If the US forces me to choose between my two nationalities, I choose France – and Europe | Alexander Hurst

Proposals to change US citizenship rules leaves dual citizens like me caught in the crossfire. If push comes to shove, I know where my loyalty lies

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

A Hollywood ending? Inside the final days of LeBron James in Los Angeles

A new book explores how an all-time great and a world famous franchise handle the waning of a monumental career

In a book about LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s only fitting that one memorable scene involves a Hollywood star: Will Smith.

Yaron Weitzman’s latest book is titled A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers. Suffice to say the plot thickens when Smith goes to the Lakers’ film room to speak to the team in 2022.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era review – as she breaks down over the terror plot, it’s impossible not to feel her pain

The singer’s tears over the Islamic State terrorist plot against her show and Southport attack make this behind-the-scenes docuseries about her world-conquering tour more moving than anyone could have anticipated

Swifties had long guessed that there would be a documentary going behind the scenes of Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour. The 2023 Eras Tour concert movie didn’t show any of the inner workings of this three-and-a-half-hour behemoth, which ran for 149 dates from 2023-24. Fans put some bits together, such as how Swift arrived on stage being pushed inside a cleaning cart. Plus, given the two albums she wrote during and about the Eras tour – 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department and this year’s The Life of a Showgirl – it wouldn’t be Swiftian to overlook another lucrative IP extension.

What fans could never have imagined was that Disney was set to start filming as the Eras tour was due to hit Vienna on 8 August 2023 – the first of three shows in the Austrian capital that were cancelled owing to an Islamic State terrorist plot. We learn this in episode one of the six-part docuseries The End of an Era, when Swift and her longtime friend Ed Sheeran are backstage at Wembley, hours before he guests at her first concert after the thwarted attack. “I didn’t even get to go,” Swift tells him of Vienna. “I was on the plane headed there. I just need to do this show and re-remember the joy of it because I’m a little bit just like …” She can’t find the words.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:24 pm

‘I lived out moments of my mother’s passing I never saw’: Kate Winslet on grief, going red and Goodbye June

For her directorial debut, Winslet assembled a cast including Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough to tell a story inspired by her own family’s bereavement. The actors talk mourning, immortality and hospital vending machines

In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, “like the north star just dropped out of the sky”.

It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. “I do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Men explicitly loving men is so threatening to the status quo’: why are gay male pop stars being shut out of the music industry?

Not long ago, artists such as Lil Nas X and Olly Alexander were ruling pop. But success has stalled as acts face industry obstacles and rising homophobia. What now?

At the turn of the decade, gay male and non-binary pop stars seemed poised to take pop music by storm. Lil Nas X broke out with Old Town Road – which blew up on TikTok, sold about 18.5m copies and remains tied with Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You as the longest-running No 1 single in US history – and artists such as Sam Smith, Troye Sivan and Olly Alexander from Years & Years were all singing about gay love and sex.

But the initial promise has stalled. Lil Nas X’s attempts to build on his smash debut album have fizzled, and he is publicly dealing with mental health issues. In October, Khalid released his first album since being outed by his ex last year but only sold 10,000 copies in the first week in the US. A previous album, 2019’s Free Spirit, sold some 200,000 copies in the first week and led to him briefly dethroning Ariana Grande as the most listened to artist on Spotify.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

‘Getting lost is good’: skybridge and floating stairs bring fun and thrills to mighty new Taiwan museum

With its soaring ceilings, meandering pathways and mesh-like walls, Taichung Art Museum, designed by Sanaa, sweeps visitors from library to gallery to rooftop garden for rousing views

Walking through the brand new Taichung Art Museum in central Taiwan, directions are kind of an abstract concept. Designed by powerhouse Japanese architecture firm Sanaa, the complex is a collection of eight askew buildings, melding an art museum and municipal library, encased in silver mesh-like walls, with soaring ceilings and meandering pathways.

Past the lobby – a breezy open space that is neither inside nor out – the visitor wanders around paths and ramps, finding themselves in the library one minute and a world-class art exhibition the next. A door might suddenly step through to a skybridge over a rooftop garden, with sweeping views across Taichung’s Central Park, or into a cosy teenage reading room. Staircases float on the outside of buildings, floor levels are disparate, complementing a particular space’s purpose and vibe rather than having an overall consistency.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:16 pm

Trump officials ‘conspiring to illegally intimidate’ non-citizens via new VA report, lawmakers say

Exclusive: Congress members seek answers after Guardian revealed data to be shared for immigration enforcement

More than 20 members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and homeland security officials after the Guardian revealed the VA is compiling a report on all non-US citizens “employed by or affiliated with” the government agency that will then be shared with other federal agencies, including immigration authorities.

The lawmakers, led by Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez – along with congressman Mark Takano of California and US senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the House and Senate veterans affairs committees – have written a group letter to be sent to the VA secretary, Doug Collins, and the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, on Friday.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Republicans and Democrats can work together on healthcare, says Trump, as rise in premiums looms – US politics live

President spoke at Congressional ball after Senate rejected two competing proposals to address imminent expiration of Obamacare subsidies

The admiral in charge of US military forces in Latin America will retire two years early, AP reports, amid rising tensions with Venezuela that include Wednesday’s seizure of an oil tanker and more than 20 deadly strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats.

Three US officials and two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that Admiral Alvin Holsey was pushed out by defense secretary Pete Hegseth. Two officials said Hegseth had grown frustrated with Southern Command as he sought to flex US military operations and planning in the region.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:05 pm

Judge issues temporary order to block officials from detaining Kilmar Ábrego García

Ábrego was freed from immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania after federal judge ordered his release

• US politics live – latest updates

A federal judge on Friday morning issued a temporary restraining order to prohibit immigration officials from detaining Kilmar Ábrego García just hours before he was scheduled to appear at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore.

His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again. The judge says officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:13 pm

Trump expands Venezuela sanctions as Maduro decries new ‘era of piracy’

Six more oil supertankers added to sanctions list, as well as members of Maduro’s extended family, amid rising tensions following tanker seizure

Donald Trump has exerted more pressure on Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, expanding sanctions and issuing fresh threats to strike land targets in Venezuela, as the South American dictator accused the US president of ushering in a new “era of criminal naval piracy” in the Caribbean.

Late on Thursday, the US imposed curbs on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil supertankers and the shipping companies linked to them. The treasury department alleged the vessels “engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:43 am

Trump signs executive order aimed at preventing states from regulating AI

Order, which lacks the force of law, also creates taskforce whose ‘sole responsibility’ will be challenging states’ AI laws

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that seeks to halt any laws limiting artificial intelligence and block states from regulating the rapidly emerging technology. The order also creates a federal taskforce that will have the “sole responsibility” of challenging states’ AI laws.

At a signing ceremony, the president touted AI companies’ enthusiasm for wanting to “invest” in the United States and said that “if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:47 am

Indiana Republicans reject effort to redraw voting maps in rebuke to Trump

Measure to redistrict, which would add two GOP-friendly seats, failed 19-31 after 21 Republicans joined 10 Democrats

• Trump news at a glance

Indiana Republicans rejected an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map on Thursday, a stunning and blunt rebuke of Donald Trump and Republican efforts to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts to add two more Republican-friendly seats.

The measure failed 19-31, with 21 Republicans joining 10 Democrats in rejecting the new maps.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:51 pm

Air passengers exposed to extremely high levels of ultrafine particle pollution, study finds

Levels during boarding and taxiing were far above those defined as high by the World Health Organization

A study has revealed the concentrations of ultrafine particles breathed in by airline passengers.

