‘Harder work than almost any album we ever did’: Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here turns 50

As the classic album hits 50, Nick Mason talks about the often difficult process of making it and how it has since fit into their larger catalogue

By almost every measure, from commercial reward to creative reach, Pink Floyd scaled its peak on Dark Side of the Moon. But, when I asked drummer Nick Mason how he would rank the album in their catalogue, he slotted it below the set that came next, Wish You Were Here. Speaking of Dark Side, he said, “the idea of it is almost more attractive than the individual songs on it. I feel slightly the same about Sgt. Pepper. It’s an amazing album that taught us a hell of a lot, but the individual parts are not quite as exciting, or as good, as some of the other Beatles’ albums.”

By contrast, he says of Wish You Were Here, “there’s something in the general atmosphere it generates – the space of it, the air around it, that’s really special,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons I view it so affectionately.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 3:07 pm

The Paris climate treaty changed the world. Here’s how | Rebecca Solnit

There’s much more to do, but we should be encouraged by the progress we have made

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris climate treaty, one of the landmark days in climate-action history. Attending the conference as a journalist, I watched and listened and wondered whether 194 countries could ever agree on anything at all, and the night before they did, people who I thought were more sophisticated than me assured me they couldn’t. Then they did. There are a lot of ways to tell the story of what it means and where we are now, but any version of it needs respect for the complexities, because there are a lot of latitudes between the poles of total victory and total defeat.

I had been dreading the treaty anniversary as an occasion to note that we have not done nearly enough, but in July I thought we might be able celebrate it. Because, on 23 July, the international court of justice handed down an epochal ruling that gives that treaty enforceable consequences it never had before. It declares that all nations have a legal obligation to act in response to the climate crisis, and, as Greenpeace International put it, “obligates states to regulate businesses on the harm caused by their emissions regardless of where the harm takes place. Significantly, the court found that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is fundamental for all other human rights, and that intergenerational equity should guide the interpretation of all climate obligations.” The Paris treaty was cited repeatedly as groundwork for this decision.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

‘There’s power in numbers’: New Yorkers are banding together to protect street vendors from ICE

With ICE targeting vendors and fear rising, community groups are organising fast to keep New Yorkers working on the streets safe

On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city.

“We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re out here distributing immigration rights information.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era review – as she breaks down over the terror plot, it’s impossible not to feel her pain

The singer’s tears over the Islamic State terrorist plot against her show and Southport attack make this behind-the-scenes docuseries about her world-conquering tour more moving than anyone could have anticipated

Swifties had long guessed that there would be a documentary going behind the scenes of Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour. The 2023 Eras Tour concert movie didn’t show any of the inner workings of this three-and-a-half-hour behemoth, which ran for 149 dates from 2023-24. Fans put some bits together, such as how Swift arrived on stage being pushed inside a cleaning cart. Plus, given the two albums she wrote during and about the Eras tour – 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department and this year’s The Life of a Showgirl – it wouldn’t be Swiftian to overlook another lucrative IP extension.

What fans could never have imagined was that Disney was set to start filming as the Eras tour was due to hit Vienna on 8 August 2023 – the first of three shows in the Austrian capital that were cancelled owing to an Islamic State terrorist plot. We learn this in episode one of the six-part docuseries The End of an Era, when Swift and her longtime friend Ed Sheeran are backstage at Wembley, hours before he guests at her first concert after the thwarted attack. “I didn’t even get to go,” Swift tells him of Vienna. “I was on the plane headed there. I just need to do this show and re-remember the joy of it because I’m a little bit just like …” She can’t find the words.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:24 pm

‘The attrition is setting in’: how Oregon’s magic mushroom experiment lost its way

Five years after legalizing psilocybin to treat a raft of health problems, practitioners worry the industry has become too costly, too white, and too regulated. Can the landmark program find its footing?

Jenna Kluwe remembers all the beautiful moments she saw in a converted dental clinic in east Portland.

For six months, she managed the Journey Service Center, a “psilocybin service center” where adults 21 and older take supervised mushroom trips. She watched elderly clients with terminal illnesses able to enjoy life again. She saw one individual with obsessive compulsive disorder so severe they spent hours washing their hands who could casually eat food that fell on the floor.

Published: December 12, 2025, 4:00 pm

A Hollywood ending? Inside the final days of LeBron James in Los Angeles

A new book explores how an all-time great and a world famous franchise handle the waning of a monumental career

In a book about LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s only fitting that one memorable scene involves a Hollywood star: Will Smith.

Yaron Weitzman’s latest book is titled A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers. Suffice to say the plot thickens when Smith goes to the Lakers’ film room to speak to the team in 2022.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Democrats publish more photos from Jeffrey Epstein estate as House minority leader calls for full release of files – live

Latest batch includes photos of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Richard Branson as top Democrat says ‘all we want is full transparency’

• House Democrats release Epstein photos with Trump, Bannon, Clinton and others

• In pictures: latest Epstein photos released

The admiral in charge of US military forces in Latin America will retire two years early, AP reports, amid rising tensions with Venezuela that include Wednesday’s seizure of an oil tanker and more than 20 deadly strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats.

Three US officials and two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that Admiral Alvin Holsey was pushed out by defense secretary Pete Hegseth. Two officials said Hegseth had grown frustrated with Southern Command as he sought to flex US military operations and planning in the region.

Published: December 12, 2025, 7:18 pm

Flooding remains threat in Pacific north-west as Washington declares emergency

Torrential rain has caused mudslides, washed out roads and submerged vehicles with more deluges expected on Sunday

Dangerous flood waters from historically swollen rivers in the Pacific north-west were continuing to cause a huge threat on Friday as 100,000 people in the area were under evacuation warnings and more deluges are due on Sunday.

Torrential rain triggered flooding on Thursday across much of the region from Oregon north through Washington state and into British Columbia, closing dozens of roads and already prompting the evacuations of tens of thousands of people.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:01 pm

‘The holy family is in hiding’: nativity scenes at US churches push back on ICE

Displays include handcuffed baby Jesus and Mary wearing a gas mask in wake of Trump’s immigration crackdown

Satirical holiday displays mocking Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, portraying the newborn Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph, as victims of heavy-handed tactics by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), have appeared across the US.

One striking retelling of the Christmas story, at Lake Street church in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, features baby Jesus lying in a manger in the snow – but wrapped in the kind of thin, foil blankets given out in emergencies and regularly as bedding to ICE detainees, and with his wrists zip-tied.

Published: December 12, 2025, 4:35 pm

‘Transition is irreversible’: María Corina Machado says not too late for Maduro’s peaceful handover

Nobel peace laureate says Maduro’s political downfall is inevitable after her fraught journey to freedom by boat

• ‘Dangerous and scary’: how a US special forces vet helped María Corina Machado flee Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro’s political downfall is inevitable, the Nobel laureate María Corina Machado has claimed, rejecting claims that the dictator’s demise would plunge Venezuela into a Syria-style civil war.

Speaking to journalists in Oslo two days after being awarded the Nobel peace prize, Machado voiced confidence that her country was on the cusp of a new political era amid an intensifying US campaign to unseat Maduro.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:50 pm

Indiana’s rejection of new voting map shows Trump’s might is not unlimited

Defeat complicates the picture for Republicans across the US as they seek to redraw districts in an increasingly messy battle

The Indiana legislature’s rejection of a new map that would have added two Republican seats in Congress marked one of the biggest political defeats for Donald Trump so far in his second term and significantly damaged the Republican effort to reconfigure congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

The defeat showed that Trump’s political might is not unlimited. For months, the president waged an aggressive effort to twist the arms of Indiana lawmakers into supporting a new congressional map, sending JD Vance to meet in person with lawmakers. Trump allies also set up outside groups to pressure state lawmakers.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:49 pm

Thailand and Cambodia agree to restart ceasefire brokered by US, says Trump

After deadly clashes between the two countries, the president announces renewal of peace deal made in July

• Thailand-Cambodia fighting explained

Donald Trump has said that Thai and Cambodian leaders agreed to renew a truce after days of deadly clashes had threatened to undo a ceasefire the US administration had helped broker earlier this year.

