The eight best showerhead filters in the US for every budget and bathroom

Shower filters claim to help with the chlorine and chemicals in the tap water we rinse with – here are the ones we recommend

• Can I pop this? 18 common skincare questions, answered by dermatologists

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

Most of us jump in the shower without giving it much thought. Lather, rinse, repeat. But what’s in that water you’re being sprayed with, and what effect is it having on your skin and hair? Tap water contains a laundry list of chemicals and minerals, some of which may be detrimental. Chlorine is the most common concern, which can dry out your skin and hair and possibly even aggravate asthma.

Fortunately, it can be removed with filters, which claim to solve all of these problems and sometimes more. One calls itself an “essential beauty wellness tool”; another is “step zero of your self-care routine”. When I began researching, the claims of beautification were so varied and extreme that I half expected to begin as a middle-aged man with thinning hair and end up as Jacob Elordi. No such luck.

Best overall:
Canopy Handheld Filtered Showerhead

Published: October 16, 2025, 7:15 pm

‘We want to use this as a launchpad’: can A24 also conquer the world of theater?

Cultish indie studio behind hits such as Moonlight, Uncut Gems and Materialists has taken over a New York theatre for $10m

On a recent Saturday night in downtown Manhattan, a sold-out crowd at the Cherry Lane Theatre delighted in one of the most bizarre sights in recent New York stage memory: comedian Natalie Palamides, dressed as if in split screen – her left side bedecked in Y2K girl signifiers (butterfly clips, low-rise jeans), her right in bro clothes (cargo pants, flannel) – barreling across the stage and tangling with … herself. In her one-woman show Weer, the Los Angeles-based clown plays two halves of a toxic relationship over three late-90s years, flipping between perspectives with the velocity of a spinning top.

The show is difficult to describe and perhaps more difficult to market, as well as gloriously unhinged and riotously funny – a bold gambit for a performer, as well as for the new Cherry Lane, the West Village staple recently renovated and reopened by A24. The film distribution company turned production studio turned cultural lodestar purchased the historic theater, billed as the “birthplace of Off-Broadway”, for $10m in 2023, as part of its expansion beyond the cultish, acclaimed arthouse films – Moonlight, Hereditary, Everything Everywhere All at Once, to name a few – that built their hip reputation for the cool and cutting edge. (Or, as some would argue, a certain loose but identifiable aesthetic – neon-drenched palette, buzzy cast, faces that have seen an iPhone – and provocative bent.) Following an interior overhaul – including new lighting and sound systems, redone upholstery, a screen and curtains for “cinema mode” and a restaurant (Wild Cherry) from hot Manhattan restaurant group Frenchette – Cherry Lane is reopened for business and aiming to attract high-minded, zeitgeist-oriented New Yorkers, whether or not they own an A24 hat.

Published: October 16, 2025, 3:41 pm

We are told the ‘war’ against Gaza is finally ‘over’. Is it? | Arwa Mahdawi

I am not celebrating the end of the ‘war’ because this was not a war – and it’s not over, either

Thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you, Benjamin Netanyahu. Thank you, Jared Kushner. Let’s all pause, shall we, and have a moment of appreciation for these three wise men who have finally brought peace to the Middle East. Blessed are the peacemakers!

And, of course, thank you to the Israeli military which, as a US taxpayer, I have done my part to help fund. To echo Kushner: “Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, [Israel] chose to be exceptional.”

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:00 am

Night owls versus early birds: who is superior according to science?

And is it actually possible for your body clock to change? Am I really turning into an early bird or have I just been forced into a child-dictated schedule?

We all know that early birds get the worm. But who wants a worm? Not me. For most of my life I have identified as a night owl, clambering out of bed as late as possible and not so much seizing but reluctantly easing into the day.

US work culture is not really optimal for night owls. Rather, it favours CEOs who get up at 4am and run a marathon while the rest of us hit the snooze button. Still, I always consoled myself with the idea that night owls are actually more intelligent and creative than their early bird counterparts. Franz Kafka and Thomas Wolfe wrote at bedtime; Bob Dylan recorded at night. Even scientific studies indicated it was true.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

Bill Belichick built an empire on control. But UNC is letting chaos reign | Andrew Lawrence

The NFL’s great tactician was meant to elevate North Carolina football. Instead, his rigid ways, fraying staff and tone-deafness have made the Tar Heels a cautionary tale

It used to be that there was no stronger brand in football than a “Bill Belichick-coached” outfit. For most of his nearly 50 years in the pros, the phrase connoted teams that prepared for every scenario, executed directions to perfection and met all the moments in between to secure victory time and again. But since the NFL turned its back on Belichick, who stepped down to the college ranks and took the head job at North Carolina seemingly for appearances, the Belichick-coached team slogan has become less of a mark of excellence than a bright warning label for a program run amok.

The concerns at this juncture, still short of midway through Belichick’s freshman season, are overwhelming. The misleading record, the stark images of home fans deserting a blowout loss to Clemson before half-time, the dramatic talent deficit – those were predictable outcomes for a septuagenarian taskmaster trying his hand at coaching college kids. But Belichick isn’t simply out of his element. He looks for all the world to be asleep at the wheel, too.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:16 pm

‘Explicit and outrageous’: South Park is back with its most gratuitous episode since naked Trump

A legitimately epic story is unfolding, involving the antichrist, savage depictions of a billionaire … and loads of scenes about The Donald’s penis

Even outside its notoriously tight weekly production schedule, South Park has always run on an unpredictable calendar, sometimes taking years between seasons. This time around, it’s jumping from one season to the next after only five episodes (which, granted, have come in bi-monthly instalments, not counting the abrupt season finale that was pushed back a week due to a blown deadline).

Tonight’s episode, titled Twisted Christian, kicks off season 28. At South Park Elementary, PC Principal – the PC standing for Power Christian ever since his politically motivated conversion at the start of last season – attempts to put a stop to his students’ obsession with the “6-7” TikTok meme, not because it is insufferable or disruptive, but because he considers it “some satanic numerology shit”. Rather than seeking help from the school’s new guidance counsellor, Jesus Christ, he turns to the world’s top expert on the antichrist: billionaire Peter Thiel. (The show’s caricature of Thiel – sunken skeletal visage with bulging bug eyes – is up there with Kristi Noem’s from earlier this year in terms of viciousness.)

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:08 pm

Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton indicted on charges of mishandling classified information

Eighteen-count indictment handed down by federal grand jury in Maryland as US president calls former ally a ‘bad guy’

The justice department filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who turned into one of his biggest critics, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.

