‘The English person with a Chinese stomach’: how Fuchsia Dunlop became a Sichuan food hero

The author has been explaining Sichuan cuisine to westerners for decades. But ‘Fu Xia’, as she’s known, has had a profound effect on food lovers in China, too

Every autumn in the mid-00s, when I lived in China, my friend Scarlett Li would invite me to Shanghai to eat hairy crab. Named for the spiky fur on their legs and claws, the crabs are said to have the best flavour during the ninth month of the lunar calendar. They’re steamed and served whole, with a dip of rice vinegar spiked with ginger. The most prized specimens come from Yangcheng Lake near Suzhou, which is not far from Scarlett’s home town of Wuxi. She had moved to Hong Kong as a child, attended high school and college in Australia, and returned to China to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. Despite her years abroad, she remained Chinese through and through – and eating hairy crab with her, I became Chinese, too.

Beginning in the Tang dynasty in the seventh century, crabs were harvested from the lakes and estuaries of the Yangtze delta and sent as tribute to the imperial court. Twelfth-century Hangzhou had specialised crab markets and dedicated crab restaurants. “I have lusted after crabs all my life,” wrote the 17th-century playwright Li Yu. “From the first day of the crab season until the last day they are sold, I … do not let a single evening pass without eating them …. Dear crab, dear crab, you and I, are we to be lifelong companions?”

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

The infidelity saga of RFK Jr, Nuzzi and her ex is unspooling: ‘It’s like they’ve opened all their trench coats’

The rollout of reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir has led to Ryan Lizza airing out her alleged affairs – and is fueling a dangerous stereotype about journalists

This week, Olivia Nuzzi – the US star political reporter known for her cozy access to top Republican figures – dropped an excerpt of her memoir, American Canto. In it, she detailed what she describes as an emotional affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who she calls “the politician”.

Not to be outdone, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance and former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza self-published an essay dishing on the day he found out Nuzzi was cheating on him, he claims – not with RFK Jr, as one might have expected, but with another former presidential candidate, Mark Sanford.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:00 pm

Will the public sexual assault of the president mark a turning point for women in Mexico? – podcast

What will it take to improve women’s safety in Mexico? With Estefanía Vela Barba and Ann Deslandes

Earlier this month, the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was greeting citizens on the streets of Mexico City when a man groped her and tried to kiss her. A video of the incident quickly spread around the world.

Estefanía Vela Barba, an activist for women’s rights, tells Annie Kelly that while the president’s assault was shocking, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a woman. The pair discuss the policies around women’s safety that Sheinbaum has subsequently announced and the importance of cultural change as well as legal reform.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:00 am

Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines: how marine life thrives on dumped weapons

Scientists discover thousands of sea creatures have made their homes amid the detritus of abandoned second world war munitions off the coast of Germany

In the brackish waters off the German coast lies a wasteland of Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines. Thrown off barges at the end of the second world war and forgotten about, thousands of munitions have become matted together over the years. They form a rusting carpet on the shallow, muddy seafloor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the Nazi arsenal was ignored and forgotten about. A growing number of tourists flocked to the sandy beaches and calm waters for jetskiing, kite surfing and amusement parks. Beneath the surface, the weapons decayed.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

Hold an ice cube – and shake like a dog: therapists on 16 simple, surprising ways to beat stress

It can cause physiological and emotional problems, but none of us can avoid it entirely. Here are some of the best ways to react when stress hormones start coursing through your body ...

Most people contend with stress in some element of their lives. What can you do when you are overwhelmed by it and your coping mechanisms no longer seem to work? Here, psychotherapists share their techniques for managing in the moment, seeking help, and minimising everyday stress.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history’: the inside story of the Medomsley scandal

At a youth detention centre in north-east England, the paedophile Neville Husband raped and assaulted countless boys. Why was his reign of terror allowed to go on – and why hasn’t there been a public inquiry?

When I met Kevin Young in 2012 he was in his early 50s, handsome, charismatic, smart – and utterly broken. The moment he started talking about Medomsley detention centre he was in tears.

Young was born in Newcastle, in 1959. At two, he was taken into care, and his parents were convicted of wilful neglect. At eight, at a school in Devon, he was sexually abused by the gardener. At 14, at St Camillus, a Catholic residential school in Yorkshire, he was sexually assaulted by the headteacher, James Bernard Littlewood. But none of this compared with his experience at Medomsley, a youth detention centre in north-east England.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

Trump signs bill to compel release of more Epstein documents

President attacks Democrats in post on Truth Social after US lawmakers swiftly move bill through Congress

Donald Trump signed a bill Wednesday directing the justice department to release files from the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, surrendering in the face of joint pressure from Democratic opponents and the president’s conservative base.

The signature marked a sharp reversal for Trump, who had the authority as president to release the documents himself, but chose not to.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:01 am

US and Russian officials draft plan to end Ukraine war based on capitulation from Kyiv

It is unclear if Trump administration backs deal that would mean Kyiv giving up territory and slashing size of military

US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday as Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 25 people in the city of Ternopil.

The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty. The plan is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:15 pm

Markets rally after Nvidia’s strong results calm AI bubble fears, and investors await US jobs report – business live

Investors cheer forecast-beating results from chipmaker, as attention turns to delayed US employment report

The boss of FTSE 250 metals group Johnson Matthey has said that chancellor Rachel Reeves should hold off increasing costs for British businesses ahead of next Wednesday’s budget.

Chief executive Liam Condon said that cost inflation was still a major issue for British industry, but that the government should also stick with plans to bring in new renewable energy supplies. He said:

The minimum is no additional cost for business. Every time costs go up, you’re making the case against investing in the UK.

In the UK cost of energy is too high versus almost anywhere in the world.

UK’s FTSE 100: up 72 points at 9,579, up 0.77%

Germany’s DAX: up 241 points at 23,402, up 1%

France’s CAC: up 90 points at 8,044, up 1.1%

Spain’s IBEX: up 143 points at 16,031, up 0.9%

Italy’s FTSE MIB: up 541 points at 43,192, up 1.25%

Nvidia bears the weight of the world but, like Atlas, it’s standing firm under that towering mountain of expectations.

Third quarter results delivered the goods and then some, a 4% beat on the top and bottom line came with a side of more good news in the form of a monster $65 billion revenue guide for the fourth quarter. While AI valuations are dominating the news feeds, Nvidia is going about its business in style.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:03 am

Democratic Florida lawmaker indicted for allegedly stealing $5m in Fema funds

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick accused of funneling money to family healthcare business for 2021 congressional campaign

Democratic representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly funneling more than $5m worth of federal disaster funds from her company into her 2021 congressional campaign.

