‘She’s leaning into the idea that her image is a gilded fantasy’: how Taylor Swift embraced the showgirl

Swift, who returns with her 12th album in the guise of the ultimate iconic performer, is the latest pop star to take on the 19th-century tradition

Taylor Swift has gone through many evolutions over her 20-year career: the guitar-strummer of her 2006 debut, the wide-eyed New Yorker on 1989, the introspective storyteller of Folklore and Midnights. Her two-year Eras tour established her as the defining entertainer of her generation, and after her recent engagement to American footballer Travis Kelce, one of its biggest celebrities. Now, after an unexpectedly brief hiatus, Swift returns with her 12th album in yet another guise: a showgirl.

Swift made The Life of a Showgirl with Swedish super-producers Max Martin and Shellback while touring Europe last year. She described the project as a tribute to her “joyful, wild, dramatic” life as an entertainer, and a look “behind the scenes” of the Eras spectacle. Album imagery by fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott shows Swift bejewelled with diamantes, fishnet tights, fur and feathered headdresses.

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:51 am

The best sleep masks: I spent six weeks testing 24 masks, and these are my favorites

We tested popular eye mask brands like Manta and Cozy Earth – plus weighted, silk and other options – to find out which ones really help you get the best rest

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

Yes, you have eyelids. But if your room is not pitch-dark, your partner stays up scrolling long after bedtime, or you’re trying to take an afternoon nap, you may need an extra layer of protection. That is because any exposure to light can suppress your body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin. A good eye mask keeps light out, helping you sleep longer and more deeply. And unlike blackout shades, sleep masks are portable, so you can use them when you’re traveling, and relatively inexpensive.

While you could just slip on one of those free eye masks airlines sometimes hand out on long-haul flights, the straps are often thin and rarely adjustable, which means the mask can put too much pressure on your eyes or slide off overnight. When you consider that getting adequate sleep (that’s seven or more hours a night for most adults) can help you stay at a healthy weight, get sick less often, and even extend your lifespan by two to five years, springing for a good eye mask is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make in your health.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:15 pm

Democrats finally have some leverage in the shutdown fight. They should use it | Robert Reich

The government has effectively been shut down since Trump returned to office, as officials clamp down on work they oppose

The United States government is officially closed.

Starting on Wednesday at 12.01am Washington time, the federal government ran out of money.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Blocked field goals, 70-yard threats and chaotic kickoffs, the foot is back in football

Rule tweaks and ‘K’ balls have put special teams at the center of the NFL season like never before, from 65-yard field goals to newfangled kickoff formations

Vic Fangio, the Philadelphia Eagles’ crafty defensive coordinator, took great pride watching his defense force a third-down incompletion Sunday, leaving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 47 yards from the Eagles’ goal line with only four seconds left in the first half.

In the old days, that might have led to a Hail Mary pass into the end zone. But instead Bucs kicker Chase McLaughlin trotted on to the field and calmly belted a 65-yard field goal through the super-heated Florida sky, tied for the second-longest in NFL history.

Published: October 2, 2025, 9:00 am

Imogen Heap: ‘We’re making a horrendous job of existing. Maybe AI is the next stage of evolution’

The pop-electronica musician answers your questions on hanging out with Jeff Beck, cheering up babies, and what she has learned from her ADHD and autism diagnoses

Social media has repopularised your song Headlock, but how did it feel 20 years ago when you had to create, advertise and market the Speak For Yourself album almost entirely solo? Samgams
Back then if you were lucky you got into NME or i-D magazine. The only real coverage I got was in the techie music mags, but then Hide and Seek was in The OC, Headlock got on the radio and I started getting recognition. If only we could have had TikTok and all this free promotion 20 years ago … but if I’d received then the kind of attention I get now, I might have made different life choices, so I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Did you really remortgage your flat to finance Speak For Yourself? AD2023
I spent four years making an album in [the electronic duo] Frou Frou on Island Records, but it never recouped so I never saw a penny. Making another album with that label would have felt like taking your best dress back to the dry cleaners after they burned it. After I got out of that deal, no bank would lend me any money. Then I realised that my two-bedroom flat in Waterloo I’d bought for £120,000 was worth a hundred grand more a year later. I remortgaged it to make the album and never looked back. Funnily enough, after all the attention on TikTok recently I’ve just received my first royalties from Frou Frou after 25 years.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:15 pm

‘My son genuinely believed it was real’: Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Are they wrong?

Some believe AI can spark their child’s imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its affect on creativity

Josh was at the end of his rope when he turned to ChatGPT for help with a parenting quandary. The 40-year-old father of two had been listening to his “super loquacious” four-year-old talk about Thomas the Tank Engine for 45 minutes, and he was feeling overwhelmed.

“He was not done telling the story that he wanted to tell, and I needed to do my chores, so I let him have the phone,” recalled Josh, who lives in north-west Ohio. “I thought he would finish the story and the phone would turn off.”

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:00 am

Trump sees ‘unprecedented opportunity’ to punish Democrats as shutdown enters day two

Republicans and Democrats engage in war of words as White House also uses impasse to cut government spending

• US government shutdown – latest updates

As the US government shutdown stretched into its second day, Donald Trump on Thursday hailed the funding lapse as an “unprecedented opportunity” to further his campaign of firing federal workers and downsizing departments.

The president announced on social media that he would sit down with Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget chief and architect of the mass firings and buyouts of federal workers.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:45 pm

Manchester synagogue terror attack: two killed and suspect shot dead

Police say they believe they know identity of man behind car and knife attack that left four people seriously injured

• Manchester synagogue stabbing – latest updates

Police have shot dead a terrorist who killed two people and seriously injured four others in an attack at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Using a car to ram into the grounds of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall, the man then stabbed worshippers in a six- minute rampage that only ended when armed officers shot at him twice, fearing he also had an explosive device tied to his chest.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:28 pm

Hamas to demand key revisions to Trump Gaza plan before accepting, sources say

Turkey and Qatar putting pressure on group to make concessions – but condition it disarm is a sticking point

Hamas will demand key revisions to Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal but is likely to accept the plan in coming days as a basis for renewed negotiations, analysts and sources close to the group say.

Trump imposed a deadline of “three or four days” from Tuesday for Hamas to give its response to his 20-point plan, which aims to bring the two-year war in Gaza to a close and allow an apparently indefinite international administration of the devastated territory, or “pay in hell”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:05 pm

Judge denies Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum in the US

Ábrego, who was deported to El Salvador in March before being returned to the US, has 30 days to appeal ruling

An immigration judge in Baltimore has denied Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum on Thursday, but he has 30 days to appeal.

Ábrego’s case has drawn national attention since the 30-year-old was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March. The Salvadorian national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he originally immigrated to the US illegally as a teenager.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:12 pm

Putin dismisses fears that Moscow plans to attack Nato as ‘nonsense’

During speech in Sochi, Russian president also strikes conciliatory note towards Donald Trump

Vladimir Putin has vowed to quickly retaliate against Europe’s “escalating militarisation”, while dismissing as “nonsense” western fears that Moscow plans to attack Nato.

During a wide-ranging speech in Sochi on Thursday, the Russian president said: “We are closely monitoring the escalating militarisation of Europe … We simply cannot ignore what is happening. We have no right to do so for reasons of our own security.”