The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:44 pm

Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa spar in New York mayoral debate

The Democratic nominee and the former governor of New York clashed repeatedly, while Sliwa criticized them both

New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls.

On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:30 am

Trump files amended $15bn defamation complaint against New York Times

Refiled complaint, after judge tossed initial suit last month, also targets individual reporters and book publisher

After a federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday.

US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September.

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:54 am

Trump says he plans to meet Putin in Budapest as Zelenskyy prepares to make missiles case at White House

US president has repeatedly hinted at supplying Kyiv with Tomahawks but some in Moscow say Kremlin sees it as negotiating gambit

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will head to the White House on Friday for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump, hours after the US president said he had agreed to another summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest after a “very productive” call.

The possible supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the Ukrainian president’s visit. Trump has repeatedly hinted in recent weeks that he may deliver Tomahawks, which would give Kyiv its longest-range weapon yet that would be capable of striking Moscow with accurate, destructive munitions.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:26 pm

Israel and Hamas trade accusations as tensions rise over hostages’ remains

Militant group says it needs specialist equipment to recover bodies as Netanyahu says fight ‘is not over yet’

• Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti assaulted by Israeli prison guards, son says

Israel and Hamas have traded accusations of ceasefire violations amid tensions over the flow of aid into Gaza and warnings that the humanitarian crisis in the devastated territory risks deteriorating further.

The ceasefire deal signed last week between Israel and Hamas raised hopes of a surge of humanitarian aid finally reaching the territory after two years of war, but most restrictions have remained in place, throttling the supply of desperately needed assistance.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:30 pm

Survivors reported after latest US attack on alleged drug boat in Caribbean

It is unknown whether US military rendered aid to survivors after attack on suspected ‘narcoterrorist’ vessel

The US military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported. But it raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody.

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:12 am

Indiana University orders school paper to cease print edition and fires director of student media

Editors at the Indiana Daily Student say administration’s move to control news content amounts to censorship

Indiana University has ordered its student-run newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student (IDS), to cease printing new editions and fired the school’s director of student media, who also served as the paper’s adviser, according to multiple reports. Students at the school are criticizing these moves as censorship.

The university’s directive to halt print editions came just hours after Jim Rodenbush, the school’s director of student media, was terminated, according to a letter from IDS editors.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:05 pm

Waving his flag all over the place: Trump adds ‘Arc de Trump’ to presidential renovations

In addition to a new ballroom, flagpoles, gilding the Oval Office and paving over the Rose Garden, the US president proposes an arch

More than two centuries have passed since France celebrated the emperor Napoleon’s birthday by laying the foundation stone of the Arc de Triomphe. Now Donald Trump has imperial ambitions of his own.

On Wednesday, the US president unveiled plans for a grand arch in Washington that has already been dubbed the “Arc de Trump”.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:42 pm

US admiral to retire amid military strikes in Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela

Alvin Holsey just took over the US southern command late last year for a position that normally lasts three years

Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media.

Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:17 pm

Nearly two dozen states sue to stop Trump ending $7bn solar grant program

States who received funding under an EPA project aimed to expand solar energy for low-income communities

Nearly two dozen states are suing the Trump administration over its cancellation of a $7bn grant program aimed at expanding solar energy in low-income communities, according to court papers.

In a statement on Thursday, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, announced two lawsuits by a group of states that received grants under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All program. The EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced the termination of the program in August. The agency said in an email that it would not comment on pending litigation.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:00 pm

Trump moves to push employers on IVF coverage and lower fertility drug costs

President says plans will lead to ‘many more beautiful American children’ but unclear if companies will sign up

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other infertility treatments.

In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:08 pm

Who are the rightwing influencers filling Trump’s head with visions of antifa?

Meet the content creators whose videos from Portland and Chicago shape the president’s distorted view of reality

• Sign up for This Week in Trumpland, a free newsletter on the latest from the Trump administration

Last week’s White House roundtable on antifa was an odd affair, mainly because the supposed experts who briefed Donald Trump on antifascism were rightwing influencers who make a living filming themselves confronting leftwing protesters.

Videos of protests in Portland and Chicago produced by these conservative content creators have long shaped the president’s distorted view of reality.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:59 pm

Mexico president dismisses US claim of cartel bounties on immigration officials

Sheinbaum says she has ‘no information’ about Trump administration claim as experts also deeply skeptical

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said her government has “no information” regarding claims by the Trump administration that Mexican cartels are offering bounties for US immigration officials.

“We are requesting information but there is none,” Sheinbaum said during her morning press conference on Wednesday. “We learned of this, just like you, via [the Department of Homeland Security’s] publication.”

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:28 am

Queer and trans immigrants allege forced labor and sexual assault in Ice facility: ‘I was treated worse than an animal’

At the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center in Basile, detainees say they were forced into hard labor – and sexually assaulted and stalked by an assistant warden

Queer and trans immigrants at a detention facility in south Louisiana have alleged that they faced sexual harassment and abuse, medical neglect and coerced labor by staff at the facility, and that they were repeatedly ignored or faced retaliation for speaking out.

In multiple legal complaints, immigrants detained at the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana, said they were recruited into an unsanctioned work program that forced them to perform hard manual labor for as little as $1 per day. Detainees also alleged that queer people were targeted by an assistant warden who stalked, harassed and sexually assaulted them.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:56 pm

Americans’ pessimism about the economy cuts across political lines

Inflation and a worsening job market are top of mind for many Americans, even among the president’s Maga base

Donald Trump is not making America feel great again.

Nine months into the second Trump administration, Americans are feeling pretty crummy. More than half – 53% – believe the economy is worsening, according to the latest survey conducted by Harris for the Guardian. That’s just slightly better than the 58% who thought it was going downhill in late April, when financial markets were still reeling from the president’s “liberation day” tariffs. About 60% think the cost of living has gotten worse since the start of the year; 47% say the job market is worse.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 am

A surge of visitors to Yosemite overwhelms a skeleton crew: ‘This is exactly what we warned about’

As the US government shutdown enters its third week, concerns mount over how the nation’s public lands will fare

Cars and RVs surged into Yosemite national park throughout the weekend, as visitors from around the world came to enjoy the crisp autumn weather, undeterred by a lack of park services and the absence of rangers.

