‘The biggest decision yet’: Jared Kaplan on allowing AI to train itself

Anthropic’s chief scientist says AI autonomy could spark a beneficial ‘intelligence explosion’ – or be the moment humans lose control

Humanity will have to decide by 2030 whether to take the “ultimate risk” of letting artificial intelligence systems train themselves to become more powerful, one of the world’s leading AI scientists has said.

Jared Kaplan, the chief scientist and co-owner of the $180bn (£135bn) US startup Anthropic, said a choice was looming about how much autonomy the systems should be given to evolve.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:37 pm

‘We make a great living’: Emma Raducanu on why she won’t moan about the tennis calendar

British No 1 on home comforts of Bromley, joys of commuting and being ‘creeped out’ by paparazzi

Emma Raducanu has garnered many endorsement deals in her nascent career, but there is perhaps one elusive sponsorship that would be most pleasing to the British No 1 women’s tennis player: ambassador of the London Borough of Bromley.

During a roundtable discussion with tennis journalists at the end of a gruelling yet satisfying season, Raducanu is merely attempting to describe a quiet off-season spent in her family home when she finds herself delivering a sales pitch about the benefits of living in Bromley. “I’m just so settled,” she says. “I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but I think just spending really good quality time with my parents has been so nice. I have loved just being in Bromley. It just reminds me of when I was a younger kid and it’s the same bedroom, same everything.

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:11 am

AI poses unprecedented threats. Congress must act now | Bernie Sanders

Despite the speed at which it is progressing, AI is getting far too little discussion in Congress, the media and within the general population. That has got to change

Artificial intelligence and robotics will transform the world. It will bring unimaginable changes to our economy, our politics, warfare, our emotional wellbeing, our environment, and how we educate and raise our children. Further, there is a very real fear that, in the not-so-distant future, a super-intelligent AI could replace humans in controlling the planet.

Despite the extraordinary importance of this issue and the speed at which it is progressing, AI is getting far too little discussion in Congress, the media and within the general population. That has got to change. Now.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘I can’t hear Mariah Carey for the 1,000th time!’ Professional Santas on their most loved – and hated – Christmas hits

A flock of Father Christmases share the seasonal songs that capture the magic, merriment and occasional heartbreak that comes with donning the red suit

My father was a Santa and my wife got me into doing it. It’s the best thing I ever did. I do schools, universities, supermarkets, Christmas lights switch-ons … As soon as Santa comes along, everybody melts. One little girl brought her guinea pig, who leapt off her hand and dived straight into my Santa beard. The parents were in stitches while we tried to get him out. My favourite Christmas songs are Eartha Kitt’s sultry version of Santa Baby, because it gets all the adults in the mood to get up and have a boogie with Santa, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because the lyrics are so pure. No Christmas songs drive me mad. It’s Christmas: they’re all great. Paul Fessi

Published: December 2, 2025, 8:23 am

The best crime and thrillers of 2025

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Belinda Bauer’s obsessive world of bird egg collectors, Uketsu’s innovative Japanese detective mystery – and more

If we get the heroes we deserve, then Jackson Lamb, foul-mouthed and slovenly ringmaster of a circus of failed spies, is truly the man for our times. With Clown Town (Baskerville), the ninth book in Mick Herron’s state-of-the-nation satire/thriller mashup series, hitting the bestseller lists, and the fifth series of the Slow Horses TV adaptation streaming, this has been the author’s year. In the latest outing, Lamb and his stable of “losers, misfits and boozers” are well up to the mark as secrets about an IRA double agent threaten to come to light, exposing the seamier side of state security for a story of loyalty and betrayal.

Complicity and culpability, as well as class and professional ethics, are the subjects of Denise Mina’s The Good Liar (Harvill). When the creator of a revolutionary blood splatter probability scale realises that its flaws may have led to an unsafe conviction, she has to decide what to do about it. Tense and powerful, this is a sobering reminder of how the human element can undermine an apparently objective scientific method. The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr (Faber) ventures into similar territory to terrifying effect. It takes place in an all-too-plausible future in which the world has become reliant on a decision-making algorithm; things go catastrophically awry when the AI tool begins to feel remorse for some of its decisions, and carnage results.

Published: December 2, 2025, 7:00 am

The fading of Japan’s Shōwa era – in pictures

Lee Chapman’s photographs document the scenes, signages and family businesses of the postwar Shōwa era Japan. They focus on a unique aspect of Japanese life, and one that in Tokyo in particular is rapidly disappearing: the buildings are long past their natural lifespans, and their occupants are reaching the end of theirs. With most of the country’s new buildings resembling those seen in many other cities around the world, the Shōwa era is now being recognised as visually appealing as well as an important period

Published: December 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Revealed: Mexico’s industrial boomtown is making goods for the US. Residents say they’re ‘breathing poison’

Polluting facilities in Monterrey, which has close ties to the US, are pumping toxic heavy metals into the city’s air and threatening residents’ health

• Leer en español en Quinto Elemento Lab

An industrial boom in a US manufacturing hub in Mexico is contributing to a massive air pollution crisis that is threatening residents’ health, according to new research by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab.

The polluting facilities in Monterrey include factories that are operated by companies from around the world – including the US, Europe, Asia and Mexico – but export largely to the US.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

Pete Hegseth told US soldiers in Iraq to ignore legal advice on rules of engagement

Defense secretary shares anecdote in The War on Warriors and rails against ‘rules and regulations’ governing war

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement.

The anecdote is contained in a book Hegseth wrote last year in which he also repeatedly railed against the constraints placed on “American warfighters” by the laws of war and the Geneva conventions.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

Putin says Russia not seeking war but ‘if Europe wants to fight, we are ready’ – Europe live

Putin’s comments appeared aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and European capitals

In parallel to Witkoff’s meeting in Moscow, we will also follow Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first visit to Ireland.

He has arrived in Dublin last night, and has a busy schedule today, paying a brief visit to the country’s new president Catherine Connolly, before meeting with key government figures including the taisoeach, Micheál Martin, and addressing both chambers of the Irish parliament in the afternoon.

Published: December 2, 2025, 4:20 pm

Asylum seekers across US in limbo over Trump’s policy reversals: ‘devastating’

US paused asylum decisions, halted Afghan visas, and will review green card requests after national guard shooting

News that the Trump administration has paused asylum decisions, halted visas for Afghans who assisted the US war effort and is reevaluating green card applications for people from countries “of concern” has left asylum seekers across the US reeling – and pushed deeper into limbo.

“People say that fear travels faster than information. And that’s exactly what has happened,” said Reza Hussaini, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan who came to the US in 2022 and is still awaiting an interview to evaluate his case.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:04 pm

Michael and Susan Dell donate $6.25bn to encourage families to claim ‘Trump Accounts’

Billionaires aim to provide incentive for families to claim new investment accounts for children created as part of Trump legislation

Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25bn Tuesday to provide 25 million American children under 10 an incentive to claim the new investment accounts for children created as part of Donald Trump’s tax and spending legislation.

The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1bn, much less multiple billions. Announced on GivingTuesday, the Dells believe it’s the largest single private commitment made to US children.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:12 pm

Trump tells Honduras ‘there will be hell to pay’ as presidential vote count stalls

Intervention is latest by US president whose preferred candidate, Nasry Asfura, is locked in ‘technical tie’

• Analysis: Trump’s counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’

Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of “trying to change” the result of the country’s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.

