‘An unhealthy and creepy obsession’: Ilhan Omar on Trump’s attacks

The Zen-like US representative from Minnesota has had the highest level of death threats of any congressperson because of the president’s attacks

“That’s Teddy,” said Tim Mynett, husband of the US representative Ilhan Omar, as their five-year-old labrador retriever capered around her office on Capitol Hill. “If you make too much eye contact, he’ll lose it. He’s my best friend – and he’s our security detail these days.”

The couple were sitting on black leather furniture around a coffee table. Apart from a sneezing fit that took her husband by surprise, Omar had an unusual Zen-like calm for someone who receives frequent death threats and is the subject of a vendetta from the most powerful man in the world.

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘I could watch the final 30 minutes on a loop till the end of time’: Guardian writers’ favourite Rob Reiner moments

The director’s incredible versatility and talent meant that he could reduce to tears with anguish or laughter, effortlessly pivoting from comedy to courtroom drama, romcom to rock mockumentary

Obviously The Shining remains the greatest Stephen King adaptation ever made, but Stand By Me is the one I love beyond all measure. It’s the warmest, the saddest and the funniest, too: a lovely, grubby ode to the joys of misspent youth. “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12,” remarks small-town adventurer Gordie Lachance, who sets off with his pals to find a dead body in the woods. “Jesus, does anyone?”

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:45 pm

First she got breast cancer. Then her daughter did, too

A breast cancer diagnosis is hard enough – what happens when a mother and daughter go through it at the same time?

Genna Freed should have been in the mood to celebrate. On a cloudy November day in 2022, her mother, Julie Newman, was about to complete her final round of radiation, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in September. The whole family, a close-knit bunch, was gathering with balloons and signs.

But Freed, then a few weeks shy of her 31st birthday, was carrying a secret. Spurred by her mother’s diagnosis, she had her first mammogram a couple days earlier, and it had turned up a suspicious spot. Now she needed a second, diagnostic mammogram, and likely a biopsy. She found herself walking a surreal sort of tightrope, caught between relief that her mother’s treatment was over and fear that she might soon be starting her own.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:00 pm

Behold, it’s the Trump who stole Christmas | Robert Reich

The president continues to preach austerity and hate to people struggling to make ends meet. No wonder voters are turning on him

Trump gave what was billed as a “Christmas speech” in rural Pennsylvania this past week that began with his “wishing each and everyone one of you a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, all of that stuff” and boasting that now, under his presidency: “Everybody’s saying ‘merry Christmas’ again.”

He then claimed – contrary to the experience of nearly everyone in the crowd – that he had gotten them “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks”. He also asserted that anyone having difficulty making ends meet should just cut back on buying stuff. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils … Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” he said, adding: “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”

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

Published: December 16, 2025, 11:00 am

Michael Douglas on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: ‘My half of the producing fee I gave to Dad’

The actor looks back on his first foray as producer as the Oscar-winning drama reaches its 50th anniversary

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

His early career was defined by the Vietnam war with early roles in political films such as Hail, Hero! and Summertree. So it felt natural for Michael Douglas, just 31, to make his first foray into producing with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a tale of one man raging against the system.

Fifty years since its release, Douglas is struck how Cuckoo’s Nest resonates anew in today’s landscape. “It’s about as classic a story as we’ll ever have and it seems timeless now, with what’s going on in our country politically, about man versus the machine and individuality versus the corporate world,” the 81-year-old says via Zoom from Santa Barbara, California.

Published: December 16, 2025, 11:04 am

I’m an elementary school principal. Students live in fear of ICE | Seth Lavin

I am in awe of the children and their parents as they live through raids. How can you call an operation targeted when it blankets a city in fear?

There is snow on the ground, but for some Chicago families, this is a moment of unfreezing. ICE is still out there, but Commander Gregory Bovino and his strike force have moved on. After months, Operation Midway Blitz has quieted.

In places like the elementary school where I am principal, some parents who were hiding are poking their heads out doors. Children holding their breath since September are beginning to exhale.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

Ilhan Omar says Trump’s repeated attacks fuel climate of political violence

The US House member says president’s rhetoric about her and Somali Americans could have dangerous consequences

US congresswoman Ilhan Omar has warned that Donald Trump’s repeated personal attacks and dehumanising rhetoric are fuelling a climate of political violence that could have dangerous consequences.

Speaking days after the president called for her to be thrown out of the country, Omar said Trump’s incendiary language reaches “the worst humans possible” and encourages them to act.

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:00 pm

US lost 105,000 jobs in October and added 64,000 in November, according to delayed data

Data shows the headline unemployment rate continued to climb and hit 4.6%, a four-year high, last month

The US labor market grew by more than expected last month, recovering some of the damage inflicted by the federal government shutdown, according to official data.

An estimated 105,000 jobs were lost in October, and 64,000 were added in November, a highly-anticipated report showed on Tuesday.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:38 pm

Trump’s chief of staff acknowledges ‘score settling’ behind prosecutions of political rivals: ‘He will go for it’ – live

‘In some cases, it may look like retribution,’ Susie Wiles says in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair

Wiles also said she had told Donald Trump that his second term was not supposed to be a retribution tour.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said in an interview in March.

I mean, people could think it does look vindictive. I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.

I don’t think he [Trump] wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.

Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:17 pm

Bondi terror attack: alleged gunmen travelled to the Philippines before ‘Isis-inspired’ shooting

Police investigating claims Sajid and Naveed Akram received ‘training’ overseas before Sunday’s attack

• Full report: Bondi terror attack

• Victims of Bondi beach shooting

• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

• Follow the latest live updates

The father and son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack appear to have been inspired by Islamic State, the Australian prime minister says, as police confirmed they were investigating why the pair travelled to the Philippines last month.

The New South Wales police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, on Tuesday alleged Naveed Akram, 24, and his 50-year-old father, Sajid, had recently travelled to the Philippines, which was confirmed by authorities in Manila.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:59 am

FBI offers $50,000 reward as Brown University shooter still at large

Two students were killed and nine wounded as hunt for unknown suspect enters fourth day, amid growing frustration

The FBI has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the killer of two students in a mass shooting at Brown University as the manhunt for someone described by the agency as an “unknown suspect with a stocky build” enters its fourth day.

Officials in Rhode Island hope the reward provides a breakthrough in the faltering case, the pace of which has sparked growing community frustration. One “person of interest” was detained then released Sunday, and FBI director Kash Patel has faced criticism for prematurely declaring it solved.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:35 pm

Washington state residents urged to ‘go now’ as flooding causes levee breach

Police in city of Pacific told residents to evacuate just hours after evacuation order had been lifted in nearby suburbs

Residents near a breached levee in Washington state were told to evacuate early Tuesday, just hours after an evacuation alert was lifted for residents near another broken levee in the same county.

Police in the city of Pacific, about 20 miles (32km) south of Seattle, urged people in the evacuation area near the White River to “Go Now!”

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:14 pm

LA investigators expected to lay out case against Rob Reiner’s son Nick

District attorney’s office has until Wednesday to file charges against Nick Reiner following deaths of his parents

Los Angeles investigators are expected on Tuesday to lay out their case against Nick Reiner, who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents, the actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

Detectives from the Los Angeles police department’s (LAPD) homicide division took Nick, 32, into custody on Sunday night, hours after his parents were found dead in their Brentwood home, the department announced on Monday.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:02 pm

Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’

Region known as ‘world’s refrigerator’ is heating up as much as four times as quickly as global average, Noaa experts say

The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis, scientists have reported.

From October 2024 to September 2025, temperatures across the entire Arctic region were the hottest in 125 years of modern record keeping, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said, with the last 10 years being the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:01 pm

Mark Carney criticised for using British spellings in Canadian documents

Linguists say the prime minister’s use of ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ breaks national English conventions

Mark Carney says that amid a fundamental shift to the nature of globalisation, his government will catalyse the growth in both the public and private sector.

But Canadian linguists say that’s a problem.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:56 pm

Trump administration says White House ballroom construction is matter of national security

Court filing was response to lawsuit asking judge to halt project until it goes through independent reviews and wins approval from Congress

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s administration argued Monday in a court filing that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for reasons of national security.

