Scrutiny grows over Trump competence – but can an unfit president be removed?

Impeachment and 25th amendment offer routes for removal – but experts say system is set up to protect the president

Donald Trump looked out across the White House ballroom at his audience of wealthy donors and business figures – people who had given millions of dollars to his extravagant plan to build a vast ballroom attached to the building’s East Wing.

The president, 79, told the crowd he had enjoyed a “really historic trip” to the Middle East, and indulged in some of his familiar patter: saying his tariffs were successful, and claiming that under Joe Biden, countries were “literally emptying out insane asylums into our country”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:00 pm

The hidden victims of the opioid crisis: the ones who lived

After overdoses left them with brain injuries and lasting complications, Americans are struggling to get proper care. Experts call it another epidemic

• A day in the life of caring for an overdose survivor

John-Bryan “JB” Jarrett was supposed to be fishing on the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, September 2020. Over dinner the night before, he told his mom, Jessica, he wanted to be on the water by 7am.

Jessica and JB were unusually close. When her work brought her to Austin, she stayed in his spare room; when the pandemic hit, she moved in for good. Despite a full life – a girlfriend, a job, a side hustle running an online thrift store – he welcomed her. They planted vegetables, packed meals for homeless people, watched true crime, even shared their phone locations.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:00 am

Money, muscles and anxiety: why the manosphere clicked with young men – a visual deep dive

The manosphere is known for misogyny, but that’s not the only thing that influencers in this space offer. Young men explain the allure and the problems of the manosphere in their own words

Published: October 21, 2025, 7:09 am

Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein and the scandal that won’t go away – podcast

Zoe Williams describes the scandals that have engulfed Andrew, leading to him giving up his titles

On Friday evening, Buckingham Palace released a statement from Prince Andrew. ‘I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first,’ it read. ‘I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me.’

It seemed that Prince Andrew was voluntarily giving up his titles such as the Duke of York, the Knight of the Garter, or calling himself the Earl of Inverness – but perhaps his hand had been forced by the palace, or by his older brother King Charles.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:00 am

Instagram keeps flubbing on teen safety. Will its new ‘PG-13’ guidelines make a difference? | Tayo Bero

The content guardrails introduced this week feel like hollow posturing after the failure of past promises

For months, Instagram has been struggling to convince parents, advocates and officials that it’s a safe place for kids, even though there’s a mountain of evidence to show quite the opposite. Now, the company is introducing yet another set of guardrails that will supposedly keep teens on the platform safe. But going by their track record, parents shouldn’t be smiling yet.

Starting this week, all users aged under 18 will automatically be placed into the 13+ setting, which restricts their feed to content that meets the standards of the US PG-13 movie rating.

Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist

Published: October 21, 2025, 10:00 am

‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose

When a fishing boat left port in Alaska in December 2019 with an experienced crew, an icy storm was brewing. What happened to them shows why deep sea fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the world

The Scandies Rose fishing boat set out to sea from Kodiak, Alaska on 30 December 2019 with a crew of seven, into weather as bad as anything December could throw. “It was enough of a shitty forecast,” said one of the crew in later testimony, “I didn’t think we were going to leave that night.” At 8.35pm, fierce, frigid winds were blowing. Some boats stayed in harbour but the Scandies Rose still set out. “We knew the weather was going to be bad,” said deckhand Dean Gribble, “but the boat’s a battleship, we go through the weather.”

The boat was carrying 7,000kg of bait and was headed north towards the Bering Sea. “She was trim, said Dean, and a good boat. Gary Cobban was a good captain.” One of the last jobs before departure was to stack the crab pots properly. There were 198 on board. That is a heavy load but not unusual. Each pot measured more than 2 metres by 2 metres. “Big, heavy fucking pots,” Gribble said.

Published: October 21, 2025, 4:00 am

CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say

Exclusive: sources say the agency is providing real-time intelligence collected by satellites and signal intercepts

• Ecuador releases survivor of US strike on alleged drug-trafficking submarine

The Central Intelligence Agency is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against small, fast-going boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations. Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret.

The agency’s central role in the boat strikes has not previously been disclosed. Donald Trump confirmed last Wednesday that he had authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela, but not what the agency would be doing.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:06 am

Trump’s nomination of Paul Ingrassia loses Republican support following racist text messages

Ingrassia, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, allegedly described himself as having ‘a Nazi streak’

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s nomination of a conservative attorney and commentator to oversee federal whistleblower protections appeared to be collapsing after his racist text messages surfaced this week and the Republican Senate leader suggested the White House should withdraw the pick.

Paul Ingrassia, currently White House liaison at the Department of Homeland Security, previously advocated for making 6 January a national holiday and publicly questioned whether the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack was a “psyop”. But the fans were flamed again on Monday after Politico reported text messages in which Ingrassia allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:04 pm

JD Vance says Gaza ceasefire plan ‘durable’ and doubles down on Trump threat to ‘obliterate’ Hamas if group fails to comply – live

During Israel visit US VP also accuses media of ‘desire to root for failure’ amid fears over ceasefire violations; Trump posted threat to Hamas on Truth Social

Gaza’s Government Media Office has posted to Telegram to say only 986 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire began just over a week ago, out of the 6,600 trucks that it says were supposed to have arrived by Monday evening.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said:

The humanitarian convoys included (14) trucks loaded with cooking gas and (28) diesel trucks designated to operate bakeries, generators, hospitals and various vital sectors, in light of the severe shortage of these vital materials that the population directly depends on for daily life, after long months of siege and systematic destruction caused by the genocide committed by the “Israeli” occupation against our people in the Gaza Strip.

We note that the average number of trucks entering the Gaza Strip daily since the ceasefire began does not exceed (89) trucks out of (600) trucks that are supposed to enter daily, which reflects the continued policy of strangulation, starvation and humanitarian blackmail practiced by the occupation against more than (2.4) million citizens in Gaza.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:35 pm

January 6 US Capitol rioter arrested for alleged threat to kill Hakeem Jeffries

Christopher Moynihan, pardoned by Trump for his role in Capitol attack, allegedly threatened House minority leader

A man who was pardoned by Donald Trump for his conviction in the US Capitol attack carried out by the Republican president’s supporters in early 2021 has been arrested for allegedly threatening to kill the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, according to authorities and the New York representative himself.

Christopher Moynihan, 34, was arrested by New York state police on a felony count of making terroristic threats, the agency announced.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:45 pm

Santos’ release from prison felt like Trump ‘stuck me in the gut with a knife’, alleged fraud victim says

Richard Osthoff says commutation was not the first time Trump did something disrespectful to a military veteran

• US politics live – latest updates

A retired member of the US navy who alleges to have lost thousands of dollars meant for his dying dog when the Donald Trump-freed George Santos defrauded him says he now views the president as a “walking middle finger”.

Richard Osthoff’s emotional comments on Monday on MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports came three days after Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year, three-month prison sentence, which was given to the former New York representative in connection with federal fraud charges.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:39 am

Case of a single vote that decided a federal election in Canada sparks uproar

Legal teams are midway through a hearing over whether one vote truly swayed an election in a Montreal suburb

The case of a single vote which determined the outcome of a federal election in Canada risks sending the “disastrous message” to voters that “some votes count more than others,” says the lawyer of a former MP as a court considers whether to void the controversial election and hold a new vote.

Legal teams in Quebec are midway through a three day hearing over whether a single vote – and an administrative error – truly swayed a recent election in a suburb north of Montreal.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:24 pm

Fears of heat-rationing for millions in US as shutdown delays energy aid

Most vulnerable families could be without critical energy assistance, experts warn, as electricity and gas bills surge

Millions of Americans face having to ration heating this winter as the US federal government shutdown and mass layoffs by the Trump administration cause unprecedented delays in getting energy assistance aid to low-income households, a group that helps people pay energy bills has warned.

