A night to remember: does everyone really prefer live music to sex?

Seven out of 10 people surveyed by Live Nation would pick a concert over sex. Given our dating and ticketing hellscapes it is interesting to consider which is the more reliable pleasure

Let’s say you find yourself with an evening free. You’re feeling refreshed, open to experience, and eager to shake things up a bit from your usual post-work routine of slump-and-scroll. The world is your oyster! Would you rather a) go to a gig or b) have sex? The answer, as is so often the case with these “would you rather” questions, is obviously: “It depends.” Thinking adults may reasonably inquire: what is the gig? Who is the sex with? Is it likely to be good?

Few would opt for a Limp Bizkit/Slipknot/Korn triple bill if one enchanted evening with Jonathan Bailey was the alternative. But adjust either end of the equation, and it becomes less clearcut. For the 40,000 people asked this question by gig promoter Live Nation, however, no such clarification was offered – and the response came out unambiguously and overwhelmingly in favour of gigs.

Published: November 13, 2025, 6:00 am

The supercar that shook the world: Enzo Ferrari’s life in the fast lane – in pictures

The cars, the races, the wins and the fans: Taschen’s new Ferrari book – full of unseen photographs, sketches and documents – celebrates a high-speed icon

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 am

You be the judge: should my boyfriend leave home comforts behind when we travel abroad?

Jenna says Dave is not embracing the ‘living abroad’ spirit while living in Barcelona, while Dave wants to feel at home. Which one of them is being a pain in Spain?
• Take part in the Guardian’s You be the judge live event
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Dave needs to embrace new experiences, instead of always clinging on to what he knows

We are abroad for six months a year, so I like to take familiar things. Jenna’s just being a snob

Published: November 13, 2025, 8:00 am

‘Fashion has the power to create jobs, preserve culture and transform lives’: is Lagos the world’s most exciting fashion week?

Since its inception 15 years ago, the Nigerian event has established itself on the international fashion calendar. Platforming sustainability and social issues, and showcasing local talent, it’s doing things a little differently

Inside a marquee in the grounds of Lagos’s five-star Federal Palace hotel and casino, models wearing sharply tailored suits and flowing woven pieces in earthy tones walk down the catwalk to the beats of Yoruba talking drums, an ancestral instrument that can mimic the sound of speech. The show, presenting the latest collection from the brand Emmy Kasbit – known for transforming handwoven Akwete fabric into modern silhouettes – marked the official start of 2025’s Lagos fashion week, which took place in the former Nigerian capital last month.

From a dedicated catwalk space featuring more than 70 designers, to the American singer Ciara closing one of the shows wearing a gele – a traditional Nigerian head wrap – the showcase, which takes place every October, has come a long way from its early days of power cuts and a lack of interest from industry gatekeepers.

Published: November 13, 2025, 6:00 am

‘She was extremely petrified’: the shocking drama about one woman’s six-year ordeal in an Iranian jail

When dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was imprisoned, her husband went on hunger strike – to force Britain to act. Narges Rashidi and Joseph Fiennes reveal how they brought their nightmare to the small screen

When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Iran in 2016, it wasn’t immediately obvious what had happened – but within 100 days, we had the contours of the story. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, held a press conference. He had amassed 780,000 signatures on a petition for her release, and delivered a letter urging the same thing to former PM David Cameron. This, it transpired much later, was after murky meetings with the Foreign Office in which civil servants insisted that the best thing, both for Nazanin’s release and the safety of her parents and brother in Iran, was to lay low and let diplomacy take its course.

“It was state hostage-taking,” says Joseph Fiennes, who plays Richard Ratcliffe in the BBC’s four-part drama Prisoner 951. “It clearly goes on, and innocent people and families are completely disrupted and tarred for life. And now I’ve told this story, I look at anyone that might be accused of something, and I don’t quite believe it.”

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:00 am

The rapid rise of renters in their 60s: ‘I hate the idea of house-sharing – but I have no choice’

It is often assumed that people of retirement age will no longer have housing costs to cover. But for a significant and growing group, this is far from the case

Now that she is retired, Deborah Herring’s days are hers to fill – usually with leisurely walks, museums and trips to the theatre. But she still manages to spare a thought for her ex-colleagues at the private boarding school where she taught religious studies for 14 years. “In their nice, expensive Oxfordshire village, I think they’d be frankly horrified about my situation,” she says with a laugh.