A team of French researchers, including those from Université Paris Cité, built a pack of instruments that was flown alongside passengers from Paris Charles de Gaulle to European destinations. The machinery was placed on an empty seat in the front rows or in the galley.

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

Russian ambassador summoned to Berlin over claims Kremlin is seeking to destabilise Germany – Europe live

Foreign ministry says there has been ‘significant increase in Russian hybrid activities’ and government will decide on further diplomatic measures later

Russia’s central bank said it was suing the Belgium-based Euroclear financial group, which holds Moscow’s frozen international reserves, as the EU moves closer to using the funds to support Ukraine, AFP reported.

The bank said it was filing “a lawsuit against Euroclear in the Moscow Arbitration Court” due to what it called “the illegal actions” of the institution.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:29 pm

Gas explosion in San Francisco Bay Area injures at least six people

Explosion led to three-alarm blaze in Hayward, California, neighborhood after construction crew damaged a gas pipe

A big explosion erupted in a San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood of Hayward, California, after a gas line rupture on Thursday, injuring at least six people, according to local news reports.

The explosion broke out around 9.30am local time, several hours after a construction crew damaged a gas pipe. At least eight fire engines and two fire trucks responded to the three-alarm blaze.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:55 pm

Woman extradited to US to face charges immediately detained by ICE in ‘Kafkaesque’ twist

Prosecutors had worked to secure extradition of Yana Leonova, but efforts unraveled when immigration officials issued order to deport her

An ongoing FBI investigation into a Belarusian woman accused of smuggling US aviation parts and electronics to Russia is teetering on the brink of collapse after being caught in what one judge called a “Kafkaesque” case brought on by the Trump administration’s attempts to deport her before she faces trial.

Federal prosecutors had worked for over a year to secure the extradition of Yana Leonova, who faces multiple charges including fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. But their efforts unraveled when immigration officials abruptly issued an order to detain and deport her soon after she was flown into the US last month, a move that plunged the case into legal chaos.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:48 pm

Trump administration creates new militarized zone in California along southern US border

Trump hands 760 acres of California public land to the navy for a new defense zone, deepening border militarization

The US’s southern border is poised to become more militarized following an announcement by Trump administration officials that armed forces would now oversee 760 acres of public land for a three-year period.

The US Department of Interior said in a statement that jurisdiction over this acreage – located in California’s San Diego and Imperial counties – would be transferred to the US navy “to establish a National Defense Area to support ongoing border security operations”.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:03 pm

‘Censorship pure and simple’: critics hit out at Trump plan to vet visitors’ social media

Some warn proposal will decimate US tourism industry as free speech advocates say it will lead to people self-censoring

Free speech advocates have accused Donald Trump of “shredding civil liberties” and “censorship pure and simple” after the White House said it planned to require visa applicants from dozens of countries to provide social media, phone and email histories for vetting before being allowed into the US.

In a move that some commentators compared to China and others warned would decimate tourism to the US, including the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the Department for Homeland Security said it was planning to apply the rules to visitors from 42 countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia, France, Germany and Japan, if they want to enter the US on the commonly used Esta visa waiver.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:00 pm

Protesters interrupt Noem hearing with Exorcist line: ‘The power of Christ compels you!’

Two protesters disrupted House panel hearing, with one yelling line made famous in 1973 horror film

Protesters briefly interrupted the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, during a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday, evoking a quote from the film The Exorcist.

As Noem delivered her opening remarks before the House committee on homeland security, two protesters disrupted the session, with one yelling: “Stop ICE raids! The power of Christ compels you! End deportations, the power of Christ compels you!”

Published: December 11, 2025, 6:05 pm

Hightailing along high streets and raiding ponds: otters’ revival in Britain

Still rare only 20 years ago, the charismatic animals are in almost every UK river and a conservation success story

On a quiet Friday evening, an otter and a fox trot through Lincoln city centre. The pair scurry past charity shops and through deserted streets, the encounter lit by the security lamps of shuttered takeaways. Each animal inspects the nooks and crannies of the high street before disappearing into the night, ending the unlikely scene captured by CCTV last month.

Unlike the fox, the otter has been a rare visitor in towns and cities across the UK. But after decades of intense conservation work, that is changing. In the past year alone, the aquatic mammal has been spotted on a river-boat dock in London’s Canary Wharf, dragging an enormous fish along a riverbank in Stratford-upon-Avon, and plundering garden ponds near York. One otter was even filmed causing chaos in a Shetland family’s kitchen in March.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

US agents increasingly arresting Afghan asylum seekers, lawyers say: ‘A huge chilling effect’

Lawyers say people ‘don’t feel safe to leave their home’ as officials target recent arrivals and those awaiting hearings

Immigration agents appear to be increasingly arresting and detaining Afghan asylum seekers, especially men, who have arrived in the US recently and are awaiting court hearings to decide their cases.

Amir – an asylum seeker who came to the US via Mexico in 2024 – was driving home from his English class in Bloomington, Indiana just after noon on Monday, when he was pulled over by an unmarked police vehicle. Minutes later, the asylum seeker from Afghanistan was cuffed and driven to a detention center.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘Rebranded plantations’: how empire shaped luxury Caribbean tourism

Research shows that the British colonial wealth extraction system still influences the region’s tourist industry

Luxury tourism in the Caribbean sells a kind of timelessness. A paradise of sun, sea and sand. But to step off the cruise ship or away from the all-inclusive resort is to see a more complex picture: a history of colonialism and a future of climate devastation. New research from the Common Wealth thinktank maps how, over the 400 years since the first English ships arrived in Barbados, empire engineered a system of wealth extraction that shapes the tourism economies of today.

Sir Hilary Beckles, Barbadian historian and chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, describes Barbados as the birthplace of British slave society. Between 1640 and 1807, Britain transported about 387,000 enslaved west Africans to the island. Extraordinary violence, from whippings to amputations and executions, were a regular feature of their lives. On the Codrington Plantation in the mid-18th century, 43% of the enslaved died within three years of their arrival. Life expectancy at birth for an enslaved person on the island was 29 years old. This was the incalculable human cost of the transatlantic slave economy.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

‘Soil is more important than oil’: inside the perennial grain revolution

Scientists in Kansas believe Kernza could cut emissions, restore degraded soils and reshape the future of agriculture

On the concrete floor of a greenhouse in rural Kansas stands a neat grid of 100 plastic plant pots, each holding a straggly crown of strappy, grass-like leaves. These plants are perennials – they keep growing, year after year. That single characteristic separates them from soya beans, wheat, maize, rice and every other major grain crop, all of which are annuals: plants that live and die within a single growing season.

“These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations],” says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan’s breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘If we build it, they will come’: Skövde, the tiny town powering up Sweden’s video game boom

It started with a goat. Now – via a degree for developers and an incubator for startups – the tiny city is churning out world-famous video game hits. What is the secret of its success?

On 26 March 2014, a trailer for a video game appeared on YouTube. The first thing the viewer sees is a closeup of a goat lying on the ground, its tongue out, its eyes open. Behind it is a man on fire, running backwards in slow motion towards a house. Interspersed with these images is footage of the goat being repeatedly run over by a car. In the main shot, the goat, now appearing backwards as well, flies up into the first-floor window of a house, repairing the glass it smashed on its way down. It hurtles through another window and back to an exploding petrol station, where we assume its journey must have started.

