‘Have we done ourselves out of a job?’: concerns in film and TV industry over on-set body scanning

Actors unclear on rights over their data and what it will be used for, as cast and crew alike fear for future of their roles

• Olivia Williams says actors need ‘nudity rider’-type controls for AI body scans

For performers on TV or movie sets, it is not unusual to receive a request to enter a booth filled with scores of cameras ready to capture their likeness from every possible angle. Yet with the cast and crew of productions already fretting over the coming role of AI in the industry, it is an increasingly troubling undertaking.

“It happens without warning,” says Olivia Williams, who adds she has been scanned more times than she cares to remember during a career that has spanned from The Sixth Sense to Dune: Prophecy.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Maga is painting Saturday’s protests as violent treason. Prove them wrong | Judith Levine

Trump allies would love an excuse to step up their crackdown. Nonviolence, both disciplined and open-hearted, must define the day

“They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Fox News on Friday. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. They’re all coming out.”

The Republican Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer said the party’s “terrorist wing” was holding the “Hate America” rally. “Democrats want to keep the government shut down to show all those people that are going to come here and express their hatred towards this country that they’re fighting President Trump,” said the House majority leader, Steve Scalise. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, embellished the story on Fox, referring to the demonstrations’ “paid protesters” and adding: “It begs the question who’s funding it.”

Published: October 17, 2025, 10:00 am

Playboy, fighter, golfer and wearer of a George Washington wig: Donald Trump’s best magazine covers

The US president has called his latest Time magazine cover ‘the worst of all time’. Our writer found some he may hate even more – and others pivotal to his rise

In a turn of events that may surprise some, Donald Trump expressed a few relatable insecurities this week. First he questioned the attractiveness of his beach body, then he blasted Time magazine for an unflattering cover photo. In fairness, he wasn’t wrong. He called the picture, taken from below, “the worst of all time”. People have focused on the wattle neck, the gossamer hair, the inside of his nostrils.

The question he asked of the editorial decision was actually a pertinent one. “What are they doing, and why?” This is the kind of scrutiny that the press should attract, except that media literacy is dying a fast death – and that has a lot to do with Trump himself. Constantly lambasting Pulitzer prize-winning publications as “fake news” and then retweeting Photoshopped images and deep fakes isn’t helping the situation.

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:24 pm

Right hair, right now: top stylists on the products they use themselves – and ones to avoid

Make every day a good hair day with top tips from the professionals, from bargain buys to treatments worth splurging on

Colourist based in California who specialises in silver hair. His clients include Jane Fonda and Andie MacDowell

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:00 pm

Many people go their whole lives without seeing a platypus in the wild. We just saw four in one night

Ten platypuses were reintroduced into Sydney’s Royal national park in 2023. This week, two new juveniles were discovered, leading one researcher to cry ‘Oh, give me a hug’

Hunting platypuses takes patience. On Thursday afternoon, I headed into the Royal national park, south of Sydney, with researchers who had reintroduced a small population of the elusive monotremes two years ago.

There was a big net and torches – and our dinner. It could be a long wait.

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Published: October 17, 2025, 2:00 pm

Tummy-flipping kisses and a chlamydia love story: TV’s best ever romcoms

To celebrate the return of charming hit Nobody Wants This, romcom superfans like Russell T Davies and Jack Rooke pick their favourite shows. Prepare to be swept off your feet!

It’s perfect, that’s all. It’s got the perfect meet-cute (boob, crashed car, injured dog); the perfect combination of realism and romance (especially for non-romantics like me); the perfect heroine (neither the hot mess nor the manic pixie dream girl we are so often forced to accept); the perfect hero (laid-back but not lazy, older but not creepy, patient, not a pillock) and perfect writing.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:00 pm

Fox News employees expressed concerns network was intentionally aiding Trump, legal filings reveal

Survey responses cited in $2.7bn defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by voting technology company Smartmatic

Multiple Fox News employees expressed concerns about the network’s editorial standards and the conduct of top hosts in an internal survey conducted in the summer and fall of 2020, with one going as far as to wonder if they had sold their “soul to the devil”, according to legal filings.

The employees’ statements were excerpted in a 771-page filing released last week, made public as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:28 pm

Trump downplays hopes he will supply Ukraine with US missiles after meeting with Zelenskyy

Trump said US may need Tomahawk missiles for a future conflict after surprise phone call with Putin earlier in day

• Europe live – latest updates

Donald Trump has played down hopes that he will supply Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, saying during a White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the US may need them for a future conflict.

