The 12 best US gifts for the fitness fan in your life, vetted by a CrossFit coach

From Lululemon to LMNT and Nike, here’s the fitness gear that’s stood up to sweat tests and made workouts better

• The 18 best Black Friday deals – plus picks for tech, travel, home and kitchen

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

As Peloton learned the hard way, no one wants to come downstairs on Christmas morning to a stationary bike under the tree that they didn’t ask for. But give someone a gift that supports the workouts they already love, and you’ll seem emotionally attuned, not presumptive.

I spent nearly a decade as an editor at two fitness magazines, where I tested hundreds of sports bras, sneakers and protein bars. Now I work out nearly every day and coach CrossFit. Here’s my short list of fitness gear that has stood up to my sweat tests and made my workout sessions more fun and comfortable.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:15 pm

White nationalist Nick Fuentes is exposing a civil war among US Republicans: ‘We look like clowns’

Tucker Carlson’s interview with the activist revealed the mainstream right is being flooded by extremism – and it’s now impossible to contain

Five days a week, thousands of fans gather online to watch Nick Fuentes hold court about the dangers of non-white immigration, feminism and “organized Jewry”. Usually dressed in a dark suit and tie, he lectures to his far-right followers, known as “Groypers”, about what he argues is the insufficient radicalism of Donald Trump’s Republican party and what he describes as the perfidies of the state of Israel and its American supporters.

Fuentes’s fixation with Israel is not rooted in concern about the war in Gaza but a belief, in his telling, that Jews are responsible for most of society’s problems. Fuentes, who is 27 and lives in Illinois, has called Adolf Hitler “really fucking cool” and compared the Holocaust to the baking of cookies.

Published: November 20, 2025, 1:00 pm

Telling a reporter ‘quiet, piggy’ was shocking – even for Trump | Margaret Sullivan

We’re supposed to be used to this by now, but getting used to it is dangerous. Her colleagues should have spoken up

Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do: asking germane questions.

Her query to Donald Trump a few days ago during a “gaggle” aboard Air Force One was reasonable as it had to do with the release of the Epstein files, certainly a subject of great public interest. Why had Trump been stonewalling, she asked, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”.

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

She was pregnant and addicted to fentanyl. Getting to keep her baby saved them both

A baby is born in withdrawal every 18 minutes in the US, and most end up in foster care. At centers like Maddie’s Place, mothers stay with their infants – and leave together, in recovery

Eight months pregnant and in pain, Stephanie Rosell went to the Holy family hospital emergency room after an infection began spreading up her legs. Unemployed and homeless, estranged from her family, she lived in a shed she had built in a friend’s yard. She was also addicted to fentanyl.

As doctors treated her infection, she began to panic. Withdrawal was setting in. She leaned over the bed and vomited.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:56 pm

The 15 best tech gifts in the US, picked by a gadget reviewer who’s used hundreds

From Apple AirPods to VR headsets and the ultimate travel backpack for hauling gadgets, these are the tech gifts they’ll still be using years from now

• The 18 best Black Friday deals – plus picks for travel, home and kitchen

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

Tech enthusiasts can be notoriously picky to buy for: they have strong opinions about brands, operating systems, even standards like surround-sound formats. And the tech world moves fast. As a tech reviewer, many products that I pick up to evaluate are put back down simply never used again. Something better comes along.

But there are products that buck the trend and stick around. As someone who is surrounded by tech, I’ve rounded up the gadgets that are so perpetually useful, I find myself reaching for them all the time. So don’t give up on surprising the techie in your life: their next favorite toy may just be on this list.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:48 pm

Mani’s writhing, relentless bass was the Stone Roses’ secret sauce – it taught indie kids how to dance | Alexis Petridis

His love of ‘good northern soul and funk’ was always in evidence and had a lasting impact on alternative music

• Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield dies aged 63

• Mani: a life in pictures

By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:07 pm

Congressman Ro Khanna warns officials not to impede Epstein files release: ‘They will be prosecuted’

California lawmaker says names of anyone involved in Epstein’s crimes must come to light, Democrat or Republican

• US politics live – latest updates

Democratic congressman Ro Khanna was a major force behind the legislative campaign that led Donald Trump to back down from his opposition and sign into law a bill compelling the release of files related to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

With the justice department now required to release the documents within 30 days, Khanna has a warning for those in the Trump administration who may find themselves pressed to withhold information: comply or face the consequences.

Published: November 20, 2025, 10:18 pm

Outrage after Trump accuses Democrats of ‘seditious behavior, punishable by death’

US president roundly decried for Truth Social post after lawmakers told military personnel to refuse illegal orders

• US politics live – latest updates

Democrats expressed outrage after Donald Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of engaging in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH” and that they should be arrested after they posted a video in which they told active service members they should refuse illegal orders.

The video, released on Tuesday, features six Democratic lawmakers who have previously served in the military or in intelligence roles, including senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and representatives Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan and Jason Crow.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:15 pm

White House press secretary defends Trump’s ‘piggy’ insult

Karoline Leavitt says president ‘calls out fake news when he sees it’ after remark to reporter draws severe condemnation

The White House issued a full-throated defense of Donald Trump’s reference to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” on Thursday, claiming without evidence that the president “calls out fake news when he sees it and gets frustrated with reporters who spread false information”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the remarks during a White House briefing, saying Trump was re-elected because of his bluntness and that members of the media should appreciate his willingness to answer their questions.

Published: November 21, 2025, 12:52 am

Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump officials over ‘collusion’ with anti-Palestinian groups

Activist detained by ICE condemns ‘smear and harassment campaign’ and demands release of key communications

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who participated in protests at Columbia University and was detained by Ice earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with anti-Palestinian groups he says contributed to his March arrest and efforts to detain him.