The filing came in response to a lawsuit filed three days earlier by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt the ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:19 pm

BBC vows to defend itself in $10bn Donald Trump lawsuit

President claims broadcaster ‘intentionally, maliciously and deceptively’ edited 6 January speech before Capitol attack

The BBC has vowed to defend itself against the $10bn lawsuit that the US president, Donald Trump filed against it.

In a complaint filed on Monday evening, Trump sought $5bn in damages each on two counts, alleging that the BBC defamed him, and that it violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:51 am

US military says eight killed in strikes on three boats in eastern Pacific

US Southern Command says boats were ‘engaged in narco-trafficking’

The US military has launched a fresh round of deadly strikes on foreign vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics, killing eight people.

The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media on Monday, announcing it had hit three vessels in international waters.

Published: December 16, 2025, 7:28 am

How the tech industry’s embrace of Trump may be paying dividends

An AI order favors tech, OpenAI chases Google and data centers look beyond Earth

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from beneath a few inches of snow in New York City. This week in tech: an analysis of the quid pro quo of Donald Trump’s executive order on AI; OpenAI goes on the defensive; and data centers attempt to launch into orbit.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:56 pm

She has stage four cancer. Her husband is a federal worker. Will she survive the Trump administration?

Michaela’s husband is away 14 hours a day amid Trump’s ban on remote work, the threat of layoffs is ever-present and their health premiums are set to multiply

Michaela felt a sharp pain shoot from her hip while she bent over to water some plants in early May 2025. Then she fell over and couldn’t get back up.

Her husband called an ambulance and she spent the night in a hospital, where, at 57, she found out she had a mass on her spine. It was metastatic breast cancer.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

Region struggling with drought now threatened by energy-hungry facilities – but some residents are fighting back

The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.

For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘A shifting system’: concerns over students’ civil rights rise as DoJ changes priorities

Under Trump, the department that once rooted out race- and disability-based discrimination has begun opening investigations over antisemitism and transgender policies

The 10-year-old was dragged down a school hallway by two school staffers. A camera captured him being forced into a small, empty room with a single paper-covered window.

The staffers shut the door in his face. Alone, the boy curled into a ball on the floor. When school employees returned more than 10 minutes later, blood from his face smeared the floor.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

‘You don’t have to do it alone’: how US cities are helping each other resist ICE

From LA to Charlotte, organizers are learning from others’ strategies to protect residents amid federal crackdowns

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on Chicago in September, Chicagoans sprang into action to protect their immigrant neighbors: teaching each other how to recognize and safely document ICE agents, setting up “know your rights” trainings, and distributing whistles en masse so people could loudly alert anyone in the vicinity when ICE was spotted.

In the months since, whistles have become a popular raid alert tool in other cities across the country – New Yorkers wear them around their necks to warn neighbors, the people of New Orleans blast them outside ICE facilities and Charlotte residents used them to ward off Customs and Border Protection officials. While strongly associated with Chicago, the tactic is actually one that city organizers learned in part from groups in Los Angeles. Its spread is illustrative of the many ways cities are helping inspire and equip one another in the face of often unlawful federal activities.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

The Housemaid review – Sydney Sweeney takes the job from hell in outrageous suspense thriller

Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar co-star as Sweeney’s secretive bosses in an upstate New York mansion, and director Paul Feig ramps up the sexual tension with evident gusto

Director Paul Feig is known for broad comedy; now he cranks up the schlock-serious dial for an outrageously enjoyable – or at any rate enjoyably outrageous – psycho-suspense thriller in the spirit of 90s erotic noir, adapted by screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine from the 2022 bestseller by Freida McFadden. We are back in the sleazy, glossy world of Curtis Hanson’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Joe Eszterhas’s Basic Instinct, but skating quite close, though not too close, to satire.

The scene is a bizarrely opulent mansion somewhere in upstate New York, splendidly isolated among a sea of bland suburban housing; it is approached by a drive, once you have got past the electronic gates. And it is down this avenue that Millie (Sydney Sweeney) nervously drives, wearing fake glasses to make herself look more mature, to apply for the job of live-in housemaid to the wealthy couple that lives there; she is hoping her prospective employers will not notice the worrying inconsistencies in her CV. She is greeted with smiley, Stepford-blond blandness by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), who appears to adore Millie, and explains that the job entails cooking, cleaning and looking after her young daughter, Cece (Indiana Elle).

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:00 pm

Best movies of 2025 in the US: No 4 – Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet’s live-wire striver using ping pong as his ticket out of normie American life is just one of many wonders in this extraordinarily rich tale
• The best movies of 2025 in the US
• More on the best culture of 2025

When reports started to emerge that Timothée Chalamet was going to play a ping pong champion in a film called Marty Supreme, the world (including this correspondent) rolled its eyes. Was Hollywood’s most annoying actor going to go for broke in what promised to be the most irritating film of all time? Well I am here to hold up my hand and say that first impressions couldn’t have been more wrong. Marty Supreme is one of the most exciting, indeed sensational films of the year, and if the Guardian film critics’ poll wasn’t a democracy, many of us would made it No 1 by some distance.

For it turns out that Marty Supreme is a character drama of quite remarkable richness, its excitement and sensation deriving from the nervous energy of its protagonist – who is indeed a ping pong player called Marty – but plying his trade in the decidedly non-quirky early 1950s where our hero, played by Chalamet, is essentially trying to use this non-traditional sport to plot a way out of the dullness and grind of his normie life, where he is on track to become a manager of a shoe store. Marty (whose last name is not actually Supreme, but the amusingly alliterative Mauser) is a pretty dislikable individual: happy to abandon a girl he gets pregnant, throw a fit when he loses a match, and think he can talk his way out of any kind of difficulty. But such is his verve, charisma and never-say-die attitude, he carries you with him.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

The 50 best albums of 2025: No 4 – Addison Rae: Addison

The former TikTok star defied expectations by delivering dreamy, experimental synth-pop whose fizzy hedonism was a tonic for trying times
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

The second coming of Addison Rae was first sown last summer, when Charli xcx featured the former TikTok dancer on the remix of her Brat single Von Dutch. Rae’s vocals are fluttery and sugar-sweet, making her an odd fit for such an abrasive song. But there was symbolic significance to Rae’s presence in a track about sticking it to the haters.

“Got a lot to say about my debut,” Rae trills, “while you’re sitting in your dad’s basement!” The 25-year-old star was referring to the backlash that followed her first single, 2021’s generic Obsessed. Back then, she was widely known as one of TikTok’s original young stars, famous for her viral choreography. Her attempts to translate that fame off-platform – that much-maligned single, a role in a dud Netflix film – had only led to widespread derision. But this time, things seemed different. Her proximity to xcx and her alt-pop cool swiftly washed away the sticky juvenilia of Rae’s TikTok fame.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘To be really successful, you have to be sexy in a straight way’: Ben Whishaw on libidinous New York and playing Peter Hujar

Peter Hujar captured a queer Manhattan demi-monde that is now lost to Aids. Whishaw reveals what he learned playing the photographer in a minimalist film being hailed by some as a masterpiece

On 19 December 1974, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz went round to her friend Peter Hujar’s apartment in New York, and asked the photographer to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He talked in great detail about taking Allen Ginsberg’s portrait for the New York Times (it didn’t go well – Ginsberg was too performative for the kind of intimacy Hujar craved). He also described the Chinese takeaway he ate and how his pal Vince Aletti came round to have a shower. And he fretted about not being paid by Elle magazine.

So what did Ben Whishaw, who plays him in the new film Peter Hujar’s Day, do himself the day before? The actor, on a video call from his home in London, rubbing his hands through his hair in a worried manner, says he could probably describe it in “about five sentences”, but after some persuasion attempts to give a flavour. “I got home from filming and I got the chicken that I’d cooked the previous day and eaten half of and I finished it. Well, not finished it but continued eating it and then had a glass of wine and fell asleep at half past nine. Boring. But, um, maybe there’s no such thing as boring.”

