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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘May I meet you?’ is just the latest in horrible dating advice from billionaires | Arwa Mahdawi

Bill Ackman thinks his pickup line could aid population rates. Given the track record of the mega-rich, it may do the opposite

Sit down and pay attention, because this column might change your life. I bring you tidings from the Nazi-filled wilderness that is now X, where Maga-adjacent billionaire Bill Ackman has generously decided to dispense romantic advice to the masses. Online culture, Ackman notes, has “destroyed the ability to spontaneously meet strangers”. The antidote to this, he suggests, are four simple words.

“May I meet you?”

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:01 pm

The 16 best Black Friday and Cyber Monday tech deals in the US – so far

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

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:36 pm

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

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

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

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

Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:00 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:00 am

Justice department will release Epstein files within 30 days, says US attorney general – US politics live

Pam Bondi speaks after US Senate passes bill to release files – but agency may hold back material that could affect a Trump-ordered investigation

One quick note, there haven’t been any changes to Donald Trump’s schedule today, per the press pool. Which means, as of now, the president doesn’t have any time allotted to sign the bill forcing the justice department to release the full batch of Jeffrey Epstein files.

We’ll keep you updated if things change throughout the day.

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:22 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 pm

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

Fallout from increased emissions linked to president’s ‘America First’ policies expected to most affect those in poor, hot countries

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding of the human cost of the Trump administration’s approach to climate.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:34 pm

MLS reopens investigation into Philadelphia Union executive as team places him on leave

• Sporting director Ernst Tanner was subject of Guardian investigation

• Complaint to MLS alleged racist, sexist, and homophobic comments

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

• Read our full investigation | Summary of our findings

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

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

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

Directed a homophobic slur at an MLS referee in 2023

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:54 pm

US charges ex-Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin with murder of witness

Unsealed indictment says Ryan Wedding tracked down witness who was then murdered before he could testify

US authorities have charged a fugitive former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin with the murder of a witness who was prepared to testify against him.

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said on Wednesday that Ryan Wedding was accused in a newly unsealed indictment of tracking down a witness in Colombia who was then murdered before he could give evidence.

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:08 pm

‘He used to say things like “Hitler was right”’: Farage faces more allegations of racist behaviour at school

A former friend and others who were at Dulwich college with the now Reform UK leader speak of his behaviour

• ‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school

It had been a fun sleepover at Nigel Farage’s house and Jean-Pierre Lihou, a teenager with an appetite, was delighted with his schoolfriend’s mother’s hospitality. “I remember the fantastic cooked English breakfast, as opposed to what you get at a boarding house on a morning,” Lihou recalled. “I was a boarder and he was a day boy,” he said of their education at Dulwich college in south-east London.

Farage was a great mimic, and funny with it, Lihou said. But over time he found there was a darker side to his 14-year-old friend.

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:04 pm

Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer announces run for California governor

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:18 pm

Jessica Tisch will remain New York police commissioner under Mamdani

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:19 pm

Nearly all immigrants detained in Trump Chicago raid had no criminal conviction

Data sharply contradicts officials’ portrayal of immigration sweeps as effort to fight ‘worst of the worst’ criminals

More than 97% of immigrants detained in the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago had no criminal conviction, according to federal court records.

The data, released on Friday and first reported by the Chicago Tribune, sharply contradicts the Trump administration’s portrayal of the immigration sweeps as an effort to fight crime and, as Trump himself has described it, targeting the “worst of the worst”.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

Pope Leo condemns US’s ‘extremely disrespectful’ treatment of immigrants

Pontiff backs statement by US bishops condemning raids and mass deportations under Trump administration

Pope Leo has reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying foreigners in the US are being treated in an “extremely disrespectful way”.

Leo, the first US pontiff in the history of the Catholic church, made the remarks in response to questions about a statement adopted last week during a special assembly of US bishops that criticised the Trump administration’s mass deportations and lamented the fear and anxiety caused by immigration raids.

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:21 pm

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:43 pm

US education department reassigns many powers to other federal agencies

Move marks further dismantling of the department and Democrats criticized administration for ‘slashing resources’

Donald Trump’s administration has taken new steps toward dismantling the US Department of Education by reassigning many of its responsibilities to other federal agencies.

The move prompted a fresh wave of criticism, as prominent Democrats accused the administration of “slashing resources” for schools and students across the US.

Published: November 18, 2025, 11:54 pm

The FDA has warned against this ‘natural remedy’ for joint pain. San Francisco immigrants still trust it

In San Francisco, doctors say, a growing number of Latinos who work physically demanding jobs have turned to supplements that promise relief for joint and bone pain. FDA warnings are not filtering through

This story was co-published with El Tecolote, a bilingual community newsroom that serves Latinx communities who live or work in San Francisco.

When Gloria Caballero, 52, started experiencing knee pain four years ago, her sister in Los Angeles suggested a natural remedy that a co-worker had sworn by: a supplement called Artri Ajo King. Following her advice, Caballero started buying the yellow-and-blue pills in Los Angeles and bringing them up to her home in San Francisco, where she started taking them twice a day, every day.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 pm

Will Trump sign the Epstein bill and when could the files be released?