The groups, a number of which have boasted about their involvement in sharing dossiers on Palestine activists with the administration, have claimed credit for Khalil’s arrest, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the legal team representing Khalil, and they say there is evidence that indicates the Trump administration “acted on information and misinformation – provided by these groups in cracking down” on Khalil and other pro-Palestine activists.

Published: November 21, 2025, 12:25 am

White House announces new oil and gas drilling off California and Florida

But Sunshine state Republicans might oppose drilling off state’s famous beaches that keep tourism dollars coming in

The Trump administration on Thursday announced new oil and gas drilling off California’s and Florida’s coasts, setting the stage for a political showdown – including with Sunshine state Republicans who have largely opposed petroleum development in the Gulf of Mexico.

This announcement comes as the US petroleum industry, despite contending with low crude prices, has been pushing for an entree to additional offshore drilling areas. The industry’s move for increased access also marks an effort to increase jobs and US energy independence, according to the Associated Press.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:54 pm

AI bubble fears return as Wall Street falls back from short-lived rally

Leading US stock markets tumble less than 24 hours after strong results from chipmaker Nvidia sparked gains

Fears of a growing bubble around the artificial intelligence frenzy resurfaced on Thursday as leading US stock markets fell, less than 24 hours after strong results from chipmaker Nvidia sparked a rally.

Wall Street initially rose after Nvidia, the world’s largest public company, reassured investors of strong demand for its advanced data center chips. But the relief dissipated, and technology stocks at the heart of the AI boom came under pressure.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:04 pm

Zelenskyy to negotiate with Trump over US-Russia peace deal requiring painful concessions

Ukrainian president’s office issues statement after other officials condemn ‘absurd’ plan to end conflict

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will negotiate with Donald Trump on a US-backed peace plan that called on Ukraine to make painful concessions in order to end the Kremlin’s invasion of his country.

The president’s office on Thursday confirmed he had received the draft peace plan, which was prepared by US and Russian officials, and that he would speak to Trump in the coming days about “existing diplomatic opportunities and the main points that are necessary for peace”.

Published: November 20, 2025, 10:53 pm

Prozac ‘no better than placebo’ for treating children with depression, experts say

Exclusive: Clinical guidelines should change to avoid exposing young people to potentially harmful side-effects, researchers say

Clinical guidelines should no longer recommend Prozac for children, according to experts, after research showed it had no clinical benefit for treating depression in children and adolescents.

Globally one in seven 10-19 year olds have a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. In the UK, about a quarter of older teenagers and up to a fifth of younger children have anxiety, depression or other mental health problems.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 pm

Bay Area’s poverty soared, data shows, as California’s top earners saw windfalls

Poverty rate jumped from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023 in state, Tipping Point Community report finds

Newly released data found that the San Francisco Bay Area’s poverty rate soared from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023, with an approximate total 1.02 million residents in this six-county region considered impoverished by year’s end.

Another 12.5% of residents – about 790,000 people – hovered on the brink of poverty, meaning that about three in 10 Bay Area residents struggled to cover basic expenses.

Published: November 20, 2025, 10:04 pm

Justice department investigates handling of Adam Schiff’s mortgage fraud case

Inquiry centers on whether two Trump allies influenced the Schiff mortgage investigation as prosecutors struggle to build the case

• US politics live – latest updates

The justice department is investigating how two Trump allies handled the investigation into whether California senator, Adam Schiff, committed mortgage fraud, according to a copy of a subpoena obtained by the Guardian and a person familiar with the matter.

The office of the deputy attorney general Todd Blanche is overseeing the inquiry, which appears to have developed as an offshoot of the main case into Schiff – a notable development since the justice department is essentially investigating activities of two close allies of the president.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:24 pm

US in talks to attend G20 summit after initial boycott, South Africa says

Cyril Ramaphosa says US has had ‘change of mind’ but does not confirm Trump’s attendance in Johannesburg

The US has changed its mind about attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa’s president has said, without confirming whether Donald Trump, who had said the US would boycott the event, now wanted to come.

Trump has claimed that South Africa racially discriminates against the minority white Afrikaner community, which led the country during the apartheid regime that ended in 1994.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:56 pm

Hospitals and clinics are shutting down due to Trump’s healthcare cuts. Here’s where

From Georgia to Oregon, clinics and wards are closing as Trump’s health law triggers steep Medicaid cuts and rising costs

• People in the US: how has the Trump administration affected your healthcare?

Healthcare providers across the country have closed clinics and hospital wards in the four months since Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the landmark tax-and-spending legislation that will lead an estimated 10 million people to lose their health insurance.

The law is expected to slash federal funding by hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years, as part of Trump’s campaign pledge to shrink government spending. But it will do so in part by paring back eligibility for Medicaid, the US government’s health insurance program for low-income people; raising the cost of healthcare under the Affordable Care Act; and defunding some family planning providers who offer abortions.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

Trump officials reveal plan to roll back regulations in Endangered Species Act

Experts fear plan, one of many attempts Trump’s made to dismantle wildlife protection, will speed up extinction crisis

The Trump administration presented a new plan to roll back regulations in the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on Wednesday, a move experts fear will accelerate the extinction crisis if adopted.

The proposed changes would allow the federal government more power to weigh economic impact against habitat designations, remove safeguards against future events – including the impacts from the climate crisis – and rescind the “blanket rule” that automatically grants threatened species the same protections as those designated as endangered.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 am

Tears and solemnity at Cheney funeral – but no memorial for those killed in Iraq

Great and good pay tribute in Washington but honouring of former vice-president was an exercise in omission

You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.