Horrified that a few weeks ago she came home to find two strangers asleep on her sofa; horrified that she has to put up with an overflowing litter tray belonging to a cat that isn’t hers; above all, horrified that at the age of 65, she is about to leave a two-bedroom flatshare to move into a four-bedroom one where she will “probably be living with people whose combined age is less than my own”.

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:00 am

US government reopens after shutdown with House to vote on Epstein files next week – politics live

Even if bill passes the House, it will still need to get through the Senate before files can be released

Democrats appear more enthusiastic than Republicans about voting in next year’s congressional elections following the party’s victories in recent state and local contests, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, which showed Republican President Donald Trump’s approval steady at 40%.

The six-day poll, which closed on Wednesday, showed 44% of registered voters who called themselves Democrats said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the November 3, 2026, elections, compared with 26% of Republicans who said the same. Some 79% of Democrats said they would regret it if they didn’t vote in the election, compared to 68% of Republicans.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:12 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

Newly released emails reveal Epstein kept close eye on Trump

Documents show staff kept Epstein informed of Trump’s air travel – and Epstein kept up with news about former friend

A tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday revealed that Jeffrey Epstein’s staff kept him apprised of Donald Trump’s air travel as it related to his own transportation – and that the late sex trafficker kept up with news about his former friend years after their relationship soured.

This disclosure of about 20,000 pages from Republican members of the committee related to Epstein comes as Trump continues to battle with the political fallout related to their past friendship – and his justice department’s failure to release documents as he had long promised on the campaign trail.

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:00 am

Latest Epstein emails cast further doubt on Andrew’s claim of cutting ties

Messages sent months after former prince said he ended relations and also appear to confirm Virginia Giuffre photo

Newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails have cast further doubt on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s account of when he cut ties with the child sex offender and his denials about meeting his accuser Virginia Giuffre.

In March 2011, four months after he later claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein, the former prince told him and the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell: “I can’t take any more of this,” in response to allegations put to him by the Mail on Sunday.

Published: November 13, 2025, 9:15 am

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 an 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 conduct and had spent hours with one of the disgraced financier’s victims.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:54 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

World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds

Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating

The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found.

Despite their promises, governments’ new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.

Published: November 13, 2025, 12:01 am

‘Whatever it takes’: Starbucks workers launch US strike and call for boycott

Unfair labor practice strike on ‘red cup day’ in over 25 cities comes amid stagnant negotiations with coffee chain

Hundreds of Starbucks workers are set to strike in more than 25 cities across the US today amid stagnant negotiations with the world’s largest coffee chain over a first union contract.

On the company’s annual “red cup day”, hailing the start of the lucrative holiday season, Starbucks Workers United is launching an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike, with rallies planned in locations including New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Columbus, Ohio; and Anaheim, California.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

US ‘disappointed’ that Rolls-Royce will build UK’s first small modular reactors

As Keir Starmer announces SMRs to be built in Wales, US ambassador says Britain should choose ‘a different path’

Keir Starmer has announced that the UK’s first small modular nuclear reactors will be built in north Wales – but immediately faced a backlash from Donald Trump’s administration after it pushed for a US manufacturer to be chosen.

Wylfa on the island of Anglesey, or Ynys Môn, will be home to three small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built by British manufacturer Rolls-Royce SMR. The government said it will invest £2.5bn.

Published: November 13, 2025, 12:01 am

Mexico takes action to combat sexual abuse after president publicly groped

Secretary for women presents plan, including prison sentences, after Claudia Sheinbaum was groped on street

The shocking public groping of Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has prompted rapid political action to tackle sexual abuse, as well as public debate on how best to address the problem, which is widespread across the country.

Citlalli Hernández, Mexico’s secretary for women, presented a presidential plan to confront the issue, which would include actions such as ensuring prison sentences for sexual abuse across Mexico, encouraging women to report incidents, and training prosecutors and other officials on how to handle the matter.