Congress approved about $4bn for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), after Trump’s proposal to cancel the life-saving heating and cooling scheme in this year’s budget was ultimately unsuccessful.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:00 pm

US pilots make emergency landing after mistaking static sound for plane invasion

Flight returned to Omaha airport minutes after departing for Los Angeles, after intercom was left on by accident

Pilots aboard a US commercial jet mistakenly thought someone was trying to invade the cockpit on Monday, leading the flight to return to the Omaha airport fewer than 40 minutes after departing for Los Angeles.

The misunderstanding on American Airlines Flight 6469 came about because the intercom that pilots and flight attendants use to speak to each other had been left on by accident, an American Airlines spokesperson said. The pilots heard some static sound over this intercom, and they mistakenly thought it meant someone was trying to break in.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:55 pm

Scientists say North American right whale population slowly increasing

Once hunted to the brink of extinction, the most venerable of the leviathans now numbers 384, up eight from past year

One of the rarest whales on the planet has continued an encouraging trend of population growth in the wake of new efforts to protect the giant animals, according to scientists who study them.

The North Atlantic right whale now numbers an estimated 384 animals, up eight whales from the previous year, according to a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium released on Tuesday. The whales have shown a trend of slow population growth over the past four years and have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, the consortium said.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:32 pm

Ecuador releases survivor of US strike on alleged drug-trafficking submarine

Officials say they have no evidence man had committed a crime, after Trump called people on submarine ‘terrorists’

• CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say

Ecuador has released a man who survived a US strike on a suspected drug-trafficking submarine, after finding no evidence that he had committed a crime, the attorney general’s office has said.

The United States has deployed warships to the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela since August, attacking mostly boats that US authorities said were running drugs.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:22 pm

Fox News host Laura Ingraham joins business venture with Donald Trump Jr

Host often criticized Hunter Biden’s business on her show and said he capitalized on his father’s presidency for deals

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is joining a business venture that includes Donald Trump Jr – after she repeatedly criticized the business dealings of another president’s son: Hunter Biden.

Ingraham, Trump Jr and Chamath Palihapitiya, a business associate of Donald Trump’s eldest son and namesake, were all listed as board members of a new venture seeking to go public on the stock market, according to Bloomberg. It purports to “fund the next chapter of American Exceptionalism and help Make America Grow Again”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:54 pm

General Motors lifts financial forecast as Trump tariff outlook improves

Detroit automaker expects 2025 adjusted core profit to be between $12bn and $13bn as it faces weakening EV market

General Motors lifted its financial outlook for the year and slightly lowered its expected hit from tariffs, as the automaker awaits expected relief on tariffs in the US while confronting a weakening market for electric vehicles.

The company now expects its annual adjusted core profit to be between $12bn and $13bn, compared with its prior estimate of $10bn to $12.5bn. The Detroit automaker said tariffs would hit its bottom line less than anticipated, lowering its updated impact to a range of $3.5bn to $4.5bn, from a previous $4bn to $5bn.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:55 pm

Trump EPA seeks to weaken scrutiny for some of US’s most toxic chemicals

New rule would prohibit states from banning dangerous chemicals, and could invalidate hundreds of protections

A new rule proposed by the Trump administration would dramatically weaken safety reviews for some of the nation’s most toxic chemicals that are already on the market, public health advocates and an EPA employee warn.

Many of the chemicals that would receive less scrutiny are among the nation’s most dangerous substances, including PFAS, formaldehyde, asbestos and dioxins. Each poses serious health risks in consumer goods, or for workers handling the substances, advocates say.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:00 pm

Biden’s ex-press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: ‘Why are Democrats not fighting back?’

Jean-Pierre explains in her memoir Independent why she decided to leave the Democratic party after two decades

When CJ Cregg exits the White House for the last time, a passing tourist asks her if she works there. “No,” she replies in the final episode of The West Wing, “No, I’m sorry I don’t.” The former press secretary casts a wistful glance back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, knowing life will never be the same.

The evanescence of power is now familiar to Karine Jean-Pierre, who in real life served as White House press secretary for two and a half years under the presidency of Joe Biden. She was the first Black person, first openly gay person and – born in the Caribbean to Haitian parents – first immigrant to hold the title.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:35 pm

‘Rogue president’: growing number of US judges push back against Trump

Pushback has come from judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats – and has slowed some extreme policies

US district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump’s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America.

Legal scholars and ex-judges note that strong court pushback has come from judges appointed by Republicans, including Trump himself, and Democrats, and signify that the administration’s factual claims and expanding executive powers face stiff challenges that have slowed some extreme policies.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:00 am

Fallen stars: why are Hollywood A-listers flopping at the box office?

This season has seen underwhelming results from stars such as Margot Robbie, Dwayne Johnson, Julia Roberts, and Keanu Reeves

Movie stars have been on a journey this fall, and it hasn’t been especially big, bold or beautiful. Actually, on second thought, maybe there is something bold about the way audiences have rejected, in quick succession, new movies collectively starring Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Channing Tatum, Kristen Dunst, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen and none other than Daniel Day-Lewis. This group of actors that would constitute an especially star-studded Oscars broadcast couldn’t muster a single hit among them. Even Leonardo DiCaprio must accept his status as the exception that proves the rule: his movie One Battle After Another is heading toward a respectable $200m worldwide – and all it took was one of the biggest stars in the world with support from familiar faces Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, a multiple-time Oscar nominee directing with an Imax-sized budget, and almost universally rapturous reviews. Put all that together in an adult-driven drama and maybe you can outgross, and lose somewhat less money than, Disney’s Snow White remake. (One Battle is unlikely to turn a profit on its theatrical release.)

Meanwhile, movies such as A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, The Smashing Machine, Roofman, After the Hunt, Good Fortune, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Anemone had no such constellation of exciting elements forming in their orbit alongside their stars. Some of them couldn’t even manage particularly great reviews. But that used to be what movie stars were there to provide: some kind of baseline level of interest in a movie, even if it wasn’t getting best-of-year reviews or boasting cutting-edge spectacle. None of the aforementioned stars are expected to perform with the superhuman consistency of Tom Cruise between 1986 and 2006 or Will Smith between 1996 and 2016. But there used to be a certain number of dramas and comedies that would make $50m or more in the US every year as a matter of course, the ones with stars tending to have an advantage in that respect.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:49 pm

This $600 poop cam wants you to film your toilet bowl

Products like Dekoda and Throne claim to offer health insights by tracking bowel movements – but who owns that data?

You can buy a smart ring to track your sleep activity or a smartwatch to monitor your heartbeat, so perhaps it makes sense that health tech’s next frontier has come for your toilet. Behold: Dekoda, Kohler’s new toilet cam. No, not that type of toilet cam: this one only shoots pictures down at what is inside the bowel, sending the snaps to an app that analyzes stool samples and rates your gut health. The Dekoda can be yours for $599, plus an annual subscription fee.

Kohler’s new product joins Throne, a $319 offering from an Austin-based startup. “Throne captures stool and hydration patterns, hands-free and automatically,” the camera’s description reads. “Notice shifts sooner, fine-tune daily choices, and feel more confident, every day.”

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:33 pm

‘It’s like they’ve erupted out of someone’s subconscious’: how horror came to possess modern cinemas

The ‘rough and ready’ genre’s current box office boom shouldn’t surprise us, say film-makers and experts

The biggest jump-scare the film industry has had in 2025? The return of horror as a main player at the UK box office. As a genre, it has impressively outperformed previous years (a 22% year-on-year increase for the UK and Irish box office: £83,766,086 in 2025, compared with £68,612,395 in 2024).