The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:44 pm

‘I lose my liberty in that moment’: Charlotte shuts down as citizens and noncitizens alike face ICE arrests

As federal agents descend in North Carolina, businesses close as even an after-school program is targeted

On Central Avenue in Charlotte, North Carolina, Manolo’s Bakery has become a focal point for resistance to the expanded immigration raids since border patrol officers descended on the city over the weekend. The owner closed the bakery to prevent his staff from being targeted. Most of the other shops on Charlotte’s busy immigrant-centric street followed suit.

Dozens of people have taken up camp in the parking lot to wave signs of support for immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been active in the city for months as part of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, but things went up a level when the border patrol arrived. Agents swiftly began buzzing through the place to make an armed show of their presence, followed at times by Charlotteans honking their horns in warning.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:00 pm

Brother Wang, a global manhunt and the Chinese-Mexican drug nexus

Alleged trafficker Zhi Dong Zhang escaped via a tunnel in Mexico before flying to Cuba and reportedly Russia but now finds himself on trial in a Brooklyn courtroom

• The China-Mexico fentanyl pipeline: increasingly sophisticated and deadly

Like so many great escapes, it involved a tunnel.

One night in July, in the Mexico City neighbourhood where he was under house arrest, Zhi Dong Zhang snuck through a hole into the property nextdoor and escaped from under the noses of the soldiers guarding him.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:20 pm

The Frida Kahlo scandal: Fridamania could reach new heights today – but where are her ‘missing’ masterpieces?

An auction in New York today is almost certain to make the celebrated artist a record-breaker. But, overshadowing what could be a $60m sale are questions about works that have allegedly disappeared

This may well be Frida Kahlo’s biggest year yet. There’s the recent opening of a museum in Mexico City celebrating her life and work. There’s the Art Institute in Chicago exhibiting her work for the first time. And then, in Shenzhen, there’s the show that marked her Chinese debut. All this “Fridamania” tucks in between last year’s big screen documentary Frida and next year’s exhibitions in London and the US.

What’s more, to cap it all, a Sotheby’s auction in New York today is almost certain to make Kahlo a record-breaker. Her 1940 painting The Dream (The Bed) is forecast to fetch between $40-$60m, which would dwarf the previous record for a female artist, set in 2014 by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1, which sold for $44.4m.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:11 pm

Is it weird facelifts are becoming normalized, or am I being too judgmental?

It is a little weird that beauty culture is convincing people to surgically saw off their facial skin and sew it back on tighter

• Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

Dear Ugly,

I’m 36 and I don’t need or want a facelift – but lately I feel like I’m being made to want a facelift. Is it weird that facelifts are becoming normalized for women my age, or am I being too judgmental?

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

I want to ignore beauty culture. But I’ll never get anywhere if I don’t look a certain way

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 pm

‘A different vibe’: New York welcomes the luxury private cinema experience

At the high-end Metro Private Cinema, a private screening room with a gourmet meal and drinks can reach $200 a person. Will people pay?

On a recent trip to the cinema, I found myself annoyed. The person next to me kept sniffling loudly and, even worse, scrolling Instagram on their phone, dimly visible from the corner of my eye. The former is simply an occupational hazard of being around other people, a thing I usually love to be doing; the latter, though a violation of the theater’s no phone policy, still more preferable to the conflict-averse than confrontation. If only, one sometimes wonders, there was some middle ground between full cinema experience and the privacy of one’s couch.

Enter Metro Private Cinemas, a new upscale theater in Manhattan that caters to cinephiles eager to privatize and glamorize the theatrical experience – for a price. For $50-100 a head, you can book a room at the 20-screen complex in Chelsea for a group sized anywhere between four and 20 people. Pick a film from either current releases or a curated archive, select a drink package for an extra $50 each, choose a 12-13 course gourmet meal off a seasonal menu for another $100 a head, and you have a ritzy night at the movies.

Published: November 20, 2025, 10:02 am

My ex is having an affair with another soccer mum and I feel complicit. Do I tell the husband or keep it quiet? | Leading questions

They probably underestimate the cost to you of keeping this secret, writes Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Before you tell the husband, could you talk to your ex?

• Read more Leading questions

I left my ex-husband two-and-a-half years ago. He told me the day we broke up that he had feelings for a married woman and she for him. I knew. It was part of the reason I wanted to leave him, along with a very long list of ways in which our marriage was no longer serving either of us.

A few months later he started actively (but covertly) pursuing this woman, who is a mum in my son’s sports team. Apart from my ex and this woman, I am pretty sure I am the only person who knows.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:04 pm

Ben Jennings on Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine – cartoon

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Published: November 20, 2025, 6:31 pm

Trump’s 'affordability' efforts are a mess of absurdity and magical thinking | Steven Greenhouse

After Republicans were trounced in this month’s votes, the administration has launched a slapdash, ill-conceived campaign

When running for president last year, Donald Trump wooed and wowed voters by vowing to reduce prices “starting on day one”. But once he was inaugurated, he seemed to pay precious little attention to prices and affordability.

All that changed, however, when inflation-weary voters thrashed Trump and the GOP on election day this month – within days, the Trump administration launched a slapdash effort to focus on affordability. Unfortunately, the campaign is a hot mess: a pile of absurdity, contradictions, magical thinking, scapegoating and good ol’ Trumpian dishonesty, with Trump repeatedly blaring that “prices are down”.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 am

The man who froze his wife and got a new girlfriend: a stranger, sadder tale than I expected | Imogen West-Knights

The story has sparked debates about cryogenics and fidelity. But it also tells us something deeper about our responses to loss

One of the last remaining fun things about the internet is getting to pass judgment on the goings-on in households that you would never hear about otherwise. On Reddit, for instance, there is a whole thriving sub for just this purpose called Am I the Asshole?, where people describe conflicts from their lives and ask strangers to adjudicate on them.