Trump announced the agreement to restart the ceasefire in a social media posting after calls with Thai prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian prime minister Hun Manet.

Published: December 12, 2025, 7:02 pm

House Democrats to ask for release of Jack Smith classified documents report

Judiciary panel Democrats ask Aileen Cannon ahead of special counsel’s deposition next week

Democrats on the House judiciary committee on Friday will ask Aileen Cannon, the judge who presided over the case against Donald Trump for allegedly hiding classified documents, to release the portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report concerning his prosecution.

Smith is scheduled to appear next week for a behind-closed-door deposition with the Republican-led committee, where he may discuss his investigation into allegations that Trump took classified materials to his properties and then hid them from federal authorities. The special counsel dropped that case against Trump, as well as another concerning his meddling in the 2020 election, in the aftermath of his re-election victory last year.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:29 pm

Louisiana pastor convicted of abusing teenage congregant

Milton Otto Martin III, who has been accused by several alleged victims of assault, convicted of indecent behavior

A Pentecostal pastor in Louisiana charged with sexually molesting a teenage girl in his church has been convicted of indecent behavior with a juvenile – but was acquitted of the more serious crime of statutory rape.

Milton Otto Martin III, 58, faces up to seven years in prison and must register as a sex offender after a three-day trial in Chalmette, Louisiana, resulted in a guilty – if split – verdict against him Thursday. His sentencing hearing is tentatively set for 15 January in the latest high-profile instance of religious abuse in the New Orleans area.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:50 pm

Hollywood director found guilty of scamming Netflix out of $11m for phantom show

Carl Rinsch, who directed Keanu Reeves action film 47 Ronin, was convicted on fraud and money laundering charges

A Hollywood director was convicted Thursday on charges that he scammed Netflix out of $11m for a show that never materialized, while he instead used the cash for lavish purchases that included several Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari and about $1m in mattresses and luxury bedding.

Carl Rinsch, best known for directing the film 47 Ronin starring Keanu Reeves, was convicted of wire fraud, money laundering and other charges, according to court records and a spokesperson for federal prosecutors in New York.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:40 pm

Exposed: the business linked to baby deaths across the world | The Latest

A year-long investigation into the Free Birth Society reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors.

Lucy Hough talks to the investigative correspondent Lucy Osborne about her reporting.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:41 pm

‘They attacked my religion, my faith’: Muslim photojournalist detained by ICE speaks out

Ya’akub Vijandre, held in ICE detention in Georgia, tells Guardian he is concerned for safety of family and friends

Ya’akub Vijandre, a Muslim photojournalist, martial arts teacher and first responder who ICE detained in October for posting on social media, told the Guardian that the government is “attacking my faith” and that he was “concerned about the safety” of his family and friends.

Speaking in his first interview from Georgia’s Folkston detention center, the 38-year-old said guards treat detainees “like animals”, yelling at them when they don’t understand English. One guard responded to his request to use the bathroom during a visit to the detention center’s library by telling him, “just piss on yourself”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 4:00 pm

US agents increasingly arresting Afghan asylum seekers, lawyers say: ‘A huge chilling effect’

Lawyers say people ‘don’t feel safe to leave their home’ as officials target recent arrivals and those awaiting hearings

Immigration agents appear to be increasingly arresting and detaining Afghan asylum seekers, especially men, who have arrived in the US recently and are awaiting court hearings to decide their cases.

Amir – an asylum seeker who came to the US via Mexico in 2024 – was driving home from his English class in Bloomington, Indiana just after noon on Monday, when he was pulled over by an unmarked police vehicle. Minutes later, the asylum seeker from Afghanistan was cuffed and driven to a detention center.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

My darling clementine: why did Chalamet and Jenner dress in matching orange?

Colour-coordinating couples are nothing new, but Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner still caught the eye

When the Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet and the media personality and businesswoman Kylie Jenner appeared at the LA premiere of his new film, Marty Supreme, this week, they appeared to have been Tangoed.

Dressed head to toe in matching bright orange outfits made by the LA-based brand Chrome Hearts, they drew strong reactions online. “I have now confirmed there is such a thing as too much orange,” said one on Reddit.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:11 pm

‘Rebranded plantations’: how empire shaped luxury Caribbean tourism

Research shows that the British colonial wealth extraction system still influences the region’s tourist industry

Luxury tourism in the Caribbean sells a kind of timelessness. A paradise of sun, sea and sand. But to step off the cruise ship or away from the all-inclusive resort is to see a more complex picture: a history of colonialism and a future of climate devastation. New research from the Common Wealth thinktank maps how, over the 400 years since the first English ships arrived in Barbados, empire engineered a system of wealth extraction that shapes the tourism economies of today.

Sir Hilary Beckles, Barbadian historian and chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, describes Barbados as the birthplace of British slave society. Between 1640 and 1807, Britain transported about 387,000 enslaved west Africans to the island. Extraordinary violence, from whippings to amputations and executions, were a regular feature of their lives. On the Codrington Plantation in the mid-18th century, 43% of the enslaved died within three years of their arrival. Life expectancy at birth for an enslaved person on the island was 29 years old. This was the incalculable human cost of the transatlantic slave economy.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Joanna Trollope obituary

Novelist whose bestsellers on relationships and modern life were dubbed ‘Aga sagas’

Joanna Trollope, who has died aged 82, was one of those rare writers who can be said to have invented a genre. When popular fiction written by, and mainly for, women tended to be classified either as “romantic novels” or “historical sagas”, Joanna gained huge success, both commercially and critically, by writing intelligently, with warmth and humour, about real situations and dilemmas that had relevance to modern women of all ages and circumstances.

She began as an author of historical romances, but her writing career was transformed with the publication of the contemporary novel A Village Affair (1989), which became her first bestseller. A young wife moves to a quiet country village with her boring husband, where she becomes friends with an independent-minded woman who lives nearby. But this is no conventional rural tale – the two women fall deeply in love. Village life, in all its complexities of petty rivalries and prejudices, is examined with incisive understanding.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:29 pm

Stephen Colbert on Trump’s ‘gold card’: ‘Pay-to-play program for rich foreigners’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s new ‘golden visa’ program for wealthy foreigners and his increasingly weird reassurances on the economy

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s new “gold card” immigration program and his many weird tangents about grocery prices.

Published: December 12, 2025, 3:29 pm

Hunger’s whip: why connecting US food stamps to work is outdated and ineffective

In many parts of the country, there are new work requirements to get food aid. But starving people doesn’t motivate them – despite centuries of this rhetoric

For more than 200 years, common wisdom and policymakers have assumed that to get people to work, you had to make them hungry. New work requirements for Snap food benefits, which went into effect in most of the US on 1 December, are only the latest in a long line of policies based on this idea. The new rules cut off benefits for any non-disabled adult up to age 65 who cannot prove that they are working or seeking work at least 80 hours every month (that includes homeless people, veterans and former foster youth). The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 2.7 million people will lose their benefits.