“Last year, no horror film reached £10m at the UK or Irish box office. This year, five films have,” says Charles Gant, box office editor of Screen International. The big hits of the year – Weapons (£11.4m), Sinners (£16.2m), The Conjuring Last Rites (£14.98m) and 28 Years Later (£15.54m) – have all hung about the multiplexes and in the public consciousness. Although much of the industry commentary focuses on the singular brilliance of Zac Cregger’s Weapons and Ryan Coogler’s postmodern epic Sinners, their successes indicate something is shifting between audiences and the genre.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:33 pm

Infectious diseases are killing deer and risking rural US economies: ‘You smell the dead everywhere’

Climate crisis contributing to spread of diseases as hunting industry takes a hit from growing number of dead deer

When landowner and hunter James Barkhurst went scouting his property about a month ago to assess the local deer population ahead of the fall hunting season, he was left in shock.

“I’ve seen about 14 dead in less than a mile stretch. There’s a lot of does, big bucks and even fawns. You smell the dead everywhere,” he says. “And I haven’t really went deep into the woods.”

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:00 pm

Bend It Like Beckham was a classic soccer movie – with one very worrying relationship

The celebrated film largely still holds up and inspires, But, with a sequel in the works, its handling of a player/coach dynamic shows how times have changed

In the proposed upcoming sequel to the “feel good”, “uplifting” film Bend It Like Beckham (one of the Guardian’s best movies about football), a leading character has been banned from the game for life. At least that’s what could, and probably should be revealed, preferably as early as possible.

Seem dramatic? It isn’t. Though Bend It Like Beckham brilliantly tackles issues around racism, gender norms, homophobia, culture, immigration, and feminism with an endearing comedic twist, a core point of the plot rests on an adult coach pursuing a romantic relationship with a teenage player. In 2025, after multiple high-profile instances of inappropriate player/coach relationships have been reported in women’s soccer, and after the harm inherent in those relationships has been exposed, the normalization of one in a celebrated film is hard to ignore.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:47 pm

Apparently many male film stars don’t wear underpants. Have they never heard of #MeToo? Or accidents?

The Oscar-winning costume designer Jenny Beavan has let slip that an alarming number of actors go commando to fittings. The profession has rarely felt more alien

Jenny Beavan is a living legend in the world of film. A three-time Oscar-winning costume designer, she gave Merchant Ivory films their distinctive look but was equally responsible for the visual onslaught of Mad Max: Fury Road.

In 2016, her decision to attend various awards shows wearing unconventional fashion captured the zeitgeist twice; first when Stephen Fry called her a “bag lady” and was forced off Twitter, and second when a clip of Alejandro González Iñárritu glowering as she passed him went viral. In other words, Jenny Beavan can do whatever the hell she likes.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:09 am

Trump is threatening Venezuela. But his own country looks a lot like it | Daniel Mendiola

The US president’s efforts to consolidate power are strikingly similar to historical authoritarian moves in Caracas

Here in the Americas, we have a peculiar tradition. Every time there is a major election, prominent figures on the right find themselves compelled to repeat some version of the vaguely menacing prediction: if the candidate for the left wins, we will become “the next Venezuela”.

Whether Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia or Ecuador, countries throughout the western hemisphere keep this tradition. Donald Trump has also participated in this ritual, proclaiming during the 2024 election cycle that if Kamala Harris won, our country would become “Venezuela on steroids”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:00 pm

Guiding my mum through hospital showed me true patient-centred care takes more than paperwork | Ranjana Srivastava

How many anxious people simply nod along, trusting the staff know what they are doing?

“Are you anxious?”

“A little bit.”

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:00 pm

The US refugee program changed my life. Trump’s possible overhaul would be disastrous | Bahati Kanyamanza

I fled war at 14 and decades later became a US citizen. Now I fear racism and exclusion could become official policy

Last week, leaked documents from the Trump administration reportedly revealed plans to gut the US refugee program, not only capping refugee resettlement at a record low of 7,500, but also transforming it from a life-saving humanitarian system into one that favors white South Africans and Europeans over the world’s most vulnerable people. As a refugee who found safety and belonging in this country, I broke into a sweat reading the news. Memories of my own journey rushed back, now mixed with a deeper fear that racism and exclusion are not just social undercurrents, but official policy.

I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and fled war at 14, spending nearly two decades in a refugee camp in Uganda before finally being resettled in the United States. Here, I reunited with my family, built a new life, and became a citizen. My story is one of patience, resilience and gratitude for a country that gave me safety and the chance to rebuild my life and give back.

Bahati Kanyamanza is a former refugee who spent about 25 years in a Ugandan refugee camp and as a refugee in the US before he became a naturalized US citizen. He is the global partnerships director at the International Refugee Assistance Project

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:00 pm

The Louvre raid was audacious - but nothing compared to the heist France's political leadership just pulled off | Rokhaya Diallo

The theft of the crown jewels is another blow to national prestige, but far greater is the threat of a monarchical president hoarding power against voters’ wishes

The world is now gripped by the spectacular (and literal daylight) robbery perpetrated on the world’s most famous art museum on Sunday morning. As visitors queued to get in to the Louvre, thieves were escaping out of another wing, after a raid on the crown jewels that took just seven minutes. The story could have been lifted straight from a Hollywood movie or an episode of the French mystery thriller series Lupin.

Yet, although this outrageous theft has stunned France, it was perhaps a fitting act of larceny for a country that has just been the victim of another incredible heist. From one Monday to the next the French people were swindled into thinking we were getting a new government. The political drama left many of us feeling like confused characters in Groundhog Day, but perhaps the closer symbolism is to be found in the surreal theft at the Louvre.

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

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Published: October 21, 2025, 12:10 pm

Dear Britain, do you worry that Team Farage is just a hot mess in power? Or is everyone too angry to care | Marina Hyde

Footage of Reform councillors fighting is further proof that uselessness abounds, but that’s almost moot. To voters they are very useful idiots

“I’m meant to be on bloody holiday this week, Paul! I don’t want to be having this meeting!” There is much to enjoy about the patriotic revolution in government promised by the leaked footage obtained by the Guardian of the Reform UK group of councillors running Kent county council. Take council leader Linden Kemkaran speaking for all free speech absolutists when she declares: “Paul! Paul! I’m going to mute you in a minute!” Or consider her repeatedly stated vision of the imperfections of representative democracy: “You’re just going to have to fucking suck it up, OK?”

Even so I think the standout bit is when Kemkaran, who acknowledged Kent’s “flagship” status for the party and its leader Nigel Farage, says: “If we can avoid putting up council tax by the full 5%, that is going to be the best thing that we can do to show that Reform can run something as big as Kent council.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:50 pm

Jack Nicklaus wins $50m verdict in defamation case over LIV Golf allegations

• Jury rules Nicklaus defamed by former company

• False claims tied him to $750m LIV Golf offer

• 85-year-old legend awarded $50m in damages

Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, has won a $50m verdict in a defamation case against his former company, bringing an end to one of golf’s most bitter business feuds.

A jury in Palm Beach County, Florida, found that Nicklaus Companies – the firm he founded and later sold – defamed him by spreading false claims that he had considered a $750m offer to become a public face of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf League and that he was no longer mentally fit to manage his business affairs. The six-person jury ruled that the company’s actions damaged the 85-year-old’s reputation and exposed him to “ridicule, hatred, mistrust, distrust or contempt”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:16 pm

‘This is Canada’s team’: Springer’s blast sends Toronto Blue Jays to first World Series since 1993

• Blue Jays pip Mariners in Game 7 to win AL pennant

• Toronto advance to face LA Dodgers in World Series

Woah, Canada!