This week, a story on the BBC threw up a particularly juicy piece of other people’s business that has been sparking debates on Chinese social media. It starts in 2017, when Gui Junmin decided to cryogenically freeze his wife, Zhan Wenlian, after she died of lung cancer. She was the first Chinese person to undergo this procedure, which was paid for by a science research institute in Jinan, east China, that agreed with Gui to preserve his wife’s body for 30 years. Reports suggest Zhan herself consented to the process before she passed away.

Imogen West-Knights is a writer and journalist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:55 pm

‘Why don’t you bake?’ A scolding that stung – until I heard it in a new way | Ying Reinhardt

My aunt was chastising me for not carrying on my mother’s legacy of pineapple tarts and butter cakes. Why had I been so resistant?

‘Aiyah, why don’t you bake?” my Aunt Julie scolded, her voice shrill with disbelief. “You should learn how to bake for the sake of your child! Your mother was such a good baker!” Her comment stung. I had always adored my mother’s youngest sister. As the only member of my family who also lived in Germany, we had a special bond.

But here she was, chastising me for failing to be a good mother before I had even given birth. I contemplated the question from her immaculate kitchen, where I stood round, hormonal, in my second trimester of pregnancy and on the precipice of new motherhood. But I didn’t have an answer.

Ying Reinhardt is Malaysian writer living in Germany

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:07 pm

The Guardian view on devastation in Gaza: the world wants to move on, but Palestinians can’t | Editorial

Drenched by floods and abandoned amid the ruins, people in Gaza can draw no comfort from US plans

The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold. The World Health Organization warned last month that the health catastrophe would last for generations.

Food remains in short supply. While displaced families shiver in flooded makeshift shelters, with many facing a third winter of homelessness, aid organisations say they cannot deliver stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins. Israel, which denies blocking aid, has designated tent poles as “dual-use” items that could potentially be used for a military purpose. Save the Children reports children sleeping on bare ground in sewage-soaked clothing.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:03 pm

The Guardian view on Nigel Farage’s youthful views: the past still matters | Editorial

Voters need to know if a party leader said racist things at school. Interviewers have a duty to keep pressing for fuller facts

For one contemporary, it is the hectoring tone of today that evokes what it was like to be at school with Nigel Farage. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Gas them’,” Peter Ettedgui recalls when asked about life at fee-paying Dulwich College in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later, he adds: “I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’ and urging them to ‘go home’.”

For others, including some in the college’s combined cadet force (CCF), what lingers is the image of the young Mr Farage in uniform and his renderings of a racist anthem titled “Gas ’em all”. Tim France, a CCF member from those years, remembered Mr Farage “regularly” giving the Nazi salute and strutting around the classroom. “It was habitual, you know, it happened all the time,” he recalls.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:02 pm

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Semenyo can lift Bournemouth, Isak must show up for Liverpool and north London derby rivals left to rue injuries

A Mancunian reunion of sorts is on the cards should Kyle Walker of Burnley face Alejandro Garnacho on Chelsea’s left at Turf Moor. The winger has started to settle at Stamford Bridge after his summer move from Manchester United and showcased his range against Wolves before the international break. His assist for Pedro Neto combined wicked pace with a perfect ball along the carpet. His setup for Malo Gusto involved shifting on to his right foot before a dinked cross to the far post. His celebration with Neto, replicating his sitting embrace with Kobbie Mainoo and Rasmund Højlund, was a reminder of how quickly things change. The last time Garnacho took on Walker? When the former scored for United in their FA Cup final win over Manchester City. Taha Hashim

Published: November 21, 2025, 12:01 am

Jessie Diggins, trailblazing star of cross-country skiing, to retire at end of season

• US cross-country star announces retirement

• World’s No 1 ranked skier will compete in Olympics

• Will finish career in World Cup finals on home snow

Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier of all time, has revealed that she will retire at the end of the season, calling time on a 15-year career that redefined what US athletes could achieve in a sport long dominated by European nations.

Diggins will race the full World Cup calendar and compete in her fourth Olympics at Milano-Cortina before finishing her career on home snow at the World Cup finals in Lake Placid. She announces her departure as the world’s No 1-ranked skier, the owner of three overall World Cup titles and three distance globes, and a four-time Olympic medalist – including the famous 2018 team sprint gold she won with Kikkan Randall that marked the first Olympic title in US cross-country skiing history.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:58 pm

Boris Becker: ‘Whoever says a prison life is easy is lying – it’s a real punishment’

Former Wimbledon champion on how taking accountability for his crimes allowed for rehabilitation, watching Novak Djokovic from his cell and the new era of brotherhood in the sport

“I heard the screaming and I didn’t know what it was,” Boris Becker says as he remembers staring into the dark in Wandsworth prison, just over two miles from Wimbledon’s Centre Court where he won the first of his three men’s singles titles at the age of 17 in 1985. “Were people trying to kill themselves or harm themselves? Or couldn’t they deal with their loneliness? Or are they just making crazy noises because they have lost their minds already?”