The indictment states that Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, stole $5m in Fema overpayments that their family healthcare company received, moving the money through multiple accounts to hide its origins. The indictment alleges that the majority of the money was used for Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign, as well as for the personal benefit of the defendants.

Published: November 20, 2025, 1:05 am

Trump and Mamdani to meet in Oval Office on Friday after months of bickering

President has previously criticised the New York City mayor-elect, labelling him a ‘communist’ and threatening to deport him

Donald Trump has confirmed a long-awaited meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will happen in Washington this week, setting up an in-person clash between the political opposites who for months have antagonised each other.

The sit-down, which Trump said on social media would take place on Friday in the Oval Office, could possibly represent a detente of sorts between the Republican president and Democratic rising star.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:15 am

Full grand jury didn’t see final Comey indictment, prosecutors admit

Concession by federal lawyers adds to mounting challenges in effort to prosecute the former FBI director

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they had never presented the final version of the indictment filed against James Comey to a full federal grand jury, a concession that adds to mounting challenges in their effort to prosecute the former FBI director.

Prosecutors acknowledged the omission during a Wednesday hearing in which Comey’s lawyers argued the case against him should be dismissed because it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:33 pm

‘California sober’: marijuana may help you drink less, study finds

Brown University researchers run joint-and-drink study to find alcohol consumption falls after smoking cannabis

It turns out that going “California sober” may actually help you stay away from alcohol, according to new research published in the the American Journal of Psychiatry.

A team of Brown University researchers conducted a study in which participants were given marijuana joints to smoke and then sent out to a controlled “bar lab”, in which they then were given the choice to have up to eight mini alcoholic beverages. The experiment was conducted three separate times: once with 7.2% THC cannabis, once with 3.1% THC cannabis and once with 0.03% THC cannabis, which was considered a placebo.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:10 pm

Nasa releases close-up pictures of comet flying by from another star system

The interstellar visitor, known as 3I/Atlas, will be seen just in this instance, never to come back again

Nasa released close-up pictures on Wednesday of the interstellar comet that’s making a quick one-and-done tour of the solar system.

Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas is only the third confirmed object to visit our corner of the cosmos from another star. It zipped harmlessly past Mars last month.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:40 am

Angoulême comics festival in crisis as creators and publishers declare boycott

French government withdraws funding after claims of toxic management and dismissal of staff member who lodged rape complaint

One of the world’s most prestigious comic book festivals is under threat of cancellation after leading graphic novelists and publishers announced they would boycott the event and the French government withdrew a tranche of its funding.

In the biggest crisis in its illustrious history, the Angoulême festival of la bande dessinée (comic strip) may not take place in 2026 after claims of toxic management and the dismissal of a member of staff who had lodged a rape complaint.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Unforgivable’: Trump’s ‘piggy’ insult is stoking more outrage than usual

The clip of the US president on Air Force One last Friday has taken off without much help from the media itself

It’s one outrage in days full of outrageous material.

“Quiet, piggy,” Donald Trump told a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her angrily.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:36 pm

Top judge resumes contempt inquiry into Trump El Salvador deportations

James Boasberg demands sworn testimony to determine whether US officials defied March court order

A federal judge on Wednesday said he was resuming his long-stalled court proceeding to determine whether Trump administration officials willfully violated a court order by deporting hundreds of men to El Salvador in March.

US district judge James Boasberg said he would demand sworn testimony from administration officials to determine whether they defied his March court order to turn around aircraft that were removing the men from US territory.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:53 pm

January 6 rioter who was pardoned by Trump arrested for child sexual abuse

Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, faces multiple charges in Florida and has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, authorities say

A man who took part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol and was pardoned by Donald Trump earlier this year has been arrested on multiple child sexual abuse charges in Florida, according to local authorities.

The man, identified as 44-year-old Andrew Paul Johnson, was taken into custody in August in Tennessee and extradited to Florida where, according to arrest records, he faces charges of lewd and lascivious child molestation of a child under 12, lewd and lascivious child molestation of a child between 12 and 16, as well as lewd and lascivious exhibition, and transmission of material harmful to a minor.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:34 pm

'War on drugs' or political agitation? Assessing Trump's actions in Venezuela – video explainer

In August, Donald Trump started a campaign of aggression against Venezuela. The US president first launched airstrikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of the South American country – a move largely condemned as extrajudicial killings – then deployed US naval assets in the Caribbean. The Guardian's Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, explains why the claims the targeted boats were carrying drugs destined for the US are dubious and what Trump's actions could mean for the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro

• Venezuela’s Maduro urges Trump to avoid Afghanistan-style ‘forever war’

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:43 pm

‘Look at us with mercy’: displaced Palestinians dread onset of harsh winter

People in tent cities on shore of southern Gaza fear disease, cold and hunger as shortages continue

Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the shore of southern Gaza could do as the storm approached. Sabah al-Breem, 62, was sitting with one of her daughters and several grandchildren in their current home – a makeshift construction of tarpaulins and salvaged wood – when the wind and the driving rain broke across Gaza last week.

“Everything collapsed … We repaired our shelter but in the night it fell down again under the heavy rain. All our belongings were soaked. The day the winds blew was a black day for us,” said Breem, originally from Khan Younis but displaced multiple times since the start of the war in October 2023.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

Nvidia earnings: Wall Street sighs with relief after AI wave doesn’t crash

Amid a blackout of data due to the government shutdown, the $5tn chipmaker’s report took on wider significance

Markets expectations around Wednesday’s quarterly earnings report by the most valuable publicly traded company in the world had risen to a fever pitch. Anxiety over billions in investment in artificial intelligence pervaded, in part because the US has been starved of reliable economic data by the recent government shutdown.

Investors hoped that both questions would be in part answered by Nvidia’s earnings and by a jobs report due on Thursday morning.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:47 pm

The 15 best Black Friday and Cyber Monday tech deals in the US – so far

From phones to TVs, smart-home cameras and headphones, now’s the time to buy the gadgets you’ve been patiently waiting all year for sales on

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

• The very best US Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, curated and vetted

Black Friday started off as a way to score some great deals on gifts, but let’s be honest: it’s also a chance to pick up some nice, deeply discounted goodies for yourself. This is especially true in the world of tech, where high prices and personal taste mean it’s often just safest to buy what works for you rather than guessing on a gift. Don’t worry, we won’t judge.

But when you’re inundated with Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, it’s easy to get spun around by specs: is that really enough storage? Is the screen big enough? Will I regret not getting the newer version? That’s when you turn to the experts.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:36 pm

A Man on the Inside season two review – Ted Danson’s despicably bland show is everything wrong with TV

Only our current tech hellscape could create a comedy so insidiously inoffensive. Prepare to be pummelled into submission as your time is siphoned off by OK entertainment

This is a cosy, lighthearted whodunnit about a retired professor who gets a second wind as a private eye. It’s also a bingo card for just about everything that makes streamer-era TV so patronising, uninspiring and mind-numbingly dull.