The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:40 pm

California shooting marks 20-year low in US mass killings – but the bigger picture is complex

Experts warn the drop doesn’t necessarily mean safer days are here to stay – and US deaths from firearms are still staggering

A shooting last weekend at a children’s birthday party in California that left four dead was the 17th mass killing in the US this year – the lowest number recorded since 2006, according to a database that tracks them.

The mass killings – defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed in a 24-hour period, not including the killer – are tracked in a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:54 pm

Plea deal for drug kingpin El Chapo’s son details abduction of cartel boss

Joaquín Guzmán López’s alleged kidnapping was to show cooperation with US leaders, attorney says

Armed men entered through a window to ambush Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the most elusive of the Sinaloa cartel’s leaders, who was then loaded onto a plane, drugged and spirited across the border to the United States, according to details revealed on Monday in the plea hearing of the drug trafficker who abducted him.

Joaquín Guzmán López, the 39-year-old son of former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking and continuing criminal enterprise in federal court in Chicago after admitting his role in overseeing the transport of tens of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of drugs to the US.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:24 pm

Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel face off in first trailer for pop star epic Mother Mary

‘Psychosexual pop thriller’ comes from The Green Knight’s David Lowery and will feature new music from Charli xcx

Anne Hathaway plays a pop star and Michaela Coel her estranged fashion designer in the first trailer for highly anticipated drama Mother Mary.

The film comes from David Lowery, whose previous films range from The Green Knight to A Ghost Story to Pete’s Dragon. His last film was Disney+ original Peter Pan & Wendy starring Jude Law.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:01 pm

What Trump’s asylum ‘pause’ means – and what it doesn’t

The US president has halted decisions on many asylum claims, but the scope, legality and real-world impact of the pause remain unclear

Donald Trump has ordered a “pause” on asylum claims in the wake of last week’s shooting of two national guard members in Washington. The suspect in the shooting, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is a 29-year-old Afghani national who assisted U.S. forces during the two-decade war there and was paroled into the United States in 2021. US citizenship and immigration services awarded him asylum earlier this year.

It’s not clear how long the president’s asylum pause will last. Trump told reporters Sunday that the directive “has no time limit, but it could be a long time”.

Published: December 2, 2025, 4:00 pm

Trump’s full-throttle threats suggest no backing down from aims to topple Maduro’s regime

As US-Venezuela tensions have long simmered, Trump’s alleged ultimatum may tip relations to boiling point

• Deadly airstrikes and a military buildup: how the US pressure campaign against Venezuela has unfolded in the Caribbean

Weeks of saber-rattling, dark threats and a US military buildup not seen in Latin America since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis led on 21 November, somewhat anti-climactically, to a telephone call, when Donald Trump rang the man he has cast as his arch-adversary, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

By Trump’s own account, it was less an attempt at opening dialogue en route to a mutually beneficial compromise than a bid to up the ante by imparting an ultimatum.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:31 pm

Trump’s night of 160 posts on Truth Social fuels debate about US president’s stamina

The 79-year-old president’s social media blitz included conspiracies, attacks on political foes and self-praise

From apparently nodding off in the Oval Office to a work day that often only begins in the afternoon, questions have swirled in recent weeks about the energy levels of 79-year-old Donald Trump, the oldest-ever US president.

Yet on social media, the commander in chief is showing no signs of fatigue. In a furious spree Monday night on his preferred social media paltform, Truth Social, Trump posted 160 times in less than four hours, a maelstrom of messaging surpassing previous prolific bouts of ranting.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:58 pm

Trump administration is ‘selling out’ admiral to shield Hegseth over boat strikes, officials say

White House names Adm Frank M Bradley as officer who ‘directed the engagement’, distancing Hegseth from accountability

• US politics live – latest updates

Officials in Congress and the Pentagon say the Trump administration is attempting to shield Pete Hegseth from responsibility for a “second strike” to kill survivors on an alleged drug boat by scapegoating a US navy admiral instead.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Monday explicitly named Adm Frank M Bradley as the officer who “directed the engagement”, distancing Hegseth, the Pentagon secretary, from accountability despite a Washington Post report that he ordered the deaths of everyone on the boat.

Published: December 2, 2025, 4:00 pm

‘We’re not going anywhere’: how unionization ‘whirlwind’ set stage for historic Starbucks strike

Four years after workers at a Starbucks store in upstate New York became the first to unionize, hundreds of outlets followed – defying intense resistance from the coffee chain. What happened next?

Thousands of Starbucks baristas are on strike across the US, warning the world’s largest coffee chain to brace for the “longest and biggest” bout of industrial action in its history.

Barely a year after Brian Niccol, the Starbucks CEO, tried to draw a line under bitter divisions between its management and unionized workers, pledging to “engage constructively” with them, the American coffee giant is now grappling with an escalating strike during its lucrative holiday trading season.

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am

The slow death of Pokrovsk

An 18-month battle, now in its endgame, has left the strategically important Ukrainian city in ruins

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

For a time Pokrovsk was a haven, a wartime Ukrainian boom city because of its strategic position in the east, 30 miles (48km) from the front. But that was before the summer of 2024, when a rapid Russian advance engulfed the industrial centre in a shattering conflict, a duel only now reaching its endgame.

The 18-month battle for Pokrovsk epitomises the current state of the Ukraine war: an attritional struggle in which gradual Russian advances have been made at extraordinary human cost. Though it demonstrates Russia cannot easily capture urban areas, the fight has also drained Ukraine, and consequences are emerging elsewhere.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:17 pm

‘A terror inflicted on our communities’: why ICE is targeting car washes in LA

Andrea Gonzalez and Norma Fajardo of Clean Carwash Worker Center, an advocacy group, describe ICE’s ‘psychological warfare’ as carwash workers are disappeared

In June, Donald Trump’s administration turned Los Angeles into a testing ground for the tactics that have come to define its sweeping mass deportation agenda across the US – launching large scale, public arrests aimed at netting as many people as possible into a growing immigrant detention system.

Throughout the raids, one of the recurring targets of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents has been carwash workers.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

How Trump’s on-again, off-again Nasa appointee emerged from a political black hole

Trump’s renomination of billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman is a tale of politics, ambition and vanity

It used to be that once your star had fallen in Donald Trump’s orbit, it was destined never to rise again. Any number of discarded former allies stretching back to Trump’s first term of office could testify as much.

One who has emerged from a political black hole to return to the president’s firmament is the billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, who will on Wednesday tell senators – for the second time – why he is the best person to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am

Sean Combs: The Reckoning review – you can see why the musician is fighting to ban this horrific documentary

Netflix’s series feels like the point of no return for the rapper and mogul. It’s so thorough in its harrowing detail that it will surely block any chance he ever had of a return to stardom

If its subject gets his way, the new documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning might not be available on Netflix for long. On Monday, lawyers on behalf of Combs sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer, demanding that the series be withdrawn based on the inclusion of footage that they claim violates copyright, and involves discussions of “legal strategy that were not intended for public viewing”.