Becker had been sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year jail term. Amid his insolvency, he was found guilty of not declaring all his assets so that additional funds could be distributed to his creditors. The judge confirmed that his money was used, instead, to meet his “commitments to his children and other dependents, medical and professional fees, and other expenses”.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

Chiefs heir Gracie Hunt backs rival Super Bowl half-time show over Bad Bunny

• Hunt backs Turning Point USA’s rival half-time show

• Goodell stands firm despite Trump-driven backlash

Gracie Hunt, the daughter of Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, is throwing her support behind Turning Point USA’s plan to stage an alternative Super Bowl half-time show, a direct counter to the NFL’s decision to feature Bad Bunny at Super Bowl LX.

Hunt said in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s The Will Cain Show on Tuesday that she “most definitely” backs Turning Point’s counter-programming effort, spearheaded by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. The NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny for the half-time show has attracted strong pushback from many on the right, who object to his criticism of Donald Trump and US immigration enforcement.

Published: November 20, 2025, 6:22 pm

World Cup playoff draw: Wales face Bosnia, Northern Ireland head to Italy, Ireland go to Prague

• Wales and Northern Ireland could meet for finals place

• Ireland to host Denmark or North Macedonia if they win

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

Wales and Northern Ireland will do battle for a place at the 2026 World Cup if they navigate playoff semi-finals of differing toughness in March.

The pair would fight it out in Cardiff for a ticket to next year’s showpiece if Wales win a home tie against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland prevail in a fiendish trip to Italy, who are out of form but will be strongly favoured. It is a particularly appetising draw for Craig Bellamy’s Wales, who are flying after defeating North Macedonia 7-1 on Tuesday and are two home victories from a return to the most exalted stage.

Published: November 20, 2025, 1:25 pm

MLS reveals 2026 schedule featuring two-month break for World Cup

• Inter Miami to open new stadium on 4 April

• Season starts on 21 February and ends on 7 November

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

Lionel Messi and Inter Miami will play a Major League Soccer match in their new stadium for the first time on 4 April, one of the highlights of the league’s schedule that was revealed Thursday.

The 2026 MLS regular season starts 21 February and runs through 7 November. It’ll be the last season in the February-to-November model, with a shortened season planned for 2027 and then the new summer-to-spring calendar for the 2027-28 campaign to closer align with other global leagues.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:36 pm

Cadillac copy Nasa playbook to build F1 team from scratch to hit Melbourne startline

Big-name drivers and cutting out the middle man a vital part of the strategy with just over 100 days to go before the 2026 season opener

Twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

At the final race of the season to be staged in the United Statess, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 pm

Ian Wright believes Jude Bellingham’s critics not ready for a ‘black superstar’

• Wright says ‘someone like Jude frightens these people’

• ‘They cannot get to this guy. He’s a winner’

The former England striker Ian Wright has defended Jude Bellingham, insisting some people are not “ready for a black superstar”.

Bellingham has come in for criticism in some quarters for his reaction to being substituted during England’s World Cup qualifying win in Albania on Sunday, amid some suggestions he is a disruptive influence in the squad. However, Wright says some people are “frightened” of Bellingham’s success.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:51 pm

Felipe Massa’s £64m claim over Crashgate can go to trial, rules judge

• F1, FIA and Bernie Ecclestone are defending the claims

• Brazilian former driver says he is rightful 2008 winner

Felipe Massa’s £64m claim against Formula One, its governing body, the FIA, and Bernie Ecclestone over Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 world championship in 2008 can go to trial, a high court judge has ruled.

Massa claims he is the rightful champion as the Brazilian eventually lost by a single point after Nelson Piquet Jr had deliberately crashed at the Singapore Grand Prix. Ecclestone, who was F1’s impresario for four decades before he was deposed in 2017, suggested in 2023 that the sport’s executives were aware of the cover-up – which became known as Crashgate – before the 2008 campaign concluded. The 95-year-old Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management are defending the claims.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:11 pm

Cop30 climate summit in Brazil disrupted after fire breaks out in venue

Event thrown into confusion and 13 treated for smoke inhalation after conference centre evacuated

• Brazilian president will take fossil fuel phase-out plan to G20 summit

Talks at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil were disrupted on Thursday after a fire broke out in the venue, triggering an evacuation just as negotiators were preparing to try to land a deal to strengthen international efforts to address the climate crisis.

Thirteen people were treated for smoke inhalation, organisers said in a statement, after the fire broke out in the pavilion area of the conference centre in Belém, Brazil.

Published: November 20, 2025, 9:52 pm

Larry Ellison discussed axing CNN hosts with White House in takeover bid talks

Exclusive: Senior officials indicated favorability toward Paramount Skydance acquiring Warner Bros Discovery

Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 am

Israeli airstrikes kill 33 people in Gaza in escalation of post-ceasefire attacks

Medical officials say 17 people killed in Khan Younis area and 16 in strikes on Gaza City

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month.

Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women.

Published: November 20, 2025, 1:25 pm

Connie Chan, progressive San Francisco lawmaker, enters race to succeed Pelosi

San Francisco supervisor, 47, highlighting work on affordability for working families in US House run

Connie Chan, a progressive lawmaker who serves on the San Francisco board of supervisors, has entered the race to succeed the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi next year.

In a Thursday announcement, Chan, 47, said the race was about “local neighborhoods versus outside money” and highlighted her work trying to make San Francisco more affordable for working families.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:22 pm

Documents reveal Gerald Ford’s effort to block report on CIA assassination plots

Release of documents comes amid conjecture Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuelan president

The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA’s role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report’s publication reveal.

The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report’s significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:34 pm

Fugees rapper Pras sentenced to 14 years in prison over illegal donations to Obama campaign

Prakazrel ‘Pras’ Michel was convicted in 2023 after a trial that included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former US attorney general Jeff Sessions

The Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funnelling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former US president Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Michel, 52, declined to address the court before US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him on Thursday.