On the surface, A Man on the Inside’s crimes might seem negligible: it’s a little schmaltzy, a little too pleased with itself in that wisecrack-stuffed American comedy way. Yet it’s exactly that inoffensiveness that makes this strain of television so insidious. When the New York Times critic James Poniewozik coined the term “mid TV” to describe the current “profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence” that has come to dominate our screens, it wasn’t so much a vicious takedown as a shrug at the blah-ness of it all. The tech giants have pummelled us into submission by siphoning off our time via OK entertainment.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:01 am

‘Suffering, betrayal, impending doom’: Spain’s alienated youth – in pictures

Magnum photographer Lúa Ribeira worked intensely with young people – shooting them in dystopian landscapes on city limits to reflect their feelings of disconnection

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 am

Saudi Prince Mohammed is being lavished with praise by Trump. It’s clear why | Mohamad Bazzi

Autocrats like Prince Mohammed are eager to benefit from Trump’s brazen effort to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, visited the US this week for the first time in seven years – and Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for his favorite Arab autocrat. On Tuesday, Trump hosted the prince for lunch and talks at the White House, followed by a black-tie dinner that included members of Congress, business leaders and top administration officials. The next day, Trump and the prince appeared together at a US-Saudi investment summit at the Kennedy Center.

It’s all part of a rehabilitation tour for Prince Mohammed, years after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who dismembered his body with a bone saw. For a time, the killing turned Prince Mohammed into an international pariah. But Trump never wavered in his support of the Saudi leader, and during his first term protected the prince from US sanctions and pressure from Congress.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:00 pm

Every time new emails drop, elites do the Epstein shuffle: ‘Yes I knew him, but I didn’t KNOW him’ | Emma Brockes

For the New York and Washington great and good who loved the company of wealth and power, all that glitters is no longer gold

Many years ago, I went to a party in central London thrown by a host known for curating interesting and heavyweight guest lists and, on entering, encountered David Irving, the disgraced historian and Holocaust denier. As a marker of social pariahdom, Holocaust denial is up there with – or perhaps even more potent than – a conviction for sex offences, and I turned around and walked out; not through any particular moral superiority, but because I thought “notoriety” as a criteria for inclusion on a guest list was stupid and offensive. As I left, I remember looking across the room at the host and thinking: you silly bloody bint, I’m embarrassed for you.

I thought about that party and Irving this week while reading, with grim amusement, the absolute scramble currently under way in the US among media and other public figures seeking to explain, justify, downplay and generally paddle away as fast as they can from their social interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. I’m not talking about the men alleged to have joined the late paedophile in abusing trafficked girls, but rather the apparently endless list of notable figures – mostly in New York, but also reaching down to Washington DC, and across America’s Ivy League campuses – who enjoyed his hospitality, appeared with him at parties, and exchanged cordial emails with the man long after his true nature was known. As the Senate voted this week to release the Epstein files, the chorus of “we didn’t know!” from certain corners grew so loud it might’ve been Germany in 1946.

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 19, 2025, 4:24 pm

Trump shrugged off Khashoggi’s killing. This is a new low | Jodie Ginsberg

Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in a Saudi consulate. The president says ‘things happen’

“Things happen.” Just two words. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is probably the most infamous journalist killing of the last decade – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for journalism – and for the truth.

The US president’s dismissal of the murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi came in a press conference with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA found in a 2021 report had orchestrated the kidnap and killing of the Washington Post columnist in 2018. (Prince Mohammed has denied involvement.)

Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:00 pm

French conservatives are inching towards a pact with Le Pen that could enable a far-right takeover of the country | Paul Taylor

In trying to woo hard-right voters, Les Républicains risk destroying France’s Gaullist legacy and putting Paris on a collision course with the EU

‘Not one vote for the left!” That call from Bruno Retailleau, chair of the mainstream conservative party Les Républicains (LR), helped a candidate allied with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) to sweep to victory in a byelection run-off against a socialist in southwest France last month after the centre-right candidate was eliminated in the first round.

It was a clear sign that, despite frequent denials, the much-diminished heirs to Charles de Gaulle’s conservative movement are inching towards a controversial “union of the right” that could put Le Pen or her protege, Jordan Bardella, in the Élysée Palace in 2027.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

The landline may be having a renaissance – but it’s to a world in which the art of phone calls has changed | Paul Daley

Some may be nostalgic for a time when the landline made communication a family affair, before smartphones were an extension of each of us

When something becomes old and then new again during my lifetime, I might be forgiven for feeling at once quite aged and a little sentimental.

But suggestions that the landline telephone may be having a cultural renaissance just make me feel old and somewhat triggered by experiences of fraught teenage social negotiations over the long obsolete rotary dial phone of my youth.

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Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:51 pm

The NFL says Jameis Winston is a ‘national treasure’. The NFL is very wrong | Melissa Jacobs

The New York Giants quarterback has become everyone’s favorite goofball. But it’s a jarring status given his history

Hear the term “national treasure” and odds are you think of someone like Dolly Parton, Betty White, Simone Biles or Tom Hanks. They are comforting, widely admired and have uncontroversial histories.

And then there’s Jameis Winston.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

The Guardian view on funding Ukraine’s resistance: a looming financial crisis in Kyiv must be averted | Editorial

Whether by leveraging Russia’s frozen assets, or other means, the EU must deliver the cash necessary to withstand Putin’s war of attrition

In the early part of this year, as the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated European leaders in Munich, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was subjected to a televised mauling in the White House, it became starkly apparent that the bonds of solidarity between the European Union and Ukraine would need to be strengthened to cope with a new geopolitical reality. As 2025 draws to a close, a moment of reckoning has arrived.

According to EU estimates, Ukraine will need more than €70bn in extra financial assistance next year to keep defending itself against Vladimir Putin. That money won’t be coming from Washington, where Donald Trump has refused to seek new funding for military aid from Congress. Yet Kyiv’s ability to negotiate an acceptable peace depends on its capacity to withstand Mr Putin’s relentless war of attrition, which is designed to drain Ukraine of the resources necessary to resist, and to weaken the resolve of its European allies.

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 19, 2025, 6:25 pm

MLS re-opens investigation into Philadelphia Union executive as team puts him on leave

• Ernst Tanner was subject of Guardian investigation

• Complaint alleged racist, sexist, and homophobic comments

• Tanner denies allegations, which initial MLS investigation did not corroborate

• Read our full investigation | Summary of our findings

Major League Soccer announced on Wednesday that it is re-opening its investigation into Philadelphia Union sporting director Ernst Tanner. The Union said in a statement to the Guardian that they have placed Tanner on administrative leave. The move comes a day after the Guardian published an investigation into Tanner’s conduct.