National parks have largely been kept open through the lapse in US federal funding that has left workers furloughed and resources for the parks system more scarce than usual. But as the US government shutdown enters its third week and legislators warn that their impasse could linger even longer than the one in Donald Trump’s first term – which currently holds the record at 35 days – concerns are mounting over how the nation’s treasured public lands will fare.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

Without Ace Frehley, Kiss could not have achieved their extraordinary greatness | Michael Hann

The guitarist was the most proficient musician in the original lineup and his bludgeoning ‘monster plod’ was central to their sound

• Ace Frehley, Kiss lead guitarist and band’s cofounder, dies aged 74

Ace Frehley was the last of the quartet to join Kiss, and when he left, the band were beginning their slow descent through the 80s. By the time Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley wrestled the brand back to the big stages, Frehley – who has died aged 74 – was little more than a face-painted pattern to the generations of new fans who came to gawp at the fireworks.

But one shouldn’t underestimate his contribution to Kiss: almost all of Kiss’s setlist to the end was made up of songs he had played on. And though he was not a prolific writer, one of his compositions – Cold Gin – remained in their setlist until Stanley and Simmons quit in 2023, more than 40 years after Frehley left the band (the less said about the 1998 reunion album, Psycho Circus, the better).

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:27 am

Blue Moon review – Ethan Hawke is terrific in Richard Linklater’s bitter Broadway breakup drama

London film festival
Hawke plays with campy brilliance and criminal combover the lyricist Lorenz Hart as he spirals into vinegary jilted despair after his split from Richard Rodgers

Breaking up with the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a hazardous business. Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Published: October 16, 2025, 8:15 pm

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

West Ham’s lack of forward planning, Rodri’s fitness concerns and a crunch clash at Anfield

• Top scorers: check out the latest standings

Ange Postecoglou is under increasing pressure at Nottingham Forest having failed to secure a win in his seven games in charge. Reports suggest Sean Dyche is waiting to take over, but history shows Evangelos Marinakis sways like the wind, and victory against Chelsea could be enough to save Postecoglou’s job for now. Goals have been a mounting concern for a team that have been beaten in four of their last five league matches and failed to score in any of those defeats. Failure to find their shooting boots will ensure Forest go three consecutive top-flight games without a goal for the first time since 1999. It will be a tough task against a buoyant Chelsea team, who entered the international break having beaten Liverpool. Moisés Caicedo was instrumental in the win against the defending champions, scoring the opener, and the 23-year-old leads the league in tackles (28) and interceptions (18). Elliot Anderson, whose total of 55 turnovers is also a league-high tally, will have his work cut out for him in what may be his toughest midfield battle of the season. Yara El-Shaboury

Nottingham Forest v Chelsea, Saturday 12.30pm (all times BST)

Brighton v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

Burnley v Leeds, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 pm

Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Trump’s inner circle knows how dangerous the incessant misinformation from Fox News can be’

Late-night hosts discuss Fox News’s influence on Donald Trump as he defends sending the national guard to US cities

Late-night hosts recapped the many vile leaked messages from a Young Republicans group chat and Donald Trump’s ongoing Fox News-fueled delusions.

Published: October 16, 2025, 3:15 pm

My sister-in-law won’t let anyone hold her new baby. It feels extreme. Is it? | Leading questions

There could be so many different reasons behind this choice, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Maybe what you really mean is you feel hurt to be left out

• Read more Leading questions

My brother and sister-in-law have a new baby a few months old. My sister-in-law won’t let anyone hold the baby, although the grandparents on both sides of the family were allowed one-off holds. At family events, as soon as the baby makes the slightest cry, her mum whips her away to a room as far from everyone else as possible. Usually they leave shortly after that.

No one says anything to her, to avoid confrontation and the “new mum” factor, but only allowing the baby contact with her parents seems like it will build problems later on. It is already difficult in the moment for everyone else, my brother included. The natural inclination is to engage with a very small baby. It’s such a short time they are like that. Already everyone else has been left out – there’s a sense of ownership and that we are all out of bounds. Even in photos, she holds the baby twisted away from everyone else. It feels extreme. Is it? How can I be supportive without feeding that extremeness (if it is)?

Eleanor says: There could be so many different reasons she’s made this choice. It could be about illness. A lot of parents limit visitors or cuddles in the first few months; it just takes one relative forgetting they have a cold or a cold sore. It could be about overstimulation. Maybe she doesn’t want to deal with the possible aftermath of the baby getting overwhelmed by multiple faces, noises, smells. It could be anxiety; maybe all day-long parenting, books and her postpartum imagination remind her of everything that could go wrong. There could be medical things we don’t know, emotional things we don’t know. It could just be her preference. This decision could be completely neurotic, or completely rational.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan

Court has repeatedly expanded states’ leeway to make voting laws that would have previously been deemed discriminatory

The last remaining piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – section 2, which empowers the federal government to protect voters from racial gerrymandering meant to dilute Black political power – appears headed for an untimely end. At oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais on Wednesday, the US supreme court appeared ready to strike down section 2, effectively completing the gradual nullification of the Voting Rights Act that it has pursued for over a decade.

The case stems from new congressional districting maps that were drawn in Louisiana after the 2020 census, which found both that the state was eligible for six seats in the House of Representatives and that its population was about one-third Black. The state initially drew maps that featured only one majority-Black congressional district, rejecting seven more racially fair maps; voters sued, and federal courts ordered Louisiana to comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing new maps in which Black voters would be a majority in a second district, thereby reflecting their share of the population and giving Black Louisianans an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 am

While the eyes of the world are on Gaza, Israeli settlers in the West Bank still behave with impunity | Ofer Cassif

As the harvest season begins, attacks on Palestinian farmers and their land are spiralling. The words of peace following the Gaza ceasefire ring hollow

Last Monday, when the US president, Donald Trump, addressed the Knesset alongside the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, my compatriot lawmaker Ayman Odeh and I raised a banner calling them to “Recognise Palestine”. We were brutally expelled by force from the parliament’s plenum, revealing the fragile state of the supposed “only democracy in the Middle East”. How can Trump and Netanyahu speak of peace in the Middle East without recognition of the people deprived for decades of their basic liberties and rights under vicious occupation?

Nowhere is the deceit more clear than in the occupied West Bank. There, the words of peace are but a weak and distant voice, but the horrifying sounds of settler violence and terror still echo loudly. More than 30 occurrences of settler violence against Palestinians have been documented since the announcement of Trump’s 20-point plan at the end of September, including physical assaults, theft of agricultural produce and torching of vehicles and property.