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:48 pm

Emerging climbing star Balin Miller, 23, dies in fall from El Capitan

• Miller fell rappelling on El Capitan’s Sea of Dreams

• Alaskan was famed for bold Denali solo ascent

Balin Miller, a popular Alaskan climber, was killed on Wednesday while rappelling near the top of Sea of Dreams, an arduous route on the southeast face of El Capitan. His mother, Jeanine Girard-Moorman, confirmed the news in posts on social media.

“It is with a heavy heart I have to tell you my incredible son Balin Miller died during a climbing accident today,” she wrote. “My heart is shattered in a million pieces.”

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:18 pm

Man described as Caribbean’s first serial killer gets 30-year prison sentence in Guadeloupe

Kathron ‘Cuchi’ Fortune, 47, found guilty of torture and murder of a woman, one week after double murder sentence in separate case

A man described as the Caribbean’s first serial killer has received a 30-year sentence for the torture and murder of a woman, days after he was given a life sentence for another double killing.

Kathron “Cuchi” Fortune, 47, was accused of “unbelievable violence” in the Assize court in Basse-Terre, in the French territory of Guadeloupe, where two separate trials were held in September and October.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:37 pm

Stephen King is the most banned author in US schools, according to report

During the 2024-2025 school year, there were more then 6,800 instances of books being pulled, led by the horror author

A new report on book bans in US schools finds Stephen King as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.

PEN America’s Banned in the USA, released on Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN didn’t even see the need to compile a report.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:04 pm

‘It will be a hell of a ride’: Steven Knight announces Peaky Blinders spin-off show

The BBC has commissioned two series focused on the next generation of the Shelby family

Peaky Blinders is to get a spin-off series, according to the BBC. The new show will focus on Birmingham after the second world war, and will follow the Shelby family who starred in the show’s previous incarnation.

Two series have already been commissioned, to air on both the BBC and Netflix, with the narrative starting in 1953.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:11 pm

Trump declares that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are ‘unlawful combatants’

President also said the US is now in a ‘non-international conflict’, according to a White House memo

Donald Trump has declared that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are “unlawful combatants” and says the United States is now in a “non-international armed conflict”, according to a White House memo obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.

A US official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly told the AP that Congress was notified about the designation by Pentagon officials on Wednesday.

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:22 pm

Trump offers top universities funds if they boost conservative ideas

Brown and MIT among nine schools told to back conservative views or risk losing federal support, sparking free speech fears

Donald Trump is offering nine top universities a deal in which they would agree to advance conservative ideas on their campuses and commit to a range of other conditions in exchange for federal funding.

The extraordinary offer, which was sent out from the White House on Wednesday, presents the universities with a 10-point “compact”. As a sweetener, any university that signs up to the deal is promised “multiple positive benefits”, including “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:58 pm

How the White House spun ‘weak’ and ‘inconclusive’ studies to tie Tylenol to autism

Experts say White House presented ‘association as causation’ and based conclusions on ‘poor quality studies’

The White House recently issued a press release with links to scientific studies to back up Trump’s claim that use of acetaminophen, commonly referred to as Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism, but those studies provided only “weak” and “inconclusive” evidence, according to physicians with expertise in reviewing medical research who spoke to the Guardian.

Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written about the Tylenol/autism claims, said that the links in the White House press release showed that the claims contained a political spin.

Published: October 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

Husband of judge who blocked ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ shutdown has ties to DeSantis

Barbara Lagoa’s husband, Paul Huck, is an attorney whose law firm has business with the Florida government

An appeals court judge who blocked the closure of Ron DeSantis’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail is married to a powerful conservative attorney whose law firm has raked in millions of dollars from the Republican Florida governor’s administration, it has been revealed.

Barbara Lagoa authored the 11th circuit court of appeal’s 2-1 ruling last month that paused the Miami district judge Kathleen Williams’s earlier order that the harsh detention facility in the Florida Everglades must be wound down within 60 days.

Published: October 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

How Chicago is resisting Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown - video

In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing, the Guardian's Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to Chicago, where Donald Trump's Ice deployment, codename Operation Midway Blitz, has been met by a defiant wave of sustained protests. With political violence on the rise, they speak to a new generation of political candidates and organisers, including Kat Abughazaleh, to find out if worse is still to come

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:44 am

Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’

Family separations were the hallmark of the first Trump administration’s border policy. Now advocates allege migrant families are being split up again as a retaliatory measure

The Trump administration has revived the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, attorneys and former immigration officials allege.

In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:00 am

Travel, national parks and housing: what does the US government shutdown mean for everyday people?

Several thousand federal employees will be furloughed or must do unpaid work. Regular people will feel it differently

Since the US government shut down Wednesday at midnight, tens of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed (told not to work), while others must work without pay until Congress passes a budget. The shutdown will have a wide range of effects on government services and programs as well as the US economy.

Here’s what it means for everyday people:

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:51 pm

Georgia supreme court sides with Gullah Geechee residents fighting to protect land

Decision reversed lower court ruling that weakened zoning restrictions put in place decades ago to preserve lands

The descendants of formerly enslaved people on Georgia’s Sapelo Island are a step closer to retaining their land and culture after a state supreme court ruling on 30 September. Two years ago, McIntosh county commissioners voted to increase the maximum size of homes allowed in the Black community Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, weakening zoning restrictions put in place several decades ago to protect the residents’ lands. The 30 to 50 Black residents of the enclave feared that the zoning changes would raise their taxes and displace them. Tuesday’s decision reversed a lower court ruling that halted a voter referendum aimed at repealing the changes. Now, county voters can decide whether to restrict large developments in the community in the future.

Dana Braun, an attorney for the Hogg Hummock residents, told the Associated Press that they were happy with the ruling. Now, she said, county residents will have “some real say”, on the allowable sizes of homes.

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:09 pm

LA 2028 Olympics: fears of mass displacement and homeless sweeps as Trump threat looms

The city has been here before, with arrests during the 1984 Olympics that had long-term consequences for the city’s Black and brown people

In the lead-up to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the city deployed 30 police officers on horseback to rid downtown of unhoused people and, in the words of a captain, “sanitize the area”.

Some people were arrested and transported to detox centers. Others were forced from public view while their possessions were trashed.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

Our girls theater: how the right claims to protect women’s sports while attacking them

The WNBA finals tip off on Friday. But many of those discussing the league denigrate its players while not bothering to watch the action itself

“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls.”

– Donald Trump during the signing of his Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports executive order, 5 February 2025

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:18 am

Dogs and drones: how scientists are saving Washington’s endangered orcas

Experts are finding new and more humane ways to protect the last 74 southern resident killer whales

Nestled between the US state of Washington and Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands are a vibrant haven for North American wildlife. Here, all of the world’s remaining 74 southern resident sub-species of orcas find sanctuary, surfacing daily from the depths of the Salish Sea.

Out at sea watching the whales is Dr Deborah Giles, an orca scientist, with her colleague, Eba. Eba is a brown and white rescue dog with a remarkable nose. Found as a cold, wet, five-month-old puppy on the streets of Sacramento, she has been detecting whale scat – or faeces – since the age of four.