Tanner had previously been under investigation by MLS after the league received a complaint from the MLS Players Association in late January. In it, the MLSPA outlined a wide range of alleged issues surrounding Tanner, which included the use of racist, sexist and homophobic language and instances of inappropriate physical contact with a staff member.

Made multiple misogynistic comments, including saying “women don’t belong in men’s soccer” about a female MLS referee and telling a gathering of academy players that they “should never worry about a referee, unless she’s a woman.”

Directed a homophobic slur at an MLS referee in 2023

Spoke about Black players “like they were subhuman” and suggested that Black referees “lack intelligence and capability.”

Touched a co-worker inappropriately “numerous times,” an allegation for which he was reported to the Union’s HR department.

Hired an underqualified coach who was allegedly abusive toward players on the Philadelphia Union II, the club’s reserve team that is used as a proving ground for young players from its thriving academy.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:54 pm

ESPN rejoins MLB as NBC and Netflix land games in sweeping new rights deal

• ESPN lands MLB.tv out-of-market package

• Netflix gets Home Run Derby, marquee games

• NBC takes over Sunday Night Baseball slate

ESPN and Major League Baseball appeared headed for an ugly separation after the network opted out of its rights deal in February.

Nine months later, it appears to be the best thing to happen to both parties.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:30 pm

Jets’ Aaron Glenn confident Kris Boyd will ‘walk away’ from NYC shooting

• Jets’ Boyd in critical but stable condition

• Glenn: player ‘upbeat’, expected to recover

• NYPD releases images of shooting suspect

New York Jets coach Aaron Glenn says he has spoken to Kris Boyd and is confident the cornerback and special teams standout will be OK after being shot in midtown Manhattan early Sunday morning.

Glenn said the hospitalized Boyd was “upbeat” in their recent conversation.

Published: November 19, 2025, 8:18 pm

Pochettino’s first full USMNT year started shakily. It ends with real World Cup hope

The US coach took charge of a team in flux and initially looked like he would feed that uncertainty. But his foundations are starting to look solid

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

The symbolism felt a tad heavy-handed, as if a scriptwriter had slightly overcooked the plot.

That the United States men’s national team should utterly humiliate Uruguay 5-1 ,the very opponent who dumped the Americans out of the 2024 Copa América in the group stage on their home soil, precipitating an all-out crisis. That the first of the USMNT’s goals on Tuesday, and the assist for the second, should come from Sebastian Berhalter, whose father, Gregg, was fired as US head coach after said Copa. That Berhalter’s successor, Mauricio Pochettino, should reclaim the program’s honor against his mentor, his “second father”, his “football father”, his “inspiration”, Marcelo Bielsa.

Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out in the spring of 2026. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:13 pm

WNBA’s latest CBA proposal would reportedly put max salary over $1.1m with revenue sharing

• WNBA proposal includes $1.1m max salary

• Minimum salary would exceed $220,000

• League seeks swift deal before deadline

The WNBA’s latest collective bargaining proposal would include revenue sharing with a maximum salary of more than $1.1m available to more than one player per team growing each year, according to a person familiar with the negotiations on Tuesday night.

WNBA officials updated the board on the latest proposal at meetings this week, the person told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because ongoing negotiations are private. The new league minimum would be more than $220,000 with an average of more than $460,000.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:31 pm

Naomi Girma makes USWNT return in squad for friendlies against Italy

• Girma last played for the US over the summer

• US plays Italy on 28 November and 1 December in Florida

Naomi Girma was named to the US women’s national team roster on Wednesday for a pair of upcoming matches against Italy after returning from a calf injury.

The defender had been sidelined since the start of the season with Chelsea but recently returned to the starting lineup, playing the first-half of the Blues’ 6-0 win over St Pölten in the Champions League and coming on for the second half of their 1-1 draw with Liverpool over the weekend. She has not played for the US since a 3-0 victory over Canada on 2 July.

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:46 pm

Jake Paul’s Joshua fight is all about fame and bluster, money and eyeballs | Jonathan Liew

When a prankster meets a puncher it’s not about sport but an elaborate viral hoax that keeps us wanting more

“If it’s all straight up and proper, you would worry that he takes this kid’s head off,” reckons Barry McGuigan. “Could get his jaw broke, his head smashed in, side of his head caved in, God forbid he could get a brain bleed,” says Carl Froch on his YouTube channel. “It could be the end of him. It could be his last day on Earth,” David Haye tells Sky News, with the sort of apocalyptic glare I try to give my children when they want to jump in a muddy puddle.

Yes, this week everyone appears to be deeply concerned for the wellbeing of 28-year-old YouTube celebrity Jake Paul. The announcement of his fight against Anthony Joshua next month has generated a flood of foreboding prognoses, and fair enough. Stepping into the ring with a two-time world heavyweight champion when a) you’re not even a heavyweight, b) your record consists almost entirely of novices and geriatrics and c) you still fight like a marmoset trapped in an empty crisp packet: on some level, we all know how this might go.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:30 pm

LeBron James begins record-setting 23rd NBA season with double-double in Lakers win

• 40-year-old plays in first NBA game in seven months

• James finishes with 11 points and 12 assists

LeBron James certainly didn’t look like he had been away from the court for nearly seven months when he began his unprecedented 23rd NBA season on Tuesday night – even if his burning lungs told him otherwise.

After reaching another landmark in what is now officially the longest career in league history, James was not at all surprised to return from his lengthy injury absence by fitting in seamlessly with the surging Los Angeles Lakers in yet another victory.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:09 pm

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in Lebanon, photos of remnants suggest

Exclusive: Images are first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly 20 years

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest.

The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 pm

New Zealand bans puberty blockers for young transgender people

Critics warn move could have devastating impact on lives and wellbeing of those affected

New Zealand has announced it is banning new prescriptions of puberty-blocking drugs for young transgender people, in a move that critics warned could worsen the mental health of those affected.

The step comes amid growing global debate about the number of adolescents seeking to change gender, dividing those concerned about hastiness in prescribing such medications and those worried about access to remedies they deem lifesaving.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:39 pm

Alice Guo, Chinese national who ran huge scam centre while Philippines mayor, sentenced to life in prison

Guo, who pretended to be Filipina to become mayor, found guilty of human trafficking after raid on compound where more than 700 people were forced to run scams

Alice Guo, a Chinese national who became a mayor in the Philippines while masquerading as a Filipina, has been sentenced to life in prison along with seven others on human trafficking charges, state prosecutors have said.