This wordless, strangely moving video – a knowing parody of the trailer for a zombie survival game called Dead Island – was for a curious game called Goat Simulator. The game was, unsurprisingly, the first to ever put the player into the hooves of a goat, who must enact as much wanton destruction as possible. It was also the first massive hit to come out of a small city in Sweden by the name of Skövde.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

NFL playoff race: Patriots and Bills battle in AFC East as Rivers runs it back

The AFC East rivals face off in a game that could decide their conference’s top seed, while a familiar face may return for the Colts

There is some serious debate that could run over this week’s top-shelf matchup. The Rams, the NFC’s current No 1 seeds, are welcoming the Lions, who claimed top seed in the conference last season. The Denver Broncos, the AFC leaders, host the Green Bay Packers who still have a shot at a first-round bye in the NFC. Either way you go you won’t be disappointed. Only there is a third way: Buffalo v New England. The emphasis is on the bounty that winning brings rather than the perils of defeat on Sunday. The Patriots can wrestle back the AFC’s No 1 seed while Buffalo can give themselves a shot at snatching the AFC East title from New England. Oh, and two MVP candidates in Drake Maye and Josh Allen are running the show. It could be a classic.

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

The 50 best movies of 2025 in the US

From astonishing docs and biopics to madcap adventures and emotional sucker punches – our critics pick the best from a spectacular year on the silver screen

• Read the UK cut of this list
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 12, 2025, 11:46 am

‘Dangerous and scary’: how a US special forces vet helped María Corina Machado flee Venezuela

Bryan Stern recounts hazardous night mission that provided perfect cover for Venezuelan opposition leader’s escape

María Corina Machado’s getaway from Venezuela involved a long, “scary” and very wet sea crossing in the dead of night with no lights, according to the American man who says he led the operation.

Bryan Stern, who heads a nonprofit rescue organisation, detailed the mission in an CBS interview published on Thursday after the Venezuelan opposition figure emerged in Norway after the Nobel peace prize ceremony.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:10 pm

Welcome to the 2026 World Cup shakedown! The price of a ticket: the integrity of the game | Marina Hyde

In World Cup parlance, Qatar was Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s qualifier. Now it’s the big time for Trump’s dictator-curious protege

I used to think Fifa’s recent practice of holding the World Cup in autocracies was because it made it easier for world football’s governing body to do the things it loved: spend untold billions of other people’s money and siphon the profits without having to worry about boring little things like human rights or public opinion. Which, let’s face it, really piss around with your bottom line.

But for a while now, that view has seemed ridiculously naive, a bit like assuming Recep Erdoğan followed Vladimir Putin’s election-hollowing gameplan just because hey, he’s an interested guy who likes to read around a lot of subjects. So no: Fifa president Gianni Infantino hasn’t spent recent tournaments cosying up to authoritarians because it made his life easier. He’s done it to learn from the best. And his latest decree this week simply confirms Fifa is now a fully operational autocracy in the classic populace-rinsing style. Do just absorb yesterday’s news that the cheapest ticket for next year’s World Cup final in the US will cost £3,120 – seven times more than the cheapest ticket for the last World Cup final in Qatar. (Admittedly, still marginally cheaper than an off-peak single from London to Manchester.)

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Most people aren’t fretting about an AI bubble. What they fear is mass layoffs | Steven Greenhouse

Artificial intelligence could make income inequality even worse and create a new underclass. Governments and society must take action

Nowadays there seems to be nonstop discussion about AI, with much of the conversation focused on whether there’s a speculative bubble or whether the chipmaker Nvidia is really worth $5tn or whether OpenAI will beat its rivals in developing new generations of artificial intelligence. But the vast majority of Americans – just like the vast majority of Europeans and Asians – couldn’t care less about those things.

Their big concern is whether AI is going to cause huge layoffs and create a disastrous job market, especially for younger workers. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a leading AI company, fed those fears when he said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years and increase unemployment in the US to 10% to 20%. In October, Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate education and labor committee, issued a report saying AI and automation could replace up to 97m jobs in the US over the next decade.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction | George Monbiot

Plummeting birth rates mean that without attracting immigration, many countries are sliding towards collapse

I know what “civilisational erasure” looks like: I’ve seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It’s a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. After a minor bump over the past 20 years, the EU rate appears to be declining once more, and now stands at 1.38. The UK’s is 1.44. A population’s replacement rate is 2.1. You may or may not see this as a disaster, but the maths doesn’t care what you think. We are gliding, as if by gravitational force, towards the ground.

Civilisational erasure is the term the Trump administration used in its new national security strategy, published last week. It claimed that immigration, among other factors, will result in the destruction of European civilisation. In reality, without immigration there will be no Europe, no civilisation and no one left to argue about it.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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

Published: December 12, 2025, 6:00 am

AI is filling the God void for many – but is ChatGPT really something to worship? | Brigid Delaney

Comforting reassurance was once the work of the church. Now it’s increasingly being sought from the machine

A few summers ago I attended two funerals in a week.

One was for a man who was atheist and had lots of worldly success. The second was for a woman who was Catholic, raised three children and lived a much quieter life.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die …

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Donald Trump wants a Europe in chaos – a sure sign for Britain to shore up its democracy | Polly Toynbee

With the US threatening to support ‘patriotic’ parties here, we need better defences, starting with tough new rules about political donations

The new threat is so dizzyingly bizarre that Europe, and especially Britain, is slow to believe it. The US declares itself our enemy. Europe emerges as its main adversary in the US national security strategy. Russia is its friend, not us. Everything that looked solid since the second world war is turned upside down; the land of the free becomes the destroyer of democratic values. Appeasement fails.

He may ramble, but Donald Trump speaks plainly. He means what he says, and he hates everything European. Except its emerging “patriotic” parties, which he wants to support. His strategy warns of “civilizational erasure”, claiming Europe will soon “become majority non-European” and parroting the racist conspiracy known as the great replacement theory. Describing Europeans as “weak”, “decaying” and “destroying their countries”, with “real stupid” leaders, Trump responded to the question of whether they would still be allies, in a Politico interview, with a hint of threat: “It depends.”

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Trans rights should be a private affair. A toxic debate does no one any favours | Simon Jenkins

The courts are a clumsy means to negotiate social relationships. Let organisations make up their own minds about inclusion

Towards the end of her life, I was a friend of the writer Jan Morris. I had known her for many years and, much to my regret, had declined an offer to do her “tell all” interview when she transitioned. Jan presented herself as a woman and had undergone an operation. To me she was simply a remarkable woman. She touched, sometimes humorously, on embarrassing incidents in her life. But it never occurred to me that a legal ruling might hover over our restaurant table and block her from going to the ladies.

Last April, the supreme court issued a ruling confirming that the word “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, not a person’s legal gender. This has a wide-reaching impact on how equality law is applied in practice, particularly in providing sex-based rights such as single-sex spaces. Six months later, a draft code on the ruling’s implementation was sent by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson. She has been sitting on it ever since, pleading for more time.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

The Paris climate treaty changed the world. Here’s how | Rebecca Solnit

There’s much more to do, but we should be encouraged by the progress we have made

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris climate treaty, one of the landmark days in climate-action history. Attending the conference as a journalist, I watched and listened and wondered whether 194 countries could ever agree on anything at all, and the night before they did, people who I thought were more sophisticated than me assured me they couldn’t. Then they did. There are a lot of ways to tell the story of what it means and where we are now, but any version of it needs respect for the complexities, because there are a lot of latitudes between the poles of total victory and total defeat.

