its efforts to resolve his billion-dollar legal threat over its editing of one of his speeches, the Guardian understands.

However, figures at the corporation are also minded to be robust in defending its journalism in the face of allegations from Trump that it made “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about him.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:21 pm

Former AOC staffer running for Pelosi’s seat promises to root out corruption – and Trump’s ballroom

Saikat Chakrabarti wants to turn Trump’s gilded ballroom into a museum on authoritarianism

Rooting out corruption in government is at the center of Saikat Chakrabarti’s campaign for Congress. And if elected next year, the 39-year-old former Silicon Valley engineer – now running to succeed Nancy Pelosi in her long-held San Francisco seat – says he would put it on display for every American to see.

As part of his anti-corruption agenda, Chakrabarti says he would introduce legislation to turn Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom into the “Smithsonian Museum on Corruption and Authoritarianism”. Looking ahead to a post-Trump Washington, Chakrabarti envisions filling the 90,000 sq ft structure, to be built in place of the now-demolished East Wing, with exhibits dedicated to the “modern dangers posed by the current wannabe dictator, the ongoing threat of authoritarianism, assaults on the rule of law and the pervasive corruption of the billionaire class”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:27 pm

The Devil Wears Prada 2: first teaser trailer for hotly anticipated sequel

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway reunite in the first look at the follow-up to hit comedy set to be released in May 2026

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway have reunited in the first teaser trailer for the much-anticipated follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada.

The Oscar-winning actors are reprising their antagonistic roles for The Devil Wears Prada 2 which is set for release next summer.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:50 pm

US strikes against boats in Caribbean ‘disregard international law’, French minister says

G7 foreign ministers questioned Marco Rubio about the attacks on what the Trump administration claims are drug smugglers

• Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

• Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is facing questions from his fellow G7 foreign ministers about the legality of the US strikes in the Caribbean on ships it says it suspects of carrying drugs.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, criticised the military operations, saying they could contribute to instability in the region, but his suggestion that the attacks were unlawful was also a rare criticism of the Trump administration.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:53 pm

Kim Kardashian’s Skims valued at $5bn after raising new funding

Skims plans to use new capital to broaden its intimates lines, and expand further into apparel and activewear

Skims, founded by reality TV star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian along with CEO Jens Grede, said on Wednesday it had raised $225m in new capital, valuing the shapewear label at $5bn.

Kardashian’s ventures, including her cosmetics brand SKKN, have attracted young shoppers and benefited from her vast social media following. Similarly, other celebrity-backed brands have also drawn venture capital investment, as firms bet on the marketing power and built-in audiences of high-profile founders to drive consumer demand.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:54 pm

Florida air force base orders residents to take down Christmas decor

Families say the housing contractor’s strict timing rules dampen holiday spirit on the base

Military families living on an air force base in Florida have been ordered to dismantle their Christmas decorations under a strictly enforced regulation that tells them when and where they are allowed to celebrate.

Residents of Tyndall air force base received a tersely-worded memo from their landlords, private housing contractor Balfour Beatty Communities, informing them that a de facto patrol of the installation had uncovered infractions of their lease agreements in the form of early holiday inflatables, lights and other festive adornments.

Published: November 12, 2025, 1:48 pm

Epstein-Barr virus appears to be trigger of lupus disease, say scientists

Connection of near-ubiquitous EBV to autoimmune disease affecting about 1 in 1,000 people may spur hunt for vaccine

A common childhood virus appears to be the trigger for the autoimmune disease lupus, according to groundbreaking research.

The study suggests that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which for most people is harmless, can cause immune cells to “go rogue” and mistakenly attack the body’s own tissues. The team behind the work said that uncovering the cause of lupus could revolutionise treatments.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 pm

Italian ‘mystic’ faces fraud trial over claim Virgin Mary statue wept blood

Gisella Cardia allegedly made €365,000 in donations from pilgrims to shrine in lakeside town near Rome

A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:58 pm

Western US states fail to agree on plan to manage Colorado River before federal deadline

Stakeholders have spent months ironing out disagreements over how to distribute water from the sprawling basin

State negotiators embroiled in an impasse over how to manage the imperiled Colorado River were unable to agree on a plan before a federally set deadline on Tuesday, thrusting deliberations deeper into uncertain territory.