Guo, who served as mayor of a town north of Manila, was found guilty of overseeing a Chinese-operated online gambling centre where hundreds of people were forced to run scams or risk torture.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:24 am

FBI worker says he was wrongfully terminated for having Pride flag at desk

David Maltinsky, a 16-year veteran, says in lawsuit agency retaliated against him for engaging in protected speech

A longtime FBI employee has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for displaying a Pride flag at his desk, naming the FBI director, Kash Patel, the justice department and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, as defendants.

According to David Maltinsky, an intelligence specialist who had served with the bureau for 16 years, his wrongful termination earlier this year was “unconstitutional and politically motivated”.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:55 pm

Samoa PM suspends country’s only daily newspaper from press briefings amid dispute over coverage

Prime minister has accused the Samoa Observer of inaccurate reporting during his eight-week medical stay in New Zealand

Samoa’s only daily newspaper has been banned from attending press conferences with the Samoan prime minister, in a move that critics say threatens the democratic integrity of the Pacific nation.

Relations between La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao Fosi Schmidt and the Samoa Observer have deteriorated in recent weeks, with the prime minister accusing the newspaper of inaccurate reporting during his eight-week medical stay in New Zealand.

Published: November 20, 2025, 4:14 am

China doesn’t want to lead alone on climate policies, senior adviser warns

Exclusive: A top official in Beijing’s Cop delegation says China is committed to clean energy – but US’s absence is a problem

China is committed to the energy transition needed to avert climate breakdown – but does not want to take the lead alone in the absence of the US, one of the country’s senior advisers has told the Guardian.

Wang Yi said China would provide more money to vulnerable countries, but the EU’s climate commissioner has warned Beijing is not doing enough to cut emissions.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

Denmark announces one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, while the rest of the EU looks away

Governments across the continent have attacked green rules with increasing ferocity – all while professing their commitment to existing climate targets

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To little fanfare and few international headlines, Denmark just announced one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets.

The unusually wind-powered and cycle-friendly Nordic nation – whose ruling Social Democrats suffered a setback in elections on Tuesday – promised on Monday to cut planet-heating pollution by at least 82% by 2035 from 1990 levels. The goal inches past the UK’s landmark 81% target for that year and races ahead of the EU’s rather wide goal of 66.3% to 72.5%.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:44 pm

WHO to lose nearly a quarter of its workforce – 2,000 jobs – due to US withdrawing funding

Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the World Health Organization in January, prompting the agency to scale back its work

The World Health Organization has said its workforce will shrink by nearly a quarter – or over 2,000 jobs – by the middle of next year as it seeks to implement reforms after its top donor, the United States, announced its departure.

US President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the body upon taking office in January, prompting the agency to scale back its work and cut its management team by half.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:06 am

‘We sent the kids home. Then all our cellphones went out’ – This is climate breakdown

When the Maui fires ripped through Hawaii, the community came together. For everyone it was a life-changing experience. This is Ryan’s story

Location Maui, Hawaii, United States

Disaster Maui wildfires, 2023

Ryan Kirkham had been the principal at Maui preparatory school for 13 years when the Maui wildfires ignited in 2023, killing 102 people in Lahaina and costing almost $3.3bn in insured damages. Climate change is increasing the severity of droughts in the Hawaiian Islands, which correlates with an increased likelihood of wildfires.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:00 pm

Jessica Tisch will remain New York police commissioner under Mamdani

Mayor-elect said head of city’s police department will stay at her post when he takes office

New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, announced on Wednesday that the city’s current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, will remain at her post when he takes up his job leading the city.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose election win has created headlines around the world, has been a frequent critic of the police, especially when it comes to issues of racism and police brutality.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:19 pm

Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer announces run for California governor

Steyer, who ran to be Democratic presidential nominee in 2020, joins crowded field seeking to replace Gavin Newsom

Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, will run for California governor, he announced on Wednesday.

The 68-year old joins a crowded field of candidates seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, and in a statement released this week pledged to focus on the state’s intractable affordability crisis.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:18 pm

State department to cut 38 universities from research program over DEI policies

Exclusive: Trump administration proposal would exclude elite schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices

The state department is proposing to suspend 38 universities including Harvard and Yale from a federal research partnership program because they engage in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, according to an internal memo and spreadsheet obtained by the Guardian.

The memo, dated 17 November, recommends excluding institutions from the Diplomacy Lab – a program that pairs university researchers with state department policy offices – if they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices” or set DEI objectives for candidate pools.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

‘No contract, no coffee’: what to know about the Starbucks workers’ strike in over 40 US cities

Starbucks union threatens to expand campaign as politicians like Zohran Mamdani back striking workers

Unionized Starbucks workers are threatening to expand a US strike against the world’s biggest coffee chain into “the largest and longest” in the company’s history – and urging customers to steer clear.

Starbucks has said the vast majority of its cafes remain open, and expressed disappointment that Starbucks Workers United launched the strike.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:07 pm

Saudi Arabia releases US retiree jailed over critical tweets

Saad Almadi’s family thanks Trump and state department as announcement comes after meeting with crown prince

Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.

Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:21 pm

Huge staff cuts at WHO will leave world ‘less healthy and safe’, experts warn

Health organisation is to lose almost a quarter of its workforce in 2026, reducing its ability to help countries facing disease outbreaks

The loss of more than 2,000 jobs at the World Health Organization (WHO) “will leave the world less healthy and less safe”, experts have warned.

The global health body said it expected to lose 2,371 posts – nearly a quarter of its workforce – by June 2026 as it deals with budget cuts after the US withdrawal from the organisation in January. At that point the WHO had 9,401 staff members.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:55 pm

Daniel Radcliffe writes supportive letter to Harry Potter successor in new TV series

The actor said he wrote wishing 11-year-old Dominic McLaughlin ‘an even better time’ growing up in the role than he had

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said that he wrote to 11-year-old actor Dominic McLaughlin, who has been cast in the title role of the new Harry Potter TV series.

Radcliffe appeared on Good Morning America on Tuesday and said: “I wouldn’t say that anyone who is going to play Harry has to [call me],” adding: “I wrote to Dominic and I sent him a letter and he sent me a very sweet note back.”

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:17 pm

Christie’s withdraws rare ‘first calculator’ from auction after French court halts export

Move comes after French scientists issued urgent appeal to prevent La Pascaline from leaving the country

A rare example of the first functioning calculating machine in history looks likely to stay in France after Christie’s withdrew it from auction pending a definitive ruling from a Paris court on whether or not it can be exported.

La Pascaline, developed by the French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642, when he was just 19, and billed as “the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction”, had been expected to fetch more than €2m (£1.8m).

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:49 pm

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at 50: the spirit of rebellion lives on

The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformity

A movie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility.