After a huge swing by George Springer, the World Series is headed north of the border for the first time in 32 years.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:11 am

American chess grandmaster and streamer Daniel Naroditsky dies aged 29

• Naroditsky became a grandmaster in 2013

• No cause of death given in statement by family

Daniel Naroditsky, an American chess grandmaster and one of the game’s most popular online streamers and instructors, has died at the age of 29.

The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where he was head coach, announced his death on Monday, calling him “a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community”. His family said he should be remembered “for his passion and love for the game” in a statement shared by the club. No cause of death was given.

Published: October 20, 2025, 11:22 pm

NBA 2025-26 predictions: Wemby for MVP? And will Thunder strike twice?

Our writers give their verdicts on the new season, which tips off Tuesday. Can New York or Houston thwart an OKC repeat? And which youngster will make the superstar leap?

If we’re lucky, a fully healthy campaign from Victor Wembanyama. He’s already shown flashes of his insane ceiling in his previous two seasons. He’s such a difficult matchup with the ball in his hands, and on defense, he changes the entire calculus of opposing teams’ schemes with his length. Jakub Frankowicz

Published: October 21, 2025, 6:30 am

UK government ‘deeply saddened’ as Maccabi Tel Aviv decline any Aston Villa tickets

• Government claims game weaponised to stoke fear

• Villa say only fans with booking history can get tickets

The UK government has said it is “deeply saddened” by Maccabi Tel Aviv’s decision to decline any tickets offered to their fans for the Europa League match at Villa Park.

The local safety advisory group opted last week to block visiting fans from attending the tie against Aston Villa on 6 November after a risk assessment by West Midlands police, a decision that drew criticism from politicians including the prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:42 am

Gibbs’ career night sparks Lions while Smith-Njigba keeps Seattle flying high

• Gibbs totals 218 yards, two TDs in Lions’ 24-9 win

• Charbonnet scores twice in Seattle’s 27-19 victory

Jahmyr Gibbs was offered oxygen on the bench after a 78-yard run.

He turned it down.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:46 am

US adds Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica to 2031 Women’s World Cup host bid

• Tournament expected to be the first with 48 teams

• US will host women’s World Cup for third time

The United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica football federations announced on Monday a joint bid to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup, the first edition of the tournament to feature 48 teams.

Fifa approved the expansion of the Women’s World Cup from 32 to 48 teams in May, adopting a 12-group format that will increase the number of games from 64 to 104, matching the expanded 2026 men’s World Cup.

Published: October 20, 2025, 10:59 pm

Mind the gap: surge from Verstappen piles pressure on McLaren and echoes 2007 | Giles Richards

Champion could snatch drivers’ title away from the leading constructors just as Kimi Räikkönen did 18 years ago

A few short months ago Max Verstappen’s world championship defence appeared to be over. But when he took the flag in the US Grand Prix on Sunday it heralded the most remarkable resurgence as he waded with a gleeful swagger back into the title fight. Verstappen was down but he is far from out and could yet still pull off what would count as his greatest triumph.

Going into the weekend in Austin, Verstappen was still treating the idea of him being a contender against the two lead protagonists, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, with a certain indifferent levity.

Published: October 20, 2025, 4:28 pm

MPs lodge parliamentary motion to strip Prince Andrew of dukedom

Ministers face growing pressure to act amid fresh allegations over prince’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

MPs have moved to lodge a parliamentary motion to strip Prince Andrew of his dukedom, in a rarely permitted move in the Commons.

The government is facing mounting pressure over the prince’s residence in the 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor, where it was revealed that he has not paid rent for more than two decades.

Published: October 21, 2025, 10:43 am

US man who admitted to rape on Facebook will serve max of four years in prison

Man wrote ‘I raped you’ after 2013 assault at Gettysburg College, which the victim said reopened years of trauma

A man who sent a Facebook message that said “So I raped you” to a woman he had sexually assaulted in college in Pennsylvania in 2013 was sentenced on Monday to between two and four years in prison.

Ian Cleary faced up to 10 years in prison for the attack – and the prosecution and defense had initially proposed a four-to-eight-year sentence.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:45 pm

Welfare cuts have fuelled rise of far right and populism, top UN expert says

Exclusive: Poverty rapporteur says governments must rethink welfare state as essential to fabric of society

Decades of efforts by mainstream politicians to roll back welfare programmes have given rise to an “extremely dangerous” discourse that has helped fuel the rise of the far right and rightwing populists in countries around the world, a top UN expert has told the Guardian.

From London to Lisbon, politicians from centre-right and centre-left parties alike had steadily eroded social programmes, fostering a sense of scarcity and creating fertile ground for the stirring up of anti-migrant sentiment, said Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:04 pm

Sanae Takaichi appoints just two women to cabinet after becoming Japan’s first female PM

New leader had promised levels of female representation comparable to those in Iceland, where six of cabinet of 11 are women

Sanae Takaichi made history on Tuesday when she became Japan’s first female prime minister. But hours after she was elected by MPs, it was evident that female under representation in the country’s political establishment would continue when she appointed just two women to her cabinet.

Takaichi had promised levels of female representation in her government comparable to those in Iceland, Finland and Norway.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:06 pm

Two more men arrested over death of Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins

Police say pair held on suspicion of conspiracy to murder after former frontman died at HMP Wakefield

Two more men have been arrested in connection with the death of the former Lostprophets frontman, Ian Watkins, at HMP Wakefield, West Yorkshire police said.

Watkins, 48, who was serving a 29-year sentence with a further six years to be served on licence after admitting a string of offences including the attempted rape of a baby, died after being assaulted in the high-security jail on 11 October.

Published: October 21, 2025, 10:56 am

Salesforce’s CEO backtracks after saying Trump should send troops into San Francisco

In tech this week: The CEO of the city’s largest private employer apologizes, Amazon Web Services’ outage and OpenAI’s Sora makes waves

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host and editor, Blake Montgomery. What I’m watching this week: South Park’s caricature of Peter Thiel and his obsession with the antichrist. Read our reporting on the show’s inspiration: Thiel’s bizarre off-the-record lectures on the subject. And now, let’s get into things.

A glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing service brought down apps and websites around the world on Monday.

The affected platforms included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:18 pm

Warner Bros Discovery considers going up for sale as potential buyers show interest

Netflix, Comcast and Paramount Skydance are reportedly among possible bidders in sale that could shake up industry

Warner Bros Discovery is considering an outright sale following interest from several potential buyers, the company said Tuesday, in what would be the latest shakeup across legacy media.

Shares of the company rose 10.5% in morning trading. Netflix and Comcast are among the potential bidders, CNBC reported Tuesday, citing sources, following earlier reports that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison was also in talks to acquire the combined company.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:42 pm

The Dutch election: key players and main issues in the snap poll

Voters could swap a rightwing government for a more moderate coalition – but the fragmentary political system makes many outcomes possible

Here is the lowdown on elections in the Netherlands, where voters look likely to swap the most rightwing government in recent Dutch history for a more moderate, commonsense coalition in a snap parliamentary ballot on 29 October.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:19 am

Delhi awakes to a toxic haze after Diwali as pollution season begins

Air breathed by people in the city categorised as ‘severe’ in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smog

Delhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India’s capital.

Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the “severe” category on Tuesday morning.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:11 am

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country

Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insects

Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.

The country was until this month one of the few places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.

Published: October 21, 2025, 10:41 am

‘World’s loneliest’ gorillas are doing just fine, say Bristol zoo bosses

Idea that apes at closed-down zoo have been abandoned is ridiculous, says CEO, after urban explorer’s video made headlines

A rainy afternoon in Bristol but the troop of western lowland gorillas did not seem to mind the damp and were foraging for snacks of lettuce and cereal scattered around their zoo enclosure.