After watching the series, you can see why Combs might be rattled. This is a man whose fall from grace last year was sudden and comprehensive, and yet Sean Combs: The Reckoning feels like the moment of no return for him. It does such a thorough job of laying out and backing up so many horrific allegations that his way back to stardom is surely blocked for ever.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:50 pm

The 15 best tech gifts in the US for moms, as requested by moms

From TheraGuns to koala breathing lights, here are good gizmos for mom, whether your budget is $20 or $220

• The 163 best holiday gift ideas for 2025, vetted by the Guardian US staff

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

The best gift you can give a mom this holiday season is some time to herself. A day with no responsibilities where everyone else handles the cooking, cleaning and household chores. She can sit back and relax, go for brunch with friends, maybe treat herself to some shopping. But that doesn’t mean you should forget to wrap something under the tree for her, too.

As a tech reviewer for more than a decade and a mom myself, I’m particularly fond of unwrapping gadgets, but you don’t have to be a techie to appreciate the utility, convenience and luxury of a thoughtful gizmo. I spoke to several moms to get their thoughts on what they want this holiday season when it comes to tech, with ideas in every price range.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:52 pm

‘He asked me what I’d done sexually with a woman’: how Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor turned her asylum grilling into a film

The rising star has made her debut film, Dreamers, a semi-autobiographical love story set in an immigration detention centre. She talks about fleeing persecution in Nigeria – and what she learned from French new wave

Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor had a little wobble when she stepped on to the stage after the screening of her debut feature, Dreamers, at the London film festival. The Nigerian-British director’s film is a love story set in an immigration detention centre. It had already premiered in Berlin earlier this year. But showing her semi-autobiographical film to a home crowd in London felt exposing. “I suddenly had this feeling: Oh my God, everyone can see me. Everyone knows everything about me.” She laughs.

Gharoro-Akpojotor has built a reputation as a rising star producer. Her company Joi Productions makes films telling black, female and gay stories. (“All of the above, sometimes individually.”) Her credits include Rapman’s Blue Story and Aml Ameen’s romcom Boxing Day, and she is currently working on Ashley Walters’ directing debut Animol.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:30 pm

‘They’re a lot like us’: saving the tiny punk monkeys facing extinction

In the tropical dry forests of northern Colombia, a small team is gradually restoring the degraded habitat of the rare cotton-top tamarin

Luis Enrique Centena spent decades silencing the forest. Now, he listens. Making a whistle, the former logger points up to a flash of white and reddish fur in the canopy. Inquisitive eyes peer back – a cotton-top tamarin, one of the world’s rarest primates.

“I used to cut trees and never took the titís into account,” says Centena, calling the cotton-tops by their local name. “I ignored them. I didn’t know that they were in danger of extinction, I only knew I had to feed my family. But now we have become friends.”

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

Prime Minister review – portrait of Jacinda Ardern shows a fully human being in charge for once

Documentary about New Zealand’s former leader records a shrewd but likable premier who did without the usual politician’s defences

New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Ardern emerges from this documentary portrait the way she did when she was in power from 2017 to 2023 … as a human being. More than any politician anywhere in the world in my adult lifetime, she looked like an actual member of the human race who was catapulted to office too fast to have acquired the defensive carapace of the professional politician. She was vulnerable and scrutable and likable in ways utterly alien to everyone else.

Obviously this sympathetic film has been edited in such a way as to omit most of the hard business of internal politics and to foreground this humanity, although there is one fascinating moment at the very end when her partner Clarke Gayford gently asks if she might be doing too much; with a tiny flash of temper she asks if he is telling her to “delegate”. Gayford got his Denis Thatcher closeup there. Did we see a subliminal moment of the non-niceness vital for all successful politicians?

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

The White House’s new media ‘bias’ tracker is a desperate gimmick | Margaret Sullivan

The site isn’t exposing misleading reporting – it’s revealing the bubble Trump increasingly inhabits

Donald Trump has used the mainstream press as a punching bag for many years, but in recent weeks his jabs have become even more frequent – and more ill-tempered.

He threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn last month over the editing of a documentary that aired more than a year ago. He called one White House reporter “piggy”, and told another – the well-regarded Mary Bruce of ABC News – that she was a “terrible person and a terrible reporter”. He called a New York Times reporter “ugly, both inside and out”.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am

John Roberts has badly weakened our democracy. Will he ever stand up to Trump? | Steven Greenhouse

Under the chief justice, the US supreme court has bolstered authoritarian agendas while undercutting the voice of voters

Throughout his two decades as chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts has sought to project the notion that he is the ultimate institutionalist, striving (supposedly) to safeguard the venerated foundations of American democracy. But with each passing year, it has become increasingly clear that Roberts will be remembered as the chief justice who helped wreck numerous institutions vital to our democracy – they include fair, non-gerrymandered elections, a sane campaign finance system, the Voting Rights Act’s protections of minority voters, and the bedrock notion that presidents are not above the law.

Roberts said in his confirmation hearings that he would merely “call balls and strikes” as chief justice, but now two decades later, many legal commentators are deeply dismayed that he has shunned the role of neutral umpire and instead spearheaded a rightwing judicial revolution that took a wrecking ball to many precedents, laws and institutions. Some have called him the worst chief justice since Roger Taney, who wrote the horrific Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that enslaved Black people couldn’t be citizens.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

Why did I ever buy my kids refillable advent calendars? | Zoe Williams

Twenty-four tiny drawers of fun stuff sounds delightful – but not when you’re the one filling the thing

Maybe 10 years ago, I bought permanent Advent calendars for the kids: Scandi-looking Christmas houses with 24 tiny drawers, from Sainsbury’s. I think my original plan was that some of the draws could contain something other than chocolate, not because I’m the kind of almond mum who won’t let anyone eat sweets before breakfast, but because their dad and I are separated and have them half the time each, so it wasn’t unusual for them to wake up and have six Lindt chocolate balls to chomp through before they’d opened their curtains.

The tiny drawers are a curse. Some years I could only find stuff for one of the kids (erasers in the shape of hedgehogs; lip balm); other years, a different one was in luck (Lego Yodas; magnets). It was never, ever fair. One year, I found tons of different batteries for the drawers, and I thought it was the most genius thing I’d ever done, but they said: “How is this a fun gift? If we needed a battery, we’d just go to the kitchen drawer, which is supposed to have batteries in it.” I realised in about 2019 that I’d just have to start planning earlier, around July, if I wanted to strike the perfect balance of parity, festivity and usefulness, and that was a good year, actually. I found some tiny business cards with swear words on them that they could just leave around the house, and ear-splitting whistles and unisex lip balm. We have enough erasers and pencil sharpeners now to last until nobody ever makes a mistake because the written word is just a memory.

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am

What the story of eight-year-old Lati-Yana Brown tells us about Britain’s callous disregard for Caribbean people | Nadine White

From enslavement to Windrush to Hurricane Melissa, there is a clear pattern to the way Britain has extracted wealth and fractured families

Britain’s long history with the Caribbean, from enslavement to the Windrush scandal, is marked by policies that have fractured families. The Home Office’s latest actions show little has changed. After the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, a tropical cyclone that made landfall across the Greater Antilles area in late October, eight-year-old Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown was left destitute in Jamaica. But after her UK-resident parents appealed for the Home Office to expedite her visa application, officials rejected it and Lati-Yana has been left to sleep on the floor of her elderly grandmother’s destroyed home.