You’ve heard this reasoning before: people are motivated to work because they and their families have to survive. If you give someone welfare – especially food aid – they become dependent and lazy. The Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative thinktank that has been campaigning for years to cut welfare, calls this “the dependency trap”. Starving people by taking away their food stamps is supposed to “incentivize individuals to better themselves and transition from dependency to work and self-reliance”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 pm

Most people aren’t fretting about an AI bubble. What they fear is mass layoffs | Steven Greenhouse

Artificial intelligence could make income inequality even worse and create a new underclass. Governments and society must take action

Nowadays there seems to be nonstop discussion about AI, with much of the conversation focused on whether there’s a speculative bubble or whether the chipmaker Nvidia is really worth $5tn or whether OpenAI will beat its rivals in developing new generations of artificial intelligence. But the vast majority of Americans – just like the vast majority of Europeans and Asians – couldn’t care less about those things.

Their big concern is whether AI is going to cause huge layoffs and create a disastrous job market, especially for younger workers. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a leading AI company, fed those fears when he said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years and increase unemployment in the US to 10% to 20%. In October, Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate education and labor committee, issued a report saying AI and automation could replace up to 97m jobs in the US over the next decade.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

RFK Jr is a danger to public health – but local Maha laws could be a bigger threat | Katrina vanden Heuvel

An array of under-the-radar initiatives are taking hold across the US, often tied to immunization, fluoridation and raw milk

Even within the freak show that is Donald Trump’s cabinet, the health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has a singular knack for dominating the headlines with the most disturbing sort of carnivalesque spectacle.

In recent months, he’s amplified harmful misinformation linking Tylenol and autism and dismissed the entire CDC vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with skeptics and conspiracy theorists. And even as that agency debated and ultimately scrapped its hepatitis B vaccination recommendation for many newborns, Kennedy courted further controversy for his alleged involvement in a tabloid-fodder love triangle.

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

Published: December 12, 2025, 3:00 pm

Donald Trump is pursuing regime change – in Europe | Jonathan Freedland

The US made it clear this week that it plans to help the parties of the European far right gain power. Keir Starmer and his fellow leaders have to face this new reality

When are we going to get the message? I joked a few months back that, when it comes to Donald Trump, Europe needs to learn from Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes and realise that “He’s just not that into you”. After this past week, it’s clear that understates the problem. Trump’s America is not merely indifferent to Europe – it’s positively hostile to it. That has enormous implications for the continent and for Britain, which too many of our leaders still refuse to face.

The depth of US hostility was revealed most explicitly in the new US national security strategy, or NSS, a 29-page document that serves as a formal statement of the foreign policy of the second Trump administration. There is much there to lament, starting with the sceptical quote marks that appear around the sole reference to “climate change”, but the most striking passages are those that take aim at Europe.

Jonathan Freedland 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: December 12, 2025, 5:36 pm

Welcome to the 2026 World Cup shakedown! The price of a ticket: the integrity of the game | Marina Hyde

In World Cup parlance, Qatar was Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s qualifier. Now it’s the big time for Trump’s dictator-curious protege

I used to think Fifa’s recent practice of holding the World Cup in autocracies was because it made it easier for world football’s governing body to do the things it loved: spend untold billions of other people’s money and siphon the profits without having to worry about boring little things like human rights or public opinion. Which, let’s face it, really piss around with your bottom line.

But for a while now, that view has seemed ridiculously naive, a bit like assuming Recep Erdoğan followed Vladimir Putin’s election-hollowing gameplan just because hey, he’s an interested guy who likes to read around a lot of subjects. So no: Fifa president Gianni Infantino hasn’t spent recent tournaments cosying up to authoritarians because it made his life easier. He’s done it to learn from the best. And his latest decree this week simply confirms Fifa is now a fully operational autocracy in the classic populace-rinsing style. Do just absorb yesterday’s news that the cheapest ticket for next year’s World Cup final in the US will cost £3,120 – seven times more than the cheapest ticket for the last World Cup final in Qatar. (Admittedly, still marginally cheaper than an off-peak single from London to Manchester.)

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction | George Monbiot

Plummeting birth rates mean that without attracting immigration, many countries are sliding towards collapse

I know what “civilisational erasure” looks like: I’ve seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It’s a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. After a minor bump over the past 20 years, the EU rate appears to be declining once more, and now stands at 1.38. The UK’s is 1.44. A population’s replacement rate is 2.1. You may or may not see this as a disaster, but the maths doesn’t care what you think. We are gliding, as if by gravitational force, towards the ground.

Civilisational erasure is the term the Trump administration used in its new national security strategy, published last week. It claimed that immigration, among other factors, will result in the destruction of European civilisation. In reality, without immigration there will be no Europe, no civilisation and no one left to argue about it.

George Monbiot 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: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

AI is filling the God void for many – but is ChatGPT really something to worship? | Brigid Delaney

Comforting reassurance was once the work of the church. Now it’s increasingly being sought from the machine

A few summers ago I attended two funerals in a week.

One was for a man who was atheist and had lots of worldly success. The second was for a woman who was Catholic, raised three children and lived a much quieter life.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die …

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

The Guardian view on Trump and Venezuela: a return to seeking regime change | Editorial

The US is ramping up the pressure on Nicolás Maduro with a tanker seizure and expanded sanctions following threats and boat strikes

Early in his first term, Donald Trump mooted a “military option” for Venezuela to dislodge its president, Nicolás Maduro. Reports suggest that he eagerly discussed the prospect of an invasion behind closed doors. Advisers eventually talked him down. Instead, the US pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions and threats.

But Mr Maduro is still in place. And Mr Trump’s attempts to remove him are ramping up again. The US has amassed its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama. It has carried out more than 20 shocking strikes on alleged drug boats. Mr Trump reportedly delivered an ultimatum late last month, telling the Venezuelan leader that he could have safe passage from his country if he left immediately. There was already a $50m bounty on his head. This week came expanded sanctions and the seizure of a tanker.

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: December 12, 2025, 6:30 pm

The Guardian view on Nnena Kalu’s historic Turner prize win: breaking a glass ceiling | Editorial

The UK art world is finally becoming more inclusive. But greater support must be given to the organisations that enable disabled artists to flourish

The Turner prize is no stranger to sparking debate or pushing boundaries. This year it has achieved both. For the first time, an artist with learning disabilities has won. Glasgow-born Nnena Kalu took the award for her colourful, cocoon-like sculptures made from VHS tape, clingfilm and other abandoned materials, along with her large swirling vortex drawings. Kalu is autistic, with limited verbal communication. In an acceptance speech on her behalf, Kalu’s facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead, said that “a very stubborn glass ceiling” had been broken.

Kalu’s win is a high-profile symbol of a shift towards greater inclusivity that has been happening in the UK arts world over the past five years. Last month, Beyond the Visual opened at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in which everything is curated or created by blind and partially sighted artists. The exhibits range from Moore sculptures (which visitors are encouraged to touch) to David Johnson’s 10,000 stone-plaster digestive biscuits stamped with braille. Design and Disability at the V&A South Kensington is showcasing the ways in which disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people have shaped culture from the 1940s to now.

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: December 12, 2025, 6:25 pm

Sherrone Moore charged with home invasion, stalking after dismissal as Michigan football coach

• Moore charged after abrupt firing at Michigan

• University says conduct violated policy

• Prosecutors allege home invasion, stalking

Sherrone Moore, who was abruptly fired this week as the University of Michigan football coach, was charged Friday with three crimes including home invasion and stalking a person he had dated, prosecutors said.