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Historian uses AI to help identify Nazi in notorious Holocaust murder image

Jürgen Matthäus has for years been investigating the killer – and is confident he has finally solved the mystery

It is one of the most chilling images of the Holocaust: a bespectacled Nazi soldier trains a pistol at the head of a resigned man kneeling in a suit before a pit full of corpses. German troops encircle the scene.

The picture taken in today’s Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and was for decades shrouded in mystery.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:23 am

Seth Meyers on government shutdown: ‘Will have repercussions for pretty much everyone’

Late-night hosts discuss US government shutdown, Trump’s military threats on US cities and his AI-generated racist video mocking Hakeem Jeffries

Late-night hosts discuss the US government shutdown and Donald Trump’s threat to send the US military into major American cities.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:30 pm

James Comey’s real ‘crime’? Daring to put the law before loyalty to Trump | Lawrence Douglas

The former FBI director prioritized fidelity to his office. The case against him is flimsy – but that’s cold comfort

In 1931, an exceptionally talented young Berlin attorney named Hans Litten summoned Adolf Hitler to testify in a criminal case. Litten represented four victims of a brutal assault perpetrated by members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or SA, on a dance hall frequented by leftist workers; by the time the assault ended, three people were dead. At trial, the defense sought to portray the SA as a disciplined political organization, under orders from Hitler to use force only as self-defense.

In his three-hour cross-examination of the head of the Nazi party, Litten managed what precious few dared to attempt. Hitler had expected the young lawyer to be intimidated; instead, Litten aggressively and skillfully dissected him under oath, reducing the supposedly gifted orator to a stammering rage. In trapping Hitler in contradictions and exposing him as an inveterate liar, Litten also made clear the Nazis’ goal of destroying the Weimar Republic. Hitler left the witness stand rattled and humiliated, henceforth forbidding Litten’s name to be uttered in his presence.

Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. His newest book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice, will be published in the spring of 2026

Published: October 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

Actors hate Tilly Norwood – but they are their own worst enemies | Catherine Shoard

The backlash against the AI actor has been fierce but with the rise of cosmetic surgery and navel-gazing releases, Hollywood needs to take a long, hard look at itself

Given that she has appeared only fleetingly in a brief comedy sketch, backlash to AI actor Tilly Norwood has been swift and fulsome. The people, the industry and the critics spoke with united voice, all of them basically retching.

Actors were especially fast out of the gate to condemn a concept that is – obviously – depressing, dystopian and (if the tech behind it has ripped off real-life faces) dodgy. It is also plain shonky: my colleague Stuart Heritage has said perhaps all there needs to be said about Tilly’s indeterminate dentistry, but there are clearly teething problems here that mean she’s far from ready for her closeup.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:40 pm

American democracy might not survive another year – is Europe ready for that? | Alexander Hurst

Trapped between Putin and Trump, EU citizens understand the grave dangers facing the continent. Their leaders urgently need to face reality, too

Fascism is supposed to look a certain way: black-clad, uniformed, synchronised and menacing. It is not supposed to look like an overweight president who can’t pronounce acetaminophen and who bumbles, for a full minute, about how he would have renovated the UN’s New York headquarters with marble floors, rather than a terrazzo. But as Umberto Eco remarked in his timeless essay on identifying the eternal nature of fascism: “Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises.”

Historians, scholars and even some insiders from the first Trump administration have seen through the comedic quality of the disguise. They appear to have seen in Donald Trump himself and those around him, Eco’s core criteria: the call to tradition and the rejection of reason, the fear of difference, the hostility towards disagreement, the ressentiment, the machismo, the degradation of language into newspeak, the cult of a “strong” leader. Almost a year ago, the historian Robert Paxton, in explaining why he had changed his mind about employing the word to describe Trumpism, remarked: “It’s bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms. It’s the real thing. It really is.”

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Do you know about shitposting? It’s cheap humour, rage bait – and now, it seems, US government policy | Robert Topinka

Donald Trump’s White House reveals a new ‘portrait’ of Joe Biden – and in his world, if you don’t laugh, the joke’s on you

On 24 September, a White House communications adviser posted a video on X of a new presidential Walk of Fame, captioned: “Wait for it”, with a pen and eyes emoji. The video pans over a succession of presidential portraits to reveal – in place of Joe Biden’s portrait – a framed photograph of an autopen signing his name. The sight-gag references the Maga conspiracy theory that, unbeknownst to “Sleepy Joe”, unscrupulous aides used the autopen to sign pardons in his name. The post delighted supporters and outraged critics, which only further delighted supporters.

And that was precisely the point. This combination of cheap humour and rage bait is the province of the shitpost, a genre of low-effort social media content designed to amuse insiders and annoy outsiders. Like so much of internet culture, shitposting was pioneered on the message board 4chan – but Donald Trump is a natural. On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, he tweeted: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” The shitpost forces a choice: undermine public decorum by laughing along, or get offended, outing yourself as a hater and a loser.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:31 am

The families of Syria’s disappeared are asking for the truth. Our country cannot rebuild until we have it | Wafa Mustafa

Over 160,000 people, including my father, were abducted by the Assad regime. The country’s new commission for the missing must be inclusive and independent to restore our trust

For more than 11 years, I told myself it was too early to grieve. My father, Ali Mustafa, was arrested by Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria on 2 July 2013 and disappeared. Since that day, we have had no word, no trace, nothing.

Every morning since he was taken I made my first thought after waking up: “He is alive.” Every night I went to sleep repeating it.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Nottingham Forest v Midtjylland, Feyenoord v Aston Villa, and more: Europa League – live

⚽ Europa League updates, plus Conference League
⚽ Live scores | Read Football Daily | And mail Niall

Given how both teams’ seasons have panned out so far, Palace getting demoted to the Conference League and replaced by Nottingham Forest looks to have actually worked out in the Eagles’ favour.

Feyenoord (4-3-3): Wellenreuther; Read, Ahmedhodzic, Watanabe, Smal; Valente, Steijn, Hwang; Hadj Moussa, Ueda, Sauer.
Subs: Bijlow, Bossin, Nieuwkoop, Larin, Borges, Bos, Tengstedt, Diarra, Targhaline, Lotomba, Sliti, Plug.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:42 pm

Norris considers Verstappen ‘genuine challenger’ for F1 title after resurgence

• Four-time champion has won past two races to close gap

• Norris plays down McLaren prioritising teammate Piastri

Lando Norris has brushed off suggestions that McLaren would prioritise his teammate Oscar Piastri in the world championship fight after a resurgent Max Verstappen has emerged as a rival contender.

Norris said the Dutchman was now in a position to defend his title, as the drivers prepare for what is likely to be the most gruelling meeting of the year in Singapore, with temperatures soaring.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:52 pm

Shedeur Sanders lip-syncs answers to media after Gabriel named Browns starting QB

• Joe Flacco benched after leading anaemic offense

• Sanders has been competing with Dillon Gabriel for role

• Fifth-round pick remains as Cleveland’s third-string QB

Rookie Dillon Gabriel will get his first NFL start on Sunday when the Cleveland Browns face the Minnesota Vikings in London. The Browns announced on Wednesday that they were benching Joe Flacco after he struggled to lead the offense in the first four games.