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:33 pm

People in the US: what news story brought you hope or happiness in 2025?

We want to hear from people about the news moments that were a ray of light in among the more difficult headlines and bad news stories

Though there have been many challenging news stories this year, we’d like to hear about the headlines that lifted your mood.

What was a moment in 2025 that stood out for you as a ray of light? Do you have a story that gave you hope or brought you happiness? What is your favorite positive news story of the year?

Published: December 15, 2025, 6:13 pm

Trump’s cannabis reform would revolutionise US policy. Just don’t expect the ‘war on drugs’ to end | Kojo Koram

Rescheduling marijuana might seem an unlikely move for a Republican president – but it perfectly coheres with his ‘America First’ worldview

For decades, the issue of cannabis reform was firmly viewed as a leftist pipe dream. To most conservatives, particularly US Republicans, legalising weed was as realistic as nuclear disarmament, or abolishing national borders.

Think of the phrase “war on drugs” and the first people that probably come to mind are Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan and George HW and George W Bush. Although the clampdown reached its harshest levels during the presidency of Mr “I didn’t inhale” Bill Clinton, it always seemed as if the GOP owned the position of being “tough on drugs”. As recently as 2023, Mitch McConnell, then Senate Republican leader, reaffirmed this reputation by stating that: “Democrats are struggling with the basics. This should not be this hard. Drugs belong off our streets.”

Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:34 pm

I spent a month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani – it’s no easy feat | Arwa Mahdawi

While the New York mayor-elect is constantly smiling in the face of his detractors, having a perma-grin didn’t come so easily to me

As a big fan of citizen science, I have spent the past month conducting a very important experiment. While I am not quite as hardcore as the American virologist Jonas Salk, who injected the polio vaccine into himself and his family before large-scale trials, this scientific inquiry has involved some personal pain. You see, I have spent the last month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani. This is not, as I have discovered, an easy feat.

Ever since the incoming mayor of New York became a household name, I’ve been intrigued by his perma-smile. His detractors call him a “jihadist”, and he smiles. He meets Donald Trump, and he smiles. Some Republican lawmakers launch a campaign to investigate his path to citizenship and deport him? He keeps on smiling. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look angry.

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:32 pm

Europe is a continent soaked in economic pessimism. Until we change that, the far right will rise and rise | Owen Jones

Since 2008, struggling communities have been told they are in competition with migrants. Only a model that gives them hope will halt the populists

How much does Europe’s future resemble its gruesome past? That question was already pressing before Donald Trump retook the White House, and turned support for the European far-right “patriotic” parties into US policy. That is, of course, what his newly published National Security Strategy means, committing the US to “cultivating resistance” in European nations against the supposed “civilisational erasure” represented by immigration.

With or without US interference, far-right authoritarianism is now an entirely plausible European future, unless there is drastic change. After all, it is already the US’s present reality. American exceptionalism once held that such an outcome was impossible in the world’s oldest continuous constitutional republic, with its system of separation of powers and no history of despotism. Yet the country is now ruled by a self-styled king, centralising executive power, weaponising the justice system, attacking civil society and neutralising the media.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:22 pm

This is another ‘ozone layer’ moment. Now, we must urgently target methane | Mia Mottley

The oil and gas industry must be legally bound to cut methane emissions. With climate tipping points approaching, time is running out

• Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados

The timing is brutal. Just as the world celebrates the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris climate agreement this month, new evidence shows that the world is crashing through the main defence that was constructed against climate catastrophe.

The three-year temperature average is – for the first time – set to exceed the Paris guardrail of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2025 will join 2023 and 2024 as the three warmest since the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the accelerating pace of the climate crisis.

Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados

Published: December 16, 2025, 8:00 am

The 100 best male footballers in the world 2025 – Nos 100-71

Arda Güler, Nick Woltemade and Rafael Leão are among the first 30 players as we start our countdown to the list, updating through the week

• Our methodology | The top 100 female players for 2025

• 2024 edition | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:23 am

Cooper Flagg sets NBA record for points by an 18-year-old, besting LeBron James

• Flagg scored 42 points, breaking James’ 2003 record of 37

• Dallas lost 140-133 to the Utah Jazz

Cooper Flagg scored the most points by an 18-year-old in NBA history, but he couldn’t enjoy the accomplishment because it came in a loss.

Flagg had 42 points – topping the previous mark of 37 set by LeBron James on Dec. 13, 2003 – in a 140-133 loss to the Utah Jazz on Monday night.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:48 pm

Steelers end Dolphins’ playoff hopes in frigid win on Monday Night Football

• Pittsburgh scores TDs on four straight possessions

• Dolphins’ four-game winning streak snapped

Aaron Rodgers passed for 224 yards and two touchdowns, and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Miami Dolphins 28-15 on Monday night to stay atop the AFC North.

Pittsburgh (8-6) won their second straight game – and 23rd straight at home during the NFL’s Monday night showcase – by overwhelming Miami (6-8) over the final 35 minutes.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:36 am

Man who drove into Liverpool FC parade jailed for more than 21 years

Police said Paul Doyle, 54, used his vehicle ‘as a weapon’ in a moment of rage at a victory parade in the city on 26 May

A former Royal Marine is starting a 21-year jail term for mowing down dozens of Liverpool football fans in a “truly shocking” act that “defies ordinary understanding”.

Paul Doyle, 54, bowed his head as he was sentenced at Liverpool crown court where victims and their families watched, some in tears, from the public gallery.

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:15 pm

Joshua v Paul makes Joe Louis’ ‘Bum of the Month’ look like the Rumble in the Jungle | Sean Ingle

The best we can hope for is that Paul does not get seriously hurt. Joshua, Netflix and the sport itself should know better

Precisely 85 years ago, one of the most fearsome heavyweight boxers in history stunk out the joint. Joe Louis was in the midst of his “Bum of the Month club”: a staggering run of 13 world title defences in 29 months against an assortment of stiffs, wild men and colourful characters. And when he arrived in Boston on 16 December 1940, most believed that Al McCoy would rapidly become his next victim. Only it didn’t quite turn out that way.

“McCoy was expected to crumple under the first punch Louis tossed in his direction,” the New York Times’ correspondent wrote. “Instead, the wily New England veteran made Louis appear ludicrous at times. Adopting a crouching, bobbing, weaving style, McCoy was an elusive target for the paralysing fists of the titleholder.” After the messy contest was stopped at the end of the fifth, a storm of jeers rang out. Louis had won, but only his bank balance had been enhanced.

Published: December 16, 2025, 8:00 am

Chiefs uncertain if Mahomes will be fit for start of 2026 season after ACL tear

• Kansas City miss playoffs for first time since 2014

• Green Bay star Micah Parsons also tore ACL

Patrick Mahomes will get a second opinion on his torn left ACL before having surgery, Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Monday, and it remains unclear whether the two-time MVP quarterback will be available by the start of next season.

Mahomes tore the knee ligament when he was spun to the ground while trying to keep Kansas City’s postseason hopes alive in a 16-13 loss to the Chargers on Sunday. The team confirmed his ACL tear a few hours after the game.

Published: December 15, 2025, 8:03 pm

Philip Rivers: how a 44-year-old grandpa nearly pulled off one of the NFL’s greatest comebacks

The Colts quarterback was coaching high school football before his surprise return. And he showed brains are almost important as brawn at his position

Is quarterback the most demanding position in sports? It’s close enough to make no difference: players must memorize a complicated playbook, orchestrate an entire offense, scan for open receivers while 280lb opponents sprint toward them with violent intent, and then thread a pass to a target who could be 30 yards downfield amid a crowd of defenders. Now try doing all that as a 44-year-old grandfather, exactly 1,800 days since you last started an NFL game.

Philip Rivers broke a historic streak for the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. The longest layoff between games before then belonged to another 44-year-old quarterback who returned to action after years out of the game, and some time in coaching – Steve DeBerg for the Atlanta Falcons in 1998.

Published: December 15, 2025, 8:15 am

Cameron Menzies cracks in the cauldron as darts faces an uncomfortable truth

The Scotsman is a wry, slightly daft ex-plumber who wears his heart on his sleeve. So why does the Ally Pally crowd enjoy goading him?