The bill passed by a passed a significant milestone in Congress and now awaits the US president’s signature

• US politics live – latest updates

The intensively discussed files related to the disgraced former financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein passed a significant milestone on Tuesday when Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of releasing them.

After months of deliberate delays and manoeuvres, the House of Representatives voted by 427 to one in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation which would, if enacted, require the justice department to release all unclassified materials on Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The Senate has unanimously agreed to swiftly pass the bill, which would then head to the White House for Donald Trump’s signature.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:47 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:07 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:24 pm

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:41 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:30 pm

Jimmy Kimmel on Epstein files congressional vote: ‘Make no mistake – this isn’t over’

Late-night hosts discussed near unanimous votes to release files after months of Trump stonewalling

Late-night hosts celebrated the congressional votes to release the Epstein files and decried Donald Trump’s warm meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:52 pm

Buckingham Palace Christmas market: why tourists flocked there – and found just locked gates and big puddles

The hot spot seemed the perfect place for Yuletide-loving royalists. But, as with the Eiffel Tower in Beijing and some of the most picturesque windmills in the Netherlands, there was much less to it than first met the eye ...

Name: Buckingham Palace Christmas market.

Age: Brand new this year.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:56 pm

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

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

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

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

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:24 pm

Welcome to Trump’s America! A place where people can’t afford to call an ambulance | Arwa Mahdawi

How are people expected to handle increased health insurance costs when everything else in life has become more expensive? I think the answer is: they’re not

I’ve got a genius business idea for people with few discernible skills. First you establish a “health insurance” company and get people to pay you large sums every month. Then, when a customer tries to use their insurance to cover medical costs, make a habit of denying their claim. While doing that, pay lobbyists to keep politicians amenable. Repeat this strategy until your company is worth billions.

I’m not saying this is exactly how the US health insurance industry works, but it’s close enough. There is a reason Americans spend the most on healthcare in the industrialised world, but have the worst health outcomes, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. Privatising a public good is great for a few well-remunerated executives but rarely benefits the masses.

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

I am the king of the common cold – and I can tell you how to avoid one | Adrian Chiles

No one suffers a cold like I do. Drops and brandy don’t touch the sides – but thanks to a friendly singer, I’ve learned a more extreme regime for countering the snuffles

This time last year, I was on a TV programme with three singers. There was a rapper of Ghanaian heritage, a big pop star, and a famous mezzo-soprano. It was deep midwinter. The night before, I’d been at an old friend’s 60th birthday, crammed into the function room of a pub somewhere in Surrey. It had been a good night, but now, just for something to say, I wondered how it was possible to avoid catching a cold when half the people at the party were players in a symphony of coughs, sneezes, snuffles and nose-blows. By the way, how come some people have nose-blows like trumpets, and others don’t? A question for another day.

At mention of my night out, this trio of troubadours in the TV green room did two things. First, they shrunk away from me slightly. Second, they engaged in a feverishly enthusiastic discussion on how to avoid catching colds which, naturally enough given their line of work, was something of an obsession for them. I get that, but I have skin in this game too – I must avoid colds at all costs because the colds I get are worse than anyone else’s. I don’t have a medical certificate to confirm this, but I know it to be true. My colds last longer. My nose is more blocked, my throat is scratchier, my coughing fits are louder, barkier and apparently endless. My family, wise to the couple of quick throat-clearances which herald the coming storm, either kick me out of the room, or clear the room themselves. Back when I presented football on ITV, my poor colleagues in the studio gallery grew attuned to the warning signs. “Cans off!” the studio director would holler to his team, before I deafened them all, blowing the wiring in their headphones.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:43 pm

Trump and his ilk imagine a world without international law – but they will not achieve it | Philippe Sands

History shows us that the creation of international rules and institutions is followed by their partial destruction, and a reconstruction that builds on what came before

Nineteen forty-five was a pivotal moment in international law, marking the founding of the United Nations and the International Military Tribunal to investigate war crimes committed during the second world war. Eighty years on, it is increasingly being said that we are living through a moment of great change, towards a world that is without such law.

In September, the Financial Times published an editorial headlined “A world without rules”. That view was premised on two incidents: Israel’s launch of a missile strike on a building that hosted Hamas officials in Qatar; and the flight of 19 Russian drones into Polish airspace. This flouting of the previous “rules-based order”, the FT said, was now producing “a kind of anarchy and a proliferation of violence”.

Philippe Sands is professor of law at University College London

This is adapted from A World Without Law?, the 46th FA Mann Lecture, delivered by Philippe Sands on 18 November 2025

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:11 pm

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

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

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

And then there’s Jameis Winston.

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

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

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:25 pm

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

• WNBA proposal includes $1.1m max salary

• Minimum salary would exceed $220,000

• League seeks swift deal before deadline

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:31 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:13 pm

‘An impossibility made possible’: how tiny Curaçao made World Cup history

Caribbean island nation is the smallest to reach tournament after appointing wily coach and drawing on diaspora

The delay in Dick Advocaat becoming Curaçao’s head coach might have been ominous but instead was the foundation for glory. Frustrated by the national federation’s financial problems, he deferred starting until January 2024, when the problems were resolved and players paid, paving the way for a historic World Cup qualifying campaign.