“From the second [Gabriel] has been here, he’s been working very hard,” Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski said. “He’s a very intelligent young man. He’s done a nice job throughout practice, and this whole season he’s been learning how to get yourself ready and understand the rhythm of an NFL week and what that looks like as a backup. Obviously, now feel like he’s ready to go as a starter.”

Published: October 1, 2025, 8:15 pm

Pitch points: why are United sticking with Amorim? And is Pulisic really that good?

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

It’s no wonder Ruben Amorim spent the closing moments of Manchester United’s defeat to Brentford staring at the floor. That’s the only place he can escape the reality of his team’s continued slide. United’s latest defeat means the Portuguese manager has now lost nearly twice as many matches (17) as he has won (nine).

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:00 am

USMNT squad: Antonee Robinson returns as Pochettino calls up 26 for friendlies

• Tyler Adams left off US squad

• Team will play against Ecuador and Australia

Mauricio Pochettino has named a 26-player roster for the US men’s national team’s upcoming friendlies against Ecuador and Australia that includes many familiar names – and has one very notable omission.

Bournemouth midfielder Tyler Adams, a usual mainstay of the squad who captained the US at the 2022 World Cup, is not included, with Pochettino breaking the news that the midfielder is expecting his second child in the days to come.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:38 pm

Two Delta planes collide while on the taxiway in New York

Wing of one aircraft hit fuselage of another, resulting in one flight attendant with non-life threatening injuries

Two Delta Air Lines regional jets collided on the taxiway at LaGuardia airport in New York, injuring a flight attendant, damaging a cockpit and tearing off part of a wing in what the airline described as a “low-speed collision”.

The wing of an aircraft carrying 32 people getting ready to take off on Wednesday night to Roanoke, Virginia, hit the fuselage of an aircraft arriving from Charlotte, North Carolina, with 61 people aboard, according to a statement from Delta.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:38 pm

Reform UK council in Nottinghamshire ends ban on local journalists

Ban on Nottingham Post and its website reversed after threat of legal action over damaging freedom of expression

A Reform UK council has ended its ban on journalists from the area’s biggest local newspaper after being threatened with legal action over damaging the outlet’s freedom of expression.

Nottinghamshire county council, which has been led by Reform since the local elections earlier this year, said it was “committed to the principles of openness” after lifting the sanctions it had placed on journalists from the Nottingham Post and its website, Nottinghamshire Live.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:02 pm

Tesla vehicle deliveries spike after several quarters of decline

Electric vehicle buyers in the US are rushing to take advantage of expiring federal tax credits

Tesla’s third-quarter deliveries trounced Wall Street estimates on Thursday after several quarters of weak performance, powered by an unusual sales boost from US electric vehicle buyers rushing to lock in popular tax credits before they expire at the end of September.

Tesla said it delivered 497,099 vehicles in the third quarter, up 7.4% from 462,890 a year earlier. It also delivered 481,166 units of its Model 3 compact sedan and Model Y crossover in the September quarter, well above Wall Street expectations. The carmaker is set to report quarterly results on 22 October.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:56 pm

Iran must move its capital from Tehran, says president as water crisis worsens

Masoud Pezeshkian says subsidence is also ‘a disaster’ in city of 10 million, which consumes quarter of Iran’s water

Iran’s president has claimed Iran has no choice but to move its capital from Tehran to the south of the country due to the city’s over-expansion, the lack of adequate water supplies and the growing threat of subsidence.

Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday that he had raised the proposal with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last year. He admitted it had received a lot of criticism, but argued that the accumulating resource crises were so deep that Iran now had an obligation to shift the capital, and no choice but to do so.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:42 pm

Part of Pablo Escobar’s ranch to be given to female victims of Colombia conflict

Estate was abandoned after Escobar’s 1993 killing and later became a theme park, and now government says given female farmers will get land

A slice of Pablo Escobar’s once-lavish ranch – a symbol of the drug lord’s enormous wealth and home to his infamous “cocaine hippos” – is being given to women who suffered in Colombia’s armed conflict, announced Gustavo Petro, the president.

Escobar, Colombia’s most notorious narco-trafficker and former head of the powerful Medellín cartel, became one of the richest men in the world in the late 1980s, with Forbes magazine estimating his fortune at $25bn.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:53 pm

Canadian government asked to clarify whether Kneecap barred from country

Opposition party says minister ‘either lied or has no clue how it works’ when he said band were ‘ineligible’ to enter

Canada’s opposition party has asked the government to clarify whether the Belfast rap trio Kneecap have been barred from the country, after doubts emerged over their status.

The Liberal MP Vince Gasparro, the parliamentary secretary for combating crime, posted a video on social media on 19 September in which he said Kneecap were “ineligible” to enter Canada.

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:44 am

Organisers call for sixth night of protest as Morocco death toll rises to three

Prime minister praises security response and says government is ready for talks

Morocco’s prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch, has praised the security force reaction to protests over corruption and public spending and said the government was ready for talks, as organisers called for a sixth night of protests.

In a statement, Akhannouch said the death toll in the protests had risen to three.

Published: October 2, 2025, 12:51 pm

‘A remarkable ability to inspire’: global tributes pour in for Jane Goodall

Barack Obama, Prince William and Tanzanian president among many to mark death of primatologist at age of 91

World leaders, friends and former colleagues have been paying tribute to the primatologist Jane Goodall, who died in California on Wednesday, aged 91.

Goodall devoted her life to studying chimpanzees and other great apes, and became a global champion for primates and for conservation, helping to challenge the idea that the primates were vegetarian and that only humans could use tools. She died in her sleep from natural causes while on a speaking tour in Los Angeles, according to her institute, leading to an outpouring of dedications from around the world.

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:15 am

Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson to make Netflix road trip series

Former One Direction members to reunite for docuseries set on the road in US after death of bandmate Liam Payne

Former One Direction members Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson are set to reunite for a Netflix road trip series.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the docuseries will follow the pair as they travel across the US. The show will be directed by Nicola Marsh, who was also behind the Demi Lovato documentary Child Star.

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:08 pm

Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable

Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade

Wildfires tore through central Chile last year, killing 133 people. In California, 18,000 buildings were destroyed in 2018 causing US$16bn (A$24bn, £12bn) in damage. Portugal, Greece, Algeria and Australia have all felt the grief and the economic pain in recent years.

As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures – fuelled by the climate crisis – that create tinderbox conditions.

Published: October 2, 2025, 6:00 pm

Lifting the ‘constant black cloud’: how a smog-bound city cut dangerous levels of air pollution

A 30-year effort driven by long-term policies is finally paying off in Santiago in Chile – but the challenge is far from over

In Santiago, this winter was different. The mountains surrounding the city – the same ones that usually trap smog and turn it into a “pressure cooker” – were visible more days than usual.