By the time Cameron Menzies finally leaves the arena, the blood gushing from the gash on his right hand has trickled its way down the whole hand, down his wrist, part of his forearm and – somehow – up to his face. Smeared in crimson and regret, and already mouthing sheepish apologies to the crowd, he disappears down the steps, pursued by a stern-looking Matt Porter, the chief executive of the Professional Darts Corporation.

The physical scars from Menzies’s encounter with the Alexandra Palace drinks table after his 3-2 defeat against Charlie Manby will be gone within a few weeks. Most probably there will be a fine of some sort. What about the rest? Man loses game of darts, punches table three times in fury, goes to hospital, repents at leisure: simple cause and effect. But of course this is not, and this is never, the whole story. In a way this tale is a kind of parable for elite darts itself, a pub game elevated to the level of a prize-fight, even – very occasionally – a bloodsport.

Published: December 15, 2025, 9:34 pm

Thomas Frank is running out of time to fix Tottenham Hotspur | Jonathan Wilson

Spurs have faced low moments in their history, and this is one of them. How will the club respond in the post-Daniel Levy era?

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Tottenham Hotspur, Thomas Frank said after Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, are “not a quick fix”. That’s been true for probably 40 years, since they lurched into financial crisis amid boardroom shenanigans in the 1980s, becoming the first soccer club to list on the stock exchange and embarking on a disastrous programme of diversification (the highlight perhaps being becoming Hummel’s distributor in the UK, a role they performed so badly that Southampton took a page of their own programme to blame Spurs for the fact that their shirts were not being delivered).

Right now, Spurs would probably settle for even a little bit of a fix, a slow hint of progress, a flicker of hope, anything to break them out of the current grim spiral. They have won just one of their last seven league games. When they beat Everton on 26 October, they were third, five points behind the leaders. Sunday’s defeat leaves them 11th, 14 points behind Arsenal. Given that Spurs finished 17th last season, perhaps that is not so unexpected – and the compacted nature of the table means they are only four points off fifth and probable Champions League qualification. But, equally, 22 points represents their lowest Premier League tally after 16 games since 2008.

Published: December 15, 2025, 3:40 pm

Peace plans ready to be presented to Russia in days, says Zelenskyy

US says talks with Ukraine in Berlin have resolved 90% of difficult issues – but no sign Putin willing to compromise

• Europe live – latest updates

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says proposals negotiated with US officials on a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine could be finalised within days, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin.

After two days of talks in Berlin, US officials said on Monday they had resolved “90%” of the problematic issues between Russia and Ukraine, but despite the positive spin it is not clear that an end to the war is any closer, particularly as the Russian side is absent from the current talks.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:16 pm

At least three writers withdraw from Hay festival in protest at Machado invite

Writers cited Machado’s support for Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro

At least three writers have withdrawn from next month’s Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia, in protest at an invitation extended to the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado.

The main reason cited by them is Machado’s support for Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and her comments in favour of a potential US military intervention in the Caribbean country.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:17 pm

How a Brazilian meat tycoon accused of bribery and deforestation became a key player in regional diplomacy

Joesley Batista is credited as a major force behind the reconciliation between Trump and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Six international airlines had suspended flights to Venezuela over the risk of possible US military strikes when an ultra-long-haul executive jet from São Paulo, Brazil, landed calmly in Caracas.

On board that flight on 23 November was the Brazilian meat tycoon Joesley Batista – twice jailed for corruption and whose companies have a long record of environmental violations. After a meeting with the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, he returned to Brazil the following day.

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:00 am

Nearly 90 flights linked to Epstein ‘came to or from UK airports’

Flight logs reveal three British women onboard who were allegedly trafficked by convicted sex offender, according to BBC

Nearly 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein reportedly arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women onboard who allege they were abused by the convicted child sex offender.

Analysis by the BBC found three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein’s records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the late disgraced billionaire.

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:22 am

Five key moments in the assault on the rights of women and girls in 2025

Since Trump’s second term began in January, global healthcare, especially for sexual and reproductive health, has been under constant attack

This time last year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for the chaos that would be unleashed in January. The volume and speed of executive orders coming out of the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by the USAID freeze. But that was just the beginning.

The US administration has been the key driver, supported by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to strengthen global ties with political allies.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

New antibiotics hailed as ‘turning point’ in treating drug-resistant gonorrhoea

First new treatments for sexually transmitted disease in decades approved by US Food and Drug Administration as number of cases worldwide surge to 82m

The first new treatments for gonorrhoea in decades could be a “huge turning point” in efforts to combat the rise of superbug strains of the bacteria, researchers have said.

Gonorrhoea is on the rise around the world, with more than 82m infections globally each year and particularly high rates in Africa and countries in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific region, which reaches from Mongolia and China to New Zealand. Cases in England are at a record high, and rates in Europe were three times higher in 2023 than in 2014.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:00 am

Estonia ferry disaster in 1994 caused by bow failure not explosion, report confirms

Investigators say latest studies of wreckage reveal no sign to back up alternative theories of a collision or a blast

• Europe live – latest updates

The sinking of the Estonia ferry more than 30 years ago was caused by the failure of its bow section, not an explosion or collision as claimed by some, authorities have said, in a report aimed at finally closing the case on Europe’s worst civil maritime disaster since the second world war.

“The MV Estonia sank as a result of the collapse of its bow construction,” Estonian, Swedish and Finnish investigators said. “There is, therefore, no reason to start a new full-scale … investigation of the accident.”

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:10 pm

Merch commemorating drunk Virginia raccoon raises over $250,000 for animal shelter

Staff at the Ashland animal shelter sold merch of raccoon they cared for after he was found passed out in a liquor store

Merchandise commemorating the raccoon that gained international fame by barging into a Virginia liquor store, smashing bottled spirits and passing out drunk in a bathroom on Black Friday has raised more than a quarter-million dollars for the local animal shelter where he slept off his bender.

The Hanover county animal protection shelter raised the charitable amount after caring for the inebriated raccoon in question and teaming up with custom apparel maker Bonfire to create and sell items seizing on the internet virality achieved by the creature.

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:00 am

Disclosure Day: first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s star-studded UFO movie

Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson head up the director’s latest effort

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s mysterious UFO movie has now provided more details on what audiences can expect.

Disclosure Day, written by Jurassic Park’s David Koepp based on a Spielberg story, sees a starry cast deal with the discovery of aliens. “Why would he make such a vast universe yet save it only for us?’” Elizabeth Marvel’s character says at the end of the teaser.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:06 pm

Norway’s national oil company facing £53m penalty for oil spills and gas leaks

Equinor accused of ‘extensive and long-term pollution’ caused by years of inadequate maintenance

Norway’s national oil company, Equinor, is facing a £53m penalty for oil spills and gas leaks at the oil-rich Scandinavian state’s only refinery, which officials said were the result of years of inadequate maintenance.

Norway’s economic crime agency, Økokrim, said it had taken action against Equinor over “extensive and long-term pollution” at the refinery in Mongstad, on Norway’s North Sea coast.

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:41 pm

Jane Goodall Earth medal to recognise people working to improve the world

Organisers of award in honour of late primatologist hope it will inspire and encourage people to take action

Earth might be under pressure, but the Queen guitarist Sir Brian May is hopeful a new award from the science, music and arts festival he co-founded will encourage people to take action.

The Starmus Jane Goodall Earth medal will be given in honour of the British primatologist who died this year and will recognise those who champion life on Earth.

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:00 pm

The trauma after the storm: Hurricane Melissa leaves trail of emotional devastation across Jamaica

Experts are calling for the integration of mental health into climate-disaster policy in the Caribbean as studies show that PTSD risks increase after hurricanes and displacement

When Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica on 28 October with 185mph winds, destroying homes, hospitals and infrastructure, killing 32 people and affecting 1.5 million, Toni-Jan Ifill immediately realised it would leave many with long-term traumatic memories.