Responding to a question on whether the US would send the cruise missiles requested by Ukraine, Trump said: “We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other things that we’ve been sending over the last four years to Ukraine.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:08 pm

Prince Andrew gives up royal titles including Duke of York after ‘discussion with king’

In statement released by Buckingham Palace, Andrew says he will give up titles and honours

• Virginia Giuffre book extract: ‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’

Prince Andrew has agreed to give up his use of the Duke of York title, he said in a statement released through Buckingham Palace.

He will also give up his membership of the Order of the Garter, meaning his only remaining title will be that of prince, which cannot be removed as he was born the son of a queen.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:37 pm

Young Republicans New York chapter suspended after racist chats leaked

Group suspended following unanimous vote after Politico documented racist and antisemitic chats from members

The New York Republican state committee has suspended the authorization of their Young Republicans chapter after members were implicated in highly offensive and racist messages that were obtained and published by Politico.

The Young Republican National Federation is made up of members aged 18 to 40 and has an active chapter in every state. Their website calls them the oldest youth political organization in the US, with the aim being to recruit young voices to the GOP before equipping and encouraging them to run for office.

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:07 pm

Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton pleads not guilty to sharing classified information

Ex-national security adviser surrendered to authorities and made court appearance as he faces 18-count indictment

• US politics live – latest updates

John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump in his first term, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges relating to diary-like notes he shared that contained top secret information with relatives and stored classified documents at his home.

Bolton did not comment to reporters as he walked into the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he surrendered to authorities and made an initial appearance before US magistrate judge Timothy Sullivan on the 18-count indictment filed against him.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:34 pm

Trump says ‘drug-carrying submarine’ was target of latest strike in the Caribbean – US politics live

US president says boat was carrying ‘massive amounts of drugs’ as Marco Rubio says more information to come later today

The US Senate failed on Thursday to re-open the government and to vote to fund the military during the federal government shutdown, ensuring that the standoff will stretch into next week.

The Senate vote on a short-term Republican funding bill failed for the 10th time with just 51 votes. A second vote on Pentagon funding in the afternoon similarly failed in a floor vote, meaning the process to begin fully funding military operations also becomes a non-starter. After the votes, senators are expected to leave Washington for the weekend, almost guaranteeing the shutdown lasts until at least Monday.

Published: October 17, 2025, 8:11 pm

At least 11 detained after protesters and police clash outside Chicago Ice center

Officers reportedly tackled and dragged several people after authorities told demonstrators to stay in ‘protest zones’

At least 11 people were taken into custody outside the Broadview Ice detention center outside Chicago after heated confrontations between Illinois state police and protesters on Friday.

Authorities had instructed demonstrators to remain in designated “protest zones”, but tensions escalated when officers moved to clear the roadway.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:59 pm

Pentagon criticises Netflix for making ‘woke garbage’ after gay military drama

Boots, hit show about a closeted teen joining the marines, has led to a statement on ‘restoring the warrior ethos’

The Pentagon has slammed Netflix for making “woke garbage” after the release of the hit gay military drama Boots.

The show, based on Greg Cope White’s 2015 memoir The Pink Marine, tells the story of a closeted teenager who enlists in the United States Marine Corps in the 1990s.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:38 pm

Faculty at Texas university fear entire liberal arts departments will be slashed

University of Texas at Austin faculty fear changes from new taskforce that could restructure humanities programs

Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin fear entire academic departments might be on the chopping block after the university quietly appointed a committee charged with studying the restructuring of its liberal arts programs.

The university – the largest in the public University of Texas system – has not made any announcements about cuts or restructuring, but faculty there have learned the committee was established earlier this semester and tasked with a review that they believe is focused on ethnic and regional disciplines such as African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, as well as women’s and gender studies.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:44 pm

Trump administration freezes $11bn for infrastructure in Democratic states

Budget chief ups ante in shutdown fight, announcing work pause in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Boston

The White House budget director, Russell Vought, said on Friday that the Trump administration will freeze another $11bn worth of infrastructure projects in Democratic states due to the ongoing government shutdown.

Vought said on social media the US army corps of engineers will pause work on “low priority” projects in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. He said the projects could eventually be canceled.