For nearly 30 years Chile’s capital has been experimenting in how to reduce air pollution; in the last few years the work has at last begun paying dividends and 2025 was the third best year in terms of fewest hours of critical pollution episodes since the first atmospheric prevention and decontamination plan in 1997. Over the last decade, hours of exposure to high levels of pollution fell by 66%, which, according to the environment minister, Maisa Rojas, means the 7.5 million residents of the metropolitan region “are breathing cleaner air”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:00 pm

Jem Cresswell’s striking whale images – in pictures

Photographer Jem Cresswell spent five years documenting the southern hemisphere’s humpback whales in the waters surrounding the Tonga Trench for his new book Giants, out now

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:00 pm

Scientists to attempt to rear swallowtail butterflies from eggs frozen in nitrogen

If successful, method could be used to support long-term conservation of species vulnerable to extinction

Researchers are to attempt to rear swallowtail butterflies from eggs frozen in liquid nitrogen in a test to see whether cryopreservation could support the long-term conservation of Britain’s largest native species.

In a groundbreaking project, researchers will freeze eggs of captive-bred European swallowtails in liquid nitrogen at -196C and attempt to rear butterflies from the unfrozen eggs, comparing their success with butterflies reared from eggs that have never been frozen.

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:40 am

Woman says she spoke with Michigan church shooter amid attack and ‘he let me live’

Lisa Louis says she was next to her mortally wounded father, when the attacker approached and asked a question

A woman who was inside a Michigan church when her father and three other people were killed says she and the gunman locked eyes during the chaos and she was able to look into his soul, seeing his pain and a feeling of being lost. She said she instantly forgave him “with my heart”.

“He let me live,” Lisa Louis, 45, wrote.

Published: October 2, 2025, 11:52 am

White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop

JD Vance, the VP, said he thought the video was ‘funny’ and the ‘sombrero memes’ would cease if government reopened

As the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.

The videos, posted by Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Perky Maxwell House viral ad takes on housing crisis as ‘Maxwell Apartment’

Historic US company also offering ‘12-month lease’ – an annual supply – of pre-ground coffee for under $40

Housing in the US has become so unaffordable that a coffee company has based a viral marketing campaign on the idea that almost nobody can afford to buy a house.

Maxwell House coffee, a 133-year-old brand, recently launched a marketing campaign rebranding themselves as “Maxwell Apartment Coffee”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 1:54 am

Trump signs order promising measures, including military, to defend Qatar

Text appears meant to assure the Qataris following Israel’s surprise attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders

Donald Trump has signed an executive order vowing to use all measures including US military action to defend the energy-rich nation of Qatar – though it remains unclear just what weight the pledge will carry.

The text of the order, available Wednesday on the White House’s website but dated Monday, appears to be another measure by Trump to assure the Qataris following Israel’s surprise attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders as they weighed accepting a ceasefire with Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip.

Published: October 2, 2025, 1:35 am

MI5 and counter-terror police on heightened alert after synagogue attack

Policing at Jewish places of worship to increase as officials investigate killer’s motivations and ties to others

• Manchester synagogue attack – latest updates

MI5 and counter-terrorism police will operate at a heightened state of alert in the coming weeks, reflecting concern that the Manchester synagogue attack risks being followed by others during a period that includes the second anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.

Policing at synagogues across the country is to be increased. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, promised “high visibility” patrols in and outside Jewish places of worship to reassure communities and to deter any further threats, while police forces elsewhere in the UK made similar commitments.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:16 pm

Up to 600 flights a day to be cancelled during French strike, Ryanair says

Airline claims next week’s air traffic control strikes could affect up to 100,000 passengers as routes over France close

Ryanair could cancel up to 600 flights a day next week due to French air traffic control (ATC) strikes, the airline has claimed.

The company’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has reiterated demands to the EU to protect overflights in a long-running campaign to minimise the disruption from ATC strikes.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:13 pm

Deaths, disappearances and forced recruitment: refugees recount horrors of relentless war in Sudan

Refugees who left Darfur and Khartoum for South Sudan say they feared being targeted by both sides in conflict

Suba Dafallah was selling vegetables at a market in the Sudanese city of Nyala one morning in March when he got a distressing call from his sister, saying their mother would like to speak to him. “Come quickly. There are clashes in the town,” he recalled his mother saying.

He gathered his belongings, closed his stall and ran home as fast as he could.

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Kenyan activists abducted after joining opposition rally in Uganda

Pair had crossed border to support presidential campaign of reggae singer Bobi Wine

Two Kenyan activists have been abducted in Uganda after attending a presidential campaign event for Bobi Wine, the reggae musician turned politician.

Heavily armed security operatives detained Bob Njagi, the chair of Free Kenya, and Nicholas Oyoo, the movement’s secretary general, at a petrol station near Kampala on Wednesday afternoon.

Published: October 2, 2025, 1:13 pm

Good Boy review – crafty supernatural horror leads with a heroic dog

A lovable pet is unlikely protagonist of 73-minute haunted house riff that has ingenious moments but gets repetitive

In the horror genre, you’d be a fool to ignore the concerns of a dog. While cats are mainly lurking in dark spaces waiting to collaborate with the orchestra on a cheap jumpscare, dogs are quick to alert their owners of nefarious goings-on, acutely sensitive to threats whether they be human or not.

In the often ingenious new horror film Good Boy, a pet dog isn’t just an easily dismissed harbinger of evil, he’s also the main character. Like last year’s Presence, which saw Steven Soderbergh tell a ghost story through the lens of the ghost, and In a Violent Nature, which gave us a gory slasher as seen by the killer, we’re given a fresh perspective on a story that’s anything but, this time a haunted house horror as seen by Indy, a loyal retriever. He’s worried about his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen, whose face we barely see), who’s retreating to his grandfather’s remote cabin after an undefined medical crisis.

Published: October 2, 2025, 3:47 pm

Marion Cotillard at 50: the actor’s 20 best films – ranked!

We rate her most impressive performances, from Lady Macbeth to Edith Piaf to a Batman baddie

In her breakout film, modern great Marion Cotillard supplies annoying-girlfriend comic relief for Samy Naceri’s gallivanting Marseille taxi driver. The spunkiness and sultriness she gives out in every scene is small beer for her – but you’ve got to start somewhere. There are worse places than in this French box office ram-raider, which spawned a franchise.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:35 pm

From Maggie Smith in Downton to Mr Blobby: 20 characters so brilliant they made bad TV shows good

These cult heroes outshone everyone else on screen. Say hello to the television stars whose excellence turned humdrum shows into essential viewing

Ever find yourself loving a specific character on TV but slightly ambivalent about the show they’re in? Sadly, it happens. Sometimes a scene-stealer finds themselves stranded in a series that doesn’t deserve their brilliance.

We’ve cogitated, consulted the archives and compiled a list of fictional creations who were arguably too good for their own shows. Consider it a counterpoint to our recent list of characters so bad that they ruined shows. Here are 20 great characters in vehicles that weren’t worthy.

Published: October 1, 2025, 3:31 pm

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally audiobook review – the life of a hospitality legend

Richard E Grant narrates the restaurateur’s candid memoir about his life’s highs, lows and biggest regrets – including barring James Corden

The memoir from Keith McNally, the British-born restaurateur behind celebrated New York establishments including The Odeon and Balthazar, begins bleakly with its author attempting suicide at his summer house in Martha’s Vineyard in 2018. We then rewind to 20 months earlier when, on a Saturday morning, he took his youngest children to the National Gallery in London. While looking at a painting of Jesus being betrayed by Judas, “I sensed my body beginning to show signs of betraying me: a strange metallic tingling started to pinch my fingertips.” McNally was experiencing the beginnings of a stroke that would leave him with impaired speech and paralysis on one side of his body.