Dr Ofer Cassif is a member of the Knesset, representing the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) since 2019

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:04 pm

My mum died this year. And the glut of apples from her tree has brought with it a new kind of grief | Zoe Williams

Every year, I refused the crates of fruit she tried to palm off on me each autumn. Now I wish I’d taken them

My mother was the most horrible cook, unbelievably bad at it. Her umbrella crime was the lack of self-knowledge – far from being bad, she thought she was brilliant – but underneath that, a set of discrete misapprehensions, any one of which would have been enough to make you not want to eat at her house. She’d never take a recipe literally; each ingredient could be swapped with something else of a similar colour, or a similar size, or not similar at all. She loved to throw in a rogue element. As I write this, I’m flicking through her magazine cuttings, and she’s made a note above an aubergine and potato casserole that says: “Good, but needs something else. Lime?”

She thought everything, sweet and savoury, could be lifted by a dried apricot. She was extremely experimental but eschewed basic principles, such as parboiling, or meat being roasted for a specific amount of time, relative to its weight, rather than “for ever”. She loved cardamom.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 am

The latest Prince Andrew abuse claims are a new low for the Royal Family. In this form, it can’t survive | Simon Jenkins

‘The Firm’ as a modernising strategy was already falling apart, but with the shocking allegations so fully in the public domain, it has now collapsed

The royal family was always a disaster waiting to happen. Its creation as a marketable entity in the 1960s by the late Queen Elizabeth II was meant to “modernise” the monarchy for the 20th century. It worked, but only up to a point. Her son Prince Andrew has long been its biggest liability, this week in trouble yet again due to his alleged behaviour within that ghoulish circle, the friends of Jeffrey Epstein.

King Charles now has a decision to make as to how far he can allow his brother’s past behaviour to tarnish the family’s image. That image is the essence of royalty. Monarchy has no other authentication. The constitutional position of head of state in a democracy is subject to the will of parliament, but also to the “will” of the people. It was the latter will that forced the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 over marrying a divorcee. A royal personage cannot stand for re-election. He or she is acceptable to the generality of public opinion or they are nothing.

Simon Jenkins 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: October 16, 2025, 4:23 pm

Dan and Phil’s relationship revelation is a reminder of how toxic fandoms can be | Eilish Gilligan

In the British YouTubers’ latest video, the pair confirm their romantic relationship – after suffering frenzied speculation for the last 16 years

This week, longtime British YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester uploaded a new video confirming they have been in a secret romantic relationship for the past 16 years.

If you weren’t a deeply online child during the 2010s, you probably have no idea who Dan and Phil are, or why this matters. But to those who formed a robust parasocial bond with the duo – who have more than 13 million collective subscribers on YouTube – this was a revelatory moment. It was also a sobering reminder of the emotional damage that toxic fandoms can wreak on their subjects.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:26 am

The Guardian view on the US and Venezuela: Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ ramps up military threats to Maduro | Editorial

Hawks want regime change. Democrats and others are right to warn against illegal and unauthorised use of force

The drumbeat is growing louder. Covert operations are supposed to remain just that, but on Wednesday Donald Trump confirmed that he had approved secret CIA actions in Venezuela and suggested that he was considering strikes on its territory. These comments follow the administration’s extrajudicial killings at sea: attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean that have left at least 27 dead – a frightening new precedent denounced by UN experts as illegal. The US has already built up forces in the region, with about 6,500 troops now stationed there. “No to war in the Caribbean … No to regime change … No to coups d’état orchestrated by the CIA,” railed Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s dictator, after Mr Trump’s remarks.

The US president’s repeated claim that each boat strike saves 25,000 American lives is even more preposterous than it first sounds. The fentanyl that killed 48,000 people in the US last year did not come from Venezuela; most of it is from Mexico. But Mr Maduro’s regime looks increasingly isolated. The US has designated Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang as a terrorist organisation that has “invaded” the US, claiming that Mr Maduro is personally responsible. It has used that posturing to justify deportations and to boast – against the evidence – that Mr Trump has cut violent crime in cities.

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: October 16, 2025, 5:49 pm

Joe Flacco leads Bengals past Steelers with late drive and McPherson field goal

• Flacco throws for 342 yards and three touchdowns

• McPherson’s kick with seconds lifts Bengals 33-31

• Chase hauls in 16 passes for 161 yards and a TD

Aaron Rodgers v Joe Flacco didn’t disappoint in the fourth-ever matchup of 40-plus-year-old NFL quarterbacks.

Evan McPherson’s fourth field goal, from 36 yards with seven seconds remaining, lifted the Cincinnati Bengals past the Pittsburgh Steelers 33-31 on Thursday night.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:57 am

Dodgers on brink of World Series return after topping Brewers for 3-0 NLCS lead

• Edman’s sixth-inning single puts LA ahead for good

• Dodgers lead series 3-0; Game 4 in LA on Friday

Tyler Glasnow had eight strikeouts, Tommy Edman hit a go-ahead RBI single in the sixth inning and the Los Angeles Dodgers took a commanding lead in the National League Championship Series with a 3-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday.

Mookie Betts had an RBI double in the first inning and Roki Sasaki delivered his third save of the postseason as the Dodgers never trailed on their way to a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series with Game 4 at Los Angeles on Friday.

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:29 am

Max Scherzer rolls back years as Blue Jays even ALCS with win over Mariners

• Scherzer allows two runs in 500th career start

• Giménez homers again, drives in four for Toronto

• Blue Jays even ALCS after second straight rout

Max Scherzer turned back the clock with a vintage pitching performance and Andrés Giménez homered and drove in four runs as the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Seattle Mariners 8-2 on Thursday to even the American League Championship Series at two games apiece.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr hit his fifth homer this postseason and the 41-year-old Scherzer allowed two runs in five and two-thirds innings for the Blue Jays, who have outscored the Mariners 21-6 in Seattle after losing the first two games at home.

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:06 am

NFL hot seat index: which coaches are running out of time?

The Titans’ firing of Brian Callahan has kicked off the annual bloodletting. With several clubs’ playoff hopes already in peril, there are toasty seats across the league

The Tennessee Titans’ firing Brian Callahan this week signaled the unofficial start of the coaching carousel.

Six weeks into the season, a league built for parity is finding there is little to go around. Nearly half (14) of the league’s teams this season are two games over .500. Three others have winning records and another three (the Chiefs, Panthers and Commanders) are 3-3 with an upward trajectory.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:41 pm

Majority of South American federations oppose 64-team World Cup proposal

• Seven Conmebol members do not support expansion

• Impact on World Cup qualifying cited as main factor

The proposed expansion of the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams is facing opposition from within Conmebol, the South American confederation that would benefit from staging the extra matches.