The Ken Kesey novel that the movie is based on was published in 1962, chronicling some of what Kesey saw as a hospital orderly and anticipating some of the coming pushback against postwar American conformity. The major change in Miloš Forman’s film is to shift the narrative away from Chief (Will Sampson), a towering Native American who presents himself as deaf and mute. Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence. Though the doctors don’t seem entirely convinced by his ruse, his behavior is apparently erratic enough for him to stay at least a little while. His attempts to bring more individualism and fun to his cohabitants runs afoul of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who exercises tight control over the ward.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:24 pm

The play that changed my life: ‘It was frightening at first but The Inheritance let me discover myself’

Roles as EM Forster and a young, gay American dying of Aids in the 2018 play allowed an opportunity for deep personal and social reflection

In 2018 I had recently lost my mother, so I was looking for connections with the spirit. The Inheritance allowed me to talk about matters of the heart.

It was the world premiere at the Young Vic in London, so we were making something brand new, which is always thrilling. They’d already done a week’s rehearsal with another actor who had pulled out of what became my role. I stayed up all night reading Matthew López’s script before my audition. It was so gripping. I was nervous of Stephen Daldry going into the audition, as he has an enormous status and he’s very front-footed in the rehearsal room. I like to be in the background and find my way, so his working methods frightened me a little bit. But I put all of that aside to serve this story.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:00 am

The Thing With Feathers review – well-intentioned adaptation of Max Porter novella about grief

Benedict Cumberbatch gives an honest performance, but this is too self-conscious to challenge or work through loss with same power as the book

This is a painful movie in both the right and the wrong ways; I found something fundamentally unpersuasive and unhelpful in its contrived, high-concept depiction of grief. Adapted by writer-director Dylan Southern from Max Porter’s novella Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch who gives an honest and well-intentioned performance as a children’s author and graphic novelist. Living a middle-class existence in London, he is suddenly widowed; one of the movie’s off-target qualities is its refusal to specify the cause of death or even show us clearly what his wife looked like, which in real life would be unbearably vivid facts. Sam Spruell has a quietly sympathetic role as Cumberbatch’s brother.

Left to look after their two young boys, he succumbs to a kind of breakdown, and hallucinates a giant nightmarish crow, which after a while the boys can sense too. The crow is derisively voiced by David Thewlis, and resembles the Ted-Hughes-ish illustrations Cumberbatch was working on. It sneeringly, ruthlessly mocks and jeers at his “sad dad” anguish; while everyone else is walking on eggshells around him, perhaps making things worse, the brutal crow jabs its beak into his psychic wound.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 am

Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks review – the sheer number of pornographic drawings is a big shock

JMW Turner left behind some 37,000 sketches when he died, many of which have rarely been seen. Do they – including a huge collection of explicit sketches – reveal truths about the elusive man?

The hook for Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks is meant to be that many of the 37,000 sketches left behind by the great British painter JMW Turner have rarely been seen and never been filmed; therein may be hints at the nuances of his elusive character that his main oeuvre kept hidden. Equally remarkable, though, is the documentary’s bold choice of contributors. As well as the art historians and present-day British artists who would dominate a standard art film, there are famous laymen, from the obviously somewhat qualified – Timothy Spall played the artist in Mike Leigh’s biographical film Mr Turner; Chris Packham is well placed to comment on Turner’s reverence for the natural world – to the more surprising hire of Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones.

Neither the sketchbooks nor the celebs turn the documentary format upside down, but they add something to a distillation of Turner’s life and legacy that balances accessibility with analytical muscle. Will a previously uninitiated viewer now be more likely to attend a Turner exhibition? Yes. Can existing Turner experts finesse their knowledge? Yes. Job done.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 pm

The World of Tomorrow review – Tom Hanks returns to the stage for time travel charmer

The Shed, New York

The actor indulges his love of the past in a breezily enjoyable play about a man falling for a woman from the 1930s, played by a standout Kelli O’Hara

Tom Hanks is a star who’s always had one foot squarely in the past. As an actor he’s forever been likened to James Stewart, a reincarnation of the charming, essentially good American everyman, a from-another-era lead who’s increasingly been more comfortable in period fare (in the last decade, he’s appeared in just four present-day films). As a producer, he’s gravitated toward historical shows such as Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific; his directorial debut was 60s-set music comedy That Thing You Do! and his undying obsession, outside of acting, is the typewriter, collecting and writing about its throwback appeal.

In his new play, The World of Tomorrow, his fondness for the “good old days” has led to the inevitable, a story about a man with a fondness for the “good old days” who actually gets to experience one of them for himself. It’s a loosely familiar tale of time travel, based on a short story written by Hanks that tries, and half-succeeds, to bring something new to a table we’ve sat at many times before.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:30 am

The Saragossa Manuscript review – cult Polish period-costume comedy is outrageous head-spinner

Wojciech Has’s slice of 1960s surrealism is set in 18th-century Spain, as an officer careens through farcical encounters and erotic episodes in a wild ride that could be a series of Monty Python sketches

This epic picaresque comedy from 1965 is a head-spinning period-costume adventure of 18th-century Spain from Polish film-maker Wojciech Has. It is a surrealist film whose surrealism resides not merely in the bizarre parched landscape of the Sierra Morena mountain range with its bleached skulls, hanged bandits, crows and mysterious inns in which seductive encounters are to be had, but also simply in the bewildering juxtaposition of individual tales and anecdotes, stories which grow out of each other. The surrealist effect (and the comedy) is in the jolt from one micro-narrative to the other, and the realisation that the overall story is thwarted and undermined.

The premise is that in the Spanish town of Saragossa during the Napoleonic wars, one officer tries to arrest another, who is apparently reading an old book – but is then distracted by the fact that this book is about his own grandfather, the nobleman Alfonse Van Worden. (Later we discover that the passages about this grandfather have been added by hand, in pen-and-ink, hence Saragossa Manuscript.) Then we flash back to this preening aristocrat-soldier himself, played by prominent Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:00 pm

Not Mariah again! New music playlists for the Christmas party season

Whether it’s vibe-setting dance and rap for house parties or soothing dream-pop for when you’re contemplating the clear-up, reach for these ready-made playlists

Let’s face it: when everyone’s two improvised cocktails deep, they’ll be hollering for Pink Pony Club, and after two more, they’ll be doing Fairytale of New York in a male-female karaoke face-off. But for the early part of the party, here’s some 2025 pop, dance and rap to keep the mood buoyant.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:41 pm

‘I never wanted to sing into a vacuum’: Scottish folk pioneer Dick Gaughan’s fight for his lost music

A skilled interpreter and social justice champion, Gaughan is a hero to the likes of Richard Hawley and Billy Bragg. Yet much of his work has been stuck in limbo for decades – until a determined fan stepped in

‘It felt to me as if the world had forgotten about the Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley of folk, or a singular figure in the mould of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash or Richard Thompson.” So says Colin Harper, curator of a slew of new releases celebrating the stunning music of Scottish musician Dick Gaughan. Harper had recently reconnected with his music after several decades, “and I couldn’t believe the quality of it. His singing and guitar playing were astonishing – he performed traditional songs and championed social justice so powerfully.”