I Regret Almost Everything sees McNally, now 74, reflecting on his health along with his long career, moving from bellboy at the Hilton hotel in London to teen actor – aged 16, he played the lead in a production of The Winslow Boy – to busboy at the New York restaurant One Fifth, where he was later promoted to maître d.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet review – a monument to Afghan resilience

A sweeping social history of Afghanistan is seen through the lens of Kabul’s InterContinental hotel, where staff endured the horrific realities of life in a war zone

So catastrophic has the last half century of Afghan history been that it is easy to forget how rich the country’s culture once was. The Mughals always regarded it as a much more refined place than India and looked to it as the source of the region’s greatest poets and artists, calligraphers and miniaturists, architects and tile makers. As recently as the early 1970s, at the height of the hippy trail, as Afghanistan filled with travellers “high on weed and low on cash”, Kabul was still known as the Paris of the east. Memoirs of the time describe a world of miniskirts, jazz clubs, bowling alleys and ice-cream parlours. This world was linked to a poor but extremely beautiful rural hinterland where life revolved around the vine harvest and the annual arrival of nomad caravans from the Wakhan corridor.

A quick flick through guidebooks of the time reveals an Afghanistan unimaginably different from today: of royal levees and fashion shows and apres-ski restaurants. Facing a photo of a gargantuan mound of melons – “delicious Afghan fruits are a treat for travellers” – you’d see a picture of “a tourist and his hunting party in the Pamir mountains with a Marco Polo sheep”. Most poignant of all are images of the priceless treasures of the Kabul Museum, almost of all which are now missing or destroyed, after looting during the mujahideen takeover of Kabul in the 1990s and the smashing up of what remained by the Taliban in 2001.

Published: October 2, 2025, 8:00 am

Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry review – a brilliant meditation on mortality

The Essex Serpent author offers a moving account of her father-in-law’s final illness that will resonate widely

The novelist Sarah Perry’s father-in-law, David, died of oesophageal cancer in 2022. This book tells the story of his dying, from the last time she saw him well, on a trip to Great Yarmouth at the end of summer, to his death less than two months later, just nine days after being diagnosed.

It’s not easy to account for what makes this book so special. Its main character is as unpromisingly ordinary as its title suggests, and some may even find him a little boring. David Perry is the kind of man who spends hours sorting his beloved stamp collection into albums with the aid of long-tipped forceps and magnifying glasses, or filling in his Sudoku puzzle books, or reading the latest copy of the Antiques Gazette, looking intently at porcelain dogs and chased silver punch-bowls.

Published: October 1, 2025, 6:01 am

Ghost of Yōtei review – a brutal and stunningly beautiful samurai revenge quest

PlayStation 5; Sucker Punch/Sony
The follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima leans into its young protagonist’s thirst for bloody vengeance

My horse in Ghost of Yōtei is called Mochizuki, which means “full moon” in archaic Japanese, and I swear she is the most unfortunate creature in all of northern Japan. The button I have to press to summon her is right next to the button I need to press to heal my samurai during a fight and I often fumble with my thumb and call her straight into a chaotic seven-on-one brawl. Mochizuki frequently gallops full pelt into an arrow or catches a sword-swipe from one of my outlaw enemies as I roll out of the way. Sometimes she stands on the edge of the skirmish, calmly waiting for me to finish disembowelling bad guys so that we can resume our picturesque adventures across the region of Ezo.

Ghost of Yōtei is the follow-up to American studio Sucker Punch’s reverent samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima, from 2020. Most of the time it looks exceptionally well-directed, no matter what you’re doing: tense standoffs against formidable swordsmen, following a golden bird or a sprinting wolf across the landscape to find a secret natural spring or shrine, scaling a mountain to sneak your way into a tightly guarded fortress. But no open-world game’s dignified framing can survive the addition of a wayward player, and so sometimes I make it look entirely ridiculous by accidentally calling my horse into a fight, or setting myself on fire by mistake.

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:16 am

Why the enormous Saudi-led deal to acquire EA matters, whether you play games or not

In this week’s newsletter: The private equity effort to acquire the makers of Fifa and more is the biggest deal in gaming history – financially and morally

When Microsoft announced its intention to buy Activision-Blizzard for a touch over $68bn in 2022, it was the biggest deal ever struck in the games industry, and one of the most surprising. But that shock pales into comparison to the reaction to the latest big move in the industry: EA (Electronic Arts), the publisher best known for its juggernaut sports games Madden and EA Sports FC (previously called Fifa), is being taken private in the “biggest leveraged buyout in history”. It’s a deal worth $55bn, by a trio of investors who, on paper, look like a collection of end-of-level bosses.

Enter player one: Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The Saudi royal family has been investing its wealth in video games for some years now, and owns its own Savvy Games Group, led by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, perhaps best known for mass-arresting his own citizens and ordering the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Player two: Affinity Partners, an investment company led by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the current US president. And player three: Silver Lake, just your run-of-the-mill evil private equity firm, which currently owns a large stake in game engine-maker Unity. Game File’s Stephen Totilo noticed that Affinity Partners’ logo is a mirror image of that used by the evil corporation in the Assassin’s Creed series. Truly you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Published: October 1, 2025, 2:00 pm

From a Utah church to a Denver museum: the man who found 75 pyramids in the US

Over a decade, Ian James captured an array of pyramid structures across 20 US states, now documented in a new book

On a summer afternoon in 2017, Los Angeles-based artist Ian James found himself at the Pain Reliever Bar & Grill, the only functioning establishment in Nekoma, North Dakota.

Lingering until midnight, while trying not to look too much like a Californian in a town of less than 30 residents, James struck up a conversation with a local couple who explained how to gain access to the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex. The former anti-ballistic missile military facility, constructed during the cold war and only operational for six months before being decommissioned, was his destination: specifically, its brutalist concrete radar tower resembling an Egyptian pyramid without an apex.

Published: October 2, 2025, 9:02 am

Virgil Abloh: The Codes review – archive show sews up status as his generation’s leading designer

Grand Palais, Paris
Teeming display from Abloh’s vast collection shows him spinning Evian bottles, Air Jordans and mixtapes into landmark looks

Before his death in 2021 aged 41, Virgil Abloh was often called the most important fashion designer of his generation. Not the best – not even close. Even at Louis Vuitton, where he became the first Black man to oversee the label’s menswear in 2018, he preferred to print on T-shirts rather than tailor them. But as a pop-culture-obsessed polymath who approached fashion with a teenager’s enthusiasm, his high-low take on streetwear sought to open up the rarefied world of fashion to kids like him who had historically been shut out of it, whether he was putting his stamp on Evian bottles, Ikea rugs, or £8,000 bags.