A month and a half after the storm, which also affected eastern Cuba, the clinical psychologist says recollections of the terrifying winds also haunt some of the staff at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston. Even the sound of rain can cause trauma responses among people who lived through it.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘No water, no life’: Iraq’s Tigris River in danger of disappearing

Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks

As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.

The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.

Published: December 16, 2025, 6:00 am

US names national guard members killed in Syria as Trump vows to hit Islamic State ‘hard’

Sgt Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, and 29-year-old Sgt William Nathaniel Howard were remembered as dedicated soldiers

The two Iowa national guard members killed in a weekend attack in Syria that the US military blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group were identified on Monday and remembered as dedicated soldiers.

The US army named them as Sgt Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:40 am

‘This has shaken us’: Providence on edge as manhunt for students’ killer goes on

Tension mixes with grief and frustration at Brown University in Rhode Island as police search for suspect

• What we know so far about the attack in Providence, Rhode Island

Tension mixed with grief and frustration in Providence on Monday around the Brown University campus, after authorities said they were still searching for a suspect who killed two students.

Nine additional students were injured in Saturday’s shooting on the Ivy League campus in Rhode Island, which is woven into the heart of the city’s East Side neighborhood, a community that to many feels more like a small town than the capital city of the smallest state in the US.

Published: December 16, 2025, 12:55 am

Donald Trump sues BBC for up to $10bn over edit of January 6 speech

President accuses corporation of ‘intentionally, maliciously and deceptively’ editing speech in Panorama broadcast

Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021, requesting up to $10bn in damages.

The US president alleged the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” edited his 6 January speech before the insurrection, in an episode of Panorama just over a year ago.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:49 am

Four arrested for allegedly plotting New Year’s Eve terror attacks near LA, say officials

Federal officials charged four suspects who they allege were planning to bomb multiple sites across southern California

Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two US companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.

The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, Bill Essayli, first assistant US attorney, said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.

Published: December 15, 2025, 10:23 pm

‘We are all human beings first’: Jews and Muslims embrace at vigils for those killed in Bondi beach terror attack

Interfaith groups share messages of love, unity and ‘deep heartbreak and condolences’ in the wake of antisemitic mass shooting

• Full report: Bondi terror attack

• Victims of Bondi beach shooting

• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

About 24 hours after terror was unleashed on Sydney’s Bondi beach, Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins stood in the city’s Hyde Park and delivered a message of unity.

“So many in our Jewish community have received messages of love from leaders in different faith communities, from Palestinian friends and friends around this country, and in so doing, we are now learning we are all just flesh and blood, and we are all also the light,” he said.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Tributes flow for Bondi shooting victim Marika Pogany, 82, ‘a source of warmth for thousands of people’

The long-serving volunteer and keen bridge player would ‘go into people’s homes and change lightbulbs, if that’s the assistance they needed’

• Full report: Bondi terror attack

• Victims of Bondi beach shooting

• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

One of the things that Marika Pogany would often say to her friend of nearly 40 years, Matthew Mullamphy, was: “Matty, no one’s perfect.”

But she was, Mullamphy says, about as close as people come.

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Many Europeans mistakenly think most immigrants are illegal, poll shows

Exclusive: Seven-country survey finds strong opposition to increasing migration and support for deportations

Many Europeans mistakenly think most migrants are in their country illegally, according to a poll that found overwhelming opposition to any increase in migration and strong support for a significant reduction in numbers, including deportation.

Pluralities or majorities of between 44% and 60% of respondents polled in a survey by YouGov in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain said they thought “many” or “somewhat” more migrants were staying illegally than legally.

Published: December 16, 2025, 11:00 am

Figures reveal stark reality of US funding cuts as 1,394 family planning clinics shut

Survey by world’s largest network for sexual and reproductive health shows devastation to services, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, and amplification of anti-rights voices

Cuts to US aid funding have directly led to the closure of more than 1,000 family planning clinics, new figures shared with the Guardian reveal.

Millions of people have been left without access to contraceptives or care, including those who have suffered sexual assault, as part of a “radical shift towards conservative ideologies that deliberately block human rights”, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:00 am

‘I fear electromagnetic catastrophe’: Josh Safdie on Marty Supreme, latent Jewish anxiety and why men are lost

The Timothée Chalamet-starring comedy about a hustling table tennis ace has been voted one of the Guardian’s films of the year. Its writer/director talks ambition, American dreams and alien takeovers

• Why Marty Supreme is the No 5 film in the UK and No 4 in the US

Josh Safdie, 41, is best known for the films he has made with his brother, Benny – frenetic chancer yarns such as Uncut Gems, Good Time and Heaven Knows What.

Last year, the brothers split and shot separate movies loosely based on real life sportsmen. Benny made wrestling drama The Smashing Machine, starring The Rock; Josh a loose take on the life of Marty Reisman, a shoe-store clerk in 1950s New York, who aspires to table tennis pre-eminence but must hustle to fund his passage to championships in London and Tokyo.

Published: December 16, 2025, 9:59 am

How did a warm, cheery man like Rob Reiner make a film as horrific as Misery?

In an industry not exactly known for it, Reiner was an exceptionally nice guy. But he was too much of a showman to make a straight shocker. The result was rich, terrifying – yet cherished

• ‘Not a second of wasted time’: Rob Reiner’s golden run
• Meeting Rob Reiner was like a visit from Santa
• Rob Reiner’s five best films
• Hollywood in shock: ‘One of the greatest’

You can love a film without, apparently, ever having paid full attention to it. I realised this only recently when I came to understood something crucial about Misery, the 1990 psychological horror film adapted from the novel by Stephen King and directed by Rob Reiner. What are the chances, I used to think, that Paul Sheldon, the bestselling novelist kidnapped and tortured by unhinged superfan Annie Wilkes, came off the road right when she happened along? It didn’t occur to me that the reason she was there in the first place was because she was stalking him or even (a conclusion not supported by the text) that she caused the crash. You think and think about these films that you love – and they come up different every time.

Reiner’s main strength as a film-maker is what made news of his death particularly horrifying, which is to say the man’s warmth – a sense, widely felt by millions who knew him only through his movies, that at heart, and in an industry not exactly known for it, Reiner was an exceptionally nice guy. His movies were smart, sophisticated, knowing, but when I think about the hits he had across every genre, the defining characteristic for me is their absence of cynicism.

Published: December 16, 2025, 8:00 am

The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago. But its lessons live on in The Quiet American

Phillip Noyce’s political drama is a searing critique of American interventionism that feels all too pertinent today

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Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) was a “quiet American”, says Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) to a French policeman. “A friend,” he adds, as the lifeless corpse of Pyle stares back at him with a wretched expression.

This is the scene that opens Phillip Noyce’s Vietnam-set political drama before the film flashes back a few months earlier to 1952 Saigon, where Fowler, an ageing Englishman, lives leisurely as a journalist reporting on the first Indochina war. When Pyle, a young American aid worker advocating for US intervention, falls for Fowler’s 20-year-old Vietnamese lover, Phượng (Đỗ Thị Hải Yến), the jaded reporter’s tranquil existence begins to unravel.

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Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Europe’s New Faces review – a punishing immersion in the migrant journey

A four-hour documentary observes life in a Paris squat and perilous Mediterranean crossings – but its non-narrative structure tests the limits of endurance and empathy

Egyptian-American film-maker Sam Abbas’s experimental documentary was made over four years and shows footage of African and South Asian immigrants making the treacherous journey up through Libya and across the Mediterranean to a Parisian squat. That’s a misleadingly linear description of the film; it’s actually cleaved into two parts which would seem back to front if we were following the stories of specific people. The first section observes life in the squat where the residents support each other as they face eviction threats and the bureaucracy of asylum-seeking, while the second part looks on as other people make the rough sea passage. Time is also spent aboard boats run by organisations such as Doctors Without Borders who seek to help the migrants.

All that might make this sound like any number of 21st-century documentaries (Fire at Sea, for instance) and dramas (Io Capitano) about immigrants crossing continents with deadly results. But this one is aggressively non-narrative, composed of a series of long static shots and still images that linger many beats longer than might seem necessary to get the point across. Body parts and faces, what looks like a fuse box, a child being delivered by a rough emergency C-section (gory stuff, be warned), someone’s phone showing text messages, water, sick people laid out like cordwood on a deck; it’s all a jumble of images, unexplained and raw, and sometimes barely visible in the low-lit conditions.