Curaçao will be the smallest nation – by land area and population – to play at the World Cup after their 0-0 draw in Jamaica on Wednesday. The Caribbean island has a population of 156,000, sinking the previous record holders, Iceland, which has about 400,000 inhabitants. Last month Cape Verde were confirmed as surprise tournament debutants but the African nation is almost 10 times bigger by area than the former Dutch colony, indicating the level of achievement by Advocaat and his squad.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:59 pm

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

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

• James finishes with 11 points and 12 assists

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:09 pm

Scotland’s wild World Cup moment was built by collective will and individual brilliance | Ewan Murray

Steve Clarke’s history-making team has a ferocious work ethic that should typify what Scotland stands for

It was not a time for calm reflection. Kenny McLean had just lobbed Kasper Schmeichel from the halfway line. Limbs. Unbridled, unfiltered joy.

On one outrageous Hampden Park night McLean, Kieran Tierney and Scott McTominay relegated Archie Gemmill’s stupendous solo effort against the Netherlands in 1978 to merely the fourth best Scotland goal of all time. Zinedine Zidane’s volley for Real Madrid in Hampden’s Champions League final of 2002? A mere tap-in by comparison. What was produced by McTominay, Tierney and McLean will live long in the memories of the children and grandchildren of anybody who was in attendance on Tuesday night. They call McLean “the Mayor of Norwich”. He may as well now be the mayor of Nairn, North Berwick and Newtongrange.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:32 pm

A trooper’s shove showed stardom doesn’t protect Black athletes from police | Etan Thomas

When I was a college basketball player, some believed we were treated differently from other Black and Brown people. An event last weekend suggests otherwise

It was 1996, my first day stepping foot on Syracuse University’s campus. I saw a big student protest was taking place so, with my freshman’s inquisitive mind, I ventured over to see what was going on.

I listened to a passionate sista named Kathy Ade, the president of Syracuse’s student African-American Society. She stood there with her Bantu knots and a megaphone addressing the crowd, discussing the fact that campus security was now going to be able to carry pepper spray. In the 90s – which my daughter Baby Sierra calls “the 1900s,” just to keep me humble – campus security carrying pepper spray was a big deal. Now, they all carry guns.

Published: November 18, 2025, 12:12 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 11:00 am

Moscow passes laws to boost defences against Ukrainian strikes

Vladimir Putin authorises the guarding of fuel sites by reservists, internet blackouts and tighter sentencing for acts of sabotage

Russia has passed sweeping laws to bolster its defences at home against Ukrainian drone strikes and sabotage operations, reflecting the Kremlin’s expectation of a protracted war with Ukraine.

Almost four years into Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine – a full-scale invasion he expected to last only weeks – Moscow is being targeted almost daily by Ukrainian drones striking energy facilities, while Ukrainian operatives have assassinated a number of high-profile Russian military figures deep inside the country.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:09 am

Rome decries ‘Italian-sounding’ pasta sauces on sale in EU parliament store

Agriculture minister calls for investigation over marketing of carbonara sauce containing wrong type of cured meat

Italy’s agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, has called for an immediate investigation after coming across what he claimed were jars of “Italian-sounding” pasta sauce on the shelves of the European parliament’s supermarket.

Lollobrigida, of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, was particularly vexed by a carbonara sauce made with “Italiaanse pancetta” – the classic Roman pasta dish is made with a different cured meat, guanciale – and a tomato sauce containing “oignons de Calabria”, or onions from Calabria.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:57 pm

Trump officials announce $1bn loan to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant

Facility that was site of worst nuclear disaster in US history will provide power for Microsoft datacenters

The Trump administration has announced a $1bn federal loan to restart the nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that is under contract to provide power to Microsoft’s datacenters.

The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on Tuesday that the loan to Constellation Energy, the plant’s operator, would “ensure America has the energy it needs to grow its domestic manufacturing base and win the AI race”.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:55 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:17 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:55 pm

Owl described as ‘fighter’ set to fly free after falling into cement mixer in Utah

Staff at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab spent days cleaning the concrete-covered great horned owl

An owl found partially encased in concrete after it got inside a cement mixer in south-western Utah is expected to fly free again after it was painstakingly cleaned by animal sanctuary workers who described the bird as a “fighter”.

The great horned owl was found at the Black Desert Resort in the south-western part of the state and arrived at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, earlier this month with its face, chest and right wing covered in dried concrete. After making sure the bird could breathe, sanctuary workers spent days cracking apart the concrete using forceps and cleaning its feathers using toothbrushes, dish soap and their fingers.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:32 pm

European Commission accused of ‘massive rollback’ of digital protections

Proposed changes to AI Act would make it easier for tech firms to use personal data to train models without consent

The European Commission has been accused of “a massive rollback” of the EU’s digital rules after announcing proposals to delay central parts of the Artificial Intelligence Act and water down its landmark data protection regulation.