Stakeholders have spent months working to iron out contentious disagreements over how to distribute water from this sprawling basin – which supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (8.9m hectares) of farmland, dozens of tribes and parts of Mexico – as the resources grow increasingly scarce.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:31 pm

‘There’s fire all around us, this is it’ – This is climate breakdown

Working with jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal was a huge source of joy. But the wildfires are getting worse. This is Abbie’s story

Location Pantanal, Brazil

Disaster Wildfires, a number of years

Abbie Martin splits her time between captaining a boat in the Virgin Islands and doing research in Brazil’s Pantanal, a region that includes the world’s largest tropical wetland and where she founded the Jaguar Identification Project. Fires in the Pantanal have reached new extremes, killing at least 17 million vertebrate animals and burning 27% of the vegetation cover in 2020. Climate breakdown made the Pantanal drier between 2001-21, increasing the occurrence of above-average fires in the region.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Supply boom in cheaper renewables will seal end of fossil fuel era, says IEA

Watchdog’s flagship report says rise in low-carbon electricity will make transition ‘inevitable’, despite Trump’s calls to carry on drilling

Renewables will grow faster than any major energy source in the next decade, according to the world’s energy watchdog, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable”, despite a green backlash in the US and parts of Europe.

The world is expected to build more renewable energy projects in the next five years than has been rolled out over the last 40, according to the flagship annual report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

The man on a mission to save Mauritania’s ‘city of libraries’ from encroaching desert sands

Desert settlement of Chinguetti faces rising sands, dwindling tourism and insecurity due to conflict in neighbouring Mali

On a recent afternoon, 67-year-old Saif Islam made his way into the courtyard of a library in Chinguetti, a tiny desert settlement nestled in the Sahara in Mauritania.

Decked in a flowing boubou gown striped in two shades of blue, his steps unsteady but his presence still commanding, he sat on a handwoven mat stroking his grey beard, with his black croc sandals neatly placed to the side.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg announces run for US House seat

Schlossberg has drummed up a large following on social media with frequent posts weighing in on national issues

John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg has said he will run for the US House next year, announcing Tuesday that he was seeking a key New York seat set to be vacated by longtime Democrat Jerry Nadler.

“This district should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington,” Schlossberg said in a campaign video posted on social media late Tuesday.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:03 am

Actor Allison Mack reveals role in Nxivm sex cult in new podcast: ‘I was abusive’

Smallville actor, released from prison two years ago, tells how she helped coerce women for cult leader Keith Raniere

The Smallville actor Allison Mack says she was once riveted by the influence she wielded through her role in the Nxivm sex cult – though it eventually sent her to federal prison, and she now realizes it was “abusive”.

“I was excited by the power that I felt having these young, beautiful women look to me and listen to me,” Mack, 43, maintains in a new podcast series titled Allison After Nxivm, which contains her first public remarks since her release from prison about two years ago. “And – yes – the sexuality of it was exciting.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Woman eludes police after high-speed chase from California into Mexico

Alyssa Wilson, a resident at a sober living home, stole a minivan and was chased for hours until crossing the border

A woman who had been staying at a women’s sobriety home in California stole a minivan and was chased by police for hours until she crossed over to Mexico on Monday.

A second woman, Nicolle Walters, 45, reported to authorities that her 2004 gray Toyota Sienna was missing, along with her car key, according to a statement by the Ventura county sheriff’s office. Walters, owner and operator of two women’s sober living homes, identified the suspect as Alyssa Wilson, one of the residents at Diana’s House Sober Living in Thousand Oaks, which is about an hour’s drive north-west of Los Angeles.

Published: November 11, 2025, 11:05 pm

One-third of museums lost government funding since Trump took office, survey says

Report including responses from more than 500 museum directors finds median loss of $30,000 in grants or contracts

One-third of US museums have lost government grants or contracts since Donald Trump took office, according to a new survey.

The findings, released by the American Alliance of Museums on Tuesday and based on responses from more than 500 museum directors across the US, shed new light on the challenges cultural institutions are facing under the Trump administration.

Published: November 11, 2025, 11:58 pm

French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal pardoned and to be released from prison

Eighty-one year-old, who has prostate cancer, can now be transferred from Algeria to Germany for medical treatment

The French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has been pardoned and is to be released from prison, the Algerian presidential office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The move, which will mean Sansal can be transferred to Germany for medical treatment, comes after the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged Algeria to free Sansal.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:23 pm

Zelenskyy fires ministers accused of involvement in bribery scheme as public outrage grows

Ukraine president also calls for sanctions against friend and former business partner, saying ‘there must be maximum integrity’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has moved to contain growing public outrage in Ukraine over a corruption scandal in the energy sector by firing two ministers who are accused of involvement in a large-scale bribery scheme.

Ukraine’s president said the justice minister Herman Halushchenko and energy minister Svitlana Grynchuk could no longer remain in their jobs. He also called for personal sanctions against his friend and former business partner Timur Mindich, the scheme’s alleged organiser.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:59 pm

Pakistani parliament votes to give army chief new powers and legal immunity

Critics say constitutional amendment, which will also limit supreme court’s independence, is ‘funeral for democracy’

Pakistan’s parliament has passed a controversial amendment to its constitution that will expand the powers of the army chief and grant him lifelong legal immunity while limiting the independence of the supreme court, in a move critics described as a “funeral for democracy”.

Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s powerful army chief who is widely seen as a de facto ruler of the country, was the main benefactor from the 27th constitutional amendment, which was passed by the parliamentary lower house on Wednesday.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:05 pm

Canada pushes to join Eurovision: ‘This is about protecting our identity’

Country explores taking part in the glitzy song contest as it distances from the US and seeks to deepen ties with Europe

When Canada released its federal budget this month, much of it was standard fare, from the plans to downsize the public service to the boost in defence spending.

But one line tucked in the nearly 500-page document has captured imaginations on both sides of the Atlantic: a mention that the government is working with Canada’s national broadcaster to explore participation in the Eurovision song contest.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:07 pm

A Merry Little Ex-Mas review – Netflix’s season of cheapo festive fare begins with a shrug

Alicia Silverstone is latest 90s star to lead a film for the streamer but her charm can’t save another bland addition to their pile of festive fare

• ‘Hypnotically terrible’: readers on 15 so-bad-they’re-brilliant Christmas movies

There’s not quite enough charm to go around in Netflix’s festive season opener A Merry Little Ex-Mas, a film that might have benefited from a release date a little closer to the big day. Maybe by then, we might have been more enveloped in the all-consuming excitement of Christmas to overlook its failings, but here in the post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving netherworld, there is no amount of fake snow or eggnog that can convince us to get on board.

It’s yet another one of the streamer’s mechanically assembled seasonal box-tickers – lead best known from the 90s/2000s, a budget of what looks like $13, some unfunny pratfalls, some city v small town tension, a visibly Canadian shoot, regressive gender roles – and will probably be lapped up by the same crowd who come back every year knowing exactly what to expect. It’s thankfully not as hideous as these can be (2023’s Heather Graham/Brandy sled-wreck Best. Christmas. Ever! remains as bad as things on both Netflix and in life itself can get) but it’s also not quite as passably fine as it should be (last year’s Christina Milian and Lindsay Lohan vehicles just about doing the job on that front).

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:01 am

Sex, lies and pistachio shells: the disturbing dream worlds of artist Joseph Yaeger

The American takes strange film stills and turns them into monumental watercolours, full of Catholic guilt and paranoia – and it’s made him the most talked-about painter of the moment

‘All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions,” says Joseph Yaeger. “It’s what Polygrapher is about.” This is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, his first since joining the prestigious London gallery Modern Art in 2024, for whom it marks the opening of new premises in St James’s.

Honesty is important to Yaeger, whose upbringing in the US in Helena, a town that he says ambitiously calls itself the capital of Montana, was as decent as it was unremarkable. “We’d sit down for dinner together every night, we’d go to church every Sunday, we’re polite almost to a fault, and traditional in almost all senses of the word.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:00 am

Holy see: three of Pope Leo’s favourite films are divine. The fourth is hard to forgive

Praise be for The Sound of Music, Ordinary People and It’s a Wonderful Life! But the sinfully twee and queasy Life is Beautiful must be renounced

Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful.

These are a few of his fav-our-ite films … Pope Leo’s that is. This white-bread movie playlist has been released in advance of His Holiness’s “meeting with the world of cinema” on Saturday, part of a longstanding Vatican policy of engaging with creatives.

The pope has, according to a Vatican statement “expressed his desire to deepen the dialogue with the world of cinema, and in particular with actors and directors, exploring the possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church and the promotion of human values.” The pope will chat with movie notables including Cate Blanchett, Spike Lee, George Miller, Gus Van Sant and Giuseppe Tornatore.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 am

Adele to make acting debut in star-studded Tom Ford movie

The singer will star alongside Adolescence breakout Owen Cooper, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Colin Firth, Thandiwe Newton and Nicholas Hoult in an Anne Rice adaptation

Adele is set to make her acting debut in the new film from Tom Ford.

According to Deadline, the fashion designer and film-maker’s third feature will be an adaptation of Anne Rice’s 1982 novel Cry to Heaven, a drama set in 18th century Italy.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:51 pm

Being Eddie review – reverential Netflix doc paints limited portrait of Eddie Murphy

There’s great access in this look at the comedian and actor’s life, from time with the subject himself to his many peers, but there’s depth missing

Being Eddie, a new Netflix documentary on Eddie Murphy, isn’t his best movie. It isn’t his worst. It’s something to justify signing the 64-year-old to a $70m production deal in hopes that he might finally be moved to return to his standup comedy roots and deliver the long-anticipated follow-up to his seminal 1987 special Raw. With access to the subject and his archival material bought and paid for, Being Eddie is free to focus on other aspects of Murphy’s life, opening with indulgent shots of his gothic mansion and its retractable roof. While the camera gawks at the spoils of Murphy’s 40-plus year career, he remains at pains to tell viewers that his day-to-day routine isn’t much different from theirs: he goes to work, hangs out with his family and falls asleep to MTV’s Ridiculousness. He thinks it’s the funniest show on TV, in fact, and would much rather binge that blooper series (which he likens to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s avant-garde work) than reruns of his greatest hits.