Published: December 16, 2025, 7:00 am

Heat at 30: Michael Mann’s electric crime thriller is a film of fire and sadness

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s dueling performances add an extra punch to the 1995 masterpiece which is both action-heavy and deeply tragic

Consider the hype leading into Heat when it hit theatres 30 years ago today. Here was Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, two legends the movie’s trailers flexed by their rhyming last names only, both masters of their craft who, much like their characters, had been watching each other from a distance (maybe competitively, maybe with respect and admiration), sharing the screen for the very first time. The pent-up anticipation was built right into the narrative, which patiently delays the onscreen face-off between Pacino’s dogged homicide detective Vincent Hanna and De Niro’s career criminal Neil McCauley for almost 90 textured and intense minutes.

Imagine the surprise then, and the comic relief, when the moment finally arrives, and these two opposing forces collide (as the trailers would say) … for a warm and exceptionally civil cup of coffee.

Published: December 15, 2025, 3:07 pm

‘Apocalyptically funny’: why The Mitchells vs the Machines is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers explaining their comfort watches is a celebration of 2021’s acclaimed animated adventure

Animation is a great way of allowing you to experience the world through the eyes of another, complete with the colour, energy, imagination and chaos that this can bring. It’s true whether you’re looking at the world from the perspective of a frustrated and talented teenage girl, or from that of a megalomaniacal rogue AI who dreams of blasting every human on Earth into space in tiny hexagonal pods (with free wifi!). Such is the chaotic and sensational combination of styles that fuels animated road-trip riot The Mitchells vs the Machines, a film that crams a father-daughter conflict, a techno-apocalypse, Olivia Colman, and every colour of the rainbow into a burnt-orange 1993 station wagon.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller produce with the same kind of free-spirited approach that characterised the likes of The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s then balanced out by Gravity Falls’ Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, who complement the zaniness with a nuanced, gentle and heartfelt story, making it more than just a superficial display of artistry. The Mitchells vs the Machines is not just a story of the relationships people have with one another, but those we have with technology and our past selves.

Published: December 15, 2025, 10:00 am

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 New York garage rock band in their 20s
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Published: December 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘It became a running joke how much my brothers and I hated it’: the sound of Christmas to me

Beyond Wham! and Elton, Guardian writers from across the generations select the songs that conjure the personal magic and memories of the season

I’m always fascinated by the ways in which my generation manage to participate in the circulation of music. Amateur TikTok edits resurrect forgotten gems and turn obscure starlets into sensations; home producers fabricate entire albums if their favourite rapper doesn’t release enough. Such is the case with Doom Xmas, the brainchild of Grammy-winning Spanish producer Cookin’ Soul, which refashions the work of late cult rapper MF Doom into Christmas music. There are filthy Grinch soundtrack flips, hectic Latin Christmas skits and a chopped-and-screwed Nat King Cole that’ll change the way you hear The Christmas Song.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

Musicians are deeply concerned about AI. So why are the major labels embracing it?

Companies such as Udio, Suno and Klay will let you use AI to make new music based on existing artists’ work. It could mean more royalties – but many are worried

This was the year that AI-generated music went from jokey curiosity to mainstream force. Velvet Sundown, a wholly AI act, generated millions of streams; AI-created tracks topped Spotify’s viral chart and one of the US Billboard country charts; AI “artist” Xania Monet “signed” a record deal. BBC Introducing is usually a platform for flesh-and-blood artists trying to make it big, but an AI-generated song by Papi Lamour was recently played on the West Midlands show. And jumping up the UK Top 20 this month is I Run, a track by dance act Haven, who have been accused of using AI to imitate British vocalist Jorja Smith (Haven claim they simply asked the AI for “soulful vocal samples”, and did not respond to an earlier request to comment).

The worry is that AI will eventually absorb all creative works in history and spew out endless slop that will replace human-made art and drive artists into penury. Those worries are being deepened by how the major labels, once fearful of the technology, are now embracing it – and heralding a future in which ordinary listeners have a hand in co-creating music with their favourite musicians.

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Fans stole my underwear – and even my car aerial’: how Roxette made It Must Have Been Love

‘We had 2,000 people outside our hotel room in Buenos Aires singing our songs all night. David Coulthard later told me that all the Formula One drivers were staying there and were annoyed because they couldn’t sleep’

In my early 20s, I was in the biggest band in Sweden. But after Gyllene Tider [Golden Times] collapsed, I was depressed for two years. At first, Roxette only got together when Marie Fredriksson, our singer, wasn’t busy with solo stuff. To keep her in the band, I needed to make it successful, so I was very motivated.

Published: December 15, 2025, 3:00 pm

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson review – startlingly original

The Indigenous Canadian author brilliantly captures the interdependence of humans and the natural world, in a darkly satirical critique of colonialism

Noopiming, the first of Canadian writer-musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s books to be published in the UK, means “in the bush” in the language of the Ojibwe people. The title of this startlingly original fiction is an ironic reference to Roughing It in the Bush; or, Forest Life in Canada, an 1852 memoir about “the civilisation of barbarous countries” by Susanna Moodie – Simpson’s eponymous “white lady” – a Briton who settled in the 1830s on the north shore of Lake Ontario, where Simpson’s ancestors resided and she now lives.

That 19th-century settlers’ guidebook went on to be hailed as the origin of Canadian women’s writing; Margaret Atwood adopted the Suffolk-born frontierswoman’s voice in her 1970 poetry collection, The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Though she mentions Moodie’s book only in an afterword, Simpson’s perspective is different. For Moodie, extolling “our copper, silver and plumbago mines” in the extractivist British colony, the “red-skin” was a noble savage, and the “half-caste” a “lying, vicious rogue”. Yet, rather than a riposte to the toxic original, Noopiming – first published in Canada in 2020 and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary award in 2022 – sets about building a world on its own terms. The “cure”, then – the antidote to Moodie’s blinkered vision – is this book.

Published: December 16, 2025, 7:00 am

The Innocents of Florence by Joseph Luzzi review – how abandoned babies spurred a flowering of Renaissance art

The precarious, cruel but dazzling world of a foundling hospital is brought wonderfully to life by the author of Botticelli’s Secret

Joseph Luzzi, a professor at Bard College in New York, is a Dante scholar whose books argue for the relevance of the great Italian art and literature of the late middle ages and Renaissance to our own times. A great populariser and advocate of the humanities in public life, he has done for Dante what his Bard colleague Daniel Mendelsohn did for Homer in An Odyssey and other books.

This short volume tells the story of the Hospital of the Innocents in Dante’s home town of Florence, a building Luzzi has been fascinated by since encountering it in 1987 on his college year abroad. The Innocenti, as it is known, was the first institution in Europe devoted solely to the care of unwanted children. The first foundling, named Agata because she was left by its gates on Saint Agata’s Day 1445, had been nibbled at by mice.

Published: December 16, 2025, 9:00 am

Poem of the week: Winter Walk by Lynette Roberts

A journey through a visionary landscape, exceptionally bright in icy weather, conjures a surreal semi-mythical world

Winter Walk

She left the hut and bright log fire at noon
And walked outside on crisp white winter snow
To find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon,
The wild wood desolate and bare below;
The red trees wet, adrift with icy flow,
The evergreens with glassy needled leaves;
A bloodstone veined red and white this view weaves.

Published: December 15, 2025, 10:12 am

Pulse by Cynan Jones review – short stories that show the vitality of the form

The Welsh author vividly captures the solitude, hard labour, dramas and dangers of rural life

In these six stories of human frailty and responsibility, Welsh writer Cynan Jones explores the imperatives of love and the labour of making and sustaining lives. Each is told with a compelling immediacy and intensity, and with the quality of returning to a memory.