To the untrained eye, their expressions might be described as lugubrious, but Sarah Gedman, the curator of mammals at Bristol Zoological Society (BZS), insisted the apes were perfectly relaxed and in tune with each other. “They’re not sad at all,” said Gedman.

Published: October 21, 2025, 10:00 am

‘The cars just turn them into mush’: can Britain’s toads be saved from traffic and terrible decline?

Since 1985, the country’s toad population has almost halved, with hundreds of thousands killed on the roads each year. But many people are determined to protect them – including 274 dedicated patrol groups

It’s 7.30 on a Friday evening, but I’m not heading to the pub or putting on a film. Instead, I’ve caught the train to a market town in Wiltshire, where I’m meeting up with members of Warminster toad patrol. These are volunteers who – like similar groups up and down the country – give up their evenings to protect their local toad population.

For the common toad (scientific name Bufo bufo) is becoming increasingly uncommon. A recent study led by amphibian and reptile charity Froglife showed that the UK toad population has almost halved since 1985. To see a creature that has been a stalwart of the British countryside – not to mention a prominent feature of literature and folklore – in decline is “worrying”, says Dr Silviu Petrovan, senior researcher at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study. Toads “don’t require very specific conditions” and “should be able to live quite well in most of the habitats in Britain,” he says – so if even they are not managing to survive, “it kind of suggests that things are not as they should be”.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:00 am

Beasts of the Sea: the tragic story of how the ‘gentle, lovable’ sea cow became the perfect victim

Iida Turpeinen’s novel has been a sensation in her native Finland. On the eve of its UK publication, she talks about her compulsion to tell of the sociable giant’s plight

Iida Turpeinen is the author of Beasts of the Sea, a Finnish novel tracing the fate of a now-extinct species: the sea cow. Similar to dugongs and manatees, the sea cow was only discovered in 1741 by the shipwrecked German-born naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller but by 1768 it had already become the first marine species to be eradicated by humans.

Translated into 28 languages and shortlisted for the country’s most prestigious literary award, the Finlandia Prize, Beasts of the Sea was described by the Helsinki Literacy Agency as the most internationally successful Finnish debut novel ever. Turpeinen, 38, a PhD student of comparative literature, is now a resident novelist at Finland’s Natural History Museum. Her book will be published in the UK on 23 October.

Published: October 21, 2025, 5:00 am

Alaskan left floating in his home after Typhoon rips it from foundations – video

The remnant storms of Typhoon Halong tore into western Alaska with such ferocity that they pulled Steven Anaver’s home from its foundation and buoyed it across choppy water – with him inside.

The water started rising quickly on Saturday night in Anaver’s village of Kwigillingok, one of two Yup’ik communities that were the hardest hit.

The storm displaced more than 2,000 people and led to one of the most significant airlift operations in Alaska's history. At least one person is dead, and two others are missing.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:34 pm

Police arrest man at Atlanta airport after tip that he was planning to ‘shoot it up’

Police found an assault rifle and ammunition in a Georgia man’s truck after his family had contacted them

Police arrested a man at Atlanta’s bustling airport on Monday after getting a tip from his family that he was planning to shoot up the place – and found an assault rifle and ammunition in his truck outside, the city’s police chief said.

Billy Joe Cagle, of Cartersville, Georgia, had described his plan to shoot up the world’s busiest airport on a social media live stream, said Darin Schierbaum, the chief of police, during a news conference.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:37 pm

University of Arizona becomes seventh US college to reject Trump’s ‘compact’

Administration has pushed nine universities to sign a deal that seeks to make changes in line with conservative ideas

The University of Arizona has become the seventh US university to reject a Trump administration proposal that would grant schools funding priority if they agree to support the administration’s conservative agenda.

The decision follows the administration’s push for nine universities to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”, which seeks to make sweeping changes to campus culture, hiring and admissions practices and foreign student enrollment. Demands from the Trump administration’s 10-point compact include reforms to the way race or ethnicity are used in admission and hiring practices, as well as a commitment to strict definitions of gender, among others.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:34 am

US appeals court could reconsider ruling in Trump’s favor on Portland troop deployment

Judge requests ‘vote on whether case should be reheard’ after panel lifted block on Trump’s planned deployment

A decision in Donald Trump’s favor by a three-judge panel issued on Monday, which lifted a block on his planned deployment of Oregon national guard troops to Portland, could be reconsidered by a new, larger panel of federal appeals court judges.

Hours after the three-judge panel decided, 2-1, that Trump has the legal authority to deploy federalized troops to Portland, a judge on the ninth circuit court of appeals formally requested “a vote on whether this case should be reheard” by a larger panel of judges.

Published: October 21, 2025, 1:57 am

Don’t use AI to tell you how to vote in election, says Dutch watchdog

Data protection authority says chatbots are ‘clearly biased’, as Netherlands prepares for national poll

• Dutch election: key players and main issues

• Europe live – latest updates

AI chatbots are “unreliable and clearly biased” when offering voting advice, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has said, warning of a threat to democracy eight days before national elections.

The four chatbots tested by the AP “often end up with the same two parties, regardless of the user’s question or command”, the authority said in a report ahead of the 29 October election.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:14 am

Nicolas Sarkozy enters prison to begin five-year sentence over criminal conspiracy

Former president organised stage-managed departure from his Paris home before becoming first French postwar leader to be jailed

• What can Sarkozy expect in La Santé prison?

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been jailed in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

France’s rightwing president between 2007 and 2012 is the first former head of an EU country to serve time in prison, and the first French postwar leader to go behind bars.

Published: October 21, 2025, 3:33 pm

EU criticised for pausing sanctions on Israel in response to Trump Gaza efforts

Pause on move to freeze preferential trade pact comes amid scramble to shore up fragile ceasefire

The EU has been criticised for pausing sanctions against Israel’s government in response to Donald Trump’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East, as the fragile ceasefire came under threat.

After meeting EU foreign ministers on Monday, the European foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, announced a pause on efforts to suspend preferential trade with Israel and sanctions against people responsible for fuelling the conflict on both sides.

Published: October 21, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Ask your daughters’: Merz defends his call for large-scale deportations

German chancellor accused of taking a page from extremist parties with ‘dangerous’ rhetoric on immigration

Critics have accused Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of adopting “dangerous” rhetoric on immigration, after he championed “very large scale” expulsions of people from cities – and claimed that anyone with daughters would agree with him.

Merz, who took office in May with a pledge to beat back the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, chastised a reporter who asked if he wished to revise his hardline remarks on migration from last week in light of widespread criticism, or apologise for them.

Published: October 21, 2025, 4:00 am

D’Angelo’s music was imbued with the influence of Black women

Female collaborators, muses and ministers shaped D’Angelo’s voice, arrangements and emotional acuity

The first time D’Angelo reached me, he wasn’t alone. His voice was entwined with Erykah Badu’s on Your Precious Love, a duet that felt like an offering being passed between sweethearts. I was 14, the edge of adolescence, opening to my own life. Their voices sounded delicate, blooming – almost shy. A cover of a classic Motown record written by Ashford & Simpson and sung, most memorably, by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, D’Angelo and Erykah’s churchy call-and-response nodded to the past while low-pitched boom-baps reflected contemporary trends on the FM dial. It was a crossroads sound, working two ways at once, and the blend, the hybridity of it all, heralded the future.