Published: November 21, 2025, 12:28 am

Prosecutors move to drop charges against Chicago woman shot by border patrol agent

Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez after he claimed she struck his vehicle, and bragged about shooting her in texts

Federal prosecutors moved on Thursday to dismiss charges against a woman who was shot several times by a border patrol agent last month during the federal immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.

Prosecutors had accused Marimar Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ruiz, 21, of using their vehicles to strike and box in border patrol agent Charles Exum’s SUV on 4 October on Chicago’s south-west side, during the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz”. Exum then exited his car and opened fire on Martinez, who suffered seven gunshot wounds.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:26 pm

Thousands of toxic sites across US face risk of coastal flooding

Study finds rising seas could flood facilities handling waste, sewage, and oil and gas – and coastal states most at risk

More than 5,500 toxic sites nationwide could face coastal flooding by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to new research.

The study, published on Thursday in Nature Communications and led by scientists at the University of California, warns that if heat-trapping pollution continues unabated, rising seas will flood a wide range of hazardous facilities including those handling sewage, toxic waste, oil and gas, as well as other industrial pollutants.

Published: November 20, 2025, 10:00 am

The two extraordinary young activists making me feel optimistic at Cop30

In today’s newsletter: Despite valid criticisms, the summits are filled with smart, passionate people dedicating their lives to fighting the climate crisis

• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

It is easy to criticise the UN climate conferences. But unless you’ve been, there’s one wonderful, almost miraculous, thing that you may not be aware of: it is a beautiful gathering of humanity, people from virtually every country on Earth, all thrown together in common cause.

What’s more, many are incredibly smart, passionate and dedicating their lives to fighting the climate crisis. The more of them you meet, the more your hope grows that global heating can be defeated.

Trump’s anti-climate agenda could result in 1.3m more deaths globally, analysis finds

Tropical cyclone Fina intensifies to category two and could hit NT coast on Friday

England’s Beth Mead: ‘If we don’t adapt to climate change, football becomes a privilege, not a right‘

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:35 pm

‘My husband and daughter went down to the garage in case it flooded. Then I heard a strange noise’ – This is climate breakdown

She was sure that there would be warnings if there was any danger. But then the floods came. This is Toñi García’s story

Location Valencia, Spain

Disaster Floods, 2024

Toñi García lives in Valencia. On 29 October 2024, devastating storms hit the Iberian peninsula, bringing the heaviest rain so far this century. The national alert system sounded at around 8.30pm local time; by then, however, flood waters had already broken through the city. Scientists say the explosive downpours were linked to climate change.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

They just call it ‘the virus’: mosquito-borne illnesses heap misery on Cubans affected by Hurricane Melissa

A lack of clean water and medicines in the aftermath of the storm has led to a sharp rise in viruses such as chikungunya and dengue

Maidel Jorge, a 36-year-old farmer, sweats as he chops down a tree to collect wood for cooking: the early November weather in eastern Cuba is still as hot as summer. The tree was young, so the wood is green, which means it will take longer to burn and their meal will take longer to prepare.

Jorge, his pregnant wife and their six-year-old son are among 300 people staying in a school turned into an evacuation centre in Grito de Yara, Granma province, some of the 3 million Cubans exposed to Hurricane Melissa, which barrelled into the country last month.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

Schools feel squeeze as Texas and federal courts spar over Ten Commandments mandate

Some schools are ‘between a rock and a hard place’ with clashing orders from state and federal authorities

Texas is undertaking the nation’s largest attempt to display the biblical Ten Commandments in public-sector schools, and in the rush to navigate the Republican-led mandate, the rollout has forced some districts to confront hard choices.

Federal courts have ordered more than two dozen of the state’s nearly 1,200 school districts not to hang posters with the religious commandments. On Tuesday, a judge ruled that the mandate violates constitutional first amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion, AKA the separation of church and state.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 pm

US added 119,000 jobs in September in report delayed by federal shutdown

Unemployment rate hits 4.4%, its highest level since 2021, and government has said no October report will be issued

The US jobs market added 119,000 jobs in September, according to the latest monthly jobs report, which was delayed by six weeks due to the shutdown of the federal government.

Amid heightened uncertainty surrounding the strength of the US economy, the much-anticipated reading was higher than the 51,000 jobs expected by analysts to be added in September.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:18 pm

‘No contract, no coffee’: what to know about the Starbucks workers’ strike in 65 US cities

More than 2,000 Starbucks employees are on the picket line as politicians like Zohran Mamdani back striking workers

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:04 pm

In Tennessee, Democrats hope a ‘coalition of the pissed off’ will flip a red district

With a platform focused on cost of living, Aftyn Behn wants to turn the US House seat blue for the first time since 1983

Republicans have controlled Tennessee’s seventh congressional district for four decades. The party finished about 21 points ahead of the Democrats when the seat was last contested, alongside Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election last November.

Twelve months on, that lead has narrowed dramatically, according to opinion polls – and a challenger is attempting to build a “coalition of the pissed off” to overturn it altogether.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 am

Ministers call on Nigel Farage to address ‘repulsive’ teenage racism allegations

Liz Kendall and Jo Stevens intervene after about 20 people claim they witnessed or were victims of Farage’s behaviour

Cabinet ministers have described detailed and multiple allegations of racism by Nigel Farage as a teenager as “repulsive” and doubled down on Keir Starmer’s call for Farage to address the claims.

Liz Kendall, the secretary for science and innovation and technology, said she was appalled by the descriptions reported by the Guardian.