The Guardian has learned that seven out of the 10 Conmebol members have expressed concerns about the expansion plan, which is being driven by the federations of Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:26 pm

Carter Hart to join Vegas Golden Knights after being acquitted of sexual assault

• Goaltender joins Vegas after high-profile acquittal

• NHL reinstatement process bars play until December

• Bettman says teams must decide on own standards

Goaltender Carter Hart has agreed to sign with the Vegas Golden Knights, becoming the first of the five 2018 Canada world junior hockey players to land an NHL contract since they were acquitted of sexual assault in a high-profile case.

Vegas announced an agreement with undisclosed terms for Hart on Thursday, the second day after the window opened for the players to sign.

Published: October 16, 2025, 7:30 pm

Last surviving member of first team to conquer Everest dies aged 92

Kanchha Sherpa was part of expedition that put Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary atop world’s highest peak in 1953

Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the mountaineering expedition team that first conquered Mount Everest, has died at the age of 92, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

Kanchha died early on Thursday at his home in Kapan, Kathmandu district, said Phur Gelje Sherpa, the association’s president.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:12 pm

Pitch Points: could Italy really miss another World Cup? And why has Wirtz started slowly at Liverpool?

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions on a regular basis. In today’s column, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them

By the time next summer’s World Cup kicks off, it’ll have been 12 years since Italy last played at the tournament they have won more times (four) than any other nation besides Brazil (five) and Germany (also four). The way things are going, the Azzurri’s 12-year wait for World Cup qualification could become a 16-year one at the very least.

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:00 am

Major airlift evacuations in Alaska after remnants of typhoon decimate villages

Weekend storm devastated two villages and displaced more than 1,500 people in the south-western part of the state

Authorities in Alaska are staging a major evacuation operation, relocating hundreds of people in one of the “most significant” airlifts in the state’s history, after a storm decimated two villages along the south-west coast over the weekend.

More than 1,500 people were displaced after the remnants of Typhoon Halong hit remote communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, battering the area with fierce winds, rain and record-breaking storm surge that caused some homes to float off their foundations.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:54 pm

Ace Frehley, Kiss lead guitarist and band’s cofounder, dies aged 74

The musician died following injuries suffered during a fall in his recording studio last month

• Without Ace Frehley, Kiss could not have achieved their extraordinary greatness

Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist and co-founder of the rock band Kiss, has died aged 74.

The musician, who inspired a generation of guitarists and performed on Kiss’ first nine albums, died on Thursday in a New Jersey hospital after suffering injuries during a recent fall, his family said in a statement.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:50 pm

Trinidad citizens believed killed in US airstrike off Venezuela coast identified

Rishi Samaroo and Chad ‘Charpo’ Joseph believed to have been on boat Trump alleged was carrying drugs to US

Family members and neighbours have identified two men from Trinidad and Tobago who are believed to be among six people killed in a US airstrike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela.

Without providing evidence, Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the strike in international waters had killed six “narcoterrorists” and claimed that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and it was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks”.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:46 pm

Illinois governor JB Pritzker won $1.4m gambling last year, tax filings reveal

Pritzker, a billionaire, says he plans to donate winnings from playing blackjack on Las Vegas trip

The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, made more than $1.4m while gambling in Las Vegas last year, according to federal tax filings released by his campaign team.

Pritzker, already a billionaire with a family net worth of $41.6bn, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, won the money after playing blackjack at a Las Vegas casino while on vacation with his wife and friends, according to his campaign spokesperson.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:30 pm

Spotify partnering with multinational music companies to develop ‘responsible’ AI products

Market-leading music streamer collaborating with the Sony, Universal and Warner music groups to create new AI features

Spotify has announced it is teaming up with the world’s biggest music companies to develop “responsible” artificial intelligence products that respect artists’ copyright.

The market-leading music streamer is collaborating with the Sony, Universal and Warner music groups – whose combined rosters feature artists including Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift – to create new AI features.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:49 pm

Indigenous and environmental leaders in Ecuador say they are facing state intimidation

Critics say referendum on rewriting country’s eco-friendly constitution is president’s latest pro-extractivist move

Indigenous and environmental leaders in Ecuador say they are facing a wave of state intimidation ahead of a national referendum next month on whether to rewrite the world’s only constitution that recognises the rights of nature.

The pressure is being applied by the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa, who has begun his second term with a Trumpian agenda of consolidating power and sweeping away legal and social barriers to extractivist businesses, such as mining.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

Woman alleged to have tortured and killed 12-year-old to stand trial in France

Killing of Lola Daviet three years ago led to outcry after far right was accused of exploiting her death for political gain

A woman who allegedly abused and tortured a 12-year-old girl before leaving her to suffocate will go on trial for murder on Friday in a case that has shocked France and caused political waves.

Lola Daviet’s body was found stuffed into a plastic trunk that had been dumped on the street near her home.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:09 pm

Four dead as Kenyan security forces fire on crowds mourning Raila Odinga

Thousands gather in Nairobi to pay respects to veteran opposition leader, prompting chaotic scenes at stadium

Four people have been killed in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, after security forces fired shots and teargas to disperse huge crowds at a stadium where the body of the opposition leader Raila Odinga was lying in state.

Odinga, a major figure in Kenyan politics for decades who was once a political prisoner and ran unsuccessfully for president five times, died on Wednesday aged 80 in India, where he had been receiving medical treatment.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:24 pm

Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars, report finds

Analysis of 800,000 European cars found real-world pollution from plug-in hybrids nearly five times greater than lab tests

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out nearly five times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show, a report has found.

The cars, which can run on electric batteries as well as combustion engines, have been promoted by European carmakers as a way to cover long distances in a single drive – unlike fully electric cars – while still reducing emissions.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:00 am

Brazil to ask countries at Cop30 to vastly increase biofuel use, leak suggests

Exclusive: Document sets draft pledge for leaders gathering at climate summit to increase use of controversial fuels

Brazil will ask countries to quadruple the global use of “sustainable fuels”, including controversial biofuels, despite concerns from environmental experts, the Guardian has learned.

A leaked document seen by the Guardian sets out a draft pledge for world leaders gathering for the Cop30 climate conference next month in Brazil to increase the use of “sustainable fuels” – chiefly biofuels and biogas, but also hydrogen – in the next decade by four times compared with 2024 levels.

By 2030, biofuel crops would require land the size of France, which would make it equivalent to the sixth-largest country in terms of arable land use globally

A fifth of vegetable oil is used for cars rather than food.