But the rejection rested on factual errors, according to Lati-Yana’s mother, Kerrian Bigby. Dawn Butler, her MP, shared a letter with me raising concerns about “misrepresentations” in the decision notice, including the claim that Bigby does not have full parental responsibility for the child, which she says is false.

Nadine White is a journalist, film-maker and the UK’s first race correspondent

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:05 am

It’s entirely reasonable to be in awe of surgeons – but patients need someone they can talk to | Ranjana Srivastava

Technical prowess must not come at the cost of good bedside manner – and being able to balance facts with empathy

Some time ago, a judicious and considered surgeon was describing the complex operation required by our mutual cancer patient. The operation necessitated a large incision, prolonged anaesthesia and possibly a second operation. Then there were the long-term complications, including pain and disfigurement. The patient was elderly and somewhat vulnerable to begin with, so just listening to the plan filled me with consternation.

So, without telling him how to do his job, I asked politely: “What does the patient want?”

Ranjana Srivastava is an Australian oncologist, award-winning author and Fulbright scholar. Her latest book is Every Word Matters: Writing to Engage the Public

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘We’re not playing soccer’: Dart OK with latest big hit during Giants’ loss to streaking Patriots

• New York Giants 15-33 New England Patriots

• Patriots move to 11-2 after comfortable victory

Drake Maye passed for two touchdowns, Marcus Jones had a 94-yard punt return for a TD and the New England Patriots became the first NFL team to reach 11 wins this season, beating the New York Giants 33-15 on Monday night.

It was the 10th straight victory for the AFC-leading Patriots (11-2), the franchise’s longest streak since winning 10 consecutive games in 2015. Coach Mike Vrabel also became the third coach since 1970 to have a win streak of 10 or more games in his first season with a team.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:09 pm

David Squires on … making the World Cup great again

Our cartoonist on the people and themes that are fuelling the buildup to next summer’s tournament in North America

• Buy a Squires cartoon now in our Print Shop

• View key to cartoon here | Buy David’s latest book

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:51 am

‘Your column was very unfair’: what happened when I met World Athletics | Sean Ingle

John Ridgeon believes I was downbeat about state of his sport. CEO may have a point … so we thrashed out our differences

It really is quite the scene. Midnight in Tokyo, Usain Bolt is DJing and the launch party for the World Athletics Ultimate Championships is in full swing. And then the World Athletics chief executive, Jon Ridgeon, walks up to me and says: “I read your recent Guardian column, and I thought it was very unfair.”

Imagine Gary Lineker going in two-footed, having never picked up a yellow card in his career. This is the track and field equivalent. Ridgeon, a former world silver medallist over the 110m hurdles, is one of the smartest and most reasonable people in sport. He is saying, in a polite way, that he is really rather annoyed.

Published: December 2, 2025, 6:58 am

Terminally ill Ajax fan will be only supporter allowed in to rearranged fixture

• Game against Groningen was abandoned on Sunday

• Fan will be permitted to watch behind-closed-doors game

A seriously ill Ajax fan will be the only supporter in attendance when the Eredivisie side complete their abandoned game against Groningen on Tuesday afternoon.

The fan, named Peter, is living in a hospice and had expressed the wish to attend an Ajax game for potentially the final time. They arranged for him to visit the fixture on Sunday but there was immense disappointment when it was curtailed within five minutes of kick-off owing to a huge pyrotechnic display by a section of the support.

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:48 am

Lane Kiffin says decision to walk out on Ole Miss for LSU was ‘excruciating’

• Coach’s move has attracted widespread criticism

• Kiffin will earn $4m more a year with Tigers

• LSU will pay Kiffin for any Ole Miss playoff success

LSU coach Lane Kiffin vowed on Monday to make his new team “the best program in all of college football” after walking away from playoff-bound Ole Miss.

Kiffin said that he tried hard to convince Ole Miss officials to let him coach the Rebels in the postseason, but the school wouldn’t let him stay on the job once he committed to LSU, a move that has led to widespread criticism of Kiffin.

Published: December 2, 2025, 4:22 am

World Cup 2026 draw: which teams have qualified and how does it work?

Your essential guide to Friday’s draw in Washington DC, including where to watch it, who to watch out for and a look at Fifa’s peace prize

The World Cup draw will start at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center at 12pm local time on Friday 5 December (5pm GMT/4am Saturday AEST). Although don’t worry if you tune in late: based on previous draws there will be a few speeches about Fifa being on the verge of bringing about world peace via the medium of football, some interpretive dance about Fifa being on the verge of bringing about world peace via the medium of football, some videos with kids kicking a ball about to show that Fifa is on the verge of bringing about world peace via the medium of football, and then, hopefully, Fifa actually bringing about world peace via the medium of football. And if you miss any of that, don’t worry Fifa will also be awarding a peace prize to the person most likely to bring about world peace in the next few months (more on that zinger later). At some point in all of that, they’ll place teams into groups and at long last give this expanded tournament an actual schedule.

Published: December 2, 2025, 6:58 am

Win in Abu Dhabi and hope for carnage: how Oscar Piastri can still win the F1 world title

Even a second place finish could be enough for the McLaren driver to become the first Australian world champion in 45 years – though he’ll need some luck along the way

If Oscar Piastri is going to break through for Australia’s first Formula One driver title in 45 years, it’s going to be the hard way.

The McLaren driver enters this weekend’s final round in Abu Dhabi trailing teammate Lando Norris and Red Bull’s four-time reigning champion Max Verstappen in the standings.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:38 am

The 100 best female footballers in the world 2025 – Nos 100-41

Olivia Smith, Aggie Beever-Jones and Vicky López make our list for the first time as we continue our countdown to the year’s best players

• Meet the judges | 2024 list | 2023 list | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

• Subscribe to Moving the Goalposts, our free newsletter

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:26 am

New York City bill aims to ban toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in firefighting gear

Approval of legislation to ban Pfas would be major win for advocates pushing for safer gear alternatives across US

A new bill proposed in the New York city council would ban the use of toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” in protective gear worn by the city’s 11,000 firefighters.

The New York fire department is the nation’s largest firefighting force, and approval of the legislation would mark a major win for advocates who are pushing for safer “turnout gear” alternatives across the US. Massachusetts and Connecticut last year became the first states to ban the use of Pfas in turnout gear, and Illinois enacted a ban this year.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:00 pm

Age of the ‘scam state’: how an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry has taken root in south-east Asia

Like the narco-state, a ‘scam state’ refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into institutions and transformed the economy

For days before the explosions began, the business park had been emptying out. When the bombs went off, they took down empty office blocks and demolished echoing, multi-cuisine food halls. Dynamite toppled a four-storey hospital, silent karaoke complexes, deserted gyms and dorm rooms.

So came the end of KK Park, one of south-east Asia’s most infamous “scam centres”, press releases from Myanmar’s junta declared. The facility had held tens of thousands of people, forced to relentlessly defraud people around the world. Now, it was being levelled piece by piece.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:02 am

Death toll from Indonesia floods passes 700 as 1 million evacuated

About 3.2 million people on Sumatra island have been affected, 2,600 have been injured and 504 are missing

The number of people killed by floods and landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island rose to 708 on Tuesday, the country’s disaster agency said, with 504 people missing.