I had been dreading the treaty anniversary as an occasion to note that we have not done nearly enough, but in July I thought we might be able celebrate it. Because, on 23 July, the international court of justice handed down an epochal ruling that gives that treaty enforceable consequences it never had before. It declares that all nations have a legal obligation to act in response to the climate crisis, and, as Greenpeace International put it, “obligates states to regulate businesses on the harm caused by their emissions regardless of where the harm takes place. Significantly, the court found that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is fundamental for all other human rights, and that intergenerational equity should guide the interpretation of all climate obligations.” The Paris treaty was cited repeatedly as groundwork for this decision.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Lindsey Vonn continues remarkable comeback with World Cup ski victory at 41

• Skier breaks record after destroying field at San Moritz

• One of favourites for 2026 Winter Olympics downhill

Lindsey Vonn’s extraordinary comeback from retirement and serious knee surgery gathered pace on Friday when she became the oldest skier to win a World Cup race at the age of 41.

The American, who had not raced for five years until she returned to the circuit last year, destroyed the women’s downhill field in San Moritz to win by nearly a second.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:35 pm

Trinity Rodman: why US soccer could lose its most compelling star to Europe

The forward’s blocked contract and a growing talent drain to Europe have nudged the NWSL into crisis mode. Here’s what’s happening and why it matters

The Trinity Rodman contract saga has exposed a fundamental tension at the heart of the National Women’s Soccer League: a salary-cap model built for stability and measured growth coming in collision with a global market that has accelerated far beyond it.

Rodman is one of the most important young players in US soccer, arguably its most marketable female star and a centerpiece of the NWSL’s future. Yet European giants have offered her salaries that America’s top women’s domestic league cannot legally match, prompting the NWSL to veto a record-breaking Washington Spirit deal (and the players’ union to file a grievance in response).

Published: December 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Gabriel Jesus is looking to impress, Daniel Muñoz is tough to replace and is this it for Mohamed Salah at Liverpool?

• Premier League top scorers: the Golden Boot race

This season Chelsea have held Arsenal after going down to 10 men and have beaten Barcelona, Liverpool and Tottenham. They have also dropped points against Atalanta, Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton, Leeds, Qarabag and Sunderland. It is clear that winning against smaller sides remains a problem for Enzo Maresca. Chelsea rise to the big occasion but inconsistency flares when they are expected to win. They do not like playing against deep defences – Maresca has often reacted with dismay when opponents switch to a back five to counter his carefully formulated plans – and can be forgiven if they are edgy about hosting Everton on Saturday. David Moyes’s side have just recorded clean sheets at Bournemouth and Manchester United. They will back themselves to neutralise Chelsea’s attacking talents. Jacob Steinberg

Chelsea v Everton, Saturday 3pm (all times GMT)

Liverpool v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Burnley v Fulham, Saturday 5.30pm

Arsenal v Wolves, Saturday 8pm

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 am

Chess: Magnus Carlsen wins Freestyle Tour title despite defeat in final event

Norway’s world No 1, 35, lost 0.5-1.5 to the US veteran Levon Aronian, 43, in Cape Town but was already sure of overall victory and a prize of around $500k

Norway’s world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, was shocked by a 0.5-1.5 loss to the US veteran Levon Aronian in Thursday’s final of the Freestyle Grand Slam Tour in Cape Town, but still finished the overall winner of the five-event Tour.

Freestyle chess is also known as Fischer Random and Chess 960. Pieces start randomly placed on the two back rows, thus drastically limiting opening preparation. Its 2025 season, with a Tour financed mainly by a $12m investment from the venture firm Left Lane Capital, has featured tournaments in Weissenhaus, Karlsruhe, Paris and Las Vegas before the final in South Africa.

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Jason Collins, NBA’s first openly gay player, says he has a year to live after brain tumor diagnosis

• Collins discloses stage 4 glioblastoma diagnosis

• Former NBA trailblazer pursuing new therapies

• Symptoms appeared and worsened rapidly

Jason Collins, the former NBA player who became the first openly gay man to play in a major US pro sports league, said Thursday he’s battling “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer”.

Collins, who revealed in a brief statement in September that he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, said in an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne published Thursday that he has stage 4 glioblastoma.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:01 pm

Nascar settles antitrust lawsuit with Michael Jordan–backed team after bruising trial

• Antitrust case ends in confidential deal

• Jordan, teams win stronger voice in Nascar

• New ‘evergreen’ charter terms required

Nascar reached a confidential settlement agreement on Thursday with Front Row Motorsports and Michael Jordan’s 23XI racing in a federal courtroom in Charlotte.

The two race teams filed an antitrust lawsuit against the motorsports organization in 2024, alleging monopolist practices and accusing Nascar of using anti-competitive tactics to pressure teams into compliance.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:20 pm

Can a nepo baby be an underdog? The remarkable rise of Shedeur Sanders

The quarterback was seen as living off his father’s name when he entered the NFL. But he has slowly started to prove himself at the Cleveland Browns

It seems the goalposts are always moving on Shedeur Sanders, the Cleveland Browns’ rookie quarterback who keeps throwing people off.

He excelled at two colleges to establish himself as a top NFL prospect, only to wind up getting picked in the fifth round of this year’s NFL draft in one of the most dramatic stock crashes in league history. He then distinguished himself in training camp, only to wind up as the back-up to the back-up. When Sanders was finally pressed into injury relief duty last month and led the Browns to just their third win of the season, the caveat was that his breakthrough had come at the expense of the even-worse Las Vegas Raiders. Last week against the struggling Tennessee Titans, Sanders became the first Browns quarterback to throw for more than 300 yards and three touchdowns and rush for another score in the same game since 1950. But for many, the bigger headline was that he lost. Again.

Published: December 11, 2025, 1:24 pm

UK imposes sanctions on four RSF officers for ‘heinous’ mass killings in Sudan

Senior commanders accused of atrocities against civilians face asset freezes – but no action against key backer UAE

The UK has placed sanctions on four senior commanders of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces suspected of involvement in “heinous” violence against civilians in the city of El Fasher, but decided not to take any action against their key military and diplomatic backer, the United Arab Emirates, or their chief commander.

British officials suggested they preferred to use their leverage with the UAE and the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, privately, but admitted there was little sign of a ceasefire in Sudan’s near three-year civil war.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:09 pm

Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud

Co-founder of Singapore-based Terraform Labs given more jail time by US judge than prosecutors sought

Do Kwon, the entrepreneur behind two cryptocurrencies that lost $40bn (£29.8bn) three years ago and caused the sector to crash, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud.

The South Korean, 34, had pleaded guilty to two counts of US charges of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud.

Published: December 12, 2025, 9:09 am

‘The worst is when the rubbish explodes’: the children living in Patagonia’s vast dumps

In sprawling landfills, thousands of Argentinian families scavenge for survival amid toxic waste and government neglect, dreaming of steady jobs and escape

The sun rises over the plateau of Neuquén’s open-air rubbish tip. Maia, nine, and her brothers, aged 11 and seven, huddle by a campfire. Their mother, Gisel, rummages through bags that smell of rotten fruit and meat.

Situated at the northern end of Argentinian Patagonia, 100km (60 miles) from Vaca Muerta – one of the world’s largest fossil gas reserves – children here roam amid twisted metal, glass and rubbish spread over five hectares (12 acres). The horizon is waste.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Primal Scream defend image of swastika inside Star of David shown during London gig

Scottish rock band says image ‘meant to provoke debate, not hate’ after many at concert accuse group of antisemitism

The Scottish rock group, Primal Scream, has defended displaying an image of a swastika inside a Star of David during a London gig, in response to accusations of racism and antisemitism.