If agreed, the changes would make it easier for tech firms to use personal data to train AI models without asking for consent, and try to end “cookie banner fatigue” by reducing the number times internet users have to give their permission to being tracked on the internet.

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:27 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:49 pm

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

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

• Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:44 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:06 am

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

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

Location Maui, Hawaii, United States

Disaster Maui wildfires, 2023

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:00 pm

Keeping promises on renewables, energy efficiency and methane ‘would avoid nearly 1C of global heating’

Analysis published at Cop30 summit shows adhering to pledges offers world hope of avoiding climate breakdown

Sticking to three key climate promises – on renewables, energy efficiency and methane – would avoid nearly 1C of global heating and give the world hope of avoiding climate breakdown, analysis published at the Cop30 climate summit suggests.

Governments have already agreed to triple the amount of renewable energy generated by 2030, double global energy efficiency by then, and make substantial cuts to methane emissions.

Published: November 19, 2025, 5:00 am

Trump shrugs off Khashoggi murder during Saudi prince’s White House visit

Trump elevates Saudi Arabia to major non-Nato ally after claiming Mohammed bin Salman ‘knew nothing’ about murder of journalist

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump has shrugged off the Saudi regime’s 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the journalist was “extremely controversial” and unpopular, dismissing the killing by observing “things happen”.

The US president made the remarks at the White House on Tuesday while welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment in Istanbul by Saudi state operatives.

Published: November 18, 2025, 9:40 pm

Singer D4vd reportedly identified as suspect in death of teen found in Tesla

LAPD sources tell NBC4 singer has not been cooperative with investigation into death of Celeste Rivas, 15

The singer D4vd has been identified as a suspect in the death of Celeste Rivas, a teenager who went missing and was found dead in the singer’s Tesla in September, Los Angeles police department sources told NBC4 Investigates.

The decomposed body of Rivas, 15, was found on 8 September in the front trunk of a black Tesla registered to D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke. The car had been ticketed in a Hollywood Hills neighborhood and then impounded in a tow yard in Los Angeles.

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 am

Meta wins major US antitrust case and won’t have to break off WhatsApp or Instagram

Challenge to Meta could have forced it to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, but judge ruled company did not hold social networking monopoly

Meta defeated a major challenge to its business on Tuesday when a US judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.

The case, brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, with the former FTC chair accusing the company of operating a “buy or bury” scheme against nascent competitors. The tech giant bought WhatsApp for $19bn in 2014. Losing either the image-based social network, which generates an estimated half of Meta’s revenue, or the world’s most popular messaging app could have done existential damage to Meta’s empire.

Published: November 18, 2025, 9:43 pm

Trump faces criticism for referring to female Bloomberg reporter as ‘piggy’

Critics accuse the US president of trying to ‘shut women journalists up’ with ‘demeaning language’

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump, who has a history of making extremely personal attacks on female journalists, referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One on Friday.

While the remark did not initially get much attention, it picked up some traction on Tuesday and has drawn backlash from fellow journalists, including some who have previously been attacked by Trump themselves.

Published: November 18, 2025, 5:52 pm

Poland closes last Russian consulate after ‘act of state terrorism’ on railway

Foreign minister orders closure of Gdańsk consulate and says four people now arrested after sabotage attack

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has described last weekend’s sabotage attack on Poland’s rail system as “an act of state terrorism” ordered by Russia, as he announced that Poland was closing the last remaining Russian consulate in the country.

“The clear intention was to cause human casualties,” he said of the weekend bomb attack.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:37 pm

Plan to speed tanks and armies across Europe in case of war with Russia

European Commission seeks to ease rules on cross-border movements to create ‘military Schengen’ zone

The EU executive has pledged to ease red tape to speed up the movement of European armies and tanks across the continent, describing it as “a critical insurance policy for European security”.

A military mobility plan announced by the European Commission on Wednesday is part of an effort to ensure Europe is ready to defend itself by 2030, in line with warnings from security services that Russia could be able to attack an EU member state within five years.

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:46 pm

Disease fears as Argentina child vaccination rates hit historic lows

Sharp drop since 2024 in country regarded as a Latin American leader in childhood and adolescent immunisation

Argentina’s childhood and adolescent vaccination rates have collapsed to historic lows, according to a new analysis, prompting warnings that once-eliminated diseases may resurge.

The study of health ministry data by the Argentinian Paediatric Society (SAP) found that fewer than half of children aged five and six received several of their essential doses in 2024. All vaccine rates analysed were below the 95% level needed to reach herd immunity.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:15 pm

How dead pigs are helping in the search for missing victims of Mexico’s drug wars

Tens of thousands of families are desperately searching for loved ones ‘disappeared’ by the country’s drug cartels. Now, pigs, drones and AI are being used to find clandestine graves

Six years ago, Guadalupe Ayala was left distraught after her 25-year-old son, Alfredo Ezequiel Campos, was taken from his home in Tlajomulco. It was another name added to the list of more than 15,000 people recorded as missing in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. In the state capital, Guadalajara, a major traffic junction plastered with posters of missing people has been renamed the “roundabout of the disappeared”.