That 3,000 litres of water are needed to drive 100km on biofuels.

That solar panels could create as much energy as biofuels while using just 3% as much land.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:04 pm

Different croaks: new frog and gecko species discovered on remote island in Australia’s north

Researchers on expedition to Dauan Island heard two distinct frog calls in the rain and ‘sure enough, they were species new to science’

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

Three new animal species – two frogs and a gecko – have been discovered on a remote island in Australia’s north.

The animals were found on Dauan Island, a 3 sq km island in the far northern Torres Strait that is dominated by boulder fields.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:01 pm

Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised

Bird migrations rank as one of nature’s greatest spectacles. Thanks to GPS tracking, scientists are uncovering extraordinary insights into ancient and mysterious journeys – and new threats that are reshaping them.

Bird migrations rank as one of nature’s greatest spectacles. Thanks to GPS tracking, scientists are uncovering extraordinary insights into ancient and mysterious journeys – and new threats that are reshaping them.

As storm-chasing seabirds, Desertas petrels seek out hurricanes that draw deep-sea creatures to the surface. Only about 200 pairs remain, although the population is stable.

Published: October 16, 2025, 8:00 am

Trump plans to switch anti-terror funds from Democratic to Republican states

Overhaul of $1bn post-9/11 program would shift funds to states that voted for Trump in 2024 election

The Trump administration plans to shift terrorism prevention funding from Democratic-led states toward those led by Republicans, government records show, as it overhauls a $1bn program created after the 9/11 attacks.

Twelve Democratic-led states are suing to block the cuts, alleging that the Trump administration is trying to punish them for not cooperating with federal immigration agents.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:30 pm

Ex-Catholic priest exploited family deaths to abuse disabled boy, police allege

Mark Ford, extradited from Indiana to New Orleans jail, faces life in prison if convicted of sexual abuse charges

A man working as a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans positioned himself as a mentor to a young disabled boy grieving two family deaths – and then exploited the proximity to abuse him for years, police allege.

Those details are contained in criminal court records generated by the arrest of Mark Francis Ford in Indiana in September as well as his subsequent transfer to New Orleans’s jail, a process which was completed late on Tuesday.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:00 am

JD Vance brushes off racist texts by adults in Republican group chat as ‘what kids do’

Vice-president downplays messages such as ‘I love Hitler’ in chat by 24 to 35-year-olds to ‘stupid jokes’

JD Vance sought to downplay the revelation that leaders of a group called the Young Republicans exchanged hundreds of racist, sexist text messages – including one in which rape was called “epic”, and another in which someone wrote “I love Hitler” – as youthful indiscretions.

Vance, speaking on a new episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, the podcast run by colleagues of the late conservative activist, suggested that the participants in the leaked chats were much younger than they in fact are. Some of the participants are barely younger than the 41-year-old vice-president.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:04 am

Church of Norway says sorry to LGBTQ+ people for ‘shame, great harm and pain’

Presiding bishop Olav Fykse Tveit says discrimination and harassment should ‘never have happened’

Against a backdrop of red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway apologised for the discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, said on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:42 pm

‘It’s been a shock’: Taylor Swift fans flock to see German museum’s Ophelia

Depiction of Shakespeare character by Friedrich Heyser believed to have inspired pop superstar’s new music video

A 200-year-old museum in Germany has found itself in the eye of a storm of delighted Taylor Swift fans when it emerged that one of the probable inspirations for the music video of her new song The Fate of Ophelia was hanging on its wall.

In the opening scene of the clip for the first song on Swift’s blockbuster new album The Life of a Showgirl, one of the world’s biggest pop stars assumes the role of the tragic Shakespearean character. The video, released earlier this month, was watched more than 27m times on YouTube in the first three days.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:23 pm

‘Inherently cruel’: Canadian parents say citizenship bill erodes rights of children adopted abroad

Rule would require adopted children born abroad to prove ‘substantial connection’ to Canada to pass on citizenship

Canadian parents of children adopted abroad say a proposed citizenship bill represents a “shocking and unconscionable” erosion of their children’s rights by the governing Liberals.

The federal government is in the midst of overhauling the Citizenship Act so Canadians born abroad can pass citizenship to further generations born abroad. The bill would also restore or grant citizenship descendants who were excluded under older citizenship laws.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:00 am

Catalonia’s Socialist president: tackling inequality can blunt separatist and far-right voices

In an interview, Salvador Illa tells of ‘pragmatic approach’ as he seeks to persuade voters about benefits of coexistence with Madrid

Catalonia’s Socialist president has said his party’s focus on tackling inequality can win over voters who are tempted by pro-independence and far-right voices as he seeks to persuade Catalans of the benefits of coexistence with the central government in Madrid after years of turmoil.

Salvador Illa, a close ally of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been in the post since August 2024 and leads the first Catalan parliament in 44 years without a pro-independence majority.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:36 pm

Elliott Gould remembers Diane Keaton – ‘We snuck into a bush and she said: “This is called making out”’

Gould and Keaton made three movies together. He recalls a co-star who was professional, original, and remarkably down to earth

• Diane Keaton obituary

• Peter Bradshaw on Diane Keaton

I was shocked when I heard about Diane’s passing. I loved her. There was nobody like her. Bright, talented, generous, and very smart and witty. She had more than just a sense of humour; she was hysterical. Whatever it was, she just had it.

The first time I saw her was in a deodorant commercial where she bit somebody’s ear. Everything about her was original. I’d be interested in anything she was involved in because she was so keen and so smart and so witty. And anybody who got to work with her was in for a treat – as I later found.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:00 am

Pop-rock wizard Todd Rundgren: ‘When I met John Lennon, he was a bundle of rags with nothing to say’

As he tours the UK, the musician answers your questions on making Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf, squabbles with XTC and the Band, and wiring his studio while high

I Saw the Light is extraordinarily brilliant. How did you write it? Eamonmcc
I was still learning about songwriting and by the time I got to Something/Anything? [1972, featuring I Saw the Light] I was slipping into formula – verse, chorus, bridge and so on, always about the girl or boy who broke your heart. I moved my hands about the keyboard and 20 minutes later that song was done. It’s partly why I went completely off the grid for my next album, A Wizard, a True Star [1973] – because I realised I couldn’t keep cranking out songs in 20 minutes about that one relationship in high school. The prettiest girl in school had suddenly taken a shine to me – I think because I had long hair, which was also the reason her dad made her break up with me, which messed me up pretty bad.