During a performance at the London’s Roundhouse, a video was shown on stage of a swastika in the centre of a Star of David that was then superimposed over eyes of images of political figures, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US president, Donald Trump.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:16 pm

Liam Neeson denies anti-vax views after narrating Covid documentary

Taken star lends his voice to a film that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and includes interview with RFK Jr

Liam Neeson has lent his voice to a new documentary that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and praises Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The film, called Plague of Corruption, is narrated by the Taken actor and based on a bestselling book co-authored by Judy Mikovits, a disgraced former scientist who gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic. She claimed Covid was caused by a bad strain of the flu vaccine and urged people not to get vaccinated.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:23 am

Australia’s social media ban launched with barely a hitch – but the real test is still to come

The policy to cut off social media access for more than 2 million under-16s remains popular with Australians, while other countries look to follow suit

On the lawns of the prime minister’s Kirribilli residence in Sydney, overlooking the harbour, Anthony Albanese said he had never been prouder.

“This is a day in which my pride to be prime minister of Australia has never been greater. This is world-leading. This is Australia showing enough is enough,” he said as the country’s under-16s social media ban came into effect on Wednesday.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Dozens killed in hospital strike in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state

Conflict monitors say the junta has increased airstrikes year-on-year since the start of Myanmar’s civil war

Dozens have been killed in a military strike on a hospital in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, according to an aid worker, a rebel group, a witness and local media reports, as the junta wages a withering offensive ahead of elections beginning this month.

“The situation is very terrible,” said on-site aid worker Wai Hun Aung. “As for now, we can confirm there are 31 deaths and we think there will be more deaths. Also there are 68 wounded and will be more and more.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:07 am

South Korea exam chief quits after complaints English test was too hard

Notoriously difficult entrance exam is regarded as gateway to economic security and even a good marriage

The chief organiser of South Korea’s notoriously gruelling university entrance exams has resigned – after complaints that an English test he designed was too difficult.

Passing the exam, known locally as the Suneung, is essential for admission to prestigious universities and regarded as a gateway to upward social mobility, economic security and even a good marriage.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:08 am

Star Wars, Tomb Raider and a big night for Expedition 33 – what you need to know from The Game Awards

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won nine awards, including game of the year, while newly announced games at the show include the next project from Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios

• The Game Awards 2025: the full list of winners

At the Los Angeles’ Peacock theater last night, The Game Awards broadcast its annual mix of prize presentations and expensive video game advertisements. New titles were announced, celebrities appeared, and at one point, screaming people were suspended from the ceiling in an extravagant promotion for a new role-playing game.

Acclaimed French adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began the night with 12 nominations – the most in the event’s history – and ended it with nine awards. The Gallic favourite took game of the year, as well as awards for best game direction, best art direction, best narrative and best performance (for actor Jennifer English).

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:56 am

Indonesia floods were ‘extinction level’ disturbance for rare orangutan species

Conservationists fear up to 11% of Tapanuli population perished in disaster that also killed 1,000 people

Indonesia’s deadly flooding was an “extinction-level disturbance” for the world’s rarest great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan, causing catastrophic damage to its habitat and survival prospects, scientists warned on Friday.

Only scientifically classified as a species in 2017, Tapanulis are incredibly rare, with fewer than 800 left in the wild, confined to a small range in part of Indonesia’s Sumatra.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:42 pm

Changes to polar bear DNA could help them adapt to global heating, study finds

Scientists say bears in southern Greenland differ genetically to those in the north, suggesting they could adjust

Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species.

Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to have disappeared by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:00 am

Week in wildlife: a baby echidna, a 600lb gator and an ‘unbearable’ bear

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Orcas team up with dolphins to hunt salmon, study finds

Northern resident killer whales appear to use dolphins as ‘scouts’, in a surprising cooperative hunting strategy

Orcas and dolphins have been spotted for the first time working as a team to hunt salmon off the coast of British Columbia, according to a new study which suggests a cooperative relationship between the two predators.

The research, published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, shows interactions between northern resident orcas (also known as killer whales) and Pacific white-sided dolphins are not just chance encounters while foraging.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:00 pm

Grand jury again declines to indict Letitia James on mortgage fraud charges

New York attorney general dodges indictment for second time in a week as Trump’s justice department seeks retribution

A federal grand jury has declined to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, on mortgage fraud charges for the second time in a week, according to a person familiar with the matter, in an embarrassing blow to the Trump justice department as the president has sought retribution against one of his political rivals.

The department has attempted to twice file new charges against James after a judge dismissed an indictment against her after determining the prosecutor handling the case had not been properly appointed.

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:11 pm

Accused Charlie Kirk killer makes first in-person court appearance

Utah judge weighs media access in prosecution of Tyler Robinson, 22, who is charged with aggravated murder

The 22-year-old Utah man charged with killing Charlie Kirk made his first in-person court appearance on Thursday as his attorneys push to further limit media access in the high-profile criminal case.

A Utah judge is weighing the public’s right to know details in the prosecution of Tyler Robinson against his attorneys’ concerns that the swarm of media attention could interfere with his right to a fair trial.

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:29 pm

Kilmar Ábrego García released from ICE custody in fight over Trump immigration

Ábrego plans return to Maryland as DHS pledges to appeal judge’s decision, calling ruling ‘naked judicial activism’

Kilmar Ábrego García has been freed from an immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania after a federal judge in Maryland ordered his release on Thursday.

Ábrego was released shortly before 5pm ET, his attorney told the Associated Press. He plans to return to Maryland, where he has lived for many years with his US citizen wife and child after first entering the country illegally as a teenager.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:48 pm

FDA to update regulations after unconfirmed claims of Covid vaccine-linked death

Announcement, and lack of details in the weeks following, represents major departure from previous FDA priorities

As the US’s top vaccine officials come under pressure from lawmakers and former leaders, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will release information “soon” about changes to regulations following unconfirmed claims of deaths after Covid vaccination.

It’s part of a sweeping effort, led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to change the routine vaccines given in childhood, limiting access to and casting doubt upon safe and effective vaccines.

Published: December 11, 2025, 7:34 pm

Papua New Guinea grapples with HIV epidemic as it battles stigma and US aid cuts

Papua New Guinea has one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the Asia-Pacific region, with many unaware they have the virus

After battling illness for years, Nancy Karipa tested positive for HIV in 1999. She had just given birth to her first child. “It was a crossroads moment for me, with the fear of denial, but I chose action,” Karipa, who is now in her 50s, said at an Aids awareness event in Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby in December. She and the baby received treatment, and her child remains healthy.

Karipa, from East Sepik in northern PNG, is unusual in sharing her story. The stigma around the disease is high in the Pacific nation, but speaking out has never been more important. This year PNG declared HIV a “national crisis”.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:47 am

‘It’s not going to end’: Thai evacuees fear for future after fresh clashes with Cambodia

Displaced people in Thailand voice doubts that Donald Trump can stop the fighting as violence flares on the border

• Half a million flee as deadly Cambodia-Thailand border clashes escalate

Rangsan Angda and many of his neighbours in border areas of Thailand had already packed their bags, fearing that a ceasefire with neighbouring Cambodia would soon collapse.