The toll was a sharp increase from the 604 dead reported by the agency on Monday.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:19 pm

‘Those who eat Chilean salmon cannot imagine how much human blood it carries with it’

The country is the world’s second-largest producer of the popular fish, and the biggest supplier to the US, but its farms are beset by accusations of dangerous labour conditions, antibiotic overuse and ecological harm

Julia Cárcamo López’s house faces the sea, near enough to hear the gulls calling through the salt-encrusted windows. She lives in the small town of Maullín, on the edge of Chile’s Patagonia, an area where almost everyone works in the fishing industry.

Outside, it is drizzling and the sky is darkening as she recalls 1 May 2019, one of the worst days of her life. “Two men knocked on my door and told me they had bad news: my husband had had an accident while working at sea,” she says. Since then, she has discovered that the accident seems to have been caused by negligence.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:00 pm

Indian order to preload state-owned app on smartphones sparks political outcry

Apple among big tech companies reportedly refusing to install Sanchar Saathi cybersecurity app on their devices

A political outcry has erupted in India after the government mandated large technology companies to install a state-owned app on smartphones that has led to surveillance fears among opposition MPs and activists.

Manufacturers including Apple, Samsung and Xiomi have 90 days to comply with the order to preload the government’s Sanchar Saathi, or Communication Partner, on every phone in India.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:30 pm

Hong Kong responds to disaster differently from Beijing – but the gulf is narrowing

Independent inquiry into fire and media questions to leader would not happen in mainland China, but crackdown on dissent has begun

As Hong Kong mourns the victims of its worst fire in decades, the response to the disaster reveals the ways in which the semi-autonomous city retains differences from mainland China – and how some of those differences are being eroded.

Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, announced on Tuesday the creation of an “independent committee” to investigate the blaze, which killed 151 people at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Published: December 2, 2025, 8:36 am

The fight to see clearly through big tech’s echo chambers

As Silicon Valley tightens its grip on the narrative, insiders and regulators push back, consumers rethink upgrades, and states experiment with AI in the public sector

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. Today, I’m mulling over whether to upgrade my iPhone 11 Pro. In tech news, there’s a narrative battle afoot in Silicon Valley, tips on avoiding the yearly smartphone upgrade cycle and new devices altogether, and artificial intelligence’s use in government, for better and for worse.

ChatGPT firm blames boy’s suicide on ‘misuse’ of its technology

ChatGPT-5 offers dangerous advice to mentally ill people, psychologists warn

AI’s safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:21 pm

St Lucia prime minister Philip Pierre keeps majority as ruling party wins

The Labour party holds at least 13 seats after a campaign centered on crime, the economy and passport sales

St Lucian prime minister Philip Pierre’s Labour party (SLP) has held its legislative majority, putting Pierre on course for reelection after a campaign centered on economic management, violent crime and passport sales.

Official election results on Tuesday showed the social democratic SLP winning at least 13 seats in the small Caribbean island’s 17-seat House of Assembly, matching its current majority with two seats left to be called. The results showed Pierre with 57.1% of the popular vote against conservative opposition leader Allen Chastanet’s 37.3%.

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:59 pm

Zillow deletes climate risk data from listings after complaints it harms sales

Site removes feature after real estate agents and some homeowners say scores appear arbitrary and hurt sales

Zillow, the US’s largest real estate listing site, has removed a feature that allowed people to view a property’s exposure to the climate crisis, following complaints from the industry and some homeowners that it was hurting sales.

In September last year, the online real estate marketplace introduced a tool showing the individual risk of wildfire, flood, extreme heat, wind and poor air quality for 1m properties it lists, explaining that “climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions” for many Americans.

Published: December 1, 2025, 6:27 pm

Hole in Antarctic ozone layer shrinks to smallest since 2019, scientists say

EU’s Copernicus monitoring service hails ‘reassuring sign’ of progress observed this year in hole’s size and duration

The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic this year was the smallest and shortest-lived since 2019, according to European space scientists, who described the finding as a “reassuring sign” of the layer’s recovery.

The yearly gap in what scientists have called “planetary sunscreen” reached a maximum area of 21m sq km (8.1m sq miles) over the southern hemisphere in September – well below the maximum of 26m sq km reached in 2023 – and shrank in size until coming to an early close on Monday, data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams) shows.

Published: December 1, 2025, 3:53 pm

‘We’re true guardians of the forest’: quilombola community near Belém demand land rights and recognition

Short boat ride from Cop30 host, Afro-descendant residents of Menino Jesus say their voices are not being heard

Walk through the conference centre where the recent UN climate talks were held and representations of Indigenous people and culture were everywhere, from the spear-carrying, fiery-headed Cop30 mascot Curupira to huge mural-sized photos of people navigating the Amazon in dugout canoes and the many protests demanding dialogue outside.

Yet a short boat ride down the river from Belém, into the forest itself, takes you to another forest-dwelling community also fighting for further recognition within the Cop process. The quilombola community of Menino Jesus has existed for six generations. Quilombolas are the descendants of former enslaved people who fled into the forest as a site of refuge. Over hundreds of years, they established a unique way of life separate from mainstream Brazilian society, living in harmony with nature as fugitives protected by the jungle.

Published: December 1, 2025, 3:00 pm

How cyclones and monsoon rains converged to devastate parts of Asia – visual guide

Extreme weather kills more than 1,100 people across south and south-east Asia as cyclones turbocharge rain systems

• Devastating floods hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand – latest updates

Tropical cyclones have combined with heavy monsoon rains to lay waste to swathes of Asia, killing more than 1,100 people as of Monday, with the death toll expected to rise, and leaving many more homeless.

A confluence of three tropical weather systems – including a rare cyclonic storm that built up in the strait of Malacca – has fuelled intense wind and rainover the past week, devastating areas of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam with flooding and mudslides.

Published: December 1, 2025, 3:39 pm

Charlie Kirk tops Wikipedia’s list of most-read articles in 2025

Zohran Mamdani, Ozzy Osbourne and Sinners also feature in encyclopedia’s top 20 most-read English-language pages

Wikipedia’s article on Charlie Kirk was the most read on the online encyclopedia this year, as users sought out information on the conservative activist.

People viewed the entry on Kirk nearly 45m times, many after he was shot at a university campus debate on 10 September.

Charlie Kirk, 44.9m page views

Deaths in 2025, 42.5m

Ed Gein, 31.2m

Donald Trump, 25.1m

Pope Leo XIV, 22.1m

Elon Musk, 20.2m

Zohran Mamdani, 20.1m

Sinners (2025 film), 18.2m

Ozzy Osbourne, 17.8m

Superman (2025 film), 17m

Pope Francis, 15.3m

Severance (TV series), 13.9m

United States, 13m

Thunderbolts*, 12.9m

Weapons (2025 film), 11.8m

JD Vance, 11.6m

Adolescence (TV series), 11.6m

MrBeast, 11.5m

Cristiano Ronaldo, 10.8m

The Fantastic Four: First Steps, 10.8m

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

National guard shooting suspect spent ‘weeks on end’ in isolation, emails show

Mental health of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who is charged with murder, had reportedly been unravelling for years

The suspect in the shooting of two West Virginia national guard soldiers in Washington DC on the eve of Thanksgiving had been struggling with his mental health, sometimes spending “weeks on end” in isolation, as he tried to assimilate in the years since arriving in the United States, it has emerged.