Published: November 13, 2025, 10:00 am

James Van Der Beek to sell Dawson’s Creek ‘treasures’ to pay for cancer treatment

Actor, 48, who revealed colorectal cancer diagnosis last year, to also auction memorabilia from Varsity Blues

Actor James Van Der Beek will once again be selling collector’s items from some of his beloved films and TV shows, including Dawson’s Creek, to help pay for his treatment for colorectal cancer.

“I’ve been storing these treasures for years, waiting for the right time to do something with them, and with all of the recent unexpected twists and turns life has presented recently, it’s clear that the time is now,” Van Der Beek told People.

The collection, which includes an outfit he wore in the Dawson’s Creek pilot, and a hat featured in the 1999 film Varsity Blues, will be auctioned at Propstore’s annual Winter Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, which runs from 5 December to 7 December.

Published: November 13, 2025, 2:53 am

Trump news at a glance: new batch of Epstein emails suggest Donald Trump ‘knew about the girls’

Release of messages by Democrats on House oversight committee likely to add to pressure on White House to release Epstein files – key US politics stories from 12 November 2025 at a glance

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 Epstein’s 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, which reportedly detail the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.

Published: November 13, 2025, 2:10 am

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

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

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

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

‘MigraWatch’ trainings to ‘Whistlemania’ events: Chicagoans fight back against ICE raids

Residents are organizing in response to raids across the city amid Trump’s wide-ranging ‘operation midway blitz’

Anaís Robles didn’t expect to get teargassed. The co-owner of Colibrí Cafe, the coffee shop that opened this year in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood, saw commotion outside in mid October and ran to see what happened.

Robles saw federal agents donning masks and decided to step back, she was half a block away when the tear gas canisters hit. “People were just in the streets, so to clear out the area, they teargas all of us, and like, multiple teargas [cannisters],” she said.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

‘What, no ziti now?’: US pasta lovers fear Trump tariffs will cause shortage

A potential 107% tariff on Italian pasta imports could cause companies to withdraw from US market – and for US producers to raise their prices

On Monday night, Kelly planned to make dinner and spend the night inside with her family. Instead, she told her husband to put the kids to bed so she could get in the car, drive to Wegman’s and “panic buy” $100 worth of Rummo pasta.

Kelly, a 42-year-old product manager who lives outside Philadelphia, has celiac disease, which means that eating gluten triggers an immune response that leads to digestive issues. She saw fellow gluten-free people on Reddit and TikTok freaking out over the fact that the US is mulling a 107% tariff on Italian pasta imports. According to the Wall Street Journal, the hike could lead to those companies withdrawing from the US market as early as January.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

‘You get more attention than you would choose’: how an unusual name can shape your life – for better or worse

From Peach to Riot to Aquaman, anything goes now when it comes to kids’ names. There are even companies to help you pick one …

“I’m lucky I’m not a lawyer or an accountant or something professional,” says Peach Martine, a 23-year-old musician whose Instagram feed is a kaleidoscope of colourful faux fur and leopard-print outfits. “People sometimes have trouble taking my name seriously.” First, there are the jokey comments (“Is your sister named Papaya?”) and then the assumption that she must be “a bit silly”. And don’t get her started on going to Starbucks. “They always put Paige on the cup!”

Martine wouldn’t dream of changing her first name though. She likes the fact that she has an unusual name. As a singer, she says, it has helped her to be more recognisable. If she had children, she would consider naming them something unique too.

Published: November 13, 2025, 10:00 am

Did Hitler really have a ‘micropenis’? The dubious documentary analysing the dictator’s DNA

Was the wartime chant about his solitary testicle correct? Did he have Jewish ancestry? New documentary Hitler’s DNA is trying to answer these, and more contentious, questions – but should it have gone there at all?

If a TV programme sets about sequencing the genome of Adolf Hitler – the person in modern history who comes closest to a universally agreed-upon personification of evil – there are at the very least two questions you want the producers to ask themselves. First: is it possible? And second, the Jurassic Park question: just because scientists can, should they?