Wikipedia says A Wizard, a True Star was “heavily informed by Rundgren’s hallucinogenic experiences”. Were you actually taking LSD? mjhmjh
I didn’t smoke or drink anything until my first album [Runt, in 1970]. In my first band they’d smoke pot and the rehearsal would turn into a 30-minute giggling session. Then, when I was 21 I was living in [rhythm section] the Sales brothers’ house and their mom said “I can’t believe you’ve never had a drink” and got me drunk. Then my best friend who was studying to be a psychiatrist suggested I try psychoactives. I trusted him implicitly, so I did. I was taking drugs occasionally throughout the building of the studio. Not when we were doing the music – I had to run the sessions – but I remember lying on my back as high as a kite trying to do the wiring. Through psychoactives I discovered there was more going on in my head than that high school relationship.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:35 pm

Back of the net! Steve Coogan film roles – ranked

As Manchester’s finest turns 60, with new film Saipan coming soon, we rank the British comedy hero’s best big-screen performances, from Tropic Thunder and Mindhorn to Philomena and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. A-Ha!

Steve Coogan entered the unofficial British comedy hall of fame at the tender age of 30, when he joined four of the Pythons and the likes of Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood in this largely forgotten version of the classic children’s tale. Bedecked in a long scarf and wearing rimless specs, he puts in a respectably twitchy turn as Mole alongside Eric Idle’s Rat and Terry Jones’s Toad.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:46 pm

Black Phone 2 review – hit horror sequel lumbers toward Elm Street

Ethan Hawke’s child-killing murderer returns from the dead to become a joke-free, low-rent Freddy Krueger in a follow-up that leaves us cold

Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was still churning out adaptations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its 1970s small-town setting, high school cast, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Funnily enough the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the character and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was clearly supposed to refer to, reinforced by Ethan Hawke playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare (even before his appearance, the word fag had also been liberally used). But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and too high on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:01 am

Sam Fender wins 2025 Mercury prize for his album People Watching

Geordie singer-songwriter’s album reached No 1 on the UK album chart and led to a series of stadium-sized concerts this summer

Sam Fender is the winner of the 2025 Mercury prize, for his chart-topping album People Watching.

Announcing the award, Sian Eleri, BBC radio DJ and one of the judges on the judging panel, said the album was characterised by “cohesion, character and ambition. It felt like a classic album, one that will take pride of place in record collections for years to come.”

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:14 pm

‘Chuck was breaking beer bottles over his own head’: thrash metal legends Testament on 40 years of mayhem

After their lead singer shed his glam rock spandex, the band became rivals to thrash’s Big Four. Still releasing potent high-octane riffage, they retread their path through cancer scares and jazz detours

In the Bay Area of mid-1980s California, a heavy metal scene was forming that was angrier, louder and much, much faster than anything that came before: thrash. Progenitors Metallica are the most well-known of its alumni, but this corner of the West Coast spawned dozens of other brilliant bands seemingly unbounded by tempo, or sometimes even melody.

With their blistering, high-octane riffing and superb technical chops, one of the most formidable and resilient is Testament. Despite having enough lineup changes to rival the Fall, cancer scares and the 1990s grunge takeover that edged out cut-off denim for plaid shirts, Testament are still selling out tours, gnashing at the heels of the commercially dominating Big Four metal bands – Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax – and releasing new records with just as much vigour. The most recent, Para Bellum, came out last week.

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:00 am

Hekate by Nikita Gill review – the ancient Greek goddess works magic in this retelling

Hekate is a traumatised youngster looking for love and a sense of belonging in this novel imagined in verse

Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and the underworld, is the prototypal witch known to many from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where she chastises the weird sisters for their meddling. Along with witchcraft and necromancy, Hekate is also associated with boundaries and crossroads, acting as protector and guide to lost travellers. In art, she is commonly depicted holding torches to show the way, and accompanied by a black dog or serpent.

In Hekate the Witch, the poet Nikita Gill reimagines the life of this enigmatic goddess in verse. Born during a war between the old Titan rulers and new Gods of Olympia, Hekate is birthed alone by her Titan mother, Asteria, who tells her she is destined for greatness. The pair live alone in a dilapidated palace but are forced to flee when Zeus and Poseidon come to enslave them. Seeking refuge in the Underworld, Asteria is denied entry but Hekate, still a Godling, is admitted and taken into the care of Styx and Hades. There, she briefly meets her father, Perses, chained to a mountain after the Titan defeat, who predicts a future for his daughter in which “the dead will bow to you as you move in their wake”.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Lyra’s last story – exclusive extract from Philip Pullman’s final instalment in The Book of Dust trilogy

Thirty years ago, Northern Lights introduced the world to Lyra Belacqua. Now, Pullman completes her story in The Rose Field – plus listen to an audiobook extract read by Michael Sheen

She washed herself as well as she could in the little basin with its lukewarm water, and looked in the mirror dispassionately. The bruises on her face were fading, but she was tanned by the sun, and her cheeks and the bridge of her nose not far off from being actually burnt, so she must find some cream or ointment to deal with that. A broad-brimmed hat would help too.

She spread a very little of the rose salve on her nose and lips, her cheekbones and forehead. Then she sat down and thought about Ionides.

Published: October 16, 2025, 10:00 am

The Captive by Kit Burgoyne review – a literary novelist tries his hand at pulp horror

A kidnapping goes the way of the occult in a gory, wildly entertaining romp from Ned Beauman, writing under a pseudonym

As we meet Luke, a nervous footsoldier in a revolutionary cell, he is on the point of carrying out his first proper operation. He and his colleagues – veteran activist Cam, and fire-in-her-belly true believer Rosa – are about to kidnap Adeline Woolsaw, 23-year-old scion of an obscenely wealthy clan who run an outsourcing company called the Woolsaw Group.

The company’s parasitic, money-grabbing, cost-shaving, data-siphoning activities stand for everything that is sinister and wrong with the conjunction of capitalism and state power. But the problem its opponents have is that the Woolsaw Group’s activities are so far-reaching, and its public profile so blandly corporate, that the public can’t be persuaded to pay any attention to its wickedness: “it’s ‘the largest public service outsourcing company in the UK’, which is so boring your brain just switches off. Which is good for the Woolsaw Group.” The hope of our wee terror cell, essentially, is that kidnapping the Woolsaws’ daughter will wake people up by putting a human face on it.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:00 am

ROG Xbox Ally X review – like nothing handheld gaming has seen before, for better or worse

Xbox’s portable console combines the openness of PC gaming and Microsoft’s desire for you to play its titles anywhere – but it doesn’t come cheap or without hitches

The ROG Xbox Ally X, the handheld console collaboration from Asus and Microsoft, is an impressive, yet expensive, piece of gaming tech. The pricier of the two portable gaming devices dropping on 16 October, the all-black ROG Xbox Ally X will cost you a cool £799 (€899/$999/A$1599) to sample its splendour. (The less powerful ROG Xbox Ally, which comes in white, will run you £499/€599/$599/A$999.) Thankfully, the pricier option has said splendour in spades.