Published: October 17, 2025, 8:08 pm

Key US nuclear agency to send 80% of workforce home as shutdown drags on

About 1,400 staff at NNAS, which manages America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, to be furloughed on Monday

• US politics live – latest updates

The agency that maintains the US nuclear arsenal will be sending home 80% of its workforce as the government shutdown drags through its 17th day and into the weekend, now the longest full funding lapse in US history.

House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers said in a Friday press conference that the National Nuclear Security Administration has now exhausted its carryover reserves.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:43 pm

US cities to resist Trump’s crackdown on dissent with No Kings protests: ‘We will not be bullied’

Second round of protests at more than 2,500 sites are set for Saturday, including in cities where Trump has sent troops

Donald Trump has promised to crack down on dissent and sent troops into US cities. His allies are claiming antifa, the decentralized antifascist movement, is behind plans to protest. He is looking for any pretext to go after his opponents.

Still, this Saturday, even in cities with troops on the ground, millions of people are expected to march against the president as part of a second “No Kings” protest. The last No Kings protest in June drew several million people across more than 2,000 locations. This time, more than 2,500 cities and towns nationwide are hosting protests.

Published: October 17, 2025, 10:00 am

Pop star Reneé Rapp delivers expletive-filled rant against Ice and Donald Trump

Chart-topping singer protested the presence of Ice in Portland, Oregon, where she was performing

The chart-topping pop star and actor Renée Rapp has excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Donald Trump in an expletive-filled onstage rant.

Rapp was performing in Portland, Oregon, where Trump is attempting to send national guard troops, claiming that the city is a “war zone”. There have been continuous protests outside the city’s Ice facility in recent months.

Published: October 17, 2025, 10:56 am

In Alaska, where overdose deaths are rising again, Narcan and community are a lifeline

Overdoses have been declining nationally since August 2023, but Alaska is far behind in that progress

Whenever he can, Shane Shelton offers neighbors naloxone, an overdose reversal medication, and a place to sleep out of the cold.

The 54-year old’s home is known as the “Dog House” in Williwaw, Alaska – on the outskirts of Wasilla in Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) borough. In this neighborhood, family homes with manicured lawns sit side by side with yards piled with old tires and tarps, some with makeshift walls nailed around them to hide the mess and avoid fines. People come to the Dog House to get high – and keep one another alive. Shelton said he had administered naloxone more times than he could count, and cannot get enough of it.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Revealed: how a Russian fight club expanded into the US with the help of American neo-Nazis

Members of white supremacist ‘active clubs’ spearheaded a US expansion of a Russian fighting group that has raised money for the Kremlin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine

A Russian street fighting organization that has raised money for Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine expanded into the US earlier this year with the help of prominent American white supremacists from the extremist neo-Nazi “active club” movement and the neo-fascist organization Patriot Front, the Guardian can reveal.

The group, known as Streets Fight Club (SFC), also promoted violent, for-profit combat events featuring white nationalist extremists held in the US south to tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and YouTube.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘Finances are getting tighter’: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

Wall Street sounds alarm over strain throughout car lending market as experts warn of potential risks for wider economy

Alarm bells are ringing on Wall Street. The recent collapses of Tricolor, a used car seller and sub-prime auto lender, and First Brands, an auto parts supplier, have put the finance industry on edge, almost two decades after problems in the sub-prime mortgage lending market set the stage for the global financial crisis.

“When you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase CEO, ominously cautioned analysts this week, after the US’s largest bank disclosed a $170m charge tied to Tricolor’s bankruptcy. “Everyone should be forewarned on this one.”

Published: October 17, 2025, 10:00 am

‘A little mix of classy and gore always works’: costume and makeup pros on how to win Halloween

A drag queen, costume designer, makeup artist, and more pros weigh in on how to pull off a costume that turns heads

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You’ve probably been there: it’s 31 October and after weeks of procrastinating you’re clawing through your closet, trying to pull together a clever Halloween costume and wondering if you’ll need to resort to cutting eyeholes in that old white bedsheet.

Others among us – hair and makeup artists, costume designers, drag queens – spend the whole year thinking about transformation. We spoke with these creative pros, including an artist who worked on The Substance and the organizer of New York City’s famed Greenwich Village Halloween parade, about what makes a memorable Halloween costume, and how even procrastinators can craft a memorable look.