That would be a bold confession to share even if it wasn’t coming from arguably the funniest person who has ever lived, and Being Eddie wastes no time in making Murphy’s claim to that title ironclad. For confirmation, director Angus Wall starts out by consulting with other recipients of major Netflix deals: Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld. It’s just hard to digest all this reverence for Murphy from comedians who have grown increasingly out touch and comfortable with punching down at marginalized groups.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:03 am

Trapped review – rough and ready abuse story that piles bleakness upon bleakness

This occasionally nuanced tale of a woman’s tough existence has some raw power, but is stymied by crude production and ropey performances

Raye, played by Gina Jones is, as the title of the film suggests, trapped. She is trapped in a bleak job, in a bleak relationship and in a bleak house. The bleakest element of this trifecta of bleakness is the relationship: she is involved with the utterly unlovely Frank (Shane McCormick) who, as one character observes, is the sort of guy who throws his entire life away then lashes out in every direction, blaming everyone but himself for how things have turned out. It’s hard to fathom why she stays with someone so awful – except, well, that’s the way the world works sometimes. Their dynamic is an abusive one, and in modern therapeutic parlance, they share the trauma bond of unstable, abusive childhoods. It’s not that Raye doesn’t know Frank’s no good; it’s that she doesn’t believe she deserves better, or that better exists.

While Trapped’s poster art promises some sort of Captivity-style torture porn slasher horror, it may be interesting to know that the film was originally called Beneath the Silence, a title that gestures towards more serious dramatic aspirations. In fact, Trapped’s understanding of abuse is considerably more sophisticated than the rest of what it offers. It is a low-budget affair that, at times, has a rough-and-ready raw power that transcends its limited production values, but too often the standard of performance and crudeness of the craft makes it hard to take seriously. The script is littered with exposition – for example, a half-brother reminds his sibling that they have “different mums”, a fact that would perhaps be very well known to the characters; it’s clearly there for the benefit of the audience.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:00 am

Charli xcx: House ft John Cale review – haunt me, then! An elegant, brutal taste of the Wuthering Heights OST

(Atlantic)
Featuring a lugubrious monologue from the Velvet Underground legend, its jagged strings are more reminiscent of that band than anything on Brat

When Charli xcx says her first new material in more than a year is “something entirely new, entirely opposite” to the sound she pursued on the era-defining Brat, she isn’t joking. Taken from the soundtrack to director Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the darkly gothic House bears almost no relation in sound or mood to the contents of Brat: it was, she says, inspired by John Cale’s description of the sound of his old mob the Velvet Underground as “elegant and brutal”.

Always skilled and generous at collaboration, here Charli xcx cedes two-thirds of the track’s vocal to Cale. He delivers a monologue – oblique and initially conversational, it turns increasingly ominous – in a voice that’s rich, sonorous and, to a certain kind of music fan at least, immediate recognisable. Weathered by time at age 83, it’s still audibly the same voice that recounted Lou Reed’s grisly short story The Gift on White Light/White Heat 57 years ago.

Published: November 11, 2025, 11:22 am

Loren Ipsum by Andrew Gallix review – chronically funny satire of the literary scene

Full of word games, in-jokes and grisly murders, this debut pours gleeful scorn on the pretensions of contemporary literary life

Freud would have had a lot to say about a novel in which the central premise is writers being murdered. A manifestation of a repressed desire to eliminate rival literary talent? A clear case of the death drive? Either way, there’s some twisted business going on in Andrew Gallix’s chronically funny debut novel, Loren Ipsum.

The morbid if intriguing premise quickly becomes secondary to an insouciant satire on the vanity fair of present-day literary culture. Not since Paul Ewen’s How to Be a Public Author has so much gleeful scorn for pretentious authors, critics and scenesters been poured on to the page. Taking its title from the placeholder text used while preparing a book for print, the novel features an eponymous protagonist, a journalist resident in Paris, who is researching a monograph on the reclusive English author Adam Wandle. Loren Ipsum somehow manages to be both the book’s moral centre and a shapeshifting cipher for everything that’s wrong with contemporary literary life. With “a heart of frosted glass”, she is “all blurred features and radio static”. Her own first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey Matter, was published by Galley Beggar in 2019. Her favourite bookshop is Shakespeare and Company (“she had all their totes”), and her best party frock is “part Mondrian, part Battenberg”. The knowing list of Loren’s favourite things is peak Bougie London Literary Woman and wickedly spot-on. It’s that kind of book. By the end, you can’t see the modernism for all the posts fencing it in.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:00 am

We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins review – a legend with a temper

The Oscar-winning actor’s autobiography combines vulnerability with bloody-mindedness and belligerence

It’s the greatest entrance in movie history – and he doesn’t move a muscle.