Moore has spent two nights in jail following his firing and subsequent arrest Wednesday.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:40 pm

NFL playoff race: Patriots and Bills battle in AFC East as Rivers runs it back

The AFC East rivals face off in a game that could decide their conference’s top seed, while a familiar face may return for the Colts

There is some serious debate that could run over this week’s top-shelf matchup. The Rams, the NFC’s current No 1 seeds, are welcoming the Lions, who claimed top seed in the conference last season. The Denver Broncos, the AFC leaders, host the Green Bay Packers who still have a shot at a first-round bye in the NFC. Either way you go you won’t be disappointed. Only there is a third way: Buffalo v New England. The emphasis is on the bounty that winning brings rather than the perils of defeat on Sunday. The Patriots can wrestle back the AFC’s No 1 seed while Buffalo can give themselves a shot at snatching the AFC East title from New England. Oh, and two MVP candidates in Drake Maye and Josh Allen are running the show. It could be a classic.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Lindsey Vonn continues remarkable comeback with World Cup ski victory at 41

• Skier breaks record after destroying field at San Moritz

• Vonn is among favourites for Winter Olympics downhill

Lindsey Vonn’s extraordinary ­comeback from retirement and ­serious knee surgery gathered pace on Friday when she became the oldest skier to win a World Cup race at the age of 41.

The American, who had not raced for five years until she returned to the ­circuit last year, destroyed the ­women’s downhill field in San Moritz to win by nearly a second.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:35 pm

Trinity Rodman: why US soccer could lose its most compelling star to Europe

The forward’s blocked contract and a growing talent drain to Europe have nudged the NWSL into crisis mode. Here’s what’s happening and why it matters

The Trinity Rodman contract saga has exposed a fundamental tension at the heart of the National Women’s Soccer League: a salary-cap model built for stability and measured growth coming in collision with a global market that has accelerated far beyond it.

Rodman is one of the most important young players in US soccer, arguably its most marketable female star and a centerpiece of the NWSL’s future. Yet European giants have offered her salaries that America’s top women’s domestic league cannot legally match, prompting the NWSL to veto a record-breaking Washington Spirit deal (and the players’ union to file a grievance in response).

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Chess: Magnus Carlsen wins Freestyle Tour title despite defeat in final event

Norway’s world No 1, 35, lost 0.5-1.5 to the US veteran Levon Aronian, 43, in Cape Town but was already sure of overall victory and a prize of around $500k

Norway’s world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, was shocked by a 0.5-1.5 loss to the US veteran Levon Aronian in Thursday’s final of the Freestyle Grand Slam Tour in Cape Town, but still finished the overall winner of the five-event Tour.

Freestyle chess is also known as Fischer Random and Chess 960. Pieces start randomly placed on the two back rows, thus drastically limiting opening preparation. Its 2025 season, with a Tour financed mainly by a $12m investment from the venture firm Left Lane Capital, has featured tournaments in Weissenhaus, Karlsruhe, Paris and Las Vegas before the final in South Africa.

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Gabriel Jesus is looking to impress, Daniel Muñoz is tough to replace and is this it for Mohamed Salah at Liverpool?

• Premier League top scorers: the Golden Boot race

This season Chelsea have held Arsenal after going down to 10 men and have beaten Barcelona, Liverpool and Tottenham. They have also dropped points against Atalanta, Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton, Leeds, Qarabag and Sunderland. It is clear that winning against smaller sides remains a problem for Enzo Maresca. Chelsea rise to the big occasion but inconsistency flares when they are expected to win. They do not like playing against deep defences – Maresca has often reacted with dismay when opponents switch to a back five to counter his carefully formulated plans – and can be forgiven if they are edgy about hosting Everton on Saturday. David Moyes’s side have just recorded clean sheets at Bournemouth and Manchester United. They will back themselves to neutralise Chelsea’s attacking talents. Jacob Steinberg

Chelsea v Everton, Saturday 3pm (all times GMT)

Liverpool v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Burnley v Fulham, Saturday 5.30pm

Arsenal v Wolves, Saturday 8pm

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 am

Jason Collins, NBA’s first openly gay player, says he has a year to live after brain tumor diagnosis

• Collins discloses stage 4 glioblastoma diagnosis

• Former NBA trailblazer pursuing new therapies

• Symptoms appeared and worsened rapidly

Jason Collins, the former NBA player who became the first openly gay man to play in a major US pro sports league, said Thursday he’s battling “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer”.

Collins, who revealed in a brief statement in September that he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, said in an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne published Thursday that he has stage 4 glioblastoma.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:01 pm

Danish intelligence accuses US of using economic power to ‘assert its will’ over allies

The US also listed as a threat due to its growing interest in Greenland, which is vital to America’s national security

Danish intelligence services have accused the US of using its economic power to “assert its will” and threatening military force against its allies.

The comments, made in its annual assessment released this week, mark the first time that the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) has listed the US as a threat to the country. Denmark, the report warns, is “facing more and more serious threats and security policy challenges than in many years”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:07 pm

Canada’s Liberals edge closer to majority after Conservative lawmaker crosses floor

Rookie Michael Ma leaves Conservative party for ‘steady, practical approach’ of Mark Carney’s government

Canada’s ruling Liberals have edged closer to a majority government after a Conservative lawmaker crossed the floor, in yet another blow to the struggling Tories.

Rookie lawmaker Michael Ma said late on Thursday that he had decided to leave the Conservative party, for “the steady, practical approach” of prime minister Mark Carney’s government, which he said would “deliver on the priorities I hear every day, including affordability and the economy”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:28 pm

UK imposes sanctions on four RSF officers for ‘heinous’ mass killings in Sudan

Senior commanders accused of atrocities against civilians face asset freezes – but no action against key backer UAE

The UK has placed sanctions on four senior commanders of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces suspected of involvement in “heinous” violence against civilians in the city of El Fasher, but decided not to take any action against their key military and diplomatic backer, the United Arab Emirates, or their chief commander.

British officials suggested they preferred to use their leverage with the UAE and the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, privately, but admitted there was little sign of a ceasefire in Sudan’s near three-year civil war.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:09 pm

Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi arrested in Iran

Mohammadi ‘violently’ detained along with other activists at memorial event in Mashhad, her foundation says

There are fears for the wellbeing of the 2023 Nobel peace prize winner, Narges Mohammadi, after she was detained by Iranian security forces at a memorial ceremony for a human rights lawyer in the eastern city of Mashhad.

Mohammadi, 53, who was granted temporary leave from prison on medical grounds in December 2024, was newly detained along with several other activists at the memorial for Khosro Alikordi, who was found dead in his office last week.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:33 pm

Primal Scream defend image of swastika inside Star of David shown during London gig

Scottish rock band says image ‘meant to provoke debate, not hate’ after many at concert accuse group of antisemitism

The Scottish rock group Primal Scream has defended displaying an image of a swastika inside a Star of David during a London gig, in response to accusations of racism and antisemitism.

During a performance at the London’s Roundhouse, a video was shown on stage of a swastika in the centre of a Star of David that was then superimposed over eyes of images of political figures, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US president, Donald Trump.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:16 pm

Kylie Minogue gets 11th UK No 1 album as Christmas No 1 race intensifies

As Wham! top singles chart, Minogue draws level with David Bowie, Eminem, U2 and Rod Stewart in the album league table, thanks to a reissue of her 2015 Christmas LP

Kylie Minogue has scored her 11th UK No 1 album, putting her level with David Bowie and Eminem in the league of all-time album chart-toppers.