Channel 4’s two-part documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator is not the first time the self-consciously edgy British broadcaster has gone there. In 2014’s Dead Famous DNA, it inadvertently answered both these questions in the negative. Having first cast aside ethical integrity by paying Holocaust denier David Irving £3,000 for a lock of hair purporting to belong to Adolf Hitler, the programme’s makers then discovered it not to be Hitler’s and thus useless for DNA sequencing.

Published: November 13, 2025, 9:33 am

The Beast in Me review – Claire Danes’s astonishing new thriller is instant top–tier TV

This taut psychological two-hander between Danes and Matthew Rhys will surely win awards. You cannot look away

It comes as a great surprise to learn that The Beast in Me is its creator, writer and executive producer Gabe Rotter’s first major work for the screen. Because it is, simply put, so very, very good. Even without two astonishing performances from the lead actors – Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys – the script, the sheer style and confidence of it all, would be things of beauty. But add what that pair are doing, and this clever, taut eight-part psychological thriller moves seamlessly into top-tier television.

Danes plays Aggie Wiggs (Rotter may still have some work to do honing his naming skills), a writer who made her name with a book about her troubled relationship with her father. She is currently stuck on her next book, about the friendship between supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her fellow judge but polar political opposite Antonin Scalia, not least because she is grieving the eight-year-old son she and her now ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales) lost to a drunk driver four years earlier. The driver, a young man called Teddy, who lives locally and frequent sightings of whom negate any chance of peace for Aggie, managed to delay a breathalyser test at the time and avoid being charged with the boy’s death. Aggie lives alone with her rage and grief in the large, empty house that was supposed to overflow with family.

Published: November 13, 2025, 8:01 am

Amid Japan’s surge in bear attacks, a torrent of AI-generated videos is adding to anxiety

Videos show schoolgirls fighting off animals, while others show people feeding bears, with some so realistic that users struggled to distinguish between fact and fiction

If a record number of fatal bear attacks wasn’t terrifying enough, experts say a torrent of AI-generated videos in Japan purporting to show people in close encounters with the animals is only adding to public anxiety – and could put people at greater risk.

While headlines about real attacks and disruption appear on a regular basis, monitors of online content are warning social media users not to be taken in by realistic videos on platforms such as TikTok of the animals attacking or interacting with humans.

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:37 am

Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back

The Guardian has no billionaire or corporate owner: funded by readers, our fierce independence is guaranteed

• If you are able, please make a contribution to our year-end appeal

The richest man on earth owns X.

The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

Food insecurity leaves long-term scars. The Snap cuts are no exception | Priya Fielding-Singh

Even after Snap benefits return, damage will have been done: scarcity leaves trauma in its wake

When I was 13, a pair of foster siblings, Carla and Rodrigo, came to live with my family. For the two of them, the move brought a period of much-needed stability – and, for the very first time, reliable access to food.

Yet scarcity had already left its mark.

Priya Fielding-Singh is the director of policy and programs at the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and the author of How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

Sicily deserves better than the looming prospect of a giant bridge that will never get built | Jamie Mackay

Troubled waters over the world’s longest suspension bridge are no surprise. The Italian government should be funding public services

A dozen or so times each day, as Italy’s southbound Intercity rail service arrives in the Calabrian town of Villa San Giovanni, the journey comes to a dramatic halt. The train is decoupled from its tracks, carefully loaded on to the deck of a ferry, and secured in place. The entire cargo then eases out into the Strait of Messina en route to Sicily. Invariably, this 25-minute crossing becomes an impromptu community moment. Passengers abandon their carriages, flocking to the ship’s top-deck snack bar to share freshly fried arancini, trade anecdotes, and admire the vista over Mount Etna’s distant peak, before returning to continue their journey by rail.

For tourists and itinerant visitors like myself, the ferry crossing is a charming novelty. For local people, however, it has long been a defining part of their identity. In his 1941 novel, Conversations in Sicily, the writer Elio Vittorini describes a group of fruit pickers congregating on the boat’s deck, feasting on large chunks of local cheese and enjoying the view. As the narrator joins them, he is transported to “being a boy; feeling the wind devouring the sea”, while gazing out at “the ruins along the two coasts”, separated, poetically, across the water.

Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:00 am

How should we tackle Reform and the rise of the far right? Our Gen Z panel has some ideas

The answer to extremism lies in real alternatives that improve peoples’ lives – not in tired platitudes or managed decline

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 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

Should I care what Sarah Jessica Parker thinks about books? | Emma Brockes

She swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but I’m running out of patience with celebrity influence in publishing

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

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.

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, 6:25 pm

Anthony Joshua set to face Jake Paul in December heavyweight bout

• Joshua and Paul finalizing December bout

• Fight expected in Miami on 19 or 26 December

• Netflix to announce matchup on Monday

Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul are finalizing a deal to meet in a heavyweight fight in Miami this December, sources told the Guardian, with Netflix preparing to announce the bout on Monday. A source with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal is done and that the fight will take place on either 19 or 26 December.

Paul had originally been scheduled to fight Gervonta Davis on 14 November at the Kaseya Center, but the event was cancelled after Davis was removed from the card amid domestic violence allegations. Davis’s former partner, Courtney Rossel, filed a civil lawsuit in Miami-Dade County accusing the lightweight champion of battery, aggravated battery, false imprisonment, kidnapping and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Miami Gardens police confirmed they are investigating the alleged incident, which Rossel says occurred at the strip club where she works. She was granted a restraining order shortly afterwards.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:14 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

Sinner into last four of ATP Finals after straight-sets win over Zverev – as it happened

• Sinner beats Zverev 6-4, 6-3 to thrill home fans in Turin

• German must beat Auger-Aliassime to make the semis

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, 10:15 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

Putin opponents criticise EU ban on multi-entry visas for Russians

Restrictions for entry to Schengen zone announced last Friday because of sabotage attacks linked to Russia

Russian opposition figures have reacted with anger and dismay to a decision by the European Union to introduce a ban on multi-entry visas to the Schengen zone for Russian citizens, announced in recent days.

“Starting a war and expecting to move freely in Europe is hard to justify,” said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, when announcing the decision last Friday. She added that the tightened rules were a response to Russian drone incursions into European airspace and sabotage attacks linked to Russia.

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:25 am

Fatal clash on Thai-Cambodia border after Trump-brokered peace deal breaks down

The truce broke down this week after a Thai soldier lost a leg to a landmine blast, prompting Thailand’s PM to say the peace deal was ‘now over’

One person has been killed by gunfire along the Thai-Cambodia border as conflict heats up between the two nations days after a Trump-backed ceasefire agreement has broken down.

Fighting erupted between Thai and Cambodian troops over five days in July, with 43 people killed and 300,000 displaced in the worst fighting along the border in a decade. Donald Trump oversaw the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two nations in Malaysia this October, after the US president previously threatened to withhold trade privileges from the two countries unless they stopped fighting.

Published: November 13, 2025, 4:03 am

EU investigates Google over ‘demoting’ commercial content from news media

Officials say effective invisibilty in search results could be leading to unfair ‘loss of revenue’

The EU has launched an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been “demoting” commercial content from news media sites.

The bloc’s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was effectively no longer visible in search results.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:09 am

Ex-top aide to Newsom indicted over scheme to steal money from ex-US health secretary

Dana Williamson among five co-conspirators in scheme to steal more than $225,000 from Xavier Becerra’s campaign

A former top aide to California governor Gavin Newsom has been arrested over federal charges alleging her involvement in a scheme to steal campaign money from Xavier Becerra, the former US health secretary.

Dana Williamson was indicted on 23 counts that include bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the US, and was scheduled to make her first court appearance Wednesday in Sacramento. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:18 pm

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

High blood pressure rates in children nearly doubled in 20 years, global review finds

Poor diet, inactivity and obesity believed to have caused hypertension for millions of under-19s around the world

The rate of children and teenagers living with high blood pressure globally has nearly doubled because of a toxic combination of unhealthy diets, mass inactivity and soaring levels of obesity, according to the largest review of its kind.

Experts said 114 million children who have developed hypertension even before reaching adulthood were facing potentially deadly and lifelong harm, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and a myriad of serious health complications.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:30 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 would 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

‘I’d do it all again,’ says Dutch minister at heart of car chip standoff with China

Exclusive: Vincent Karremans says row with Beijing that threatened global car production is ‘wake-up call’ to west

A bitter battle over the future of a Chinese-owned chipmaker in the Netherlands that threatened to cripple the global car industry is a “wake-up call to Europe and the west”, the minister at the heart of the row has warned.