FBI rookie Clarice Starling must walk along the row of cells until she reaches Dr Lecter’s reinforced glass tank, where the man himself is simply standing, his face a living skull of satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit – immobile, that is, until such time as he launches himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A billion true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are very boring, with nothing like Anthony Hopkins’s screen presence.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 am

‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize-winner

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?

When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.

Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife and young son Jonathan.

Published: November 11, 2025, 5:49 pm

One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson review – freewheeling reflections on life, art and AI

One Thousand and One Nights is the framing device for the author’s pithy and thought provoking takes on everything from eugenics to trouser suits

In the framing device that opens the Middle Eastern folk tales collected in One Thousand and One Nights, King Shahryar avenges his wife’s infidelity by ordering her execution and marrying a new virgin every night, having each of them beheaded by sunrise so they won’t have time to cheat. When he runs out of victims, the young Persian queen Shahrazad volunteers but stalls her own murder by telling the king one captivating tale after another – and those become the stories we’re reading.

As Jeanette Winterson puts it in her new book – a dizzying whirligig of memoir, history, philosophy, politics and self-help, loosely tied to commentary on the Nights – Shahrazad’s feat of creativity “refuses the present emergency – the contrived drama of a powerful man”. The echo of life in the Trump era is deliberate; for Winterson, the means by which Shahrazad changes her predicament holds out hope for a progressive politics currently losing ground to “radical-rightwing thuggery”. “A better story starts with a better story,” she writes. “Reason will not win the day. Without imagination nothing changes.”

Published: November 11, 2025, 9:00 am

What does my love for impossibly difficult video games say about me?

From Demon Souls to Baby Steps, challenging games keep a certain type of player coming back for more. I wonder why we are such suckers for punishment

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Most people who really love video games have the capacity to be obsessive. Losing weeks of your life to Civilization, World of Warcraft or Football Manager is something so many of us have experienced. Sometimes, it’s the numbers-go-up dopamine hit that hooks people: playing something such as Diablo or Destiny and gradually improving your character while picking up shiny loot at perfectly timed intervals can send some people into an obsessional trance. Notoriously compulsive games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, meanwhile, suck up hours with peaceful, comforting repetition of rewarding tasks.

What triggers obsession in me, though, is a challenge. If a game tells me I can’t do something, I become determined to do it, sometimes to my own detriment. Grinding repetition bores me, but challenges hijack my brain.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:00 pm

‘We were effectively props’: young stars of game development feel let down by the ‘gaming Oscars’

Announced in 2020 by the Game Awards as an inclusive programme for the industry’s next generation, the Future Class initiative has now been discontinued. Inductees describe clashes with organisers and a lack of support from the beginning

Video games have long struggled with diversification and inclusivity, so it was no surprise when the Game Awards host and producer Geoff Keighley announced the Future Class programme in 2020. Its purpose was to highlight a cohort of individuals working in video games as the “bright, bold and inclusive future” of the industry.

Considering the widespread reach of the annual Keighley-led show, which saw an estimated 154m livestreams last year, Future Class felt like a genuine effort. Inductees were invited to attend the illustrious December ceremony, billed as “gaming’s Oscars”, featured on the official Game Awards website, and promised networking opportunities and career advancement advice. However, the programme reportedly struggled from the start. Over the last couple of years, support waned. Now, it appears the Game Awards Future Class has been wholly abandoned.

Published: November 11, 2025, 12:30 pm

Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley died after fall, autopsy finds

Medical examiner says Kiss founding member’s death was accidental, caused by blunt force injuries from a fall

Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist and founding member of the glam rock band Kiss, died from blunt force injuries to the head that he suffered in a fall earlier this year, an autopsy has determined.

Frehley died peacefully on 16 October surrounded by family in Morristown, New Jersey, a few weeks after the fall occurred, according to his agent.

Published: November 11, 2025, 9:19 pm

Sally Kirkland, Oscar-nominated actor of film and television, dies at 84

The actor has over 250 screen credits, including Anna, The Way We Were and JFK, and collaborated with Andy Warhol

Sally Kirkland, the Oscar-nominated actor and one-time member of Andy Warhol’s the Factory, has died at 84.

The star of films including Anna, JFK and Bruce Almighty had entered hospice care two days before her death after a period of ill health. Last year, a GoFundMe page had been set up to help her in the wake of “life-threatening infections” and a number of falls. She had also been diagnosed with dementia.

Published: November 11, 2025, 3:12 pm

‘Harlem has always been evolving’: inside the Studio Museum’s $160m new home

The iconic museum, which was founded in 1968, has been rehoused in 82,000-sq-ft building providing a new destination for Black art in New York City

Call it the second Harlem renaissance. On Manhattan’s 125th Street, where a statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr strides onwards and upwards, and a sign marks the spot where a freed Nelson Mandela dropped by, there is bustle and buzz.