The scale of his impact on design can’t be measured in stuff, but Virgil Abloh: The Codes, the first exhibition devoted purely to the late fashion designer’s whopping 20,000-item archive, demonstrates that he was as much a voracious collector of things – the titular codes – as he was a maker of it.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:05 pm

‘Everything that is wrong with the human race’: inside Hollywood’s bizarre war on the leaf blower

For 18 years, Cate Blanchett has railed against the hated garden gadget – and she’s not alone. From Hugh Grant to Danny DeVito, the backpack blower has united stars in unlikely, furious contempt

Consider the great Hollywood feud. Perhaps Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s mutual loathing comes to mind? Or Marlon Brando’s 40-year-old beef with Burt Reynolds? Maybe the more recent tensions between Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh? Well, let me tell you: these are absolutely nothing compared to Cate Blanchett and her indefatigable animus towards … the leaf blower. Seemingly every single leaf blower.

Truly, this is one of the greatest celebrity animosities of this century. The earliest extant Blanchett-rant on the subject is a W Magazine interview, way back in 2007, when she ambiguously characterised leaf blowers – a lot of fence-sitting here – as “everything that is wrong with the human race”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 10:57 am

Actor Robert Aramayo: ‘Like anybody who hasn’t had the education, I thought Tourette’s was all about swearing’

Formerly seen as a young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones and as Elrond in The Rings of Power, Aramayo is creating a buzz with his role as the condition’s campaigner John Davidson in I Swear. It taught him a lot, he says – but it’s a huge responsibility

Kirk Jones was feeling nervous. The director was two weeks away from shooting his new film, a biopic of the pioneering Scottish Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson, and he still hadn’t seen his lead actor perform any of the script. Jones had been impressed by Robert Aramayo in the supernatural Netflix series Behind Her Eyes, and liked the actor when they met over Zoom.

He then invited him to Galashiels, to meet Davidson in his home town, where he was convinced Aramayo was the right choice for the role. “I was confident enough not to feel the need to meet 50 other actors and audition them,” he says. But “I didn’t ask him to read”, he admits. “Looking back, I think that was insane.”

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:00 am

The peacock parent problem: how to survive being raised by a narcissist

Psychotherapist Kathleen Saxton has written a book about growing up with a mother or father who is grandiose, entitled, exploitative and lacking in empathy. She discusses how to recognise the signs – and recover

Many of Kathleen Saxton’s clients only realise they were brought up by a narcissistic parent when they are older. Saxton, a psychotherapist, says that the truth may come with starting a relationship, meeting their partner’s family, and seeing they are nothing like their own. “Or they have family themselves, and think, ‘I would never do that to my own children.’ Sometimes it takes us until we’re in our 30s or 40s to realise that something was not OK.” Her oldest client is in their 70s and “has finally dealt with the fact they’ve got a narcissistic mother, who is still alive, and how it’s affected them all through their life”.

Saxton hopes her new book, My Parent the Peacock, will help people to recognise, and recover from, a narcissistic parent. They might have grown up being controlled, in an environment where love was conditional, gaslighting was common, and they were often blamed, belittled and criticised. Their parents’ needs came above their own, and their mother or father was emotionally exploitative. The consequences of these experiences may have continued into adulthood.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:00 am

You be the judge: should my partner stop hankering after salt and pepper shakers?

Debbie is happy to keep salt in a small bowl, but Gene wants smart shakers. You decide if their table needs a shake-up
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

He says the Spanish bowl we use for salt is unhygienic, but I think it makes us look cultured

Proper shakers are more practical and elevate the table, showing it was laid with care and intention

Published: October 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Why do I keep waking up at 2am – and how do I get back to sleep?

Experts say it’s common to wake up at night, but maintenance insomnia can cause trouble sleeping again

I have no trouble falling asleep. Most nights, my head hits the pillow, and that’s all I remember.

But several times a week, I find myself wide awake at 2.00am – stressing about a work deadline, wondering if my daughter is adjusting to her new school or making a note on my phone to get the car washed. Usually, I get back to sleep in an hour, but when my 8am alarm goes off, I feel groggy, wishing I’d had that extra shut-eye.

Published: October 1, 2025, 4:00 pm

The best bath towels in the US, from fluffy to quick drying – tested

We tested bath towels at all price points to find the softest, most absorbent towels that can withstand the rigors of life – and are worth the money

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

I am a huge fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That book has taught me two things: don’t panic, and a quality bath towel will get you far in this world (it says that a towel “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”). A nice bath towel is also a simple way to add a dash of luxury to your daily routine.

When it comes to bath towels, I want one that’s soft, fluffy, absorbent, and can withstand the rigors of life. Above all, it has to be worth the money.

Best bath towel overall
Parachute Organic Super Plush

Best value
Brooklinen Super-Plush Turkish Cotton Bath Towels

Published: October 1, 2025, 7:15 pm

Six tips and products to keep leafy greens fresh longer, tested

From TikTok hacks to ‘as seen on TV’ products, we tested the most popular ways to preserve greens to see what works

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

Nobody wants to waste food, but sometimes leafy greens spoil so quickly, it feels like it’s out of your control. One day you’re bringing a batch home from the grocery store, the next you’re staring at a wilted mess that’s bound for the bin.

The internet is full of both tips and products that promise to solve this situation, but which of them actually work? To find out, I tested three products and three online tips intended to keep baby spinach fresher longer.

Published: October 1, 2025, 2:15 pm

Tell us about your bad first date experiences

We would like to hear from people about their first date horror stories and what went wrong

Whether it’s talking about your ex too much or your date not looking anything like their profile picture, we’d like to hear about your bad first date experiences.

What happened and did you leave early or stay until the end of the date? Did it prompt any changes in how you date or did you just chalk it up to bad luck?

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

Golden retriever boyfriends and ick lists: gen Z’s dating rules are making them ‘constantly disappointed’

A steady stream of viral terms and online guidance is leading young people to reduce prospective partners to checklists

Lea Veloso, 26, has an ever-growing ick list.

If he spits on the ground, can’t cook, lies about his height, identifies as apolitical or doesn’t travel enough. If he’s weird about other men wearing makeup (“like, K-pop idols”), says he wants a “slightly autistic woman”, has no skincare routine or only likes songs that got famous on TikTok. It’s an ick if he doesn’t call his parents, sniffs every five seconds, is an unsuccessful DJ or is embarrassed to do karaoke. Recently, she uncovered a new one: if he’s saving himself for marriage. It’s now at the top of the checklist on her Notes app that she references whenever she starts seeing someone new.

Published: October 1, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘A paroxysm of disposability’: France’s distaste for Shein’s ultra-fast fashion

A petition to ban the brand has passed 270,000 names but French shoppers have not been immune to its inexorable rise

A couple of hours before Shein opened a pop‑up shop in Dijon this summer, the words “Shein kills” and “exploitation, forced labour, slavery, pollution” were found graffitied in French on the outside wall.

Yet the fierce backlash to its series of temporary outlets in France in recent years, including in Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille, has not deterred the Chinese-founded fast fashion brand from choosing the country for its first permanent physical stores.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:17 pm

‘Dior is drama’: Jonathan Anderson goes for the jugular at Paris fashion week

All eyes were on the Northern Irish designer’s debut – not just to reinvent Dior, but to jolt fashion itself out of its slump

It was the biggest Paris fashion week moment in years. There were two best actress Oscar winners in the audience (Mikey Madison, Charlize Theron) and the daughter of a third (Sunday Rose Kidman Urban) on the catwalk. There were so many K-pop stars that the teenagers of Paris had packed out the Tuileries gardens from dawn.