The ceasefire deal – brokered by Donald Trump, who proclaimed himself “President of PEACE” after he helped end five days of deadly clashes in July – had seemed precarious from the start. “Both sides are confronting one another all the time,” said Rangsan, 50.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:05 am

Eurovision winner Nemo to return trophy in protest at Israel taking part in 2026

‘Clear conflict’ between Eurovision ideals of ‘inclusion and dignity for all’ and decision to let Israel compete, says 2024 winner

Nemo, the Swiss singer who won the 2024 Eurovision song contest, has said they are handing back their trophy in protest over Israel’s participation in next year’s event.

The 26-year-old, the first non-binary winner of the contest, said on Thursday there was “a clear conflict” between the Eurovision ideals of “unity, inclusion and dignity for all” and the decision to allow Israel to compete.

Published: December 11, 2025, 6:38 pm

Germany drops promise to resettle hundreds of Afghans

Interior ministry will tell 640 people awaiting sanctuary ‘there is no longer any political interest in their being admitted’

• Europe live – latest updates

Hundreds of Afghans previously promised sanctuary in Germany have been told they are no longer welcome, in a stark U-turn by the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz‪.

The 640 people in Pakistan awaiting resettlement – many of whom worked for the German military during the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan – will no longer be taken in, as Merz’s government axes two programmes introduced by its centre-left-led predecessor.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:54 pm

My darling clementine: why did Chalamet and Jenner dress in matching orange?

Colour-coordinating couples are nothing new, but Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner still caught the eye

When the Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet and the media personality and businesswoman Kylie Jenner appeared at the LA premiere of his new film, Marty Supreme, this week, they appeared to have been Tangoed.

Dressed head to toe in matching bright orange outfits made by the LA-based brand Chrome Hearts, they drew strong reactions online. “I have now confirmed there is such a thing as too much orange,” said one on Reddit.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:11 pm

Joanna Trollope obituary

Novelist whose bestsellers on relationships and modern life were dubbed ‘Aga sagas’

Joanna Trollope, who has died aged 82, was one of those rare writers who can be said to have invented a genre. When popular fiction written by, and mainly for, women tended to be classified either as “romantic novels” or “historical sagas”, Joanna gained huge success, both commercially and critically, by writing intelligently, with warmth and humour, about real situations and dilemmas that had relevance to modern women of all ages and circumstances.

She began as an author of historical romances, but her writing career was transformed with the publication of the contemporary novel A Village Affair (1989), which became her first bestseller. A young wife moves to a quiet country village with her boring husband, where she becomes friends with an independent-minded woman who lives nearby. But this is no conventional rural tale – the two women fall deeply in love. Village life, in all its complexities of petty rivalries and prejudices, is examined with incisive understanding.

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:29 pm

‘I live for playing cops and robbers!’ Martin Compston on love, Las Vegas and the new Line of Duty

He’ll soon be going back on the hunt for bent coppers – but not before a wild revenge tale of divorcees going rogue. The star talks feeling inferior to Meera Syal, his life in the US and why he’s thrilled to be typecast

While we embark on the inhumanly long wait for the new season of Line of Duty, which starts shooting in January, you’ll see Martin Compston – the show’s hero and true north – a number of times. Twice as you’ve never seen him before, and once, in Red Eye, in the form that you’ve come to know and love him: brisk and taciturn, brave and speedy, the man you’d trust to save the world while the dopes all around him can’t even see it needs saving.

But first, The Revenge Club, in which he is a revelation. The setting is a support group for divorcees, a ragtag gang united by nothing but the fact that they’ve been summarily dismissed by their spouses. “There’s no other reason for these characters to be in each other’s lives,” Compston says from his home in Las Vegas (more on that later – much more). “They’re all desperate and lonely and in dire need of companionship. They’re all, in their own ways, broken, which makes for this explosive mix.”

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

A stiff dose of ‘weak sauce’: Paul Dano’s best films – ranked!

After Quentin Tarantino’s unfavourable comments about the actor’s performance in films including There Will Be Blood, we run through the roles that show just how potent he really is

This disquieting narrative debut from the British director James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) is a kind of minor Cape Fear. Gael García Bernal plays a sociopathic outsider threatening the apparently perfect life of his long-lost preacher father (William Hurt). In what now looks like a dry run for There Will Be Blood, Dano is the earnest son campaigning for creationism to be taught at school, and sideswiped by the emergence of his sinister half-brother. Variety labelled the film “noxious”. It’s undoubtedly nasty, but Dano helps to lend it a pulse.

Published: December 11, 2025, 1:26 pm

Goodbye June review – Kate Winslet’s Christmas heartwarmer is like a two-hour John Lewis ad

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday, that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 pm

Silent Night, Deadly Night review – killer Santa remake is overstuffed

There are too many competing and overfamiliar ideas in this busy slasher reboot that’s sorely lacking in style

There was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.

We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t enough to shock today’s horror fans.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:32 pm

Add to playlist: the slow-burn psychedelia of Acolyte and the week’s best new tracks

Unhurried trippy bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a glamorously unhurried sense of hypnosis

From Edinburgh
Recommended if you like Dry Cleaning, Massive Attack, Nick Cave
Up next Warm Days in December out now, new EP due early 2026

As fixtures of Edinburgh’s gig-turned-performance art scene, Acolyte’s eerie, earthy psychedelia is just as likely to be found on stage at the Traverse theatre as in a steamy-windowed Leith Walk boozer. Their looped bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a sense of slow-burn hypnosis – and just like their music, Acolyte are glamorously unhurried. They’ve released only a handful of songs in the seven years since Lee and bassist Ruairidh Morrison first started experimenting with jazz, trip-hop and spoken word, but now the group (with Daniel Hill on percussion and Gloria Black on synth, also known for throwing fantastical, papier-mache-costumed club nights with her former band Maranta) are gathering pace.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

The 50 best albums of 2025

The year’s finest LPs as decided by 30 Guardian music writers – from a slip’n’slide through British club culture to a UK rapper like none before her
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 12, 2025, 1:59 pm

From shiveringly vivid Mahler to the eclectic Hermes Experiment: our top classical recordings of 2025

Opera may be conspicuous by its absence, but the brilliance of Berlin Philharmonic’s Schoenberg and the exceptional South Korean Yunchan Lim gave us plenty to sink our teeth into this year

The survey of the new releases that my colleagues and I have enjoyed most in 2025 differs in one significant respect from the lists of previous years. This year’s top ten contains no operas. There has been a profound change in record companies’ policies of how and what they record. The glitzy, studio-based opera recordings of the last century now seem impossible to contemplate, and even releasing audio-only recordings taken directly from live opera-house performances often seems less viable than issuing DVDs of the same productions.

Some specialist labels devoted to specific areas of the operatic repertoire continue sterling work: operas feature prominently in Bru Zane’s mission on behalf of neglected French composers, while Opera Rara continues to crusade for forgotten, mostly 19th century, mostly Italian, scores which this year included the original 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Other companies continue to find treasures in Europe’s apparently inexhaustible baroque archives, while, on its own label, the London Symphony Orchestra has continued to release Simon Rattle’s Janáček series taken from his concert performances with the orchestra at the Barbican, the latest release being Jenůfa. If full-length operas are notably scarce in the schedules of the major companies, two exceptions this year were Decca’s release of the Oslo-sourced Flying Dutchman, with Lise Davidsen and Gerald Finley, and Deutsche Grammophon’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, part of Andris Nelson’s Boston-based Shostakovich series, both of which proved less than overwhelming.