There are more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico – one of the tragic consequences of the country’s deadly drug crisis, with most of the “disappeared” believed to be abducted by organised crime groups and drug cartels. The total is likely to be even higher as many people are not reported missing for fear of retribution.

Published: November 19, 2025, 12:00 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:29 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:31 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:00 pm

Wicked: For Good review – Cynthia Erivo sweeps the field in explosive second chunk of Oz prequel

Bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, Erivo leads a fine cast in a zingily scored conclusion to the hit origin story

Director Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.

Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the Wizard, who pretty much becomes the Darth Vader of Oz: a slippery carnival huckster who is realising that his seedy charm is corroding his soul. Jonathan Bailey pivots to a much more serious, less campy, more passionate Prince and Ariana Grande is, as ever, delicate and doll-like as Glinda, though with less opportunity for comedy. But the superstar among equals is Cynthia Erivo, bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, and revealing a new vulnerability and maturity. Elsewhere, Marissa Bode returns as Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-using half-sister; Ethan Slater is Boq, the Munchkin working as her servant; and Michelle Yeoh brings stately sweetness to the role of the Wizard’s private secretary Madame Morrible.

Published: November 18, 2025, 5:00 pm

Champagne Problems review – Netflix’s latest Christmas romcom lacks fizz

The streamer continues its annual onslaught of forgettable festive films with a mostly charmless romance set in France

At the risk of sounding like the Grinch, I must once again bemoan the release of Christmas movies before Thanksgiving; the temperatures may be dropping at long last, but it’s still too close to the gloominess of daylight savings and too far from the belt-loosening of the actual holidays to fully indulge in Netflix’s now-annual buffet of cheap Christmas confections. Nevertheless, their content conveyor belt rolls on, offering treats about as substantial and enduring as cotton candy beginning in mid-November.

Like American chocolates that no longer, in fact, contain real chocolate but sell like gangbusters on Halloween anyway, the Netflix Christmas movie, like rival holiday movie master Hallmark, is relied upon, even beloved, for its brand of badness, for its rote familiarity (nostalgic casting, basement-bargain budgets, Styrofoam snow, knowingly absurd premise) and uncanny artificial filler, for its ability to deliver hits of sugary pleasure while still somehow under-delivering on expectations. At worst, these films are forgettable train wrecks (last week’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas); at best, they are forgettable fun, such as the Lindsay Lohan comeback vehicle Falling For Christmas, of which I remember nothing other than cackling with my friend on her couch. (Actually, at best they are memorably ludicrous, such as last year’s impressively unserious Hot Frosty.)

Published: November 19, 2025, 8:06 am

Sisu: Road to Revenge review – Finnish hero takes on a Red Army butcher in terrific sequel

Punchy, old-school stunt work, inventive baddie-splattering and a simple plot as our grizzled Finish prospector finds a new foe in his Soviet-occupied homeland

In 2022, the Finnish indie action movie Sisu had the look of a one-hit wonder. Pitting a grizzled prospector against an entire platoon of Nazis, writer-director Jalmari Helander heeded the lessons of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, principally that there is serious cinematic value in going pedal-to-the-metal along a single, straight narrative line. That profitable sleeper hit now yields this choice follow-up, which somehow feels more expansive while still clocking in under 90 minutes.

Having seen off the SS, indomitable hero Aatami (Jorma Tommila) gains a tragic backstory and a new, vicious postwar foe in the tremendously named Red Army butcher Igor Draganov, played by wily James Cameron favourite Stephen Lang. Again, the economy of Helander’s approach proves striking and thrilling. No unnecessary obstacles have been placed between the audience and a good time at the movies: we get one scene of Aatami dismantling his family home beam by beam and one scene of Draganov being sprung from jail before the pair intersect in the back roads of Soviet-occupied Finland. Cutting to the chase grants Helander time to craft set pieces in which Aatami outthinks and outflanks the Red Army’s might; in this respect, Sisu 2 is a more-of-the-same sequel. The good news is that it remains terrific: punchy, old-school stunt work, crisply uncluttered cutting, and varied, inventive baddie-splattering from the moment Aatami deploys one of those beams to take down a jet fighter.

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 4:15 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:00 am

The wild old wicked gang: great Irish writers – in pictures

Edna O’Brien on her sofa, Joseph O’Connor in his garden, Seamus Heaney surrounded by books … British photographer Steve Pyke on capturing the greats of Irish literature

Published: November 18, 2025, 7:00 am

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn review – a visceral tale of witchcraft

The author of The Employees goes back to 17th-century Denmark for an intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity

On 26 June 1621, in Copenhagen, a woman was beheaded – which was unusual, but only in the manner of her death. According to one historian, during the years 1617 to 1625, in Denmark a “witch” was burned every five days. The first time this happens in Danish author Olga Ravn’s fourth novel, the condemned woman is “tied to the ladder, and the ladder pushed into the bonfire”. Her daughter watches as she falls, her eye “so strangely orange from within. And then in the heat it explodes.”