The six-week standoff between the EU and Beijing over Nexperia and its vital supplies of automotive semiconductors has served up a sobering lesson to world leaders over their dependency on China, says Vincent Karremans.

Published: November 13, 2025, 8:00 am

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

‘The car belongs in Berlin’: city backpedaling on bike-friendly policies, critics say

Car-critical measures have been slashed since the conservative CDU came into power in 2023, triggering protests and dividing communities

In the rubble left by the second world war, Berlin seized a zero-hour opportunity to remake itself with a brave new vision of mobility, its citizens zooming down broad avenues and autobahns in roaring German-engineered cars.

Tramlines, particularly in the capitalist west of the divided city, were ripped out to make way for motorists, and bicycles were muscled out of the main traffic arteries. The autogerechte Stadt (car-friendly city) was born.

Published: November 13, 2025, 5:00 am

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

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

Chinese scientist charged with smuggling pathogen into US to be deported

Yunqing Jian, temporary researcher at University of Michigan, was studying organism harmful to some crops

A Chinese scientist charged in Michigan with smuggling biological materials pleaded guilty on Wednesday, but was given no additional time in jail beyond the five months she already spent in custody.

Yunqing Jian, who was a temporary researcher at a University of Michigan lab, will be released and quickly deported. A judge called it a “very strange” case involving an “incredibly accomplished researcher”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:32 pm

Anthropic announces $50bn plan for datacenter construction in US

AI startup behind Claude chatbot working with London-based Fluidstack on building vast new computing facilities

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50bn investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new datacenters in Texas and New York.

“We’re getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren’t possible before,” Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said in a press release.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:29 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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s unexpected joy’: the guerrilla mosaic artists adding colour to potholes, benches and bomb craters

From Southampton to Sarajevo, urban mosaicists are transforming city spaces and bringing communities together – one tile at a time

Our cities are full of grey tower blocks built for efficiency rather than aesthetics. Public benches are made of cheap concrete, pavements are falling apart, old structures are left derelict. Amid this backdrop of unloved, muted ugliness, a new wave of guerrilla mosaicists are enlivening their cities with beautiful, colourful designs.

These artists rarely get official sign-off for their work. The legality of their art can be murky, with one of the medium’s more prolific artists, Will Rosie, calling it “Permission-vague street art” (His book is aptly named Mr Mosaic: Unarrestable). Rosie installs Mr Men and other cartoon-inspired mosaics around Southampton, where he lives. He encourages volunteers to assist him with projects to make the art form more accessible. “People are bored and missing community,” the 52-year-old youth worker says. “I want to make the city a better place, and people can see that. And they love that I’m doing it without permission because it’s like: ‘Stick it to the man, you ain’t got no power over me, coppers!’”

Published: November 13, 2025, 8:00 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

Park Avenue review – Fiona Shaw is fearless in upmarket New York mother-daughter relationship drama

Having left her husband, Shaw’s daughter moves in with her at the family’s Manhattan apartment and soon tensions arise – wry, sweet, melancholic but somewhat insubstantial

Fiona Shaw finds some tremendous form in this upmarket dramedy of mother-daughter tension and first-world problems, and Katherine Waterston is (as ever) really good. There’s plenty of amusement and wry, sophisticated sadness here, though co-writer and director Gaby Dellal has confected what is, in the end, a pretty middleweight movie.

Shaw plays Kit, an elegant and wealthy widow living in a handsome apartment on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, known for her witty disdain for those less stylish than herself and about to publish a memoir of life with her late husband, a collector of Chinese art. Out of the blue her grown up daughter Charlotte (Waterston) appears, having run out on her abusive rancher husband; she intends to stay for a while with her mother in her childhood Park Avenue home while she figures things out.

Published: November 13, 2025, 11:00 am

Left-Handed Girl review – striking Taiwanese family drama is a real marvel

Shih-Ching Tsou and frequent collaborator Anora’s Oscar-winning auteur Sean Baker have created an affecting and original film of both humour and pathos

There are few things in a culture as ridiculous and potent as its superstitions. Left-Handed Girl’s I-Jing, a sweet five-year-old who has just moved back to Taipei with her mom and older sister, gets literal firsthand experience when her grandpa admonishes her for using her left hand for everything – it’s not natural; it’s the devil at work, he says.