Published: December 11, 2025, 3:10 pm

Joyride by Susan Orlean review – an extraordinary, curious life

An exuberant, inspiring memoir from the New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief

In 2017, 10 years after Susan Orlean profiled Caltech-trained physicist turned professional origami artist Robert Lang for the New Yorker, she attended the OrigamiUSA convention to take Lang’s workshop on folding a “Taiwan goldfish”. I was with her, a radio producer trying to capture the sounds of paper creasing as Orlean attempted to keep pace with the “Da Vinci of origami”, wincing when her goldfish’s fins didn’t exactly flutter in hydrodynamic splendour.

It was Orlean in her element: an adventurous student, inquisitive and exacting, fully alive to the mischief inherent to reporting – and primed to extract some higher truth. “When we first met you said something to me I’ve never forgotten,” Orlean told Lang. “That paper has a memory – that once you fold it, you can never entirely remove the fold.” Was that, she wondered, an insight about life, too?

Published: December 12, 2025, 7:00 am

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds; Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle; All Tomorrows by CM Kosemen; The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson; The Witching Hour by various authors

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, £25)
Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man in space, is reborn as a private eye on board the starship Halcyon as it draws nearer to the end of a centuries-long journey. Yuri knows he died for the first time back in the 1960s, long before the technology existed to launch such sophisticated spaceships, but believes his remains were preserved and stored for future revival. Onboard life is modelled on classic crime noir from the 1940s: men in hats, cigarettes and whisky, with no futuristic tech beyond some clunky, glitching robots. As he doggedly pursues the truth about the seemingly unconnected deaths of two teenagers from the most powerful families on the ship, Yuri gradually learns about himself. There’s a conspiracy that goes back generations in this clever, entertaining blend of crime and space opera.

Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle (Confingo, £9.50)
The third collection after London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny captures both the reality and the mysteries of contemporary life in Paris in 14 short stories, 11 published here for the first time. Royle is a genius at blending the ordinary with the eerie, and his stories range from displays of outright surrealism to sinister psychological mysteries that play out as suspensefully as Highsmith or Hitchcock. It’s a memorable, unsettling excursion through the streets, passages and banlieues of Paris, and a masterclass in writing evocative short fiction.

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Sophie Kinsella obituary

Author whose Shopaholic series of romcom novels were global bestsellers and adapted into a Hollywood film

Sophie Kinsella, who has died of a brain tumour aged 55, was one of Britain’s most successful novelists, selling more than 50 million copies of her books, including the globally successful Shopaholic series. Through three decades she retained a loyal and passionate readership with her deceptively light and intricately plotted comic novels.

Like her best-known heroine, Becky Bloomwood, Kinsella began her writing career in financial journalism, but, realising she was uninspired (and probably not very good at it), she wrote a book, The Tennis Party, that was published in 1995, when she was 25, under her given name, Madeleine Wickham (“Maddy”). This was followed by five subsequent standalone “Aga sagas”, which all achieved moderate chart success and critical acclaim.

Published: December 11, 2025, 7:18 pm

Where to start with: Arundhati Roy

As Foyles names her memoir its book of the year, here’s a guide to the Booker prize winner’s wide-ranging oeuvre of fiction and nonfiction

‘The point of the writer is to be unpopular,” said Arundhati Roy in 2018. Over the last three decades – beginning with her 1997 Booker winner, The God of Small Things, which catapulted her into celebrity – the writer’s works of fiction, nonfiction and essays have indeed been polarising; she has become one of the most prominent critics of the Indian government and Hindu nationalism.

Last year, she was awarded the PEN Pinter prize, given to writers who cast an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world. Earlier this year, she published Mother Mary Comes To Me, an account of her relationship with her mother. The memoir has now been named Foyles book of the year, and was also shortlisted for Waterstones book of the year. Here, Priya Bharadia takes readers through Roy’s essential reads.

Published: December 11, 2025, 11:00 am

‘Charismatic, self-assured, formidable’: Lara Croft returns with two new Tomb Raider games

An all-new Croft adventure, Tomb Raider Catalyst, will be released in 2027 – and a remake of the action heroine’s first adventure arrives next year

After a long break for Lara Croft, a couple of fresh Tomb Raider adventures are on their way. They will be the first new games in the series since 2018, and both will be published by Amazon.

Announced at the Game Awards in LA, Tomb Raider Catalyst stars the “charismatic, self-assured, formidable Lara Croft” from the original 1990s games, says game director Will Kerslake. It’s set in the markets, mountains, and naturally the ancient buildings of northern India, where Lara is racing with other treasure hunters to track down potentially cataclysmic artefacts. It will be out in 2027.

Published: December 12, 2025, 2:45 am

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – how a tiny studio developed the Belle Époque-set gaming blockbuster

What started as Guillaume Broche’s personal project has been nominated for 12 Game awards, sold more than 2m copies and been praised by Emmanuel Macron as a ‘shining example of French audacity’

The record-breaking 12 nominations at the Game awards this year was beyond the wildest dreams of Guillaume Broche when he first began inking out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a personal project while working at Ubisoft.

Before selling more than 2m copies, the narrative-driven roleplaying game with “a unique world, challenging combat and great writing” was a technical demo called We Lost. It was Broche’s appetite for risk and a few hopeful Reddit posts that would create the game’s world of Lumiere and its struggle against the Paintress.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

Sleeper hits, sci-fi sculpture and Martin Parr on Martin Parr – the week in art

Artists explore insomnia and snoozing, sculptors imagine alternative futures and we look back with a great British photographer – all in your weekly dispatch

To Improvise a Mountain
Painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye portrays fictional people in made-up settings. Where does she get her haunting ideas? Here she reveals her inspirations from Walter Sickert to Bas Jan Ader.
• MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, until 25 January

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Jarvis Cocker and Mary Beard announced as Booker prize judges

The historian is set to lead a ‘stellar’ 2026 panel featuring the Pulp frontman and other acclaimed writers, as the search begins for next year’s standout work of fiction

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker will feature on the 2026 Booker prize judging panel that will be chaired by the classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard.

Novelist Patricia Lockwood has also been named as a judge, along with the poet Raymond Antrobus and Rebecca Liu, an editor at the Guardian Saturday magazine.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:59 pm

Seth Meyers to Trump: ‘You can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth’

Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s unconvincing “A+++++” grade for the economy and his rambling speech in Pennsylvania

Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure Americans on the economy as the private sector sheds jobs and grocery prices keep rising.

Published: December 11, 2025, 4:30 pm

The 20 best US beauty gifts for makeup and skincare lovers – curated by dewy-skinned content creators

Products that our experts personally use – and their recommendations for a range of skin types and tones, sensitivities and age groups

• The 27 best fashion gifts in the US – curated by our favorite stylists and creators

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From the skincare-obsessed tweens that took over Sephora to the busy moms who’ve mastered their no makeup-makeup look, we all know of someone who’d love a new moisturizer or lipstick as a holiday gift.

With so many blushes, bronzers and barrier creams on the market, it can be difficult to spot a product that actually works from one that’s just packaged prettily.

Published: December 11, 2025, 3:15 pm

Experience: I stopped a man from crashing our plane

A passenger having a mental health episode was heading for the emergency exit. He lunged for the door handle, screaming

I write thrillers: mostly ­historical mysteries. In September 2024, I was returning from a ­literary festival in Italy, where I had been talking about my ­latest book. It was a Ryanair flight, and as we came in to land at London Stansted, I heard people behind me shouting. I looked back to see some of them were standing up. A moment later a big man – I would guess he was 6ft 4in, and powerfully built – burst through them. He headed towards an emergency exit and lunged for the door handle, screaming. Behind him, a smaller guy was clambering over the tops of the seats, shouting: “It’s not terrorism. It’s not terrorism. Mental health!”