In the story Reindeer a man is seeking a bear, which has been woken by hunger from hibernation and is now raiding livestock from the farms of a small isolated community. “There was no true sunshine. There was no gleam in the snow, but the lateness of the left daylight put a cold faint blue through the slopes.” The story’s world is one in which skill, endurance, even stubbornness might be insufficient to succeed, but are just enough to persist.

Published: December 15, 2025, 9:00 am

He wrote the world’s most successful video games – now what? Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser on life after Grand Theft Auto

He rewrote the rule book with Rockstar then left it all behind. Now Dan Houser is back with a storytelling-focused studio to take on AI-obsessed tech bros and Mexican beauty queens

There are only a handful of video game makers who have had as profound an effect on the industry as Dan Houser. The co-founder of Rockstar Games, and its lead writer, worked on all the GTA titles since the groundbreaking third instalment, as well as both Red Dead Redemption adventures. But then, in 2019, he took an extended break from the company which ended with his official departure. Now he’s back with a new studio and a range of projects, and 12 years after we last interviewed him, he’s ready to talk about what comes next.

“Finishing those big projects and thinking about doing another one is really intense,” he says about his decision to go. “I’d been in full production mode every single day from the very start of each project to the very end, for 20 years. I stayed so long because I loved the games. It was a real privilege to be there, but it was probably the right time to leave. I turned 45 just after Red Dead 2 came out. I thought, well, it’s probably a good time to try working on some other stuff.”

Published: December 15, 2025, 12:35 pm

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Rob Reiner comments: ‘So hateful and vile’

Late-night hosts also discussed a horrific news weekend and the president’s strange Christmas story about snakes

Late-night hosts reacted to the murder of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as well as Donald Trump’s 10-minute tangent about Christmas snakes.

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:15 pm

From Harry Potter to The Crying Game, Susie Figgis’s explosive enthusiasm made her an irreplaceable casting director

Producer Stephen Woolley pays tribute to Figgis, who has died aged 77, a brilliant professional whose ‘molotov cocktail personality’ enabled her work in British and Hollywood cinema

I first encountered Susie Figgis over 40 years ago when I interviewed her for The Company of Wolves, my debut movie production with Neil Jordan. We met at my then-cinema the Scala – it was a busy, noisy office but a sunny day, so we went up to the roof. Susie, who was already something of a legend having cast Stephen Frears’ Bloody Kids, Laura Mulvey’s avant garde films and Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, unleashed a volcanic eruption of unbridled enthusiasm for Angela Carter and Neil’s script. The collection of explosive expletives and voluble “darlings” almost blasted me to the King’s Cross streets below.

So began a professional relationship that spanned more than 23 movies. The task we set her for The Company of Wolves was tricky: to find an actor to play the adolescent Rosaleen. She achieved it through painstaking and meticulous methods (her trademark) over the next few months, exceeding our expectations when she discovered the excellent Sarah Patterson. She then topped that with the suggestion of Angela Lansbury for “Grannie” (who flew from Hollywood to shoot with us and had her character’s head decapitated for her troubles) and a superlative supporting cast of dancers, performance artists and veteran actors for our strange, violent woodland fairytale. Her passion for cinema was infectious: not only for the film-makers, but also the agents and actors who read our scripts. Susie demanded an intelligent and thoughtful response to the screenplays so no simple yes or no would suffice.

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:11 pm

From Seinfeld to Shawshank, Rob Reiner changed Hollywood for ever

Reiner’s own films reshaped modern comedy and drama with their intelligence, empathy and range. But through his company, Castle Rock, he paved the way for Seinfeld, Sorkin and many more

• News: Rob Reiner found dead in apparent homicide

• Gallery: Rob Reiner – a life in pictures

• Meeting Reiner was like a visit from Santa

As a film-maker, Rob Reiner championed humour, civility and intelligence – qualities you suppose would be out of step with the Hollywood of the 1980s where he made his name, and in the 1990s where he scored a series of extraordinary, far-reaching successes. Reiner had a family interest in the workings of on-screen comedy: his father Carl had played a key role on Sid Caesar’s TV shows, which themselves were revolutionary, and helped birth a new generation of screen comics by directing Steve Martin’s film debut The Jerk. Rob had become a household name as Meathead, the liberal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted Archie Bunker in 70s sitcom All in the Family (the equivalent to Mike Rawlins v Warren Mitchell in the British original, Till Death Us Do Part). But it was as a director and producer that he really made his impact felt.

In 1984, Reiner released This Is Spinal Tap, a “mockumentary” about a fictitious heavy metal band from the UK that rewrote the rules on what comedy could do. It sent up rock’n’roll behaviour and codified its cliches (with Reiner himself doing a hilarious parody of Martin Scorsese’s hosting role in The Last Waltz) and gave us zingers that haven’t lost their comedy power more than 30 years on: “The numbers all go to 11”, “it’s such a fine line between stupid, and er … clever.” Its deployment of improvised comedy was revolutionary for a Hollywood feature, and while Reiner wasn’t the first to use the fake-documentary techniques for comedic purposes (that goes back at least to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run), it hugely popularised the mockumentary style; subsequent efforts include Bob Roberts, Fear of a Black Hat, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. All these owe Tap a huge debt – as well as the microgenre of star Christopher Guest’s improv-mockumentaries: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Almost incidentally, Spinal Tap became a sort-of-real band, with tours, record releases and a follow-up feature (Spinal Tap II: The End Continues), in which the presence of music industry titans Paul McCartney and Elton John demonstrated the high regard in which the original was held.

Published: December 15, 2025, 1:29 pm

Hollywood reacts in shock to death of Rob Reiner: ‘One of the greatest filmmakers to ever live’

Actors, directors and politicians voice their sadness after bodies of Reiner and wife Michele Singer Reiner were found by authorities

• News: Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner found dead at home in apparent homicide

• Gallery: Rob Reiner – a life in pictures
  

Hollywood is in shock after the sudden death of director and actor Rob Reiner, who has been found dead in an apparent homicide at his Los Angeles home with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

Reiner’s peers paid tribute after reports began to emerge on Sunday afternoon that the bodies of a 78-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman had been found by authorities inside a home owned by Reiner in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

Published: December 15, 2025, 9:14 pm

Four rules for being a good guest this holiday season

Sustainable pet toys, what to get for your mom and gift ideas from small businesses

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

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

Recently, my colleague Danielle Renwick published a piece where she interviewed Chelsea Fagan, author of Having People Over, about how to host a dinner party without breaking the bank.

Published: December 16, 2025, 3:15 pm

The 15 best gifts for skiers and snowboarders – picked by a winter sports writer

From warm socks that prevent chafing to the ideal backpack to tote your gear, here’s what you can gift your snow-crazed loved ones

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

Years ago, when I relocated to Boulder, Colorado, I knew I was moving into ski territory. But I wasn’t prepared for the full-blown obsession people had for snow sports.

As a Pennsylvanian who had viewed winter as a season to be endured rather than enjoyed, I was puzzled by my new friends who rushed to the slopes at the first falling flake. Now I’m a snowboarder and a writer who covers outdoor sports, and I see that the hype is real.

Our favorite gifts for lovers of nature and the outdoors

Our favorite skincare and beauty gifts

The best gifts for the men in your life

Published: December 15, 2025, 8:15 pm

Rise of the full nesters: what life is like with adult children who just can’t leave home

In the UK, close to half of 25-year-olds now live with parents who, in many cases, would expect their nest to have long since emptied. How does this change families, for good and bad?

If life had worked out differently, Serena would by now be coming to terms with an empty nest. Having brought up seven children, she and her husband might even have been enjoying a little more money and time for themselves. But as it is, three of their adult children are now at home: the 23-year-old finishing his degree; the 28-year-old, a teacher, saving for a house deposit; and the 34-year-old, after a mental health crisis. At 63, Serena comes home from her job as a social worker to a mountain of laundry, and a spare downstairs room requisitioned as a bedroom.

Having a houseful is “really good fun”, she says, and makes life richer and more interesting. But it took a while to get used to partners staying over – “I’m not a prude, but you don’t necessarily want to be part of that life for your children, do you?” – and lately, she has felt the lack of an important rite of passage. “I’ve become old and I never really felt it, because I’ve been in that parent mode for such a long time,” she says. “It’s suddenly hit me that I didn’t have that transition that often happens, with kids who leave when you’re in your 40s and 50s – that just hasn’t happened. It’s odd.”