When I-Jing stares at her appendage with dismay, so begins a new relationship between her and her devil hand as she navigates city life. Shot entirely with iPhones, debut solo director and co-writer Shih-Ching Tsou (the other co-writer is Tsou’s frequent collaborator, Anora’s Sean Baker) summons the frenetic energy and sensory experience of Taipei. There are bright red Chinese characters overtaking the glass windows of a pawn shop; the pleasant melody of trash-collecting trucks; the easy ping-pong of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against grimy buildings that can nearly make you smell the specific essence of a bustling, wetter city. It’s not so much a love letter from a fan as it is a devotional to a place known by heart. Tsou pairs the kaleidoscopic fragments of the city with the splinters of imperfect people – poignantly and tenderly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and delivering a triumph of a film.

Published: November 13, 2025, 10:02 am

City on Fire review – Tarantino-inspiring Hong Kong thriller burns with grit and moral tension

Ringo Lam’s 1987 cop yarn starring a magnetic Chow Yun-fat delivers the violent realism and emotional heft that shaped Reservoir Dogs’ bloody caper

Ringo Lam’s Hong Kong cop thriller gained a new level of recognition in the west when Quentin Tarantino admitted he’d borrowed heavily from its plot for his own Reservoir Dogs. In truth, apart from the bare bones of the plot (culminating in that famous Mexican standoff), there’s little comparison. No wisecracking about Madonna lyrics or torture scenes set to 70s soft rock here; instead, you get gritty, often bloody violence in the bustling streets and night markets of Hong Kong (which look splendid in this new restoration), and an effective tale of cops, robbers and divided loyalty. (And to be fair, Lam in turn was inspired by 1970s Indian thriller Gaddaar.)

You also get Chow Yun-fat in his prime, as an undercover police officer charged with infiltrating a gang of jewel thieves. Unlike Reservoir Dogs, though, we know he’s a cop from the outset, and the story contrasts his own force’s infighting and inhumanity with the relative honour and camaraderie he finds among the criminals – that even includes the one who killed his colleague (Danny Lee). In his undercover persona Chow is cool and clownish, but he also effectively conveys the toll and turmoil of his double identity. Chow’s work in John Woo’s operatically flashy action movies such as A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled put this era of late-80s and early-90s Hong Kong cinema on the global map, but this is a more brutal and realistic kind of movie, full of grubby locations, tough choices and sudden deaths as well as some thrilling foot chases and shootouts.

Published: November 13, 2025, 9:00 am

Adulthood review – Alex Winter’s nastily comic crime noir as family intrigue over division of assets

Skeletons rattle and good people turn bad in ruthless tale that is very well played but not quite lethal enough

A bit of a throwback to the kind of noir-tinged black-comedy-dramas of yore where good people break very bad, this quietly ruthless film sticks to the template but throws in some new-fangled touches. It also draws on the talents of a cracking roster of supporting players, who add a substantial amount of texture and colour to the proceedings, not least among them the film’s own director Alex Winter, best known for playing Bill opposite Keanu Reeves’ Ted. In a peripheral but significant role, Winter plays a sad-sack stoner, the kind of tragic loser Bill might have grown up to be if he and Ted had never encountered George Carlin and his most excellent time machine.

That said, something feels a bit undercooked here, perhaps due to Winter’s direction or Michael MB Galvin’s script, which seems to lack a little torque in the last turns of the screw. The set-up is simple enough, a quite relatable for anyone who has an ageing parent and shiftless siblings. Meg (Kaya Scodelario) has outsourced the care of her widowed mother Judy (Ingunn Omholt) to home-help Grace (Billie Lourd, gloriously trashy) while Meg raises her kids and tries to get her business selling stuff on Facebook up and running. When Judy has a stroke, Meg’s wannabe screenwriter brother Noah (Josh Gad) arrives in town and the two siblings must prepare for their parent’s death and the division of assets.