The celebrated Apollo Theater is in the midst of a major renovation. The National Black Theatre is preparing to move into a $80m arts complex spanning a city block. In September the National Urban League opened a $250m building containing its headquarters, affordable housing and retail space with New York’s first civil rights museum to come.

Published: November 11, 2025, 10:03 am

‘I can see a world where Spotify doesn’t exist’: will a new generation of music streaming companies succeed?

Nimble, open-minded outfits such as Nina Protocol, Cantilever and Subvert are looking to bring more money to artists, and a richer experience for listeners

The noise around Spotify this year has been louder than ever, from Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine – a biting indictment of the company and its alleged practices, described as “error-riddled theories” by Spotify itself – to a slew of indie artists leaving the platform due to political and ethical reasons. There was even a recent music forum in California called Death to Spotify.

So the timing is fortuitous for a growing number of independent streaming and music community platforms, such as Nina Protocol, Coda, Subvert, Lissen, Vocana, and just last week a new one launched in the UK: Cantilever. “More people are definitely looking for alternatives,” says Nina Protocol’s chief executive Mike Pollard. “We strongly believe the future of music is independent.”

Published: November 11, 2025, 11:20 am

I thought there was something wrong with my body – until I shared a shower with 50 strangers

Naked in a forest, among people of every age, race, gender and physique, I finally shook off the self-doubt that had haunted me since my teens

When I was 15, I grew nine inches in nine months. My bones ached at night. I grew out of my clothes at a rapid clip, exposing skinny ankles beneath the bottom of my blue jeans. I went from being average height to towering over everyone in my class.

I had been uncomfortable in my own skin even before that. I grew up in the US in the late 70s, and my body type was not in fashion. I was curvy in places that were not celebrated, with thighs and a butt that announced themselves in ways I found uncomfortable. I was a teen when I first started dieting, and women’s critiques of their bodies, and the bodies of others, quickly became a constant refrain of my youth.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:55 am

My petty gripe: autoplay trailers – give me more than 10 seconds before trying to make me watch The Diplomat

Even at the end of Schindler’s List, after a message honouring the memory of 6 million Jews murdered, I have four seconds before Binge is telling me to watch NCIS

• Read more petty gripes

Much like Keri Russell and probably all my friends’ dads, Netflix really wants me to watch The Diplomat right now. Like, really wants me to. The problem is, I don’t want to watch The Diplomat. This doesn’t seem to matter to Netflix.

Netflix wants me to watch The Diplomat so badly, I can’t even have 10 seconds for a little cry after finishing Adolescence without being forced to dive for the remote to stop Netflix autoplaying the trailer for The Diplomat. I timed it; Netflix has decided 10 seconds is enough time for you to wallow in your feelings, reflect on society, and credit the hundreds of people who spent years making that show, before you need to be directed to more content, more content, MORE CONTENT.

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Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Peanut allergies have plummeted among US kids since 2017 – what happened?

Blockbuster research has upended assumptions about the allergy. Experts shared what parents should know about introducing food allergens

According to a paper published in the Journal of Pediatrics this month, the number of peanut allergy diagnoses among children has dropped over 40% since 2017.

The reason? Food allergy guidelines have undergone a sea change in the past decade.

Published: November 11, 2025, 5:00 pm

‘I opened up like a giant elevator’: the seven sly, savage stages of a £100,000 romance scam

Last year, romance fraud rose 52% for over-55s in the UK. Victims often feel they’ve made a terrible mistake and are at fault – but really, they’ve been expertly groomed by criminals

In total, over two and a half years, Elizabeth gave £100,000 to “Sam”, the “man” she met online, who she thought she loved and loved her back. She emptied her savings account, pawned her late mother’s jewellery and took out bank loans. She became so overdrawn that she could barely afford food and lived mainly on soup.

She had sent this money, for all sorts of reasons, to a man she’d never met. The first was a $500 Amazon voucher because Sam, a consultant, was out on an oil rig and needed to buy a manual. Later, the rig required a new part; then the tanker transporting the oil ran into problems, too. She gave money to Sam’s daughter who was trapped in an abusive marriage. Finally, when Sam became ill, Elizabeth was contacted by his doctor and began paying Sam’s medical bills. “When this doctor messaged to tell me that Sam was in a coma, I remember thinking he had such a strange, unprofessional turn of phrase,” says Elizabeth. “He said, ‘I’m sorry to spill the beans.’” She breaks into laughter. “A doctor! How could I have been so gullible?”

Published: November 11, 2025, 5:00 am

The perplexing rise of protein shakes: how a ‘meaty sludge’ became a billion-dollar industry

In 1865, the first ever protein-based product consisted of ‘melted-down beef hides and carcasses’. Now, there are countless shakes on the market – including one by a Michelin-starred chef. Why is everyone drinking them?