The album, Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped), will sound familiar to her fans: it’s a reissue of her 2015 album Kylie Christmas (which only reached No 12), containing four newly recorded tracks and an altered tracklisting. It had already been reissued once before, in 2016, as the Snow Queen Edition. Nevertheless, the Fully Wrapped version counts as a new album in chart terms, and so continues a non-consecutive run of No 1s that began in 1988, when Minogue’s self-titled debut spent six weeks at the top.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 pm

‘What is going on here?’ Meloni celebrated at Italy’s far-right Atreju Christmas festival

Week-long event organised by Brothers of Italy looks like winter wonderland but is chance for PM to flaunt power

When, out of curiosity, Leila Cader and her friends entered the gardens surrounding Castel Sant’Angelo, a prominent Rome monument that once served as a refuge for popes during times of war, they thought they’d chanced upon an enchanting winter wonderland.

With the scent of mulled wine wafting through the air, Santa’s elves wandering around, stalls selling nativity-scene figurines and skaters merrily gliding on an ice-rink, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Published: December 12, 2025, 4:04 pm

‘The worst is when the rubbish explodes’: the children living in Patagonia’s vast dumps

In sprawling landfills, thousands of Argentinian families scavenge for survival amid toxic waste and government neglect, dreaming of steady jobs and escape

The sun rises over the plateau of Neuquén’s open-air rubbish tip. Maia, nine, and her brothers, aged 11 and seven, huddle by a campfire. Their mother, Gisel, rummages through bags that smell of rotten fruit and meat.

Situated at the northern end of Argentinian Patagonia, 100km (60 miles) from Vaca Muerta – one of the world’s largest fossil gas reserves – children here roam amid twisted metal, glass and rubbish spread over five hectares (12 acres). The horizon is waste.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Families washed out of tents as flood waters course through Gaza

Gaza has been hit by heavy rains and low temperatures, deepening the misery of most of its 2.2 million population who are living in tents after two years of Israeli bombardment. Thousands of homeless people have been washed out of their makeshift shelters and forced to seek emergency refuge

Published: December 12, 2025, 3:26 pm

Air passengers exposed to extremely high levels of ultrafine particle pollution, study finds

Levels during boarding and taxiing were far above those defined as high by the World Health Organization

A study has revealed the concentrations of ultrafine particles breathed in by airline passengers.

A team of French researchers, including those from Université Paris Cité, built a pack of instruments that was flown alongside passengers from Paris Charles de Gaulle to European destinations. The machinery was placed on an empty seat in the front rows or in the galley.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

Indonesia floods were ‘extinction level’ disturbance for world’s rarest ape

Conservationists fear up to 11% of Tapanuli orangutan population perished in disaster that also killed 1,000 people

The skull of a Tapanuli orangutan, caked in debris, stares out from a tomb of mud in North Sumatra, killed in catastrophic flooding that swept through Indonesia.

The late November floods have been an “extinction-level disturbance” for the world’s rarest great ape, scientists have said, causing catastrophic damage to its habitat and survival prospects.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:42 pm

‘Soil is more important than oil’: inside the perennial grain revolution

Scientists in Kansas believe Kernza could cut emissions, restore degraded soils and reshape the future of agriculture

On the concrete floor of a greenhouse in rural Kansas stands a neat grid of 100 plastic plant pots, each holding a straggly crown of strappy, grass-like leaves. These plants are perennials – they keep growing, year after year. That single characteristic separates them from soya beans, wheat, maize, rice and every other major grain crop, all of which are annuals: plants that live and die within a single growing season.

“These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations],” says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan’s breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Hightailing along city streets and raiding ponds: otters’ revival in Britain

Still rare only 20 years ago, the charismatic animals are in almost every UK river and a conservation success story

On a quiet Friday evening, an otter and a fox trot through Lincoln city centre. The pair scurry past charity shops and through deserted streets, the encounter lit by the security lamps of shuttered takeaways. Each animal inspects the nooks and crannies of the high street before disappearing into the night, ending the unlikely scene captured by CCTV last month.

Unlike the fox, the otter has been a rare visitor in towns and cities across the UK. But after decades of intense conservation work, that is changing. In the past year alone, the aquatic mammal has been spotted on a river-boat dock in London’s Canary Wharf, dragging an enormous fish along a riverbank in Stratford-upon-Avon, and plundering garden ponds near York. One otter was even filmed causing chaos in a Shetland family’s kitchen in March.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Trump signs executive order aimed at preventing states from regulating AI

Order, which lacks the force of law, also creates taskforce whose ‘sole responsibility’ will be challenging states’ AI laws

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that seeks to halt any laws limiting artificial intelligence and block states from regulating the rapidly emerging technology. The order also creates a federal taskforce that will have the “sole responsibility” of challenging states’ AI laws.

At a signing ceremony, the president touted AI companies’ enthusiasm for wanting to “invest” in the United States and said that “if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:47 am

Woman extradited to US to face charges immediately detained by ICE in ‘Kafkaesque’ twist

Prosecutors had worked to secure extradition of Yana Leonova, but efforts unraveled when immigration officials issued order to deport her

An ongoing FBI investigation into a Belarusian woman accused of smuggling US aviation parts and electronics to Russia is teetering on the brink of collapse after being caught in what one judge called a “Kafkaesque” case brought on by the Trump administration’s attempts to deport her before she faces trial.

Federal prosecutors had worked for over a year to secure the extradition of Yana Leonova, who faces multiple charges including fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. But their efforts unraveled when immigration officials abruptly issued an order to detain and deport her soon after she was flown into the US last month, a move that plunged the case into legal chaos.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:48 pm

Grand jury again declines to indict Letitia James on mortgage fraud charges

New York attorney general dodges indictment for second time in a week as Trump’s justice department seeks retribution

A federal grand jury has declined to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, on mortgage fraud charges for the second time in a week, according to a person familiar with the matter, in an embarrassing blow to the Trump justice department as the president has sought retribution against one of his political rivals.

The department has attempted to twice file new charges against James after a judge dismissed an indictment against her after determining the prosecutor handling the case had not been properly appointed.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:11 pm

Accused Charlie Kirk killer makes first in-person court appearance

Utah judge weighs media access in prosecution of Tyler Robinson, 22, who is charged with aggravated murder

The 22-year-old Utah man charged with killing Charlie Kirk made his first in-person court appearance on Thursday as his attorneys push to further limit media access in the high-profile criminal case.

A Utah judge is weighing the public’s right to know details in the prosecution of Tyler Robinson against his attorneys’ concerns that the swarm of media attention could interfere with his right to a fair trial.

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:29 pm

Australia’s social media ban launched with barely a hitch – but the real test is still to come

The policy to cut off social media access for more than 2 million under-16s remains popular with Australians, while other countries look to follow suit

On the lawns of the prime minister’s Kirribilli residence in Sydney, overlooking the harbour, Anthony Albanese said he had never been prouder.

“This is a day in which my pride to be prime minister of Australia has never been greater. This is world-leading. This is Australia showing enough is enough,” he said as the country’s under-16s social media ban came into effect on Wednesday.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

South Korea exam chief quits after complaints English test was too hard

Notoriously difficult entrance exam is regarded as gateway to economic security and even a good marriage

The chief organiser of South Korea’s notoriously gruelling university entrance exams has resigned – after complaints that an English test he designed was too difficult.

Passing the exam, known locally as the Suneung, is essential for admission to prestigious universities and regarded as a gateway to upward social mobility, economic security and even a good marriage.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:08 am

Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud

Co-founder of Singapore-based Terraform Labs given more jail time by US judge than prosecutors sought

Do Kwon, the entrepreneur behind two cryptocurrencies that lost $40bn (£29.8bn) three years ago and caused the sector to crash, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud.