I’ve put the ROG Xbox Ally X through its paces for the last few weeks, playing indie darlings and massive role-playing games throughout my apartment. Though the price tag is certainly a shocker (the Steam Deck OLED, a direct competitor, costs £479/€569/$549/A$899 for its cheaper model), the power packed into this comparatively smaller frame (291 x 122 x 51mm) is like nothing the portable gaming market has seen before.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:21 pm

Diane Keaton died of pneumonia, family reveals

Actor’s family thanks the public for ‘the extraordinary messages of love and support’ for ‘beloved Diane’, who died on 11 October aged 79

Diane Keaton died of pneumonia, the Oscar-winning actor’s family have revealed, as they expressed their thanks for the “extraordinary” response to her death last week.

“The Keaton family are very grateful for the extraordinary messages of love and support they have received these past few days on behalf of their beloved Diane, who passed away from pneumonia on October 11,” the family said in a statement to People.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:34 am

Britney Spears calls claims in Kevin Federline’s memoir ‘extremely hurtful’

Singer disputes account in ex-husband’s memoir You Thought You Knew, in which he says she behaved erratically around their sons

Britney Spears has responded to her ex-husband Kevin Federline’s claims in his upcoming memoir about their marriage, calling his depiction of her “extremely hurtful and exhausting”.

In You Thought You Knew, Federline details his two-year marriage with Spears and their divorce in 2007, which was followed by a protracted battle over custody of their two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:05 am

Frank Lazarus obituary

My friend Frank Lazarus, who has died aged 86, was a versatile actor, pianist and, most of all, writer of musicals, with a play that enjoyed a long run on Broadway.

In 1979 he teamed up with the comedy writer Dick Vosburgh in a Marx Brothers-inspired double-header, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. Frank composed the music and Vosburgh wrote the book and lyrics. It journeyed from the small New End theatre in Hampstead, London, to the May Fair theatre in the West End, followed by 17 months on Broadway (at the John Golden theatre in New York) and a tour of the US and Canada.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:11 pm

You be the judge: should my housemates bring the bins in?

Mohammed alleges that his flatmate Ben isn’t doing his bit when it comes to the garbage. You decide who is talking rubbish
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

If the bins are left out for ages, our neighbours don’t like it and random people chuck rubbish in

Published: October 16, 2025, 7:00 am

‘We keep wine in caves and cathedrals’: an eating and drinking tour of Burgos, Spain

A Norman Foster-designed ‘wine cathedral’, Hobbit-style cellars and a Petra-lookalike church are drawing attention to this tasty corner of the Ribera del Duero in northern Spain

‘We can talk about culture, churches, monasteries, whatever, but the main thing here is eating and drinking.” My guide, Loreto Esteban Guijarro, is keen to ensure I have my priorities straight. I’m with Loreto to discover the food and wine culture of Spain’s Burgos province, a high-altitude area ringed by distant mountains. In summer the days are hot, and at night temperatures plummet. To thrive in these extremes, the food, the wine, and even perhaps the people, are robust and straight-talking.

I’m staying deep in wine country at the rural Posada de Pradoray, built as a hunting lodge for the Duke of Lerma in 1601. The thick stone walls, dark polished wood and heavy doors leading to simple rooms with vineyard views suggest little has changed in this landscape for centuries. Burgos is part of the Ribera del Duero wine region which stretches for 71 miles following the Duero River through the provinces of Burgos, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:00 am

Instant coffee just beat drip – we were stunned too

Sometimes simple wins: why instant coffee might deserve a second look

• This piece was originally published in the Filter US newsletter. Sign up to get early access to our stories on buying fewer, better things

Each week in the Filter US newsletter we cut through the noise to bring you smart, practical recommendations on how to live better – from what is worth buying to the tools, habits and ideas that actually last.

As the Filter US’s new editorial coordinator, I was thrilled that my first assignment allowed me to write about something I can’t live without: coffee. And I’ll confess, I consider myself quite the coffee snob. Every morning, I sit at my tiny New York City kitchen table, trying (and often failing) to solve a crossword puzzle, while enjoying my first cup of the day.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for baked leek and egg gratin | A kitchen in Rome

Soft leeks topped with halved boiled eggs and smothered in a blanket of cheesy bechamel: what’s not to like?

While sorting out some books the other day, as well as gathering a pile to give away or sell, I spent a large part of two hours looking for books I know I once had, and trying to remember if I had loaned or lost them. And then, in the case of one particular book, ordering another copy. Ten out, one in: not terrible.

The book I (re)ordered was Beaneaters and Bread Soup, by Lori de Mori and the photographer Jason Lowe. Gathered over decades of living just outside Florence, the book is a collection of wonderful, practical Tuscan recipes, and also tells a story of Tuscan food through portraits of photogenic local artisans: a chestnut grower, a bee keeper, a man who makes knives … I would mention more if I could find the book, which I suspect was borrowed and never returned – you know who you are! (Unless I have got this wrong and it is behind the bookcase.)

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:00 am

Californians wary yet supportive of proposal to redraw voting maps: ‘This is a tactical measure’

Proposition 50 is part of the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to counter Texas’s gerrymandered maps

California is set to vote on a new congressional map in November, part of a plan by the governor, Gavin Newsom, and state Democrats to deliver up to five new Democrat-held seats in the US Congress.

The plan is a direct effort to counter a Republican-led push in Texas, which will give the GOP a five-seat advantage in the upcoming midterms.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:00 pm

75% of Americans report soaring prices as Trump claims inflation ‘over’

Exclusive poll: Inflation remains a concern despite president’s pledge to reduce prices on ‘day one’

• Analysis: Americans’ pessimism about the economy cuts across political lines

Nine months after Donald Trump took office, promising to reduce prices on “day one”, a clear majority of Americans say their monthly costs have risen by between $100 and $749, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian.

The president has continued to insist that there is “virtually no inflation”. “Prices are ‘WAY DOWN’ in the USA,” Trump wrote on social media in late August.

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 am

The longest breath holder and a Virginia creeper: photos of the day – Thursday

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

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:00 pm