Before long, D’Angelo’s 1995 debut Brown Sugar got shared and traded and analyzed among my girlfriends. Though we were deep in hip-hop’s high-flossing, shiny suit era, we noticed how he insisted on tenderness. It was the ’90s; crack and the crime bill had ravaged our neighborhoods and hurt our pride. His visuals seemed to seek to restore it. His music videos had a relaxed, smoky cool; clips such as Lady and Me and Those Dreaming Eyes of Mine showed women in every hue of brown whirling beneath warm lights and D’Angelo’s own devoted gaze. I had a dozen first loves, just as many fears, and a bouquet of dreams for the future – D’Angelo’s songs seemed to catch my currents.

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:16 pm

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: how the ‘anti-sitcom sitcom’ became a hit

Stupid, absurd and filled with depraved characters, this scrappy series might be TV’s greatest underdog

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The year was 2005 and comedy television was entering a shiny new era. Cultural giants like Friends and Sex and the City might have concluded a year earlier but glossy upstarts – The Office and How I Met Your Mother, heard of them? – were ready to fill their monolithic shoes. Into their midst came a scrappy new series: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The success of It’s Always Sunny was never guaranteed. It was born only a few months after YouTube, shot on a handheld camera, had a budget of practically nothing and featured a motley crew of out-of-work actors. The show was built on a simple premise; to highlight the exploits of an idiotic, narcissistic group of friends running an Irish dive bar in South Philly who scheme, betray and trick each other – or unfortunate strangers – at every turn.

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Published: October 21, 2025, 2:00 pm

The Draft! review – entertaining Indonesian meta-horror goes down the Scream route

The tired old tropes of spooky visions, cursed wells and cookie-cutter characters are gleefully dissected in a fun slasher that trades a cabin in the woods for a villa in the jungle

If you enjoyed Scream and Cabin in the Woods, you’ll want to give this Indonesian horror a spin: it’s a gleefully referential slasher set not in a cabin in the woods, but a villa in the jungle. Said villa has no phone signal, but does benefit from regular power cuts, an old Dutch cemetery located barely 300m away, a live-in creepy uncle, regular visions of a little girl dressed in white, an obviously cursed well, and a forbidden room which may or may not be included in the floor plan. The characters immediately clock that the situation resembles a horror movie, and frankly, you’d lose all respect for them if they didn’t.

But the more the cliches pile up, the more we (and at least one of the characters) realise some sort of complicated meta-horror game is afoot. Why would a dumb jock, shy nerd, irritating guy, tomboy and girly girl with no real backstory be hanging out here anyway? The film gets into some slightly sticky territory when the characters have discussions of the “make it make sense” variety, but is on firmer footing with anything that involves commenting on and playing around with the various tropes of horror movies, with a particular focus on Indonesian horror cliches – and it gets wilder and sillier as it progresses.

Published: October 21, 2025, 8:00 am

Interstellar’s second life: how Christopher Nolan’s most divisive film became his most loved

When Nolan’s space epic was released in 2014, critics picked at the plot holes and scientists picked at the science – now, 11 years later, it’s the internet’s favourite film. Was it just ahead of its time?

Every Saturday, for the last 18 months, Shane Short has watched the same film: Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space epic Interstellar. He’s not even sure how many times he has seen it now, though he does know he saw it 31 times in cinemas when it was briefly rereleased for its 10th anniversary in 2024. This year he has flown from his home in Hawaii to Melbourne to watch Interstellar projected on 1570 film at the city’s Imax – twice – where the regular screenings of Interstellar, even those held midweek and during the day, can reliably sell out in minutes.

Set in a future not that far from us now, Interstellar follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former Nasa test pilot turned farmer who leaves his children Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy) behind on a climate-ravaged Earth to search space for a new home for mankind. Murph is furious with grief at Cooper for picking a future for humanity over a life spent with her; as the decades pass, Tom (played as an adult by Casey Affleck) settles into embittered detachment, while Murph (Jessica Chastain) becomes a scientist and works closely with Prof John Brand (Michael Caine), the Nasa scientist who sent her father away on his mission with his own daughter, Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway).

Published: October 20, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘Stole my heart’: why My Best Friend’s Wedding is my feelgood movie

The next in our series of writers sharing their all-time favourite comfort films is a trip back to 1997 with Julia Roberts’s charmingly chaotic anti-hero

If When Harry Met Sally questioned whether men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way, My Best Friend’s Wedding is unequivocal. If your fiance has a female BFF – especially if she has the megawatt smile and mile-long legs of Julia Roberts at her ravishing best – prepare for drama. Even if you’re Cameron Diaz. Which is the precise scenario we’re confronted with at the start of my favourite chaotic caper, which made just under $300m at the global box office when it debuted in 1997, and also stole my heart as a melodramatic 11-year-old.

We were truly spoiled for romcoms in the 90s – believe me, I watched them all – but My Best Friend’s Wedding is something special. To watch this PJ Hogan classic (he also directed Muriel’s Wedding) is to sink into a warm bath of nostalgia, complete with brick-sized mobile phones, indoor smoking and croony Burt Bacharach classics. It has everything: a car chase, an all-cast singalong lunch complete with dancing lobster claws and even an intimate mishap with an ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David. But it also has the chutzpah to turn the romcom formula on its head, and give us an ending we don’t necessarily expect.

Published: October 20, 2025, 9:00 am

Strange Harvest review – lurid horror expertly disguised as true crime

Stuart Ortiz’s convincingly faked crime documentary details the hunt for a Los Angeles serial killer dubbed Mr Shiny

For its first few minutes, this comes on like a standard true crime documentary: establishing shots of the Greater Los Angeles area, talking heads introduce themselves as police officers and friends of the victims, and we zoom in on a handwritten list of names until one particular name fills the screen. All the tricks of the trade are here, and director Stuart Ortiz plays things more or less straight. In fact it’s a mockumentary: not a parody but instead a horror movie that happens to be told using the format of a true crime documentary.

The story, about a masked killer called Mr Shiny (if you think this name strains credibility, don’t forget there are real serial killers nicknamed the Happy Face Killer, the Dating Game Killer and the Doodler), is functional enough. There are lurid details of the killings, and police officers talking about how the crimes were beyond belief; there are taunting notes from the murderer; passages where the trail goes cold; moments when the police nearly catch Mr Shiny, only for him to slip through their fingers.

Published: October 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘I was working as a cook when it went to No 1’: how Norman Greenbaum made Spirit in the Sky

‘My label said a four-minute single with lyrics about Jesus would never get played on radio. But, in 1969, the song sold two million copies. It’s now been No 1 in three different decades’

Spirit in the Sky started as an old blues riff I’d been playing since my college days in Boston, but I didn’t know what to do with it. After I moved to LA, a guy I knew came up with a way of putting a fuzzbox inside my Fender Telecaster, which created the distinctive sound on Spirit in the Sky.

Published: October 20, 2025, 1:48 pm

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan review – startling stories of China’s new precarity

The viral blog turned book details the exhausting life of a courier, but something may have been lost in translation

From the early 2000s until the Covid lockdowns, Hu Anyan was one of China’s vast army of internal migrants, moving between cities in pursuit of work. He did 19 jobs – shop assistant, hotel waiter, petrol attendant and security guard, among other things – in six cities. Although all these jobs were atrociously paid, they still earned him more than the one he tried for two years in the middle of this period: writer. (An 8,000-word story earned him less than 300 yuan – about £30.) Then, during Covid, he wrote a blog about his night shifts in a logistics warehouse, and it went viral. The blog expanded and became I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, which has sold nearly 2m copies in China since being published in 2023, and now appears in Jack Hargreaves’s English translation.

The low-paid Chinese worker is at the mercy of an entirely unrestrained market. The jobs Hu does demand unpaid trial periods and have no base pay, and he works mainly for commission or a handling fee, which his employers can reduce on a whim. Disgruntled employees pick on each other, because “going after the powerful will only cost us in the end”. Experienced hands refuse to help newbies, on the grounds that “teaching the disciple might starve the master”. The only power Hu has is to walk away. When his bosses learn that he has no children, that his parents have pensions and medical insurance and don’t need his support, they worry that he will leave at a moment’s notice (and are sometimes right).