I always thought my first foray into Michelin-starred culinary territory would involve sitting in a fancy restaurant feasting on some perfectly seared scallops or a magnificent rack of lamb doused in a rich jus. Instead, I’m in a fitness studio – with Doja Cat blaring through the speakers – watching my “Michelin-starred” shake come together in a blender. Inside is a scoop of vanilla protein powder, the flesh of a guanabana (a tropical fruit with a spiky exterior that tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana) and some almond milk. Saffron foam is sprayed into a plastic cup and sprinkled with some blue spirulina before the pale protein mixture is poured on top.

The resulting shake, which was developed by the Michelin-starred chef Miller Prada for Hermosa, a luxury protein powder brand sold in Barry’s, a chain of fitness studios, is like a drinkable lava lamp, with white, blue and yellow swirling softly in the cup. According to Erika Tamayo, the founder of Hermosa, it has only one comparison. “Everyone says that it looks like Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night,” she says. Before I’m allowed to taste it, she spritzes a coffee-scented liquid on the lid and then tells me how to drink it to get the “full Michelin experience”. Place the straw about midway in the cup and suck (it should taste like an ice-cream), before shoving it down full-throttle to get a hit of the “mood-enhancing” saffron.

Published: November 11, 2025, 10:00 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: exosomes are all over TikTok, but are they really the next big thing in anti-ageing skincare?

They’ve been shown to influence regeneration and healing, but you may want to read this before splashing out

I attended a big skincare industry event in New York last autumn, at which people seemed to be discussing exosomes as though all other anti-ageing skincare products and methodology would soon be rendered redundant. I’ve read countless roundups of new exosome products since then (£430 for a serum!), and felt the inescapable buzz of a perceived major breakthrough in skincare, and so you know what I’m about to do, again. I’m going to suggest everyone calms the hell down and finds something more worthwhile to spend their money on.

Exosomes, in very basic terms, are tiny, naturally occurring parcels of material used as a communication device between skin cells. They can positively influence skin cell behaviour, such as regeneration and healing. Studies into whether extracted exosomes work in treatments for skin inflammation, hair growth and scarring are so far mostly small, pre-clinical and it must be said, very promising, albeit far from conclusive. We don’t yet know how best to extract exosomes, how stable they are, how they should be used to best effect, whether they will work topically, or what impact they may have on things like skin cancers.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: party season is coming but all that glitters is not gold

Every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ

I am all in favour of getting the festive season started as early as possible. I get an actual physical thrill out of booking my Christmas food delivery slot in September, and the morning after Halloween I fire the starting gun on mince pie season. I know it makes me sound deranged and/or six years old, but I just absolutely love everything about Christmas. I’m here for all of it and I want it now.

But fashion? That’s my one holdout. At this time of year every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘Fashion exposes people’s desires and anxieties’: how much do we really reveal when we get dressed?

A new exhibition – with contributions from Chanel, McQueen and Galliano – places 100 looks under the psychoanalytic lens, and suggests that what we wear is the result of a battle in the psyche

When you picked out an outfit this morning, did it feel like free will? Was it a series of deliberate choices that made it desirable to venture out into the world wearing said garment? Or was your decision a response to deeper subconscious forces? What if the choices we make about clothes are not our own conscious choices to make?

That’s the premise of a new exhibition in New York. Dress, Dreams and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, that makes the case that clothes are the “deep surface”, the “changeable, renewable second skin”, that outside the merely practical act as a facade for far more than we know.

Published: November 11, 2025, 1:25 pm

Houseplant hacks: do humidifiers really help houseplants?

Electric humidifiers aren’t essential for hardy species, but they deliver a steady mist and consistent results – at a price

The problem
Winter is brutal for tropical houseplants. Central heating turns living rooms into deserts, leaving once lush calatheas with brown, crispy edges. Misting can increase humidity, but the effects are short-lived.

The hack
An electric humidifier delivers a steady mist to boost humidity around your plants. You simply fill the tank with water and let it run for a few hours a day, so humidity levels feel more like the tropics than Trafford.

Published: November 11, 2025, 10:00 am

From the Andes to the Amazon: a six-week riverboat adventure to Belém, Brazil’s gateway to the river

Visiting the city hosting the Cop30 conference brings with it questions about farming, tourism and sustainability

In an open-air market in the Brazilian city of Belém, I had a problem. It was breakfast time and I wanted a drink, but the long menu of fruit juices was baffling. Apart from pineapple (abacaxi) and mango (manga), I’d never heard of any of the drinks. What are bacuri, buriti and muruci? And what about mangaba, tucumã and uxi? Even my phone was confused. Uxi, it informed me, is a Zulu word meaning “you are”.

But then I started to recognise names that I’d heard on my six-week voyage from the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon. There was cupuaçu. I’d picked one of those cacao-like pods in a Colombian village about 1,900 miles (3,000km) back upriver. And even further away, in Peru, there was açaí: a purple berry growing high up on a wild palm. The Amazon, it seems, is vast and varied, but also remarkably similar along its astonishing length.