But if you haven’t heard of the 77-year-old Gaughan, it’s not surprising: much of his work has been unavailable for years, the rights to it having been claimed by the label Celtic Music, who have not made it available digitally. Gaughan doesn’t recall receiving a royalty statement from the company in 40 years. He is battling for ownership and, in turn, hopes to help other veteran folk artists regain control of their catalogues. “To find that the music I made, that I put a lot of work into, is just not available – it’s like your life isn’t available,” he says.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:15 pm

Jeeves Again review – new Jeeves and Wooster stories by celebrity fans

This collection of new short stories about Bertie and his valet pays homage to the genius of PG Wodehouse – just in time for Christmas

As with most of the giants of late 19th- and early 20th-century English literature, the vast majority of PG Wodehouse’s readers today are non-white. Perhaps it was brutal colonial indoctrination that ensured the modern descendants of the aspirant imperial middle classes from Barbados to Burma, with their tea caddies, gin-stuffed drinks cabinets and yellowing Penguin paperbacks, still devour Maugham, Shaw and Kipling. Perhaps they just have good taste.

Wodehouse’s detractors are many – Stephen Sondheim (“archness … tweeness … flimsiness”), Winston Churchill (“He can live secluded in some place or go to hell as soon as there is a vacant passage”), the Inland Revenue – but for millions around the world he remains the greatest comic writer Britain has ever produced. And he clearly still sells here, as this collection of a dozen new officially sanctioned stories by writers, comedians and celebrity admirers, out in time to be a stocking filler, attests.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 am

The Dinner Party by Viola van de Sandt review – a formidable debut

An intimate soiree builds to a horrific climax in this visceral novel about a young woman tasked with hosting a meal for her fiance

Literature loves a dinner party. From Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway to more recent offerings such as Sarah Gilmartin’s The Dinner Party and Teresa Präauer’s Cooking in the Wrong Century, an intimate soiree provides the perfect recipe of claustrophobia and choreography into which a novelist can sink their teeth. The preparations are usually unduly stressful, the guest list dynamic unpredictable, the quantity of alcohol borderline obscene – in short, as a device it has all the ingredients for total, delicious carnage.

The latest entrant to this literary Come Dine With Me is Viola van de Sandt, whose debut The Dinner Party centres on Franca, a shy young woman from the Netherlands tasked with hosting a meal for her English fiance Andrew and his two male colleagues. To make matters more challenging, it is the hottest day of the year, the menu is rabbit (despite Franca’s vegetarianism) and her sous chef is their often violent pet cat.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:00 am

The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco review – a masterclass in visual reportage

The author of Palestine turns his attention to the legacies of Indian partition in this brilliant portrait of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots

Joe Sacco is one of a very small number of graphic novelists who have smashed through into the mainstream. His masterwork is Palestine, a collected volume of single-issue comic books he created in the 1990s, documenting the violence in Gaza. His technique is to embed as a journalist in a war zone and interview people on the street, telling their stories with pictures. Lessons on global politics emerge from ultra-local conflict and depictions of day-to-day life.

Palestine propelled Sacco to fame, drawing comparisons with Maus, Art Spiegelman’s two-volume saga about Polish Jews during the Holocaust with Nazis portrayed as cats, and Jews as mice. These works are sold prominently in bookshops, not in musty basements packed with racks of polyethylene-sheathed superhero comics. Alongside a couple of others, Maus and Palestine signalled that graphic novels, as they became known, could be serious works of fiction, nonfiction and journalism. Palestine itself is as depressingly relevant today as it was in the 1990s. In December 2023, it was reprinted for the first time in a decade, after selling out following the 7 October attacks.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:00 am

How generative AI in Arc Raiders started a scrap over the gaming industry’s future

The use of AI in the surprise game-of-the-year contender has sparked a heated cultural and ethical debate, and raised existential questions for artists, writers and voice actors

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Arc Raiders is, by all accounts, a late game-of-the-year contender. Dropped into a multiplayer world overrun with hostile drones and military robots, every human player is at the mercy of the machines – and each other. Can you trust the other raider you’ve spotted on your way back to humanity’s safe haven underground, or will they shoot you and take everything you’ve just scavenged? Perhaps surprisingly, humanity is (mostly) choosing to band together, according to most people I’ve talked to about this game.

In a review for Gamespot, Mark Delaney paints a beguiling picture of Arc Raiders’s potential for generating war stories, and highlights its surprisingly hopeful tone as the thing that elevates it above similar multiplayer extraction shooters: “We can all kill each other in Arc Raiders. The fact that most of us are choosing instead to lend a helping hand, if not a sign that humanity will be all right in the real world, at the very least makes for one of the best multiplayer games I’ve ever played.”

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:00 pm

A eureka moment in a town called Eureka: Curran Hatleberg’s best photograph

‘I turned a corner and saw this: a dusty alley lined with daisies, a few redheads, a handful of puppies and a woman with a gas can, all in blinding sun. That’s the miracle – when everything comes together and you’re there to catch it’

In 2013, I’d been living in New York for a long time. The social life was vibrant but I had never figured out a way to make pictures there. So when a friend sent me details of a teaching position in Eureka, California, I jumped at the chance. When I arrived, I found Northern California to be a confounding and beautiful place, one that inspired a new body of work almost immediately.

Eureka was the first time I’d stayed so long in one place. During those months, I saw the same people day after day. I taught two days a week at the local community college and the rest of the time I was free to walk around – exploring, meeting people and taking photographs. I was entirely focused on my work, almost like a residency.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:29 pm

Sarah Ferguson’s new children’s book ‘pulped’ after scrutiny over Jeffrey Epstein links

Copies of Flora and Fern: Kindness Along the Way, which was set to be published in October, have been sent for recycling

Thousands of copies of Sarah Ferguson’s new children’s book have reportedly been withdrawn from sale and “pulped” in the wake of the renewed scrutiny over her links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The book had been due for publication on 9 October, but was postponed until 20 November. It has now been removed entirely from publication schedules, and publishing sources have claimed that printed copies are being sent for recycling.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:55 pm

‘Pictures unite!’: how pop music fell in love with socialist infographics

When Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath invented the visual language of Isotypes, it was to democratise education. As a new exhibition shows, it ended up influencing pop art, graphic design and electronic musicians from Kraftwerk to OMD

When Otto Neurath died in Oxford some 80 years ago, far away from his native Vienna, he was still finding his feet in exile. Like many a Jewish refugee, the economist, philosopher and sociologist had been interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man, along with his third wife and close collaborator Marie Reidemeister, having chanced a last-minute life-saving escape from their interim hideout in the Netherlands across the Channel in a rickety boat in 1940.