According to emails obtained by the Associated Press, Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s mental health had been unravelling for years, leaving him unable to hold a job and flipping between long, dark stretches of isolation and taking sudden, weeks-long cross-country drives.

Published: December 1, 2025, 9:26 pm

US north-east braces for ‘significant’ snowfall after storm hits midwest

Prediction for New England area comes after travelers experienced disruption over Thanksgiving holiday weekend

A winter storm is expected to slam much of the north-east United States with rain, ice and heavy snow on Monday night through Tuesday, forecasters have said, with millions of Americans under winter storm advisories.

The bulk of the storm is expected to arrive in the region later on Monday, with the system forecast to develop over the Gulf states then move up the eastern seaboard. Most of the heaviest snowfall is expected to end by Tuesday night, with conditions clearing by Wednesday.

Published: December 1, 2025, 10:53 pm

Several protesters arrested after ICE raid thwarted in New York City

Demonstrators blocked the exit of ICE vehicles from a parking lot using garbage bags and metal barriers

A raid by federal immigration authorities on Saturday in New York City was thwarted by about 200 protesters, several of whom were arrested after scuffles with police officers.

The episode was the latest in which citizen activists have stood up to agents enforcing Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda through targeted raids in various cities across the country after his second presidency began in January.

Published: December 1, 2025, 7:41 pm

‘A doll to me and a trumptet to Jimmie’: six-year-old girl’s letter to Santa in 1883

Janet’s wishlist, which ran in Leeds Mercury, and letter from Hampshire girl in 1898 unearthed in newspaper archives

The toys on the Christmas wishlist may have evolved in more than 140 years but children, it seems, do not change. That, at least, is the suggestion of a newly uncovered letter to Father Christmas dating from 1883, believed to be one of the earliest known such messages in the UK.

The letter, addressed to “DeAR SAnTA CLAus”, was written by a six-year-old girl called Janet and preserves her idiosyncratic spelling and capitalisation. “PLeAs BRIng a Doll to Me with a cRADEL, AND a TRuMPtet to JiMMie, AND SoMe OTHer THing to MA AND PA,” wrote Janet, demonstrating both a touching concern for her family members and a canny nose for publicity.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:39 pm

‘I kept smelling a horrible nasty smell’: the risks of England’s old dumping grounds

For some, the smell brings on nausea and headaches. Others fear ‘forever chemicals’ seeping into the water

• UK and Europe’s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies

“I just kept smelling this horrible, nasty smell … like animal excrement, and I was wondering what it was,” says Jess Brown, from Fleetwood, Lancashire.

Brown’s mother suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and she believes the smells make it worse. She also worries for her eight-year-old daughter, whose asthma worsens when the odour seeps indoors.

Published: December 2, 2025, 7:00 am

Shells found in Spain could be among oldest known musical instruments

Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher

As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.

The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.

Published: December 2, 2025, 5:00 am

Nine boars found dead in Spanish swine fever outbreak

Hundreds of police, rangers and military personnel deployed to tackle virus threatening pork export industry

Spanish authorities have deployed hundreds of police officers, wildlife rangers and military personnel in an effort to contain an outbreak of highly infectious African swine fever (ASF) outside Barcelona before it becomes a major threat to the country’s €8.8bn-a-year pork export industry.

Officials believe the virus, detected in the municipality of Bellaterra, may have begun to circulate after a wild boar ate contaminated food that had been brought in from outside Spain.

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:26 am

The Outsiders: why Francis Ford Coppola’s coming-of-age drama is secretly gay

It’s about rival gangs of straight boys in 60s Oklahoma fighting it out – but the abundance of male beauty in this 1983 adaptation of the SE Hinton novel tells another story

While serious film lovers reach for Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish as their favourite screen adaptation of an SE Hinton novel, I can never go past The Outsiders, as much for what it did to me as a gay kid growing up in the mid-80s who was terrified of being discovered as for any artistic merit.

There are cheesy things about the movie, for sure – it’s superficial wash of nostalgia for the 60s, there are a few egregious continuity errors, some rawness in the performances – but none of that matters as the opening strains of Stevie Wonder’s Stay Gold hit your ears and the cinematographer Stephen H Burum’s montage of overexposed sunsets fills the screen. The story of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, always makes me, a kid who grew up in the leafy suburbs of south-east Melbourne, feel entirely at home.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

Jon Stewart on Trump claiming not to know about his own MRI: ‘That’s not physically possible’

Late-night hosts discussed the president alleging he knows nothing about a recently revealed MRI scan from October

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump for his use of an ableist slur and unconvincing attempts to assuage concerns about his cognitive abilities.

Published: December 2, 2025, 4:13 pm

Marty Supreme review – Timothée Chalamet a smash in spectacular screwball ping-pong nightmare

Following every dizzying spin of Chalamet’s table tennis hustler, Josh Safdie’s whip-crack comedy serves sensational shots – and a smart return by Gwyneth Paltrow

This new film from Josh Safdie has the fanatical energy of a 149-minute ping pong rally carried out by a single player running round and round the table. It’s a marathon sprint of gonzo calamities and uproar, a sociopath-screwball nightmare like something by Mel Brooks – only in place of gags, there are detonations of bad taste, cinephile allusions, alpha cameos, frantic deal-making, racism and antisemitism, sentimental yearning and erotic adventures. It’s a farcical race against time where no one needs to eat or sleep.

Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a spindly motormouth with the glasses of an intellectual, the moustache of a movie star and the physique of a tiny cartoon character (though that could just be the initials). He’s loosely inspired by Marty “The Needle” Reisman, a real-life US table tennis champ from the 1950s who was given to Bobby Riggs-type shenanigans: betting, hustling and showmanship stunts. The movie probably earns the price of admission simply with one gasp-inducing setpiece involving whippet-thin Chalamet, a dog, a bathtub, cult director Abel Ferrara in a walk-on role and a scuzzy New York hotel room. Talk about not being on firm ground. Similarly disorientating is the climactic revelation of Chalamet’s naked buttocks prior to one of the most upsetting displays of corporal punishment since Lindsay Anderson’s If….

Published: December 1, 2025, 5:00 pm

‘Ingrained in my psyche’: why Gremlins 2: The New Batch is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort rewatches is a look back at Joe Dante’s raucously rule-defying sequel

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” Some sage advice from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, talking, glasses-wearing member of the slimy Gremlin horde that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At face value, it’s nothing more than an investment tip from one monster to another. However, in a weird way, it’s also pretty solid life advice. Seriously, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is take things too seriously. The Brain Gremlin knows this. In fact, most of the toothy monsters that populate Dante’s wild 1990 film (arguably his best) have the same sly, self-aware sense of humour when it comes to the blurry line separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s one element of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and the older I get, it’s the theme that resonates the most.

Published: December 1, 2025, 10:00 am

Why won’t Marvel let Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine retire in peace?

The actor himself has promised to accept all future cameos as the beloved claw-gremlin, but this will only wear out his superpowers

There was once a time when Hugh Jackman Wolverine cameos made a sort of sense. Bursting out of a cell in full Weapon X gear, massacring half a bunker, then vanishing, in 2016’s otherwise pretty forgettable X-Men: Apocalypse. Telling potential recruitment team Magneto and Professor X to, er, go fuck themselves while propping up a bar in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Even popping up via archived footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2018’s Deadpool 2. These were cameos we could accept: quick, self-contained sideshows that understood the sacred rule that such things ought to be fun and brief. They also arrived at a time when Jackman didn’t yet carry the weight of 25 years of audience investment.