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:38 pm

Moss in space: spores survive nine-month ride on outside of ISS

Scientists say plant’s resilience suggests it could help with oxygen generation or soil formation on space missions

Matt Damon grew potatoes for survival in The Martian, but researchers say mosses could one day help turn the dust and rocks of other planets into fertile soil.

Physcomitrella patens, or spreading earthmoss, is already known as a pioneering species – albeit for being an early plant on the scene in areas of barren mud. Now researchers have found that spores of the moss can survive for at least nine months stuck to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and still reproduce once back on Earth.

Published: November 20, 2025, 4:00 pm

Ottawa officials to cull ‘mindblowing’ influx of thousands of goldfish in pond

Scourge of goldfish has become growing problem as fish are released by pet owners into increasingly warm waters

City officials in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, plan to cull thousands of feral goldfish from a stormwater pond, a decision that reflects the pervasive spread of the species throughout the region.

Earlier in the year, city staff removed 5,000 fish from the city’s Celebration Park. But as many as 1,000 more are believed to still be living in the water.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:07 pm

US watchdog led by Trump ally investigates BBC Panorama edit of January 6 speech

Brendan Carr, head of FCC, asks if programme ever aired in US which is seen as key to any future litigation

A US media regulator led by a close ally of Donald Trump is examining whether an edition of the BBC’s Panorama broke US regulations in the way it edited one of the president’s speeches.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by Brendan Carr, has written to the BBC’s outgoing director general, Tim Davie, asking whether the programme was ever aired in the US.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:50 pm

‘A tapestry of stone’: the first Ismaili Centre in the US rises in the heart of Texas

Architect Farshid Moussavi is behind a tranquil and timeless new building where Houston’s 40,000-strong Ismaili Muslim community can come together. But how has she created something that looks so delicate out of stone?

On a hot autumn day in southern Texas, monarch butterflies flit around the gardens of Houston’s new Ismaili Centre. Fragile and gaudy, they are on their way south to overwinter in Mexico, travelling up to 3,000 miles in a typical migration cycle, an epic feat of insectile endurance.

Their combination of delicacy and stamina is an apt metaphor for the Ismaili Centre, a building that has taken seven years to realise and is designed to last for a century or more. It’s a place where Houston’s 40,000-strong Ismaili Muslim community, one of the largest in the US, can practise their faith but it’s also a venue for shared activities.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:46 am

Seth Meyers on Epstein files: ‘It’s obvious why Trump fought so hard to stop this bill from passing’

Late-night hosts react to the congressional vote that overwhelmingly approved a bill forcing the justice department to release the Epstein files

Late-night hosts reacted to the congressional vote sending the bill to release all files related to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to the desk of his former friend Donald Trump.

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:21 pm

Ken Burns on his American Revolution documentary: ‘We won’t work on a more important film’

The acclaimed documentarian’s latest epic series has been in the works for a decade and features A-list contributions from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks

Ken Burns is no longer a mere documentarian; he is a brand, a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. When he has a new project heading for the small screen, everybody wants a part of him.

Burns has done “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, nearing the end of nine-month promotional tour that included 40 cities, 80 screenings and hundreds of interviews. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.”

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:05 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:01 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 am

Brat pack: Charli xcx’s 20 best songs – ranked!

As she releases music from her upcoming soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, we count down the best of her frank, futuristic tracks

Such was the extent of fan involvement in the How I’m Feeling Now album that the title of Claws was decided by online vote. The opposite of the album’s more fraught depictions of lockdown, it celebrates being trapped with someone you love, although the clanking rhythm track adds a vague sense of unease.

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:55 pm

Brahms: Symphony No 1, Tragic Overture album review – Petrenko and the Berliners give Brahms organic momentum

(Berliner Philharmoniker)
Brahms’s Tragic Overture leaps to life while there is much interest in a careful reading of the composer’s First Symphony in this new recording from the Berlin Philharmonic with their chief conductor

The Berlin Philharmonic’s in-house label continues its mission to document chief conductor Kirill Petrenko’s considered interpretations of the classical canon. In this case, it’s Brahms’s First Symphony, captured live at the Philharmonie just two months ago, coupled with the Tragic Overture, recorded last year.

For this performance, Petrenko examined Meiningen Court Orchestra scores marked up with specific directions given by the composer himself. The results may strike some as interventionist, however there’s an organic momentum here that is hard to resist with a pronounced flexibility that, according to the excellent booklet essay, clarifies Brahms’s “furious struggle against the bar line”. Balance is impeccable, although solos seem over spotlighted at times by the recording engineers.

Published: November 20, 2025, 6:31 pm

Out of the shadows: why Avril Coleridge-Taylor deserves to be heard

The daughter of the British composer Samuel made controversial choices that took her on a different path to her father’s activism. Ahead of the premiere recording of her piano concerto, its soloist looks at a musician who learned the hard way about ‘belonging’

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous British composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s was a name enveloped in the long shadows of history.

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto with the BBC Philharmonic. With its impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer, born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a woman of colour.

Published: November 20, 2025, 4:31 pm

Víkingur Ólafsson: Opus 109 album review – pianist’s concept album opens up transcendent vistas

(Deutsche Grammophon)
Olafsson’s account of Beethoven’s Op 109 is one of the most beautiful on record, the centrepiece of a recording that links the composer to Bach and Schubert

Disinclined to follow the herd and record Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas as a job lot, Víkingur Ólafsson has chosen to circle one of them, No 30 in E major, Op 109, locating it in a musical timeline that reflects both the composer’s past and the Viennese milieu of the early 18th century.