While exit doors can’t be opened when a plane is at full altitude because the air pressure inside is too great, levels dip during descent, and it is possible to open them. I feared that if he opened the exit, the plane would be hard to control and we might hit the ground about 300mph faster than we were meant to.

Published: December 12, 2025, 5:00 am

Meat-free under the mistletoe – recipes

Not a fan of the traditional festive spread? These recipes are a Christmas feast that even turkeys would vote for

Published: December 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

I now declare you throuple: how to plan a polyamorous wedding

A throuple in Tennessee shares how they planned a fairytale wedding, from rings to first dance

On the day of her wedding, Janie Coppola, 30, overslept. She woke up to a friend banging on her bedroom window, and had to quickly do her hair before rushing to the venue, a dreamy castle in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Fortunately, the rest of the day went smoothly, and on the afternoon of 18 October, she walked down the aisle in a big white dress to be wed to her husband. And her wife.

“Your favorite throuple got hitched,” Margaret French, 32, Janie’s wife, captioned an Instagram post about the day.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 pm

You be the judge: should my wannabe influencer friend stop using me for content?

Marielle says being recorded is part of being her friend, but Beth is fed up of being a muse. Who should reel it in?

• Get a disagreement settled or become a YBTJ juror

Sometimes she films me while I’m eating. I’ll see myself on her Instagram – it’s like a jumpscare

I want Beth to see that the content we make together can get us a foot in the door

Published: December 11, 2025, 8:00 am

‘It becomes like Zoolander’: the podcast making you think differently about clothes

Avery Trufelman is the New York-based radio producer behind Articles of Interest, a fashion podcast that has non-fashion people gripped in their millions

Did you know that the zipper only came about because a Swedish-born engineer named Gideon Sundback fell in love with a factory owner’s daughter? Or that it took longer for it to be developed than it took for the Wright brothers to invent the aeroplane? You probably know that pockets have become a symbol of gender privilege – but were you aware that in the 18th century, women’s pockets were big enough to hold tools for writing, a small diary and a snack for later? Perhaps most surprising is that layering, which has made Uniqlo one of the biggest brands in the world, was in effect invented in the 1940s by a man named Georges Doriot, who was also famous for inventing venture capital.

All these nuggets and more are included in Articles of Interest, a podcast by 34-year-old Avery Trufelman. Listeners tune in for the smarts but also her disarming sense of fun. Not to mention her low, husky voice, which seems made for podcasting. “I don’t take care of it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says over video call from her apartment in New York.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:00 am

A cure for ‘bacon neck’: How to keep your T-shirts in top shape

Marlon Brando was a victim of it, even Princess Diana was caught out by a collar ‘curled like bacon in a pan’. Here are a few ways to avoid their fate

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It is sometimes, amusingly, known as “bacon neck”, and it is the bane of my life: the loss of elasticity that results in a crinkly, ill-fitting collar. This undulating menace commonly befalls the classic crew-neck T-shirt or sweatshirt, but scoop, polo and V-necks can also be afflicted. Too often, science conspires to transform a smooth neckline into something resembling a failed polygraph test.

The term “bacon neck” (not to be confused with “turkey neck”, the disparaging phrase for sagging skin that is almost uniformly levelled at women) was coined, or at least popularised, in a 2010 Hanes commercial featuring the basketball star Michael Jordan. In the clip, Jordan’s seat-mate points out a fellow plane passenger’s worn-out collar: “See how it’s all curled up like bacon in a pan? See how bad this guy looks?”

Published: December 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Festive stress getting to you? A potter in the garden is the ideal antidote

Escape from the Christmas mayhem to spruce up pots and outdoor furniture, sow sweet peas, or even paint a fence

I suspect you’re not thinking about the garden much this month. After all, we’re 12 days away from Christmas. Perhaps you’re wrapping presents or running school fairs, or maybe you’ve stumbled upon this while having a little scroll in the queue for a grotto somewhere. It’s difficult to even be outside and at a loose end during daylight hours at the moment.

In case you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, what if you went out into your green space or garden, and started having a bit of a potter? Nothing fancy; goodness knows, I don’t put my garden “to bed” as tradition would dictate – chopping down perennial growth and sweeping up leaves and laying a thick black blanket of mulch over neatly edged beds. But rather a gentle ramble, picking up the plastic flowerpots that have blown about the place and finally emptying that sad pot of desiccated summer annuals into the compost bin. You’ll probably feel a bit less chaotic, possibly even a little festive, afterwards.

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Teenagers are presenting Christmas wishlists, Powerpoint-style – my daughter included

A far cry from hand-scrawled letters to Santa, on graphic design platform Canva users have created a whopping 1.4m Christmas wishlist presentations

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Twas three weeks before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for my 13-year-old daughter, who emerged from her lair with a level of vim uncommon in daylight hours.

As she made her approach with laptop aglow, her droll little mouth was drawn up in a bow. It then became apparent that I was about to become the audience (some may say “victim”) of a recent cultural phenomenon: the Christmas wishlist slideshow.

Published: December 11, 2025, 2:00 pm

Ho, ho, Hamburg: bringing the flavours of a true German Christmas market home

From glühwein to lebkuchen, bratwurst to stollen, recreating the delicacies I sampled in the city’s festive markets is wholly achievable. Plus, a new digital cookbook for a good cause

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Without wanting to sound tediously Scrooge-like, the German-style markets that have become seasonal fixtures in many British cities over the last few decades never make me feel particularly festive. What’s remotely Christmassy – or German – about Dubai-chocolate churros and Korean fried chicken, I grumble as I drag the dog (who enjoys all such things) around their perimeters.

Hamburg’s markets, however, which I was myself dragged around last weekend, are a very different story. For a start, the city has many of them, mainly fairly small – and some, such as the “erotic Christmas market” in St Pauli, with a particular theme. What they all have in common is the range of food and drink on offer … though let’s gloss hurriedly over the phallic gingerbread shapes on sale at St Pauli in favour of the eye-opening range of glühwein (white, rosé, kirsch-spiked, blueberry-flavoured), which was far more appealing.

Published: December 11, 2025, 12:30 pm

Threshold: the choir who sing to the dying - documentary

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed.  For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

Published: December 12, 2025, 11:01 am

‘She was very, very thin’: witness tells of Ukrainian journalist’s final days in Russian prison

Soldier’s account corroborates reports Viktoriia Roshchyna was taken to prison deep inside Russia, where it is believed she died

Details of the last days in captivity of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died last year, have emerged with the witness account of a soldier who was with her when she was transported to a prison deep inside Russia.

Roshchyna was seized while reporting from behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine in the summer of 2022, one of an estimated 16,000 civilians detained by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

Published: December 11, 2025, 10:46 am

I used to report from the West Bank. Twenty years after my last visit, I was shocked by how much worse it is today

Among the many people I met, there was a pervasive feeling of hopelessness and a sense that resistance is slowly becoming a memory

In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.”

Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now.

Published: December 11, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us: how important are your pets during Christmas?

We’d like to know more about your how much your pets feature in your life during the festive period

We’d like to find out more about you and your pets at Christmas.

Do you spend more on buying Christmas gifts for your pets than your family and friends? Or do you skip party plans altogether to stay with your animal companion?

Published: December 11, 2025, 9:49 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: December 12, 2025, 2:16 pm

Sandhurst cadets and skating ministers: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: December 12, 2025, 1:43 pm