The child is watched, in turn, by a wax doll who sees everything: everything in this scene, and everything everywhere, through all space and all the time since it was fashioned. It sees the worms burrowing through the soil in which it is buried; the streets of the world in which it was made. It inhabits the bodies that walked those streets: “And I was in the king’s ear, and I was in the king’s mouth, and I was in the king’s loose tooth and in the quicksilver of his liver, and did hear.”

Published: November 18, 2025, 7:00 am

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

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

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 3:00 pm

Master System at 40: the truth about Sega’s most underrated console

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the markets in Japan and the US. But in Europe, a technologically superior rival was making it look like an ancient relic

There’s an old maxim that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as it is anywhere else. Nowadays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you were brought up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this chunky contraption essentially was the only game in town – the company had Mario after all, and its vice-like hold on third-party developers created a monopoly for major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers ruled the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior rival.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the autumn of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based around the famed Z80 CPU (used in home computers such as the Spectrum, Amstrad and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it boasted 8kb of RAM, a 64-colour palette and the ability to generate 32 sprites on screen at one time – making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

Published: November 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘We shoot at the good guys’: the role-players who train US troops – in pictures

Photographer Claire Beckett captured the soldiers and civilians who dress up as Afghans and Iraqis in military bases across America. They play everything from insurgents to shoppers in mocked-up firefights

Published: November 19, 2025, 7:00 am

Can ceramics be demonic? Edmund de Waal’s obsession with a deeply disturbing Dane

The great potter explains why he turned his decades-long fixation with Axel Salto – maker of unsettling stoneware full of tentacle sproutings and knotty growths – into a new show

Potter and writer Edmund de Waal, a dark silhouette of neat workwear against the blinding white of his studio, is erupting with thoughts, all of them tumbling out of him at once. He is giving me a tour of the former gun factory on a London industrial estate gently disciplined into architectural calm. It has work stations for his staff (it’s quite an operation); store rooms; and a main space nearly empty but for some giant black lidded vessels he made in Denmark, as capacious as coffins. At either end, up discreet sets of steps, are the places of raw creation. One, with its potter’s wheel, is where he makes; the other, with its desk and bookshelves, is where he writes.

He opens a door to the room housing his two mighty kilns, its back wall lined with rows of shelves with experiments in form and glaze, and tells me of his irritation when people comment on the sheer tidiness of the whole place. “It’s porcelain,” he says with passionate emphasis. Dust and dirt are the enemy. Potters, he points out, “have struggled for hundreds and hundreds of years to keep things clean so that they don’t blow up in kilns, or don’t bloat or don’t dunt or all the other myriad things that can happen”. He is old enough, he says, to have had the kind of potter’s apprenticeship that involved the endless sweeping up of clay dust. Dust is the traditional bringer of potter’s lung – the chronic condition, silicosis. Clouds of dust surround any pottery-making endeavour, if you’re not careful.

Published: November 18, 2025, 4:26 pm

The Kessler Twins sisters Alice and Ellen die together aged 89

German pop duo who last year said their wish was ‘to leave together’ had joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald

Alice and Ellen Kessler, the pop singing sisters who were famous in Europe in the 1960s, especially in Italy where they were credited for bringing glamour to the country’s TV network, have died aged 89.

The identical twins had chosen to have a joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald, close to Munich, on Monday, said Wega Wetzel, a spokesperson for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted dying association.

Published: November 18, 2025, 4:33 pm

John C Reilly wants to win hearts in Mister Romantic, a show that’s truly lovable

From Chicago to Stan & Ollie, the Oscar-nominated actor has sung on screen for years. Now he arrives on stage – inside a trunk – to serenade the audience

In one of Hollywood’s nicer ironies, character actor John C Reilly finally made it big with a song about being invisible. His Oscar-nominated performance as the duped and devoted schmuck Amos Hart in Kander and Ebb’s Chicago was defined by his solo, Mister Cellophane. Director Rob Marshall had him sing it in an empty theatre so Amos doesn’t even get an audience for his big number.

More than 20 years later, Reilly has dusted off a not dissimilar tailcoat and rouged his cheeks once more under a new moniker, Mister Romantic, and this time there’s a full house. Backed by a four-piece band he is here to win our hearts with 90 minutes of jazz standards and popular songs, plus the odd chanson and comic verse. After a dozen or so dates in the US, the show has a short run this week in London at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, whose beautifully restored interior and history as a music hall fits Mister Romantic like a glove.

Published: November 18, 2025, 1:51 pm

The 18 very best US Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, curated and vetted

What’s a true Black Friday steal versus a modest markdown? Our experts found the best deals and sales across home, kitchen, tech, travel and wellness products

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

We all have holiday traditions we look forward to each year: cooking your grandmother’s classic stuffing recipe. Opening your favorite Advent calendar. Or, if you’re a retailer, pushing deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

With the influx of these so-called “doorbuster deals”, it can be hard to know a true steal from a modest markdown. So we’ve asked shopping experts to curate the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales across five of the most-shopped for categories. Whether you’re looking for a much-needed sleep upgrade or a cordless vacuum that’ll stand the test of time, below is our list of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals across home, kitchen, tech, travel and wellness products. These are items that normally add up fast but right now are going for prices you won’t wince at.