Thanks to Neurath’s pioneering use of pictorial statistics – or “Isotypes” as Reidemeister called them, an acronym for “International System of Typographic Picture Education” – he left behind an enormous legacy in the arts and social sciences: it is the language through which we decode and analyse the modern world. But his lasting relevance would have been hard to predict at the time of his death at the age of 63.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:31 pm

I look at a stranger and see a friend. Am I a super-recognizer?

I once even thought I had seen my late grandmother. Can science explain my overfamiliarity with strange faces?

When I was in my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I was dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn’t be her.

I’d had similar experiences all my life. Every now and then, I “recognized” someone I didn’t know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn’t place.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘We love a plastic chopstick to stir’: 10 cocktail-making tips from Australian bartender Michael Madrusan

You don’t need fancy equipment to make a martini, the founder of Melbourne’s The Everleigh says – but you do need to measure precisely

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I fell in love with bartending in London, aged 21, working in pubs and nightclubs, but it wasn’t until I joined the team at New York’s Milk & Honey that I really knew it was the career for me. We focused on classic cocktails, made excellently, delivered with grace, and our tight-knit team were dedicated to the cause.

Sasha Petraske, the founder of Milk & Honey, and who tragically died in 2015, became my mentor, and I am forever grateful for the passion and determination he instilled in me. In 2011 he partnered with me on The Everleigh, in Melbourne’s Fitzroy. After 14 incredible years, we’ve now closed The Everleigh, although we continue to influence Victorian bar culture at Heartbreaker in the CBD, and by supplying Melbourne’s best bars and restaurants with hand-cut ice from Navy Strength Ice Co.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 pm

Sali Hughes on beauty: from nail polish to powder, the best new makeup of 2025

It’s been a bumper year but these are my top picks, including my most used lipstick and an eyeshadow palette that has finally stolen my heart

This has been an excellent year for new makeup, starting with Givenchy’s comeback. Having infuriated the beauty community by (badly) reformulating its classic loose powder, it won back detractors with the exceptionally good Prisme Libre Pressed Powder, which blurs, smoothes and near-perfects a face of makeup, and now lives full time in my handbag. This was followed by a Bronzer Powder version, also £45, which succeeded in moving me away from creams to achieve a filtered, sun-kissed finish. Full marks with distinction for both.

I won’t dwell on Nars The Multiple (£33), because I so recently have, but the reboot of this classic cheek, eye and lip cream improved on the legend with nuanced, muted shades and a soft, lasting, flattering finish.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

My ex shot me 10 times – and after the coma, I became an undercover cop

When Katrina Brownlee tried to leave her fiance, he aimed a gun at her pregnant stomach. The 22-year-old wasn’t expected to survive, let alone walk again. But she soon began her fight for other victims of crime

A month before she was shot, Katrina Brownlee had a premonition. It came to her in a dream: the 22-year-old saw her former fiance, a law enforcement officer who had been abusing her for years, try to kill her, but she survived. She had experienced premonitions from a young age – she later came to see them as guidance from God. On the way to the house she had shared with him, she could hear a voice in her head pleading with her: don’t go back there.

It was a freezing January morning in 1993. Brownlee was five months pregnant and had taken a cab with her two-year-old daughter through the snow to the house she had shared with her ex in Long Island, New York state. Her elder daughter, then seven, was at a playdate. A few weeks earlier, Brownlee had left her fiance for good and she and her daughters had been living in a motel to hide from him. However, over the last few nights, she had spoken to him on the phone. He seemed to have accepted their relationship was over and agreed she could come and collect her belongings.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

A moment that changed me: I broke my foot – and took up a sport that led to stratospheric success

I had run every day for ten years and cried when the doctor said I needed two months off. Then I borrowed an oversized road bike. At first, I couldn’t wait to ditch it, but something kept me going ...

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that I broke my foot. The injury didn’t seem like a big deal at first, because stress fractures sneak up on you. It just hurt, and wouldn’t stop hurting, except while running. Maybe because running was the only time I felt good about myself. But in the end the pain intruded there, too. I ran on stubbornly, with a limp.

Eventually I had to go to the doctor, and that’s when it hit me. She said it would take eight weeks to heal – no running. I couldn’t imagine even one week without running. I had run every single day for nearly 10 years and I loved it. I tried to find the words to explain, to say that this “rest” was just not possible, but I was too embarrassed. It was a minor injury by clinical standards – and self-inflicted, too. But afterwards, in the corridor, I cried.

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:55 am

How do the pros get someone to leave a cult? Manipulate them into thinking it was their idea

Two of the world’s leading cult interventionists live (with their parrot) in Philadelphia. They explain the art of coaxing people out of the most pernicious groups in the world

When the phone rings at Patrick Ryan and Joseph Kelly’s home in Philadelphia, chances are the caller is desperate. One couple rang because their son was about to abandon his medical practice to follow a new-age guru in Spain. Another call came from a husband whose wife was emptying their life savings for a self-proclaimed prophet in Australia. Yet another family phoned about their niece, who was in a relationship with a man stealing from her, maybe drugging her, probably sexually assaulting her.

These families had tried everything else. When nothing worked, they heard there were two men in Philadelphia who might still be able to bring their loved one home.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

Onboard the world’s largest sailing cargo ship: is this the future of travel and transport?

The Neoliner Origin set off on its inaugural two-week voyage from France to the US with the aim of revolutionising the notoriously dirty shipping industry

It is 8pm on a Saturday evening and eight of us are sitting at a table onboard a ship, holding on to our plates of spaghetti carbonara as our chairs slide back and forth. Michel Péry, the dinner’s host, downplays the weather as a “tempête de journalistes” – something sailors would not categorise as a storm, but which drama-seeking journalists might refer to as such to entertain their readers.

But after a white-knuckle night in our cabins with winds reaching 74mph or force 12 – officially a hurricane – Péry has to admit it was not just a “journalists’ storm”, but the real deal.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us: have you ever received a terrible Secret Santa?

We’d like to hear all about your Secret Santa disasters

It’s that time of year again… Whether it’s with family, colleagues or friends, many of us will be asked to take part in a Secret Santa as the festive period approaches. You know the drill: a fixed budget, a random name draw, and a high risk of ending up with something a bit naff. But hey, that’s Christmas, right?

Maybe you’ve been lucky, and have done well out of Secret Santas over the years. But we’re looking for stories of when it’s gone really, really wrong. Have you received a gift that had clearly been bought that morning from the office’s nearest corner shop? Or have you given a gift that was intended as a joke, but which didn’t land with the recipient? We want to hear from you!

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:34 am

Monkeys in Nepal and snow in the UK: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:54 pm