The South Korean, 34, had pleaded guilty to two counts of US charges of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud.

Published: December 12, 2025, 9:09 am

Dozens killed in hospital strike in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state

Conflict monitors say the junta has increased airstrikes year-on-year since the start of Myanmar’s civil war

Dozens have been killed in a military strike on a hospital in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, according to an aid worker, a rebel group, a witness and local media reports, as the junta wages a withering offensive ahead of elections beginning this month.

“The situation is very terrible,” said on-site aid worker Wai Hun Aung. “As for now, we can confirm there are 31 deaths and we think there will be more deaths. Also there are 68 wounded and will be more and more.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:07 am

The 50 best movies of 2025 in the US

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

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

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Published: December 12, 2025, 11:46 am

‘I lived out moments of my mother’s passing I never saw’: Kate Winslet on grief, going red and Goodbye June

For her directorial debut, Winslet assembled a cast including Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough to tell a story inspired by her own family’s bereavement. The actors talk mourning, immortality and hospital vending machines

In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, “like the north star just dropped out of the sky”.

It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. “I do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

The Revenge Club review – this starry divorce caper makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time

Martin Compston and Meera Syal are among the names in this tale of divorcees hitting back at their exes. It’s a thriller, comedy and psychodrama all at once – but could maybe do with being more simple

Sometimes three-in-one type things are good. Phone chargers with lots of leads for all your devices that have stupidly different ports. Those woolly hats that cover your neck and lower face, so you look daft but are impregnable to winter cold. The Nars blusher stick that is also a lipstick and eyeshadow.

When it comes to dramas, however, it’s best to stick to one field of endeavour. The Revenge Club is a gallimaufry of tones, styles and performances. Watching it is like looking through a kaleidoscope that someone twists for you every few minutes; it’s fun but quite disorienting after a while.

Published: December 12, 2025, 3:00 pm

‘I live for playing cops and robbers!’ Martin Compston on love, Las Vegas and the new Line of Duty

He’ll soon be going back on the hunt for bent coppers – but not before a wild revenge tale of divorcees going rogue. The star talks feeling inferior to Meera Syal, his life in the US and why he’s thrilled to be typecast

While we embark on the inhumanly long wait for the new season of Line of Duty, which starts shooting in January, you’ll see Martin Compston – the show’s hero and true north – a number of times. Twice as you’ve never seen him before, and once, in Red Eye, in the form that you’ve come to know and love him: brisk and taciturn, brave and speedy, the man you’d trust to save the world while the dopes all around him can’t even see it needs saving.

But first, The Revenge Club, in which he is a revelation. The setting is a support group for divorcees, a ragtag gang united by nothing but the fact that they’ve been summarily dismissed by their spouses. “There’s no other reason for these characters to be in each other’s lives,” Compston says from his home in Las Vegas (more on that later – much more). “They’re all desperate and lonely and in dire need of companionship. They’re all, in their own ways, broken, which makes for this explosive mix.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

Goodbye June review – Kate Winslet’s Christmas heartwarmer is like a two-hour John Lewis ad

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday, that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 pm

Silent Night, Deadly Night review – killer Santa remake is overstuffed

There are too many competing and overfamiliar ideas in this busy slasher reboot that’s sorely lacking in style

There was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.

We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t enough to shock today’s horror fans.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:32 pm

‘Men explicitly loving men is so threatening to the status quo’: why are gay male pop stars being shut out of the music industry?

Not long ago, artists such as Lil Nas X and Olly Alexander were ruling pop. But success has stalled as acts face industry obstacles and rising homophobia. What now?

At the turn of the decade, gay male and non-binary pop stars seemed poised to take pop music by storm. Lil Nas X broke out with Old Town Road – which blew up on TikTok, sold about 18.5m copies and remains tied with Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You as the longest-running No 1 single in US history – and artists such as Sam Smith, Troye Sivan and Olly Alexander from Years & Years were all singing about gay love and sex.

But the initial promise has stalled. Lil Nas X’s attempts to build on his smash debut album have fizzled, and he is publicly dealing with mental health issues. In October, Khalid released his first album since being outed by his ex last year but only sold 10,000 copies in the first week in the US. A previous album, 2019’s Free Spirit, sold some 200,000 copies in the first week and led to him briefly dethroning Ariana Grande as the most listened to artist on Spotify.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

Add to playlist: the slow-burn psychedelia of Acolyte and the week’s best new tracks

Unhurried trippy bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a glamorously unhurried sense of hypnosis

From Edinburgh
Recommended if you like Dry Cleaning, Massive Attack, Nick Cave
Up next Warm Days in December out now, new EP due early 2026

As fixtures of Edinburgh’s gig-turned-performance art scene, Acolyte’s eerie, earthy psychedelia is just as likely to be found on stage at the Traverse theatre as in a steamy-windowed Leith Walk boozer. Their looped bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a sense of slow-burn hypnosis – and just like their music, Acolyte are glamorously unhurried. They’ve released only a handful of songs in the seven years since Lee and bassist Ruairidh Morrison first started experimenting with jazz, trip-hop and spoken word, but now the group (with Daniel Hill on percussion and Gloria Black on synth, also known for throwing fantastical, papier-mache-costumed club nights with her former band Maranta) are gathering pace.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

The 50 best albums of 2025

The year’s finest LPs as decided by 30 Guardian music writers – from a slip’n’slide through British club culture to a UK rapper like none before her
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 12, 2025, 1:59 pm

From shiveringly vivid Mahler to the eclectic Hermes Experiment: our top classical recordings of 2025

Opera may be conspicuous by its absence, but the brilliance of Berlin Philharmonic’s Schoenberg and the exceptional South Korean Yunchan Lim gave us plenty to sink our teeth into this year

The survey of the new releases that my colleagues and I have enjoyed most in 2025 differs in one significant respect from the lists of previous years. This year’s top ten contains no operas. There has been a profound change in record companies’ policies of how and what they record. The glitzy, studio-based opera recordings of the last century now seem impossible to contemplate, and even releasing audio-only recordings taken directly from live opera-house performances often seems less viable than issuing DVDs of the same productions.

Some specialist labels devoted to specific areas of the operatic repertoire continue sterling work: operas feature prominently in Bru Zane’s mission on behalf of neglected French composers, while Opera Rara continues to crusade for forgotten, mostly 19th century, mostly Italian, scores which this year included the original 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Other companies continue to find treasures in Europe’s apparently inexhaustible baroque archives, while, on its own label, the London Symphony Orchestra has continued to release Simon Rattle’s Janáček series taken from his concert performances with the orchestra at the Barbican, the latest release being Jenůfa. If full-length operas are notably scarce in the schedules of the major companies, two exceptions this year were Decca’s release of the Oslo-sourced Flying Dutchman, with Lise Davidsen and Gerald Finley, and Deutsche Grammophon’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, part of Andris Nelson’s Boston-based Shostakovich series, both of which proved less than overwhelming.

Published: December 11, 2025, 3:10 pm

Joyride by Susan Orlean review – an extraordinary, curious life

An exuberant, inspiring memoir from the New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief

In 2017, 10 years after Susan Orlean profiled Caltech-trained physicist turned professional origami artist Robert Lang for the New Yorker, she attended the OrigamiUSA convention to take Lang’s workshop on folding a “Taiwan goldfish”. I was with her, a radio producer trying to capture the sounds of paper creasing as Orlean attempted to keep pace with the “Da Vinci of origami”, wincing when her goldfish’s fins didn’t exactly flutter in hydrodynamic splendour.