The French first ladies Brigitte Macron and Carla Bruni, both embroiled in news-making storylines of their own, chatted in the front row. The film-maker Luca Guadagnino designed the stage set around an upside-down glass pyramid directly invoking the Louvre, that shimmering icon of modern Paris.

Published: October 1, 2025, 5:15 pm

No plucking way: Stella McCartney pioneers plant-based fashion feathers

Designer uses naturally dyed ‘fevvers’ in her collection for Paris fashion week

Stella McCartney is trying to save the world, one feather at a time. Or rather one “fevver”, a new plant-based product that has the look of a feather without the bird, which made its first ever appearance at the designer’s spring/summer show in Paris.

“It’s weird to me that feathers being plucked from a bird are seen as delicate in fashion,” said McCartney backstage at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. “I’m trying to show that you can still have the theatre of fashion without the animal compromise.”

Published: October 1, 2025, 10:35 am

A moment that changed me: I froze in a job interview – and it made me stop hiding my disability

I had always been hyper-independent, preferring to get the wrong bus than ask for help with my visual impairment. When I finally acknowledged it, I was overwhelmed by the love and support of friends and strangers

In the first week of summer 2019, I decided I wanted a job. I was 16, finally old enough to attend festivals and concerts with my friends; all I needed was the money. With no prior work experience, I scraped together a CV that didn’t even fill a page and sent it to every shop and cafe in my little village in Chelmsford, Essex. Miraculously, I was offered a job interview at the local fast food restaurant.

I remember the nerves I felt on the way there. What would they ask me? Would they like me? In the end, I had nothing to worry about. The interview went well and the hiring manager seemed ready to hand me a contract. But, before I left, he asked me to try out serving a customer. “Just give her the items shown next to her order number on that screen,” he said, pointing to a monitor on the wall behind him.

Published: October 1, 2025, 5:55 am

‘Indolent and not photogenic’: can I make my reluctant cat a social media star in seven days?

Olly isn’t an obvious influencer – but that could be said of many of the felines who rule online. Here is what happened when I set out to turn him into a sensation

A day at work for Mark Wardle can include accompanying cats to Hollywood film sets or high-end magazine shoots. As an “animal talent booker and fur whisperer” (a title that makes me immediately regret my own career path) Wardle manages about 60 pets, many of them cats, at the pet influencer agency Urban Paws.

His is not a unique job. In the UK and beyond, pet influencer agencies – including one devoted to cats, Feline Stars – have begun to proliferate. The reason, Wardle notes, is simple: many of these animals now have “more reach and followers” than their human counterparts, with enough clout to land primetime TV spots. It is, after all, an industry riding the wave of a global pet economy projected to surpass $500bn by 2030.

Published: October 1, 2025, 4:00 am

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for pizzette with courgette, mozzarella and mint | A kitchen in Rome

These mighty mini pizzas, inspired by the late Russell Norman, are characteristically unfussy, practical and delicious

While a few books on the shelf have lost their spines over the years, one book has always been that way – Russell Norman’s Polpo: A Venetian Cookbook (of Sorts). Seeing it for the first time, when it was published in 2012, I remember thinking how daring it was to produce a book with a stripped-away spine, leaving its binding and pea-green stitching exposed. This choice was a practical one, however, because it allowed the book to open completely, meaning it lies (or leans) absolutely flat, which makes it feel like the most obliging book, with no threat whatsoever of it flipping closed at precisely the moment you need to check an instruction while your hands are covered with dough.

The page that didn’t flip closed last week was 62, Russell’s basic pizza or pizzette dough, which is a great and effective recipe that I have made on and off since 2012, and a recipe that not only survived the scrutiny of the cooking teacher Carla Tomasi, but was even endorsed by her. (Although she did apply her way of kneading the dough: working in the bowl with wet hands, rather than on a floured board, so as not to incorporate more flour, and using a series of folding pulls that create more elasticity.) Russell and Carla, stretching together.

Published: October 2, 2025, 5:00 am

How to turn a glut of blackberries into a decadent chocolate cake – recipe

Get raiding the hedgerows to make this moussey, intense and complex flourless chocolate cake

This year’s bumper crop of blackberries has kept me busy foraging the hedgerows and left our kitchen and fridge full of berries to turn into new recipes. Inspired by the glut, I returned to an old favourite, my beetroot nemesis, a twist on the River Cafe’s famous chocolate nemesis cake in which I use the whole beetroot, including its candied magenta stems. Blackberries have a tendency to turn squishy, but even when they’re soft, they’re still juicy and fine to cook with. Determined not to let this bounty go to waste, I’m using some of the surplus in this heavenly, complex, adult dessert, which is rich in antioxidants and endorphin-boosting flavonoids.

Published: October 1, 2025, 12:00 pm

Focus on US mass shooters’ political beliefs undermines fight against gun violence

Leaning so heavily on politics to understand mass violence fails to capture rapidly changing landscape of radicalization

It’s a common feature in the response to the high-profile acts of gun violence in the US: among the first, if not the first, element in a shooter’s background to be scrutinized is their political beliefs.

The recent spate of mass shootings has followed this same playbook. After Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Republican officials, including Donald Trump and JD Vance, were quick to paint the suspect as “a radical leftist”, even when little was known about his background. When a young man opened fire at a Texas Ice facility last week, killing two detainees and injuring another, authorities and the media quickly turned to the question of which political camp the suspected attacker belonged to.

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out?

The first and second Trump administrations have provoked markedly different critical reactions. The shock of 2016 and its aftermath saw a wave of liberal anxiety about the fate of objective knowledge, not only in the US but also in Britain, where the Brexit referendum that year had been won by a campaign that misrepresented key facts and figures. A rich lexicon soon arose to describe this epistemic breakdown. Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” their 2016 word of the year; Merriam-Webster’s was “surreal”. The scourge of “fake news”, pumped out by online bots and Russian troll farms, suggested that the authority of professional journalism had been fatally damaged by the rise of social media. And when presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” a few days after Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, the mendacity of the incoming administration appeared to be all but official.

The truth panic had the unwelcome side-effect of emboldening those it sought to oppose. “Fake” was one of Trump’s favourite slap-downs, especially to news outlets that reported unwelcome facts about him and his associates. A booming Maga media further amplified the president’s lies and denials. The tools of liberal expertise appeared powerless to hold such brazen duplicity to account. A touchstone of the moment was the German-born writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who observed in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exists”.

Published: October 2, 2025, 4:00 am

People in the US: share your views on the US government shutdown

We’re interested to hear what people make of the Democrats’ refusal to vote for the Republican spending bill, and what people think the party should demand to end the shutdown

The US federal government has shut down after Democrats refused to vote for a Republican plan to keep the government open through mid-November, instead laying out a series of demands centered around healthcare that amounted to the undoing some of what the GOP has accomplished over the past year.

Do you agree with Democrats’ refusal to vote for the Republican spending bill, even though it risked a shutdown? Why or why not?

Published: October 2, 2025, 2:13 pm

Hot-air balloons and a dewy cobweb: photos of the day – Thursday

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

Published: October 2, 2025, 12:34 pm