Published: November 18, 2025, 9:10 pm

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

From toilet paper to toolsets, we’ve reviewed thousands of deals to find the 20 worth checking out

• The 16 best US Black Friday and Cyber Monday kitchen deals you can snag early

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

Black Friday used to be known for crazy crowds rushing into stores and fighting over the best deals. Now, that chaos has wriggled its way online. Products now come from a hundred different brands you’ve never heard of, accompanied by “reviews” that might very well be written by the very same companies.

Not to worry. More than a decade of experience as a professional product reviewer has given me a pretty well-honed nose on what’s a good deal for you and your family. Much of that time was spent in a lab, testing everything from washing machines to hair dryers. I’ve also covered retail shopping events such as Black Friday and Prime Day enough times to know how companies try to deceive you, and how to spot it.

Published: November 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

The 11 best US Black Friday and Cyber Monday travel deals already taking off

From Away, Calpak and REI, here are budget-friendly reasons to upgrade your suitcase, replace your headphones and finally invest in a set of packing cubes

• Snag these home and kitchen Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals

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

While the Black Friday deals landscape can be overwhelming – and you might be tempted to avoid it completely – some actually incredible deals do exist out there, particularly in the travel space. As a travel journalist and the writer of a packing list newsletter, I’m always on the hunt for luggage, clothing and gear that will streamline my travel process. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, I keep a trained eye on the retailers with genuine discounts on carry-on suitcases, comfortable loungewear and more. Pro tip: if a specific item catches my eye, I will Google it to see if another website is offering a more enticing deal. (It usually is.)

So if you’re hunting for items that will upgrade your travels without blowing your budget, use my curated guide to inform your shopping. I’ll be regularly updating the deals throughout the holiday sales period, so check back here for more savings over the next two weeks.

The best luggage deal:
Away Packing Pro Bundle

Published: November 18, 2025, 6:47 pm

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

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

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 2:00 pm

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 6:55 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

Untie me! Why big bows are everywhere – feminine, ironic and strangely subversive

They can be garish and ostentatious, or a sign you are softer than you might first appear. From the catwalk to the high street to the big screen to the rugby pitch, you just can’t miss them right now

Wuthering Heights is a story about pain, revenge and the Yorkshire moors as a metaphor for bad life choices. But if Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation is anything to go by, it’s also about bows.

https://composer.gutools.co.uk/content/691cb44c8f08255fbad73e2f

Published: November 18, 2025, 5:00 am

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

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

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 10:00 am

I’m vegetarian, he’s a carnivore: what can I cook that we’ll both like? | Kitchen aide

Mushrooms again come to the rescue for that meaty mouthfeel, but our panel also recommends the savoury flavours of Asia to sate those umami cravings

I’m a lifelong vegetarian, but my boyfriend is a dedicated carnivore. How can I cook to please us both?
Victoria, by email
“I have three words for you, Victoria,” says Anna Ansari, author of Silk Roads, who grew up in a predominantly vegetarian household: “Di si xian.” Typical of northern China, this stir-fry of aubergine, potato and peppers (otherwise known as the “three treasures”) is laced with soy, Shoaxing wine, white pepper, sugar, cornflour and, in Ansari’s case, doubanjiang. She also adds tofu (the fourth treasure, if you will) for “a rounded, one-pot/wok dinner” to eat with steamed rice. “It reminds me of being a teenager in Beijing, far from home and in need of warmth and comfort,” she says, and we could all do with some of that right now. “It’s also cheap as proverbial chips, not to mention quick to make, and it will knock both your socks off. Promise.”

Mushrooms could also pave the way to harmonious dining. “Surely they’re the closest thing to a natural meat substitute,” says Zak Hitchman, chef/owner of Other in Bristol. He’d be inclined to layer them up in a lasagne: “Slice a load of mixed mushrooms [chestnut, shiitake, oyster], then saute them in oil and butter with some seasoning.” Next, fry onion, garlic, celery, diced carrot, maybe some rosemary or thyme, until softened, then return the cooked mushrooms to the pot with some tinned tomatoes and tomato puree. “You could bulk it out with tinned lentils,” he says, but either way be sure to include a splash of soy and some miso for “that meaty flavour”, plus any vinegar you have knocking around “for balance”. Cook slowly until reduced, then layer between dried lasagne sheets. “Top that with bechamel [or simply dollop on some mascarpone] and lots of grated parmesan [a vegetarian one, if need be]. Drizzle with olive oil and bake until the pasta is soft, the sauce bubbling and the top golden.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: November 18, 2025, 1:00 pm

Wetlands and wildlife in the Netherlands: slowing down and connecting with nature in Friesland

The cosy cabins, bike rides and serenity of De Alde Feanen national park make it the perfect place to switch off and unwind in winter

If there are times when the sights, smells and sounds of a new destination are best downed in a single, heady, flaming sambuca of a weekend, there are others when a more slow-drip pace is called for. Such is the case with De Alde Feanen, in Friesland. One of the most peaceful national parks in the Netherlands, this 4,000-hectare wetland slows down naturally after the summer season. Its waterways shrug off their summer flocks of kayakers, paddleboarders, boat trippers and terrace diners. Museums and galleries close. The local tourist office winds down. Even the park’s population of nesting storks fly south.