Published: October 21, 2025, 8:00 am

The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee review – newly discovered stories from an American great

If we regard this book as literature, it is an unqualified failure. But these juvenile stories and essays shed fascinating light on the repression of Lee’s early life

When a new book is published by a writer dead for a decade, there is always some suspicion that the bottom of the barrel is being scraped. When the writer is Harper Lee, there is also the unpleasant aftertaste of the release of her second novel, 2015’s Go Set a Watchman, which was promoted as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, when in fact it was a formless early draft. The publication was also surrounded by controversy over whether the aged Lee, by then seriously disabled, had really consented to its publication.

This new book, The Land of Sweet Forever, is a much more conventional enterprise: a collection of Lee’s unpublished short stories and previously uncollected essays. No deception is being practised here, and if people want to read the lesser scribblings of a favourite author, it is surely a victimless crime. However, like most such books, it has little to offer to those who aren’t diehard fans.

Published: October 21, 2025, 6:00 am

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe review – inside rock’s wildest decade

From shadowing a cocaine-addled David Bowie to winning over Joni Mitchell, deliciously readable tales by the director of Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe spent his youth being in the right place at the right time. In 1964, aged seven, he was taken by his mother to see “a kid named Bob Dylan” play a local college gym. By the age of 14, living in San Diego, he was writing record reviews for a local underground magazine whose main aim was to bring down Richard Nixon. Shortly after that, he started interviewing the bands of the day as they came through California – first Humble Pie for Creem, and then the Eagles, the Allman Brothers Band and Led Zeppelin for Rolling Stone.

Crowe previously fictionalised his story in the 2000 film Almost Famous, which he wrote and directed. His lyrical and compulsively readable memoir The Uncool is bookended by the opening of a musical version, which coincides with the death of Crowe’s mother Alice whose aphorisms, including “Put some goodness in the world before it blows up”, are scattered throughout the book. Alice insisted that Crowe skip two school grades, driving his precocity; she was also dead against rock’n’roll on account of its unbridled hedonism. When Crowe asks her what Elvis did on The Ed Sullivan Show that was so subversive he had to be filmed from the waist up, she “clinically” replies: “He had an erection”.

Published: October 20, 2025, 6:00 am

Poem of the week: On the Death of Dr Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson

An elegy to the poet’s personal physician is full of vivid detail delivered with infectious warmth

On the Death of Dr Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson

Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blast or slow decline,
Our social comforts drop away.

Published: October 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 review – an interestingly toothless piece of noir fiction

PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox (version tested); The Chinese Room/Paradox Interactive
Arriving more than two decades after the original, this sequel was mired in development disaster – resulting in an interesting almost-failure

You are an ancient and powerful vampire, and you wake up in the basement of some decrepit Seattle building, with no recent memories and a strange sigil on your hand. The first thing you do is feed on the cop who finds you, before smacking his partner into a wall so hard that his blood spatters the brick. A violent fanged rampage ensues, where you beat up and tear apart rival undead and their ghouls while currying the favour of the local court of vampires, and trying to keep your existence hidden from the mortal populace of this sultry city.

But this is also a detective story: there’s a younger night-stalker sharing your brain, a voice in your head named Fabian, who talks like a 1920s gumshoe (presumably because he once was one). Fabian isn’t violent at all; he evidently works with the human police and the vampire underworld, snacking on consenting volunteers’ blood and using his mind-delving powers to solve murders. These two stories are two entirely different games in the same setting, but then everything about Bloodlines 2 feels stitched awkwardly together. It is unfortunate that I happen to be playing this right after bingeing AMC’s Interview with the Vampire TV series, because the contrast is stark. One is a masterful, frightening, sexually charged and deftly comic reimagining of vampire mythology. The other is OK.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:30 am

Out of Words – crafting gaming’s most unusual love story from clay and glue

Most games want you to save the world. This stop-motion adventure wants you to hold someone’s hand

Stop-motion adventure Out of Words was one of the most striking reveals at this year’s Summer Game Fest. While most games are built from code, Out of Words is made from clay, fabric, and glue: a love story literally crafted by hand that even caught the attention of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima (“The biggest praise we could imagine,” game director Johan Oettinger says.)

Oettinger dreamed of making a stop-motion video game since he was 12, when he first played 90s point-and-click claymation game The Neverhood. After years working across films, commercials and installation art, Out of Words became the project to merge these two lifelong passions.

Published: October 20, 2025, 9:00 am

Jon Stewart on Donald Trump: ‘He’s the imitation crab of kings right now’

Late-night hosts discuss the record-breaking turnout for anti-Trump No Kings rallies and Trump’s AI video response

Late-night hosts recapped the record-breaking No Kings rallies against Donald Trump and mocked Republican attempts to dismiss the protests.

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:23 pm

‘I get to do whatever I want in the moment’: why more people are going to gigs, festivals and clubs alone

The number of solo festivalgoers has jumped since the pandemic, and even safety concerns aren’t dissuading lone ravers. We speak to some to find out why

From solo travel to dining alone, people have increasingly been embracing social activities by themselves in the years since the pandemic – even in the ultra-social contexts of live music and club culture.

A recent survey by Ticketmaster found that the number of people who have attended either a weekend or day festival by themselves has risen from 8% in 2019 to 29% this year. Reading and Leeds festival introduced a campsite area for solo attendees this year, joining Download’s longstanding “lone wolf” area, and there are a growing number of social media pages such as London Solo Ravers, and WhatsApp groups such as Untitled Rave Community Project, for people venturing to nightclubs alone.

Published: October 21, 2025, 9:30 am

‘I said goodbye to Heath Ledger at this urinal’: a stroll round Terry Gilliam’s pivotal places

The studio where he crashed the Life of Brian spaceship, the stage where he put on a Faust that caused fights, the pub where he last spoke to Heath Ledger … the ex-Python takes a hilarious and evocative meander down memory lane

Down an alley in Covent Garden, on a building that was once a banana warehouse, there is a blue plaque. “Monty Python, Film Maker, Lived Here, 1976-1987,” reads the inscription. It’s easy to miss: the plaque is not at eye level as they normally are, but up on the first floor, almost as if the blue plaque committee lost confidence in their uncharacteristic joke. Or perhaps John Cleese put it up.

Terry Gilliam arrives. I like his jacket. It looks like it’s been stitched together from bits of blankets. “Me too,” he says. “I got it 30 years ago in a secondhand store in New York.” We’re going to wander around London, revisiting places that have played significant parts in his career, as he approaches his 85th birthday.

Published: October 21, 2025, 4:00 am

Master at work: on set with celebrated British film director Terence Davies – in pictures

Davies, who died in 2023, was the director of masterworks such as The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth, and Distant Voices, Still Lives. As the BFI mounts a full retrospective including a free exhibition from the Terence Davies Archive held by Edge Hill University, we go behind the scenes of some of his acclaimed films

• Davies interviewed in 2022

Published: October 21, 2025, 6:00 am

I fell at the top of a mountain – and knew I had to haul my broken body down or die in the snow

While navigating a steep trail, Jean Muenchrath lost her grip. She was horrifically injured, with a broken spine, shattered tailbone, pubic bone and hip fractures, internal bleeding, a head wound and one on her buttock that turned gangrenous. There was no choice but to get home ...