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:00 am

When Secret Santa goes disastrously wrong: ‘It was the most awful thing – I just wanted to cry’

A game of solitaire accompanied by a nasty note, dog food for someone who just lost a puppy … Secret Santa is supposed to be fun, but when it’s not, it can lead to all kinds of trouble

Susanna Beves was a young teacher working at an international school in Germany when she opened a gift that would put her off Secret Santas for ever. The present itself, a solitaire game, “would have been quite nice in the normal circumstances,” she says. But it was accompanied by a note: “It told me that it had been chosen for me because I was single and lonely and likely to remain so, as I had no friends.”

“It was the most awful thing,” Beves, now 57, remembers. When she opened the gift, in a room full of 60 staff members, “I just wanted to cry,” she says. “Everybody was there and everybody was opening their gifts. So I knew that the person who’d written that note was in the room with me.”

Published: December 16, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Oysters are a risk, as is raw meat’: why you get food poisoning – and how to avoid it

Several kinds of bacteria can give you an upset stomach. Here is how to steer clear of the worst offenders, and what to do if they do make it through

Many people in the modern world, it’s probably fair to say, do not take food poisoning particularly seriously. Yes, most folks wash their hands after handling raw chicken and use different chopping boards for beef and green beans – but who among us can honestly say we’ve never used the same tongs for an entire barbecue or left a storage box of cooked rice on the sideboard for a couple of hours? Ignore that rhetorical question for a moment, though – before you comment that of course everyone should do all those things, let’s talk about what’s happening in your body when it all goes horribly wrong.

At the risk of stating the obvious, food poisoning occurs when you eat food contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses or toxins – but that doesn’t mean it always works the same way. “Some bacteria, such as Bacillus cereus – sometimes found in reheated rice – produce toxins before the food is eaten, meaning they can cause symptoms such as sudden vomiting within hours,” says Dr Masarat Jilani, an NHS specialist who regularly manages children and adults with food poisoning. Bacillus cereus also produces another type of toxin in the small intestine, which can cause diarrhoea. “Others, such as Salmonella and E. coli, act after you’ve eaten and often cause longer-lasting symptoms through inflammation of the gut.”

Published: December 15, 2025, 10:00 am

Is it true that … wearing heels changes the shape of your feet?

Stilettos are fine for an evening out, but wearing them all day, every day could cause permanent damage

‘If you’d asked me that 15 years ago, I would have said: ‘Absolute nonsense – it’s all genetics and shoes aren’t responsible for any problem,’” says Andrew Goldberg, consultant orthopaedic foot and ankle specialist at the Wellington hospital in London. But viewing 3D scans that show how people’s feet look while standing in their shoes changed his mind completely.

He took two scans of a person’s feet – one barefoot and one in high heels – and the difference was striking. In the high heels, the toes were crowded together, the big toe showed a bunion, and the smaller toes were clawed, gripping for balance.

Published: December 15, 2025, 8:00 am

St Paul’s splendour and tender deer – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: December 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

Panya the pygmy hippo: how a tiny baby animal became a sensation

Just in time for Christmas, a little calf has arrived at a German zoo and gone viral. But is he cuter than Moo Deng?

Name: Panya the pygmy hippo.

Age: About three weeks.

Published: December 16, 2025, 1:54 pm

Endings are hard, but facing them helps us to heal

I understand the temptation to run away – I have felt it too. Try to stay in the room, and in the moment. You’ll be glad you did

This is my last column for you. I am shocked and delighted that I’ve been allowed to carry on for almost two years, saying such controversial and true things as: the oedipal complex is real and all of us have one; psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective and vital mental health treatment and we must fight for it in the NHS; and Midnight Run is the best film of all time. It has been a joy and an honour, and, now we are here, I’ve been thinking about the significance of endings.

Because they are significant. Sometimes, having no time left can make it possible to feel and say what was impossible before. They can invite an intimacy and truthfulness and grief that some find overwhelming. It’s not unusual for patients to talk of dropping out, or to skip the final session – to call it a waste of time, to want to leave the room before the end.

Published: December 15, 2025, 11:00 am

‘I am not happy with my output!’ Kate Hudson on taking risks, rejecting compromise – and finding her voice at 46

After years as Hollywood’s romcom darling, Hudson is putting music at the centre of her career – and after her show-stealing turn in Song Sung Blue, the Oscar buzz is growing

The first voice I hear when I enter the hotel room to meet Kate Hudson belongs to her 21-year-old son, Ryder, who speaks from the end of a phone: “Love you, Mum!”

Doesn’t everyone? You don’t have to be related to Hudson to consider her a joyous proposition – a great performer who hasn’t yet made a great film. It was a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous, her breakthrough picture, that she first proved she could hoist a movie out of the doldrums while making the task appear as effortless as blow-drying her hair. Without her performance as Penny Lane, the rock’n’roll muse who describes herself as a “band-aid” rather than a groupie, Cameron Crowe’s dopey valentine to the 1970s of his youth would have been Almost Forgettable.

Published: December 15, 2025, 5:00 am

What is ‘home’ now? A woman’s two-year search for safety in the ruins of Gaza

Nour AbuShammala has returned to her partly destroyed apartment in Gaza City. This is her story of multiple displacements, injury and devastation over the last two years

When 26-year-old Nour AbuShammala stepped back into her family’s apartment in Gaza City in October the rooms were gutted, the walls were damaged by bombing, and there was no water or electricity, but it was still home.

Since the outbreak of war in October 2023 she has been forced to flee six times. This is her story of relentless displacement, survival and loss, told using photography and videos provided by AbuShammala and satellite imagery of a ruined Gaza.

Published: December 16, 2025, 7:00 am

‘We’re back at stage one’: Trump cuts rock Louisiana town plagued by gun violence

Federal funds helped Bogalusa address the deep roots of crime – but with the grant pulled, has momentum been lost for ever?

Before the street outside her mother’s home filled with gunfire, before panicked partygoers sprinted through the front yard, before she discovered that the body on the ground was a young man she had watched grow up, Khlilia Daniels knew something in Bogalusa had to change.

It was December of 2022, and Daniels had spent the year watching her home town on Louisiana’s border with Mississippi become a steadily more frightening place. Murders, once rare, now seemed to be happening almost every month, shootings every other week, and in a city of just over 10,000 people, that violence felt close, the losses personal. The victims and perpetrators were predominantly Black, usually young and too often cousins, neighbors or the children of friends, people whom Daniels would see around, until suddenly they were gone.

Published: December 15, 2025, 12:00 pm

Assad family live in Russian luxury as Bashar ‘brushes up on ophthalmology’

Family friend, sources in Russia and Syria, and leaked data help give rare insight into life of dictator’s reclusive household

In 2011, a group of teenage boys spray-painted a warning on to a wall in their school playground: “It’s your turn, Doctor.” The graffiti was a thinly veiled threat that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, a London-trained ophthalmologist, would be next in the line of Arab dictators toppled by the then raging Arab spring.

It took 14 years, during which 620,000 were killed and nearly 14 million displaced, but eventually the doctor’s turn came and Assad was deposed, fleeing to Moscow in the middle of the night.

Published: December 15, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us your favourite film of 2025

We want to hear about the best film you have seen this year. Share your favourite now

We would like to hear about your favourite films of 2025. Was it a tantalising thriller, a comedy that had you rolling in the aisles, or a horror that gave you goosebumps? Which film released in 2025 tops your list?

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Published: December 16, 2025, 10:45 am

Tell us your favourite TV shows of 2025

We would like to hear about your television highlights of the year. Share your thoughts now

The Guardian’s culture writers are compiling their best TV shows of the year – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

What was your top TV show of 2025, and why?

Published: December 16, 2025, 10:46 am

Venezuela’s militia and a Statue of Liberty replica: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Warning: graphic content

Published: December 16, 2025, 2:16 pm