For Ólafsson, looking backwards means turning to Bach, whose musical fingerprints he detects all over late Beethoven. The latter’s uninhibited invention, he argues, has its roots firmly in the baroque with its improvisatory elements and enthusiasm for the dance.

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:24 pm

Liars by Sarah Manguso audiobook review – livid tale of marriage gone awry

Rebecca Lowman narrates a superb, claustrophobia-inducing plunge into a relationship descending from bad to worse

Halfway through Liars, the story of a new relationship that becomes a marriage, our protagonist, Jane, is asked by a neighbour: “Why are you with him?” It’s a question that has been on the listener’s mind for some time.

Jane’s partner, John, lies about his feelings, his financial status, where he is going and where he has been. He is chaotic, lazy, resentful, entitled and given to getting drunk and spending money he hasn’t got. At the start of their marriage, Jane’s career as a writer and academic is on the up, while John – a visual artist and aspiring film-maker – has hit a professional wall. Time and time again, he insists they move cities for better work opportunities, which soon puts a spanner in his wife’s working life. It comes as no surprise that, after their son is born, Jane is left to do the parenting while her husband absents himself from his responsibilities.

Available via Picador, 6hr 7min

Published: November 20, 2025, 3:00 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 7:00 am

Ariana Grande contracts Covid during Wicked: For Good press tour

Oscar-nominated star of two-part musical forced to cancel press stops as film is predicted to deliver year’s biggest box office opening

Ariana Grande has tested positive for Covid amid the whirlwind press tour for Wicked: For Good, precluding some promotional appearances in New York.

The Grammy award winner and Oscar nominee posted an Instagram story on Thursday captioned “moments before Covid” along with a photo from her appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon from earlier this week. Grande, who plays Galinda/Glinda in the second part of Jon M Chu’s film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, will reportedly miss a few upcoming press appearances, including a slot on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:26 pm

Tatsuya Nakadai obituary

One of the greatest actors of Japanese cinema best known for Ran, the 1985 film adaptation of King Lear

Though he had the well-appointed bone structure of the 1950s matinee idol, it was Tatsuya Nakadai’s eyes that seized film audiences. Using these huge brown saucers to telegraph naivety or eerie self-possession, the Japanese actor, who has died aged 92, seemed at times to be able to make them protrude from his skull.

In the centrepiece scene of Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 King Lear adaptation Ran, when Nakadai’s warlord is ejected from his burning castle, his glare of incipient madness is unbearable.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:14 pm

Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist, dies aged 63

Ian Brown and Tim Burgess were among those to pay tribute to Mani, whose death was announced by his brother and nephew

• Alexis Petridis: ‘Mani’s writhing, relentless bass was the Stone Roses’ secret sauce – it taught indie kids how to dance’

• Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield: a life in pictures

Gary “Mani” Mounfield, best known as bassist of the Stone Roses and later a member of Primal Scream, has died aged 63. The cause of death has not been shared.

His brother Greg Mounfield posted the news on Facebook on Thursday: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.” His nephew also shared the news.

Published: November 20, 2025, 11:00 pm

‘Do you expect me to talk?’: Dick Van Dyke says he turned down playing James Bond

As the veteran actor turns 100 he reveals that he was approached to play the British spy in the 60s, but realised his accent wouldn’t have been up to scratch

For more than six decades, the actor Dick Van Dyke has been pilloried for his attempts at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964). Now, the actor who has since apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” as chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic has revealed he was in the running to play another UK icon on screen: James Bond.

Speaking on the Today TV programme in the US, Van Dyke, who turns 100 next month, said that Bond producer Albert Broccoli approached him after his performance in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968 to ask if he fancied being a successor to Sean Connery.

Published: November 20, 2025, 1:45 pm

Survive winter like a Scandinavian

Plus: the best advent calendars, toaster ovens and more

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

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

I’ve always dreaded winter. When daylight saving takes away precious hours of sunlight and I need 10 extra layers to leave my apartment, I begin counting down to summer.

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:15 pm

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

Six ways to stay warm: how a bouncer shows winter the door

From layers for your head to padded boots made in Yorkshire, our expert on keeping warm shares his hard-won expertise, learned from spending hours in the cold

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As someone who works in frontline security, standing outside bars, shops and night spots for up to 12 hours at a time – occasionally watching clubbers turn blue while waiting for a cab – I am well versed in the need to dress weather appropriately. With temperatures hitting freezing across the UK this week, here are my tips, tricks and product recommendations to keep the frostbite at bay.

It’s all about the base

Published: November 20, 2025, 4:04 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

We would like to hear about the best and worst gifts you’ve received for Christmas, a birthday or any other occasion

One Christmas, I unwrapped a dress that could only be described as an act of aesthetic violence. It was of no definable color or shape, and managed to be both too big and too small. Also, there were ruffles.

“Oh no,” my mother said when I tried it on. My father was laughing too hard to speak.

Published: November 20, 2025, 4:15 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 5:00 am

People in the US: how has the Trump administration affected your healthcare?

We’d like to hear how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is impacting your local healthcare provision

• Hospitals and clinics are shutting down due to Trump’s healthcare cuts. Here’s where

Healthcare providers across the country have closed clinics and hospital wards in the four months since Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the landmark tax-and-spending legislation that will lead an estimated 10 million people to lose their health insurance.

The law is expected to slash federal funding by hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years, as part of Trump’s campaign pledge to shrink government spending. Though the bill isn’t thought to be the only cause of the closures – it may have an impact on local healthcare settings that are financially struggling.

Published: November 20, 2025, 12:00 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 8:34 am

Mourning in Gaza and snow in Seaham: photos of the day – Thursday

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

Published: November 20, 2025, 2:02 pm