Last week, in an appearance on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, Jackman revealed that he has banned himself from saying no to future appearances as the surly mutant. “I am never saying ‘never’ ever again,” he said. “But I did mean it when I said ‘never’, until the day when I changed my mind. But I really did for quite a few years, I meant it.” There are suggestions that he could make a brief appearance in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday, in order to capitalise on the success of Marvel’s recent $1bn megahit Deadpool & Wolverine, even though he wasn’t mentioned in an interminable name-on-chair live stream from earlier this year, in which most of the main cast members were revealed.

Published: December 1, 2025, 8:00 am

The best history and politics books of 2025

The revolutionary spirit in politics and architecture; histories of free speech and civil war; plus how the Tories fell apart and Starmer won

We live in a hyper-political yet curiously unrevolutionary age, one of hashtags rather than barricades. Perhaps that’s why so many writers this year have looked wistfully back to a time when strongly held convictions still made waves in the real world.

In The Revolutionists (Bodley Head), Jason Burke revisits the 1970s, when it seemed the future of the Middle East might end up red instead of green – communist rather than Islamist. It’s a geopolitical period piece: louche men with corduroy jackets and sideburns, women with theories and submachine guns. Many were in it less for the Marxism than for the sheer mayhem. Reading about the hijackings and kidnappings they orchestrated makes today’s orange-paint protests seem quaint by comparison.

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am

What we’re reading: Geoff Dyer, Andrew Michael Hurley, Marcia Hutchinson and Guardian readers on the books they enjoyed in November

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I finally got round to Thoreau’s Journal. It is determinedly down-to-earth and soaring, lyrical and belligerent, humane and cantankerous. Walt Whitman thought Thoreau suffered from “a very aggravated case of superciliousness”, but as Walt also said (of himself) the Journal of this brooding, solitary figure is great; it “contains multitudes.”

Homework by Geoff Dyer is published by Canongate (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Cassava Republic. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Published: December 1, 2025, 4:55 pm

Five of the best food books of 2025

Sami Tamimi celebrates Palestine’s culinary heritage, Helen Goh uncovers the psychological benefits of baking and Roopa Gulati reveals tricks used in the best Indian kitchens

Lugma: Abundant Dishes & Stories from My Middle East
Noor Murad (Quadrille)
One of the greatest tests of a cookbook is not just whether the recipes appeal on first glance, but whether they have the power to weave themselves into your regular cooking life. By this measure, Lugma is my top food book this year. Its author, Noor Murad, is a young Bahraini-British food writer who has previously worked with Ottolenghi. It is a delight to find her writing here in her own voice about the Middle Eastern ingredients that mean so much to her (you’ll need black limes!). The recipes hit a sweet spot between ease and specialness. Even a simple side dish of greens becomes a feast, sauteed with fried onions and turmeric oil. Alongside a pantheon of rice dishes for celebrations, there are simpler midweek hits such as tuna jacket potatoes enlivened with a spicy tomato sauce and preserved lemons. Noor’s deeply fragrant Middle Eastern bolognese is now the recipe against which I judge all other ragus.

Baking and the Meaning of Life
Helen Goh (Murdoch)
The idea of baking as therapy is often bandied around, but Helen Goh knows whereof she speaks. Alongside her career as a baker, Goh (who was born in Malaysia to Chinese parents) was for a long time a practising psychologist. Whatever the theory behind the effect, every time I follow Goh’s wonderfully precise yet creative recipes, I feel a deep calm and happiness as well as a sense that she is teaching me new skills (“learning, growth and achievement” are among the psychological benefits of baking, according to Goh). The Shoo Fly buns are the currant buns of dreams (with a whole raw orange pureed into the dough) and I wanted to make the chocolate financiers with rosemary and hazelnuts so much that I bought a financier tin specially (no regrets there).

Published: December 1, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘It would take 11 seconds to hit the ground’: the roughneck daredevils who built the Empire State Building

They wrestled steel beams, hung off giant hooks and tossed red hot rivets – all while ‘strolling on the thin edge of nothingness’. Now the 3,000 unsung heroes who raised the famous skyscraper are finally being celebrated

Poised on a steel cable a quarter of a mile above Manhattan, a weather-beaten man in work dungarees reaches up to tighten a bolt. Below, though you hardly dare to look down, lies the Hudson River, the sprawling cityscape of New York and the US itself, rolling out on to the far horizon. If you fell from this rarefied spot, it would take about 11 seconds to hit the ground.

Captured by photographer Lewis Hine, The Sky Boy, as the image became known, encapsulated the daring and vigour of the men who built the Empire State Building, then the world’s tallest structure at 102 storeys and 1,250ft (381m) high. Like astronauts, they were going to places no man had gone before, testing the limits of human endurance, giving physical form to ideals of American puissance, “a land which reached for the sky with its feet on the ground”, according to John Jakob Raskob, then one of the country’s richest men, who helped bankroll the building.

Published: December 1, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘We didn’t think Back to the Future sounded plausible – or good’: Huey Lewis and the News on The Power of Love

‘I told the producers I didn’t know how to do a song for a film – and added that, frankly, I didn’t fancy writing one called Back to the Future. They said, “No problem, just give us one of your songs”’

Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis asked to meet us, along with Bob Gale and Neil Canton. They said they’d just written this film whose lead character was a guy called Marty McFly, and whose favourite band would be Huey Lewis and the News. They asked: “How about writing a song for the film?” I said: “I’m flattered but I don’t know how to write for film necessarily. And frankly, I don’t fancy writing a song called Back to the Future.” They said: “No problem. We just want one of your songs.” I said: “Tell you what, we’ll send you the next one we work on.”

Published: December 1, 2025, 2:45 pm

‘Was it a woman who bit off his ear?’: the wild life and serene photography of Tom Sandberg

Norway’s most celebrated photographer made his name with calm, reflective images that sit at odds with his reckless life. Friends and family remember a paradoxical man

Norway has never looked as wet as in the photographs of the late Tom Sandberg. There are shots of drizzle and puddles, of asphalt slick with mizzle. A ripple of water appears to have a hole in it, a figure looms behind a rain-dappled window, a gutter glows after a downpour.

Shot in either bold chiaroscuro or gentle orchestrations of greys, these are pictures with the power to make the everyday seem dreamlike. But they are also uplifting, in a confusing kind of way, like being told to dress for sun even when the clouds are black.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:07 am

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs decries Netflix series by 50 Cent as ‘shameful hit piece’

Disgraced and incarcerated music mogul claims footage in docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning was stolen

Sean “Diddy” Combs has taken issue with a splashy new Netflix docuseries on his life and many legal troubles, that is executive-produced by his longtime rival 50 Cent.

The former Bad Boy Records executive and hip-hop star, currently serving a four-year sentence for prostitution-related charges, blasted Sean Combs: The Reckoning as a “shameful hit piece”, and accused Netflix of incorporating stolen footage.