Frédérique Arguello, hair designer and Bafta and Critics Choice winner for The Substance

Jeanne Fleming, artistic and producing director of New York’s Village Halloween Parade, the largest in the world

Machine Dazzle, Emmy and Obie-award winning costume designer, set designer, performance artist and drag queen

James Nguyen and Alexander Gottlieb, AKA James & AC, costume designers who have collaborated with Chappell Roan and were on the design teams of the Broadway shows Death Becomes Her (James) and Moulin Rouge! (AC)

Mike Marino, make-up artist whose credits include The Batman (2022), A Different Man (2024) and Black Swan (2010). Frequently collaborates with Heidi Klum on Halloween costumes.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:15 pm

‘Our world is combustible’: Kathryn Bigelow on AI, Andy Warhol and nuclear Armageddon

The record-breaking Oscar winner explains how her new film, A House of Dynamite – starring Idris Elba as the US president – is rooted in her cold war childhood and the urgent threats we all face today

Kathryn Bigelow has been thinking about death: hers, and mine, and yours as well. History will always remember her as the first woman to win a best director Oscar, which she did in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. But in her new film, A House of Dynamite, history may not have long to run. It is the story of a nuclear missile, launched at an American city. The rest is about what happens next. Bigelow would like you to consider Armageddon.

“Someone I know said the bomb for the audience is realising this is possible,” she says. She smiles. “I’m glad if people come away from the movie as concerned as I am.”

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:00 am

‘A foot out in the cold’: leaders huddle at IMF as icy economic winds blow

Worries over private credit, tax and spend, skittish bond markets and tariff chaos dominate meeting in Washington

“The security blanket is covering us, but maybe we have a foot out in the cold.” That was the typically colourful warning from the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, this week to its gathering of finance ministers in Washington.

At its spring meetings in April, the IMF said the erratic trade policies emanating from the White House, half a mile away from its glass and steel HQ, amounted to a “major negative shock” for the global economy.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:14 pm

Jimmy Kimmel on the Republicans: ‘So much greed and hypocrisy and duplicity’

Late-night hosts spoke about Trump’s obsessive ‘Cinderella ballroom’ plan as many Americans struggle to afford basics

Late-night hosts spoke about Donald Trump’s attempts to transform the White House and how he was “cashing in bigly” on being president.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Trump’s peace plan is just about holding together, but may be unravelled by two unresolved issues | Rajan Menon

The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the establishment of an international stabilisation force are key in securing long-term peace, but the plan is dangerously vague on these issues

Two years of death and destruction in Gaza ended once Israel and Hamas signed off on Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. A ceasefire is in place. Humanitarian trucks have begun to roll in. Hostages and prisoners are being exchanged. Israel has begun a first-phase pullback from the territories it controls, and under Trump’s plan its troops will eventually be deployed in a buffer zone along Gaza’s land border.

Given these developments – all part of the opening phase – dismissing the momentous changes in Gaza is to deny reality. There have already been disputes over the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages, but there are unresolved longer-term problems that could derail the ceasefire and imperil the rest of the Trump plan.

Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

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: October 17, 2025, 11:18 am

Donald Trump claims to be the president of peace, but at home he is fomenting civil war | Jonathan Freedland

His ruthless use of the national guard to menace cities and political enemies is unprecedented. He is preparing for battle against the ‘enemy within’

Donald Trump had better hope the members of the Nobel committee are not paying attention to what’s happening inside the United States. If they did take a look, they’d notice a jarring pattern. While the US president likes to play the peacemaker abroad, at home he is Trump, bringer of war.

It’s easy for the first fact to conceal, or divert our attention away from, the second. This week was a case in point. It began with Trump travelling to Israel, where he was hailed as a latter-day Cyrus, a mighty ruler whose name would be spoken of for millennia to come, the man who had brokered what he himself boasts is an “everlasting” peace.

Jonathan Freedland 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: October 17, 2025, 4:51 pm

Trump is battling the ravages of Time – in more ways than one | Dave Schilling

The president is upset with his photo on the magazine’s cover. I, too, have a bone to pick with my scalp

Why are we so obsessed with hair? Just a bunch of fibers sprouting out of your skin, yet we make a massive fuss over it. Those with it, flaunt it. News anchors, fashion models, that damned Jeremy Allen White. Boy, does he love to show off. His hair should be nominated for an Emmy, just on thickness alone. What did he do to deserve that floppy mess on top of his head? I thought this country was a meritocracy? Nope. He’s obviously benefited from a family history of thick locks.