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 am

The Silver Book by Olivia Laing review – a thin line of beauty

The world of 1970s Italian cinema is the glossy backdrop for an elegantly wrought but shallow novel

“Ugliness,” noted Pier Paolo Pasolini, “is never completely depressing or repulsive. It contains within it an allegory of hunger and pain, its history is our history, the history of Fascism … It is tragic, but immediate, and for this reason, full of life.” For Pasolini, ugliness was its own kind of truth, such that Rome could lay no claim to being the most beautiful city in the world “if it were not, at the same time, the ugliest”. For some, though, that truth risked becoming “unseeable”. The gaze of the touristic voyeur, said Pasolini, skimmed over slums for the poor “filled with illness, violence, crime, and prostitution”, “convinced of the extraneousness and untimeliness of this sub-proletarian, underdeveloped world”.

Olivia Laing’s second novel, The Silver Book, is a work preoccupied with beauty. Set in the world of Italian cinema in 1974, the book overflows with extravagant film sets, feasts, dazzling costumes. Even Pasolini himself, cruising around in his Alfa Romeo, oozes charisma and allure. But as Pasolini made clear, beauty without its opposite can only ever be incomplete.

Published: November 13, 2025, 9:00 am

King Sorrow by Joe Hill review – dragon-fired horror epic is a tour de force

This sprawling tale of college kids who summon evil with lifelong consequences is a fantastic read

Six oddball but doughty kids fall into the path of a vast and terrible supernatural evil which has come into our world from the outer limits of darkness. They must spend their lifetimes battling it, facing horror after horror in the process.

This is the plot, roughly, of Stephen King’s novel It (his best; no arguments). It is also the plot, roughly, of King’s son Joe Hill’s new horror doorstopper, in which six friends summon the ancient, infinitely malicious dragon King Sorrow from the Long Dark to help them defeat some baddies. Needless to say, their supernatural ritual backfires.

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 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

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

Swear, self-promote and pretend you’re on a first date: a celebrities’ guide to Letterboxd’s Four Favourites

From Kristen Stewart to Willem Dafoe, everyone is telling the site their top four movies – but here are unwritten rules that will make sure you stand out

Once a humble app feature, Letterboxd’s Four Favourites has mutated into our era’s cinematic confession booth. Users choose (and can endlessly reshuffle) their top four films on their profile, while clips of celebrities and civilians alike performing the same ritual play out to Letterboxd’s 2.4 million Instagram followers.

It’s now a social-media genre of its own: the red carpet backdrop, the jaunty music, the snappy edits, the cheerful pings as posters slide into place. Each clip is a perfect little slice of fame, fandom and carefully choreographed spontaneity. And yet, beneath the surface chaos, there are rules. Unwritten (until now), but as binding as an Oscars embargo. So if you ever find yourself ambushed by the Letterboxd camera, here’s how to put in a convincing performance.

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 am

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

‘A girl of genius’: archives unsealed of Amy Levy, queer Jewish writer admired by Oscar Wilde

Levy’s work was ‘ahead of her time’ and speaks to current debate around feminism, LGBTQ+ literature and Jewish identity, say researchers

For one of Victorian literature’s most distinctive voices, who was once hailed as a genius by Oscar Wilde, very little has been known about Amy Levy for more than a century.

But audiences will now have the opportunity to become more deeply acquainted with a writer whose pioneering work explored women’s independence, Jewish identity and same-sex desire.

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 am

Hilary Mantel story imagining Margaret Thatcher’s assassination to be staged in Liverpool

Short story set in 1983, and published a year after the former prime minister’s death, considers ‘what happens when people feel they don’t have a voice’ says director John Young

Hilary Mantel’s controversial story imagining the murder of Margaret Thatcher in the summer of 1983 is to be staged next year in Liverpool.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983 was published in the Guardian in 2014 and gave the title to Mantel’s collection of short stories that year. In the tale, a woman opens the front door of her flat in a “genteel corner” of Windsor expecting a plumber yet finds a gunman entering. He is intent on using her home’s vantage point to take aim at the then prime minister, who is having an eye operation at a nearby private hospital.

Published: November 13, 2025, 7:00 am

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

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

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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

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

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

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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

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

‘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

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