Published: December 1, 2025, 9:42 pm

The 28 gifts and treats Filter US writers are loving this holiday season

From durable Converse dupes to laundry detergent sheets, our product reviewers reveal what products earned spots in their daily lives

• The 163 best holiday gift ideas for 2025, vetted by the Guardian US staff

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

At the Filter US, our writers test plenty of things in the line of duty: bath towels, sleep masks, AirPods Pro, blenders, toaster ovens, instant coffee and more. So what are they putting in their own shopping carts?

This holiday season, the Filter team asked our product reviewers to share what they’re personally using and loving. Their answers ran the gamut: a portable projector that transforms any wall into a private theater, a more durable dupe of Converse’s Chuck Taylors, a trigger-point massage tool to loosen tight muscles and laundry detergent sheets that are kind to the planet and easy to use, to name a few. Read on for the 28 most loved items that earned a spot in our writers’ daily lives. Karen Yuan, Filter US commissioning editor

Published: December 1, 2025, 8:15 pm

Gratitude can be truly healing – but you need more than a checklist

Transformative gratitude occurs within sincere relationships, but building those links is not always an easy process

Recently, my psychoanalyst annoyed me. She said something and I felt misunderstood, criticised – and that she was wrong. I wanted an apology. As we worked through this, as she listened to me and I listened to her, I gradually realised that she hadn’t meant exactly what I thought, and that I was the one who had misunderstood, who was being so critical. But why couldn’t she have made it easier for me to understand, phrased it like I would have done? She responded: “That isn’t what I thought.”

In that moment, something clicked. I felt the rush and the relief of sudden emotional clarity. I think this came from seeing that my psychoanalyst, by not apologising to appease my anger, by not taking an easy way out of the conflict, by persisting in offering me her honest thoughts about what was going on in my mind and by bearing my struggle to take them in, was giving me an extremely rare and precious experience. I felt an overwhelming and surprising surge of gratitude.

Published: December 1, 2025, 11:00 am

From Gears of War to Uno: the 15 most important Xbox 360 games

As the Xbox 360 turns 20, we celebrate its most influential and memorable games – both exclusives, and those that came to the console first

Originally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade.

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Is it true that … a glass of wine a day is good for your heart?

Moderate wine consumption may benefit your cardiac health, but foods such as grapes and berries offer similar advantages without the negative effects

“People shouldn’t think that drinking wine is good for you,” says Dr Oliver Guttmann, a consultant cardiologist at the Wellington hospital in London.

Alcohol consumption is linked to high blood pressure, liver disease, digestive, mental health and immune system problems, as well as cancer.

Published: December 1, 2025, 8:00 am

The one change that worked: I used to be a compulsive shopper – until I hit upon a simple trick

The minute I had any disposable income, I would spend it on things I didn’t need. Deciding to wait a day before handing over my money changed everything

One day at work two years ago, a notification hit my phone: my paycheck had come through. It was a fair amount for someone still at university, so I did what I always did when payday arrived: I opened every shopping app on my phone. Amazon, Vinted, Etsy, Depop, Zara, you name it. Within the space of an hour, I had spent £90 on clothes, decorative items and a completely useless weighted blanket I never touched.

A few days later, I went online again and bought a hairdryer. I already owned one, but thought another couldn’t hurt. Then I added LED strip lights and two pairs of shoes that weren’t even my size. This wasn’t new behaviour. In fact, I’d been notorious for it ever since I could afford to buy my own things.

Published: December 1, 2025, 11:00 am

Houseplant hacks: how can I stop my plants dying when I turn on the central heating?

Ease your houseplants into winter by giving them a seasonal reset and moving them away from radiators

The problem
As soon as the heating is switched on, houseplants start to struggle. Warm, dry air strips moisture from leaves, dries soil faster, and turns cosy corners into arid microclimates. Many people mistakenly think radiator heat is similar to sunlight – warm and life-giving – but it isn’t. Sunlight provides energy for photosynthesis, while radiator heat is dry, stagnant and relentless, closer to a slow cooker than sunshine.

The hack
Before turning on the heating, give your plants a seasonal reset. Move them away from radiators or vents (at least half a metre, ideally). Group plants together to create a pocket of humidity, or place a bowl of water nearby to counteract dryness. Top-dress tired soil with fresh compost, trim off any yellowing leaves and wipe dust from the foliage so the plants can breathe. Water lightly, then let them rest in bright, indirect light to adjust before winter sets in.

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:00 am

‘It was extremely pornographic’: Cara Hunter on the deepfake video that nearly ended her political career

The Irish politician was targeted in 2022, in the final weeks of her run for office. She has never found out who made the malicious deepfake, but knew immediately she had to try to stop this happening to other women

When Cara Hunter, the Stormont politician, looks back on the moment she found out she had been deepfaked, she says it is “like watching a horror movie”. The setting is her grandmother’s rural home in the west of Tyrone on her 90th birthday, April 2022. “Everyone was there,” she says. “I was sitting with all my closest family members and family friends when I got a notification through Facebook Messenger.” It was from a stranger. “Is that you in the video … the one going round on WhatsApp?” he asked.

Hunter made videos all the time, especially then, less than three weeks before elections for the Northern Ireland assembly. She was defending her East Londonderry seat, campaigning, canvassing, debating. Yet, as a woman, this message from a man she didn’t know was enough to put her on alert. “I replied that I wasn’t sure which video he was talking about,” Hunter says. “So he asked, did I want to see it?” Then he sent it over.

Published: December 1, 2025, 5:00 am

Life Invisible: the fight against superbugs starts in the driest place on Earth – documentary

Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s highest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:38 am

How Kenya’s jailhouse lawyer turned a life sentence into a legal career behind bars

After being imprisoned for murdering her partner, Ruth Kamande studied the legal system to understand her own case. Now she is fighting to reform Kenya’s laws

It is a cool, overcast morning in Nairobi, and Ruth Kamande is in front of a computer, deep in concentration. Next to her is a thick red hardback book entitled Laws of Kenya. Kamande, 30, a diminutive figure in a stripy black and white tunic dress, graduated with a University of London LLB law degree in 2024, and works with incarcerated women. Her office, a small light and airy room that she shares with about 10 others, is in Lang’ata maximum security women’s prison where she is serving a life sentence for murder.

“I used to admire lawyers very much,” she says. “It impressed me when I saw them in movies fighting big cases, but also for people in society who are marginalised. I didn’t know that one day, in very difficult and unusual circumstances, I would become one.”

Kamande, a prisoner at Lang’ata maximum-security women’s prison in Kenya, has successfully helped other incarcerated women win cases

Published: December 2, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us your favourite albums of 2025

We would like to hear about the best album you have heard this year and why

There have been bold British rap breakthroughs from Jim Legxacy and John Glacier, highly personal grief-stricken albums by Blood Orange, Jerskin Fendrix, Jennifer Walton and the Tubs; breakup albums for the ages by Rosalía, Lily Allen and Cate Le Bon; proof there’s life in Britpop yet from Pulp and Suede; emphatic arrivals on pop’s main stage from CMAT and Olivia Dean.

As the Guardian prepares to count down the best albums of 2025, we’d like to know what your top records were, and why: the returns to form, bolts from the blue, slow-burners and surprises. Let us know and we’ll run the best submissions after the Guardian’s No 1 is unveiled later in December.

Published: December 2, 2025, 9:15 am

A fallen sculpture and a desert storm: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: December 2, 2025, 1:57 pm