As Jean Muenchrath stood at the summit of Mount Whitney, a storm thundered in. It was May 1982, and here, at the highest point of the contiguous US, she and her boyfriend Ken were coming to the end of a month-long ski and hike, 223 miles along the John Muir Trail, through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

The trip had been gruelling at times – equipment had broken and they had been threatened by bears and avalanches. But it had also been exhilarating. At 22, Muenchrath was fit, strong and an experienced hiker. She had skied since she was a child and worked as a ranger for the US national park service in Montana; she and Ken, who she had met at university, had been on many smaller adventures while preparing for this one.

Published: October 21, 2025, 4:00 am

Pickle power: how to make your first ferments | Kitchen aide

Little more than clean jars, salt water and time are needed to get you on the path to perfect pickles

I love ferments and want to start making my own to save money. Where should I start?
Ben, by email
“Maybe with some carrots, onions, cucumber or beetroot – anything Ben has an excess of,” says Connor Wilson, head chef at The Kirkstyle Inn in Slaggyford, Northumberland. “Fermentation is a great way of preserving produce, but it won’t give new life to things that are past their best.”

That said, tired-looking carrots would be perfect for Olia Hercules’ go-to for newbie fermenters: “If they look dehydrated but without any rotting, they’re amazing to ferment,” says the author of Strong Roots. “The sugars concentrate and you get this bright carrot flavour.” Start by slicing carrots (“the thinner or smaller the pieces, the quicker they’ll ferment”), then make a brine by mixing 35g rock or sea salt (“don’t use table salt”) with a litre of water (“tap is fine, filtered is better”), and making sure the salt dissolves. You can then go as fancy or simple as you like: “Drop in some peppercorns, allspice berries, coriander seeds, fennel seeds or anything else you think might go, bring the brine mix up to a simmer, then take off the heat and leave to infuse and cool to room temperature.” Pop the sliced carrots in a sterilised jar, then fill with the brine, making sure the veg are fully submerged: “You don’t want any sticking out and meeting the air, because that’s when bad bacteria can attach.” Hercules then leaves the sealed jar(s) for a few days until signs of fermentation emerge – “The brine will turn opaque, and you’ll see some bubbles” – then taste, taste, taste: “Once the carrots are nice and sour, stick the jar in the fridge.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: October 21, 2025, 12:00 pm

Fly around or make out with your crush: how to start lucid dreaming

We asked experts to share tips on how to take control of dreams once you realize you’re in it

Usually, we don’t have much say in what we dream about. Our brains churn up images, and we sit back and watch. But it’s possible to take control. You can turn the monster chasing you into a mouse, or fly through the sky like a bird. All it takes is realizing you’re in a dream, mid-dream – otherwise known as lucid dreaming.

Lots of people want to lucid dream. There are online communities devoted to sharing tips and tricks, like the subreddit r/LucidDreaming, which has about 98,000 weekly visitors. Recent discussion topics include “If flying is hard, try giving yourself a Green Lantern ring,” and “Has anyone gone to space in [a lucid dream]?”

Published: October 20, 2025, 4:00 pm

The best dehumidifiers: 14 favourites to beat damp and cut bills, tested

Fed up with condensation, mould and musty smells? A dehumidifier could help – plus they’re a cheaper way to dry laundry compared with tumble dryers

• The best electric blankets and heated throws, tested by our expert

You don’t have to live in the American deep south to feel the effects of humidity. At home, just breathing makes the air more humid, let alone cooking or showering.

And when it gets too humid, it’s bad for our health as well as our homes. In fact, the two are connected: humidity lets mould and dust mites flourish – and they, in turn, can trigger asthma and allergies.

Best dehumidifier overall:
Ebac 4650e

Best budget dehumidifier:
VonHaus smart dehumidifier with laundry mode

Published: October 21, 2025, 2:42 pm

Garmin Fenix 8 Pro review: built-in LTE and satellite for phone-free messaging

Top adventure watch upgraded with 4G calls, messages, live tracking, satellite texts and SOS for going off the grid

The latest update to Garmin’s class-leading Fenix adventure watch adds something that could save your life: phone-free communications and emergency messaging on 4G or via satellite.

The Fenix 8 Pro takes the already fantastic Fenix 8 and adds in the new cellular tech, plus the option of a cutting-edge microLED screen in a special edition of the watch. It is Garmin’s top model and designed to be the only tool you need to more-or-less go anywhere and track anything.

Published: October 21, 2025, 6:00 am

Feel like your mind and body are separate? Here’s how life changes when we become whole

When I was younger, I valued my body only for what it could do for me. A quick jog was enough to make me see where I’d been going wrong

I have just got back from a run. I am shocked to write those words. I think it might have been a decade since my last. But I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my physical health. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to be thinner. I’ve also run to cure my anxiety (and written about it – I was just running away from the anxiety, not addressing it). At other times, I ran because I wanted to get better at running. This was what it meant to me then to build a better life.

Published: October 20, 2025, 10:00 am

I’m still globetrotting at 76. New people and new places are what keep me alive

Getting older hasn’t dimmed my love of travel. In my 70s, it’s still all about my next trip, be it a cruise, Goa … or a naturist resort in Crete

I may be 76, but slowing down, or retirement, couldn’t be further from my mind. True, I don’t have a hefty pension or a partner to while away the rest of my days with, but my love of travelling is as passionate as it has always been.

I love scaring myself stupid trying new experiences, and if a friend or daughter is unavailable I’ll go alone. Solo travel is far better than sitting at home looking back instead of forward.

Published: October 20, 2025, 6:00 am

Georgina Hayden’s recipe for parmesan and sage jacket potato gnocchi | Quick and easy

It’s easy to forget how simple and frugal homemade gnocchi can be, especially when you make them from an already cooked batch of baked spuds – delicious

If I’m going to the effort of making jacket potatoes (and by effort I mean putting them in the oven for an hour), I will almost always pop in a few extra spuds to make gnocchi for a later meal. The difference between shop-bought and homemade gnocchi is vast, especially the vac-packed, long-life kind, which are dense and can be heavy. Freshly made gnocchi, with fluffy baked potatoes, however, are light as air, pillowy and silky. If that sounds intimidating, let me reassure you that this recipe is really forgiving, and much easier than making fresh sheet pasta. I love them served simply, as here, with a slightly nutty sage butter and lots of parmesan. The simple sauce lets those gnocchi sing.

Published: October 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘Smash, grab, melt it down’: how material value likely motivated the Louvre heist

Experts say thieves would struggle to find a buyer if the stolen goods remained intact

To break into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grab eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanish into the Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

Published: October 20, 2025, 3:25 pm

Dealing with ‘Andrew problem’ could help ease William’s accession to the throne

King Charles cannot have been unaware that the future king would not relish having to deal with his uncle

The Prince of Wales, who Buckingham Palace has said was “consulted” before Prince Andrew’s dramatic statement, must have felt some relief at his uncle agreeing to relinquish use of his titles and honours.

At some point William will become king. His uncle, 12 years younger than King Charles, may well be watching when he takes his coronation oath. The indications are, however, Andrew may be watching from afar.

Published: October 20, 2025, 2:00 pm

Dim days, bright nights: a hidden cruelty of Ice detention

Tens of thousands of people held across the US amid Trump’s immigration crackdown could face an insidious hazard: broken internal clocks

At the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, about 1,500 people in immigration detention await their day in court. Most are held for months, living not by the rising and setting sun but under the perpetual twilight of fluorescent lights.

“We couldn’t tell if it was day or night,” said one former detainee who spent 10 months at the facility and whom the Guardian is not naming for fear of retaliation from US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the Geo Group, the private company that operates the detention center. “The lights were on 24/7. We maybe saw the sun twice a week.” Windows were coated in dark paint, and people made eye masks with their socks, he recalled.

Published: October 20, 2025, 11:00 am

Cow worship and dogs on the lookout: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: October 21, 2025, 11:42 am