It was Orlean in her element: an adventurous student, inquisitive and exacting, fully alive to the mischief inherent to reporting – and primed to extract some higher truth. “When we first met you said something to me I’ve never forgotten,” Orlean told Lang. “That paper has a memory – that once you fold it, you can never entirely remove the fold.” Was that, she wondered, an insight about life, too?

Published: December 12, 2025, 7:00 am

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds; Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle; All Tomorrows by CM Kosemen; The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson; The Witching Hour by various authors

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, £25)
Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man in space, is reborn as a private eye on board the starship Halcyon as it draws nearer to the end of a centuries-long journey. Yuri knows he died for the first time back in the 1960s, long before the technology existed to launch such sophisticated spaceships, but believes his remains were preserved and stored for future revival. Onboard life is modelled on classic crime noir from the 1940s: men in hats, cigarettes and whisky, with no futuristic tech beyond some clunky, glitching robots. As he doggedly pursues the truth about the seemingly unconnected deaths of two teenagers from the most powerful families on the ship, Yuri gradually learns about himself. There’s a conspiracy that goes back generations in this clever, entertaining blend of crime and space opera.

Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle (Confingo, £9.50)
The third collection after London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny captures both the reality and the mysteries of contemporary life in Paris in 14 short stories, 11 published here for the first time. Royle is a genius at blending the ordinary with the eerie, and his stories range from displays of outright surrealism to sinister psychological mysteries that play out as suspensefully as Highsmith or Hitchcock. It’s a memorable, unsettling excursion through the streets, passages and banlieues of Paris, and a masterclass in writing evocative short fiction.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Sophie Kinsella obituary

Author whose Shopaholic series of romcom novels were global bestsellers and adapted into a Hollywood film

Sophie Kinsella, who has died of a brain tumour aged 55, was one of Britain’s most successful novelists, selling more than 50 million copies of her books, including the globally successful Shopaholic series. Through three decades she retained a loyal and passionate readership with her deceptively light and intricately plotted comic novels.

Like her best-known heroine, Becky Bloomwood, Kinsella began her writing career in financial journalism, but, realising she was uninspired (and probably not very good at it), she wrote a book, The Tennis Party, that was published in 1995, when she was 25, under her given name, Madeleine Wickham (“Maddy”). This was followed by five subsequent standalone “Aga sagas”, which all achieved moderate chart success and critical acclaim.

Published: December 11, 2025, 7:18 pm

Where to start with: Arundhati Roy

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

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

‘If we build it, they will come’: Skövde, the tiny town powering up Sweden’s video game boom

It started with a goat. Now – via a degree for developers and an incubator for startups – the tiny city is churning out world-famous video game hits. What is the secret of its success?

On 26 March 2014, a trailer for a video game appeared on YouTube. The first thing the viewer sees is a closeup of a goat lying on the ground, its tongue out, its eyes open. Behind it is a man on fire, running backwards in slow motion towards a house. Interspersed with these images is footage of the goat being repeatedly run over by a car. In the main shot, the goat, now appearing backwards as well, flies up into the first-floor window of a house, repairing the glass it smashed on its way down. It hurtles through another window and back to an exploding petrol station, where we assume its journey must have started.

This wordless, strangely moving video – a knowing parody of the trailer for a zombie survival game called Dead Island – was for a curious game called Goat Simulator. The game was, unsurprisingly, the first to ever put the player into the hooves of a goat, who must enact as much wanton destruction as possible. It was also the first massive hit to come out of a small city in Sweden by the name of Skövde.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

Star Wars, Tomb Raider and a big night for Expedition 33 – what you need to know from The Game Awards

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won nine awards, including game of the year, while newly announced games at the show include the next project from Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios

• The Game Awards 2025: the full list of winners

At the Los Angeles’ Peacock theater last night, The Game Awards broadcast its annual mix of prize presentations and expensive video game advertisements. New titles were announced, celebrities appeared, and at one point, screaming people were suspended from the ceiling in an extravagant promotion for a new role-playing game.

Acclaimed French adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began the night with 12 nominations – the most in the event’s history – and ended it with nine awards. The Gallic favourite took game of the year, as well as awards for best game direction, best art direction, best narrative and best performance (for actor Jennifer English).

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:56 am

‘Charismatic, self-assured, formidable’: Lara Croft returns with two new Tomb Raider games

An all-new Croft adventure, Tomb Raider Catalyst, will be released in 2027 – and a remake of the action heroine’s first adventure arrives next year

After a long break for Lara Croft, a couple of fresh Tomb Raider adventures are on their way. They will be the first new games in the series since 2018, and both will be published by Amazon.

Announced at the Game Awards in LA, Tomb Raider Catalyst stars the “charismatic, self-assured, formidable Lara Croft” from the original 1990s games, says game director Will Kerslake. It’s set in the markets, mountains, and naturally the ancient buildings of northern India, where Lara is racing with other treasure hunters to track down potentially cataclysmic artefacts. It will be out in 2027.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:45 am

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

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

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Like lipstick on a fabulous gorilla’: the Barbican’s many gaudy glow-ups and the one to top them all

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990s

The Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel. Some might argue, as they stumble out of Barbican tube station and gaze upwards, not much has changed in the interim.

The use of the word “barbican” was in decline in this country until the opening in 1982 of the Barbican Arts Centre. Taking 20 years to build, it completed the modernist megastructure of the Barbican Estate, grafted on to a huge tract of land devastated by wartime bombing. The aim was to bring life back to the City through swish new housing, energised by the presence of culture. Nonetheless, the arts centre, the elusive minotaur at the heart of the concrete labyrinth, was always farcically difficult to locate. To this day, visitors are obliged to trundle along the Ariadne’s thread of the famous yellow line, inscribed in what seemed like an act of institutional desperation, across concrete hill and dale.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:49 pm

‘Getting lost is good’: skybridge and floating stairs bring fun and thrills to mighty new Taiwan museum

With its soaring ceilings, meandering pathways and mesh-like walls, Taichung Art Museum, designed by Sanaa, sweeps visitors from library to gallery to rooftop garden for rousing views

Walking through the brand new Taichung Art Museum in central Taiwan, directions are kind of an abstract concept. Designed by powerhouse Japanese architecture firm Sanaa, the complex is a collection of eight askew buildings, melding an art museum and municipal library, encased in silver mesh-like walls, with soaring ceilings and meandering pathways.

Past the lobby – a breezy open space that is neither inside nor out – the visitor wanders around paths and ramps, finding themselves in the library one minute and a world-class art exhibition the next. A door might suddenly step through to a skybridge over a rooftop garden, with sweeping views across Taichung’s Central Park, or into a cosy teenage reading room. Staircases float on the outside of buildings, floor levels are disparate, complementing a particular space’s purpose and vibe rather than having an overall consistency.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:16 pm

Liam Neeson denies anti-vax views after narrating Covid documentary

Taken star lends his voice to a film that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and includes interview with RFK Jr

Liam Neeson has lent his voice to a new documentary that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and praises Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The film, called Plague of Corruption, is narrated by the Taken actor and based on a bestselling book co-authored by Judy Mikovits, a disgraced former scientist who gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic. She claimed Covid was caused by a bad strain of the flu vaccine and urged people not to get vaccinated.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:23 am

Amanda Seyfried says she will not apologise for calling Charlie Kirk ‘hateful’ after his shooting

The Housemaid actor received backlash in September when she left a comment on Instagram after the rightwing activist was killed

The Housemaid star Amanda Seyfried has said she is “not fucking apologising” for describing Charlie Kirk as “hateful” after the latter was shot dead in September.