Published: November 11, 2025, 7:00 am

Same sheet, different dish: how to use up excess lasagne sheets

Smash them up and put them in soup or serve with pasta sauce, says our overstocked panel of pasta pundits

• Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

I’ve accidentally bought too many boxes of dried lasagne sheets. How can I use them up?
Jemma, by email
This is sounding all too familiar to Jordon Ezra King, the man behind the A Curious Cook newsletter. “It’s funny Jemma asks this,” he says, “because I was in this exact same situation earlier this year after over-catering for a client dinner.” The first thing to say is there’s no immediate rush, he adds: “It sounds obvious, but you can keep the boxes for a long time.” Fortunately for Jemma and her shopping mishap, however, lasagne sheets are also flexible, and their shape doesn’t have to dictate what you do with them.

With this in mind, soupy things are good to get on the weekly dinner rotation, be that pasta e ceci or minestrone, the latter being the go-to of choice for Mattie Taiano, chef and co-owner with Ravneet Gill of Gina’s in Chingford, Essex: “Just bash up the lasagne sheets with a rolling pin and chuck in all the bits.” Theo Randall, chef-patron of Cucina Italiana at the InterContinental London Park Lane, meanwhile, would break the pasta lengthways and cook it in boiling salted water: “Add that to a ragu-like sauce with some of the pasta cooking water and a generous knob of butter. Just make sure you cook the pasta and sauce together for at least three minutes, so they combine in texture and flavour.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: November 11, 2025, 1:00 pm

Love Immortal: the man devoted to defying death through cryonics – documentary

Alan, 87, has devoted his life to trying to defy death, and has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death to be reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.

Published: November 11, 2025, 10:33 am

‘I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did’: the intersex campaigners fighting to limit surgery on children

What should be done about the small proportion of babies born with genitals that are neither typically male nor typically female? Many of those affected believe parents and doctors are often too quick to schedule operations

Small Luk was initially “so happy” to be offered genital reconstruction surgery, aged eight. Doctors had told her she was a boy, but that she had an illness, which was why she couldn’t urinate standing up. “They told me this is a problem,” the 60-year-old from Hong Kong says. “And that in the future, you cannot marry, you cannot have a baby, so you need to have surgeries.”

Having been bullied at school for her ambiguous gender presentation, she found the idea that she could be “modified back to normal” a compelling one. But it wasn’t as simple as the doctors made out: Luk had an undeveloped uterus and vagina in her body as well as underdeveloped male genitals.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

US firefighter detained on the job speaks out after deportation: ‘I feel betrayed’

Exclusive: Border patrol arrested José Bertin Cruz-Estrada while he was battling a wildfire in Washington. He is now in Mexico, separated from his family in Oregon

José Bertín Cruz-Estrada was responding to a wildfire in Washington state on 27 August when four unmarked vehicles drove up to his crew’s remote location in a national forest.

Cruz-Estrada, part of a team of 20 Oregon-based firefighters, had spent a week hiking through dense terrain, battling smoke and clearing fallen trees and other debris to prevent the Bear Gulch fire, a 9,000-acre blaze, from growing. That morning, they were waiting for a taskforce leader to provide instructions, but Cruz-Estrada quickly realized the men arriving in trucks were not emergency responders.

Published: November 11, 2025, 1:00 pm

I’m an American relying on food stamps. This country has turned us into lab rats

I’m one of 41 million people who need Snap to make ends meet. For weeks, the administration has turned our survival into a game: will they eat, or won’t they?

It is 10 November, and my refrigerator is almost empty.

I am, in fact, hungry as I write this. It is not that I do not have food at all; it is that I do not have the inclination to eat a can of tuna for breakfast, nor do I have the time to cook the winter squash my neighbor gave me.

Published: November 11, 2025, 2:39 pm

Tell us: have you moved to another country for your partner?

We’d like to hear about how the move affected your relationship

After Annalisa Barbieri’s recent advice column “I moved abroad to live with my wife, but I’ve come to hate her country”, we are looking to hear from people who relocated to another country for their partner but have found the move difficult, or would even prefer to be elsewhere.

How has the move affected your relationship? What have you struggled with?

Published: November 11, 2025, 3:58 pm

Share your pub quiz cheating confessions

We would like to hear your guilty secrets and suspicions around cheating in pub quizzes

A pub owner and landlord has outed a team of pub quiz cheats in a social media post but without naming them, which has since led to massive online speculation.

With this in mind, we would like to hear your guilty secrets and suspicions around cheating in pub quizzes. Have you ever cheated? Or have you suspected another team of doing so? You can share your confessions, anonymously if you wish, below.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:47 am

Rubble of Syria’s civil war and a rickshaw driver: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:07 pm