A 20-minute drive south-east of Leeuwarden, in the country’s north-east, the lakes, ponds, ditches and canals of “The Old Fens” are the remains of the peat-cutting that began there in the middle ages. Now awash with reeds, rushes and sedges, its watery habitats are richly biodiverse, home to more than 100 bird species as well as otters, pine martens, roe deer and dragonflies. Hay meadows and wetland forest add marsh thistle, reed orchids, alders and willows to the list. Ribboned with well-marked hiking and cycling trails, the proximity to nature draws spring and summer tourists but treasures can be found there in autumn and winter too; among them thousands of ducks and geese, and some of the starriest skies in the Netherlands.

Published: November 18, 2025, 7:00 am

Amazon selling a tasteless Christmas baby outfit is Claus for concern

The offensive listing seemed more than a mistake – it was a failure of corporate responsibility, says reader

I found a baby outfit (sizes from newborn to five years) on Amazon bearing the phrase “Santa’s favourite ho”.

This isn’t just a tasteless mistake – it’s a failure of corporate responsibility and consumer protection. A corporation this large should have systems that prevent sexualised or exploitative language being associated with items for children.

Published: November 18, 2025, 7:00 am

Plastic surgeons wrestle with requests for ‘Mar-a-Lago face’: ‘You’re going to look like Maleficent’

The puffy, artificial look is rising in popularity - thanks to Maga elite such as Kristi Noem and Matt Gaetz

Picture a plastic surgeon’s office. You might imagine a sleek Los Angeles practice, with discreet entrances meant to conceal celebrities from the paparazzi. Maybe a Dallas high-rise, where monied housewives spend on postpartum “mommy makeovers”. Or a Miami location, where influencers and OnlyFans stars film TikToks of their BBLs. One city you might not think of is Washington DC. But its buttoned-up reputation belies a newly buzzing industry.

Much has been made of the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face”, or the uncannily smooth and artificially voluminous features seen on the likes of Maga elite such as Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz. The bee-sting puffy lips, frozen brows and taut necks have been compared to Real Housewives stars, sleep paralysis demons and – ironically, considering the Republican party’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture war – drag queens (minus the campy fun).

Published: November 18, 2025, 4:33 pm

Mahmood Mamdani on Zohran, Uganda and forced expulsion: ‘Who is part of the nation and who is not?’

After being expelled from his homeland in 1972, the academic has grappled with questions of political belonging – a major theme of his son’s mayoral campaign

The night before Mahmood Mamdani was expelled from Uganda in 1972, a senior professor from the university where he had been employed as a lowly teaching assistant wandered into his family home, looking for spoils. The rest of the family had already left – for the UK, the US and Tanzania – but 26-year-old Mamdani had decided to remain until the final day of the three-month period that Idi Amin, the Ugandan president, had designated for all Asians to leave the country. Passing over the furniture and other remnants of decades of family life, the professor hit upon a carton of Johnnie Walker Red, which Mamdani invited him to take home.

Published: November 18, 2025, 2:26 pm

Scotland football supporters: share your views on qualifying for the men’s World Cup

We’d like to hear from Scotland football supporters – tell us how you feel about qualifying and any plans to watch the matches

Scotland’s men have secured a place at the World Cup for the first time in nearly three decades.

After a nail-biting match at Hampden Park in Glasgow, they beat group favourites Denmark 4-2.

Published: November 19, 2025, 9:47 am

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

We’d like to hear from fans about their experience of buying tickets – and also from those who have decided against doing so

The first two rounds of ticket sales for the 2026 World Cup have opened. Yet even with the draw yet to take place and matchups yet to be determined, fans appear to be flocking to buy them. The dynamic pricing model instituted by Fifa has raised prices sky-high, with many fans offering stories of technological issues with Fifa’s sales platform as well.

We want to hear from you: Have you bought World Cup tickets? How much did you spend? Do you think it’ll be worth it? And did you face any obstacles – technical or otherwise – to getting the tickets you want? And if you haven’t bought tickets yet – why not?

Published: November 18, 2025, 10:00 am

Tell us your favourite late-arriving TV characters

We would like to hear your favourite characters whose gamechanging arrivals lifted the shows they were in

From Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones to the Hot Priest in Fleabag, we have picked our favourite 18 TV characters whose gamechanging arrival in later seasons have lifted their whole show. Now we would like to hear yours. Who is your favourite late-arriving TV character and why?

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

Published: November 18, 2025, 4:14 pm

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

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

Published: November 19, 2025, 1:54 pm