Seyfried was speaking to Who What Wear when she was asked about her social media activity, including the backlash around her Kirk comment. “I’m not fucking apologising for that. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I commented on one thing. I said something that was based on actual reality and actual footage and actual quotes. What I said was pretty damn factual, and I’m free to have an opinion, of course.”

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:34 pm

The 20 best US beauty gifts for makeup and skincare lovers – curated by dewy-skinned content creators

Products that our experts personally use – and their recommendations for a range of skin types and tones, sensitivities and age groups

• The 27 best fashion gifts in the US – curated by our favorite stylists and creators

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From the skincare-obsessed tweens that took over Sephora to the busy moms who’ve mastered their no makeup-makeup look, we all know of someone who’d love a new moisturizer or lipstick as a holiday gift.

With so many blushes, bronzers and barrier creams on the market, it can be difficult to spot a product that actually works from one that’s just packaged prettily.

Published: December 11, 2025, 3:15 pm

Experience: I stopped a man from crashing our plane

A passenger having a mental health episode was heading for the emergency exit. He lunged for the door handle, screaming

I write thrillers: mostly ­historical mysteries. In September 2024, I was returning from a ­literary festival in Italy, where I had been talking about my ­latest book. It was a Ryanair flight, and as we came in to land at London Stansted, I heard people behind me shouting. I looked back to see some of them were standing up. A moment later a big man – I would guess he was 6ft 4in, and powerfully built – burst through them. He headed towards an emergency exit and lunged for the door handle, screaming. Behind him, a smaller guy was clambering over the tops of the seats, shouting: “It’s not terrorism. It’s not terrorism. Mental health!”

While exit doors can’t be opened when a plane is at full altitude because the air pressure inside is too great, levels dip during descent, and it is possible to open them. I feared that if he opened the exit, the plane would be hard to control and we might hit the ground about 300mph faster than we were meant to.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

A cure for ‘bacon neck’: How to keep your T-shirts in top shape

Marlon Brando was a victim of it, even Princess Diana was caught out by a collar ‘curled like bacon in a pan’. Here are a few ways to avoid their fate

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It is sometimes, amusingly, known as “bacon neck”, and it is the bane of my life: the loss of elasticity that results in a crinkly, ill-fitting collar. This undulating menace commonly befalls the classic crew-neck T-shirt or sweatshirt, but scoop, polo and V-necks can also be afflicted. Too often, science conspires to transform a smooth neckline into something resembling a failed polygraph test.

The term “bacon neck” (not to be confused with “turkey neck”, the disparaging phrase for sagging skin that is almost uniformly levelled at women) was coined, or at least popularised, in a 2010 Hanes commercial featuring the basketball star Michael Jordan. In the clip, Jordan’s seat-mate points out a fellow plane passenger’s worn-out collar: “See how it’s all curled up like bacon in a pan? See how bad this guy looks?”

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

I now declare you throuple: how to plan a polyamorous wedding

A throuple in Tennessee shares how they planned a fairytale wedding, from rings to first dance

On the day of her wedding, Janie Coppola, 30, overslept. She woke up to a friend banging on her bedroom window, and had to quickly do her hair before rushing to the venue, a dreamy castle in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Fortunately, the rest of the day went smoothly, and on the afternoon of 18 October, she walked down the aisle in a big white dress to be wed to her husband. And her wife.

“Your favorite throuple got hitched,” Margaret French, 32, Janie’s wife, captioned an Instagram post about the day.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 pm

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

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

• Get a disagreement settled or become a YBTJ juror

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

Meat-free under the mistletoe – recipes

Not a fan of the traditional festive spread? These recipes are a Christmas feast that even turkeys would vote for

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Festive stress getting to you? A potter in the garden is the ideal antidote

Escape from the Christmas mayhem to spruce up pots and outdoor furniture, sow sweet peas, or even paint a fence

I suspect you’re not thinking about the garden much this month. After all, we’re 12 days away from Christmas. Perhaps you’re wrapping presents or running school fairs, or maybe you’ve stumbled upon this while having a little scroll in the queue for a grotto somewhere. It’s difficult to even be outside and at a loose end during daylight hours at the moment.

In case you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, what if you went out into your green space or garden, and started having a bit of a potter? Nothing fancy; goodness knows, I don’t put my garden “to bed” as tradition would dictate – chopping down perennial growth and sweeping up leaves and laying a thick black blanket of mulch over neatly edged beds. But rather a gentle ramble, picking up the plastic flowerpots that have blown about the place and finally emptying that sad pot of desiccated summer annuals into the compost bin. You’ll probably feel a bit less chaotic, possibly even a little festive, afterwards.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Teenagers are presenting Christmas wishlists, Powerpoint-style – my daughter included

A far cry from hand-scrawled letters to Santa, on graphic design platform Canva users have created a whopping 1.4m Christmas wishlist presentations

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Twas three weeks before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for my 13-year-old daughter, who emerged from her lair with a level of vim uncommon in daylight hours.

As she made her approach with laptop aglow, her droll little mouth was drawn up in a bow. It then became apparent that I was about to become the audience (some may say “victim”) of a recent cultural phenomenon: the Christmas wishlist slideshow.

Published: December 11, 2025, 2:00 pm

Ho, ho, Hamburg: bringing the flavours of a true German Christmas market home

From glühwein to lebkuchen, bratwurst to stollen, recreating the delicacies I sampled in the city’s festive markets is wholly achievable. Plus, a new digital cookbook for a good cause

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Without wanting to sound tediously Scrooge-like, the German-style markets that have become seasonal fixtures in many British cities over the last few decades never make me feel particularly festive. What’s remotely Christmassy – or German – about Dubai-chocolate churros and Korean fried chicken, I grumble as I drag the dog (who enjoys all such things) around their perimeters.

Hamburg’s markets, however, which I was myself dragged around last weekend, are a very different story. For a start, the city has many of them, mainly fairly small – and some, such as the “erotic Christmas market” in St Pauli, with a particular theme. What they all have in common is the range of food and drink on offer … though let’s gloss hurriedly over the phallic gingerbread shapes on sale at St Pauli in favour of the eye-opening range of glühwein (white, rosé, kirsch-spiked, blueberry-flavoured), which was far more appealing.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:30 pm

Threshold: the choir who sing to the dying - documentary

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed.  For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:01 am

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

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

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:46 am

I used to report from the West Bank. Twenty years after my last visit, I was shocked by how much worse it is today

Among the many people I met, there was a pervasive feeling of hopelessness and a sense that resistance is slowly becoming a memory

In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.”

Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us: how important are your pets during Christmas?

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

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

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

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:49 am

Tell us: have you bought tickets for the 2026 World Cup yet?

We’d like to hear from fans about their experience of buying tickets – and also from those who have decided against doing so

The first two rounds of ticket sales for the 2026 World Cup have opened. Yet even with the draw yet to take place and matchups yet to be determined, fans appear to be flocking to buy them. The dynamic pricing model instituted by Fifa has raised prices sky-high, with many fans offering stories of technological issues with Fifa’s sales platform as well.

We want to hear from you: Have you bought World Cup tickets? How much did you spend? Do you think it’ll be worth it? And did you face any obstacles – technical or otherwise – to getting the tickets you want? And if you haven’t bought tickets yet – why not?

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:16 pm

Sandhurst cadets and skating ministers: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:43 pm