Call me greedy if you must, but I don’t just want some hair – the sad remnants of a life in decline – I want a lot of hair. I want so much hair that I have to employ a live-in barber to trim me up twice a day just to keep it all from consuming my entire face. I want people in the streets screaming at the top of their lungs. “Look at that hair! The guy under it isn’t so bad, either!”

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:18 pm

Martin Rowson on Trump, Putin and prospects for peace in Ukraine – cartoon

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Published: October 17, 2025, 3:32 pm

Millennial dads are experiencing something mums have known for a long time | Gaby Hinsliff

Men want to be active, engaged parents, but many are being torn apart by the competing demands of family and work

Can men really have it all? It’s a ridiculous question, obviously; a loaded assumption that women spent years clambering out from under. Mothers have worked long and hard to dispel the myth that anyone should be able to single-handedly juggle a job, children, a happy relationship and a meaningful life without ever breaking sweat or (more pertinently) needing help.

And to some extent we have succeeded, judging by a survey of 5,000 UK fathers published this week by the charity Working Families which found three-quarters now say they genuinely want to share the parenting load equally with their partners. Except, it seems, the outside world has yet to catch up.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:00 am

The Guardian view on Trump and the law: a restraint on the executive is morphing into its weapon | Editorial

The indictment of critics including John Bolton rings alarm bells as the US president expands his power and seeks to use the justice system to exact revenge

“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted after beginning his second term – emboldened, perhaps, by the supreme court’s bombshell ruling on presidential immunity last year, which many say gave the office-holder the powers of a monarch.

Millions of Americans are expected to push back against the president’s growing power at No Kings protests across the US on Saturday. The demonstrations come as former intelligence and national security officials warn that the country is sliding towards “competitive authoritarianism”, in which elections and courts survive but are systematically manipulated by the executive.

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:22 pm

The Guardian view on Austen and Brontë adaptations: purists may reel, but reinvention keeps classic novels alive | Editorial

The appetite for onscreen versions of much-loved literature is endless, but dogged faithfulness to a text is not the only way to stay true to authors’ spirit

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every classic novel must be in want of a sexed-up adaptation. Ever since Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy waded out of the lake in a wet shirt in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice adapted by Andrew Davies, we have expected the undercurrents of novels to be writ large on screen: the novel is dripping in sexual tension – who knew? No one objects when Jane Austen’s couples kiss on TV, although it never happens on the page. But we are reluctant to imagine more troubling historical realities, such as maternal mortality, or where the fortunes behind the big houses came from.

As part of the 250th celebrations of Austen’s birth, Davies shocked audiences at the Cliveden literary festival last week with revelations that he is working on versions of Emma and Mansfield Park that will include death, debauchery and slavery. Spoiler: Emma dies in childbirth.

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:21 pm

Most athletes have chosen to ‘shut up and dribble’ over Gaza | Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva

Only a handful of North American athletes have spoken out against Israel’s assault on Gaza, a silence shaped by fear, sponsorship and the policing of speech

“I will not just shut up and dribble… I get to sit up here and talk about what’s really important.” So proclaimed LeBron James in 2018 when confronted with the question of whether athletes have the right to speak about the political and social justice questions of their time.

Yet since 7 October 2023, elite athletes in North America have had startlingly little to say about what most human rights groups in the world, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations have characterized as Israel’s genocide in Gaza (a situation currently in flux due to a mutually agreed upon ceasefire and prisoner exchange).

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Derek Silva is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University. They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game and co-hosts, with Johanna Mellis, of The End of Sport podcast.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:00 am

Carter Hart’s return shows hockey’s redemption machine never stops

The Vegas signing of the former Team Canada goaltender, acquitted but still suspended, exposes a sport where talk of “values” masks a deeper culture of silence

On Thursday, the Vegas Golden Knights announced that goaltender Carter Hart will join the team on a professional tryout contract. Hart was one of five former Team Canada World Junior players initially charged with sexual assault stemming from an incident in 2018, and, though acquitted earlier this year, remains suspended by the NHL until 1 December. In a statement about Hart’s contract signing, the Golden Knights said that the team remains “committed to the core values that have defined our organization from its inception” and that the team expects “that our players will continue to meet these standards moving forward”.

Which sounds all well and good, but there’s a difference between expecting someone to meet a standard and maintaining it – or even enforcing it. It’s not surprising that Hart is back on the ice in the NHL. For one thing, he was indeed acquitted, along with the other four accused, which is technically grounds for readmittance, whether one agrees with the ruling or not. For the league, the union, and the teams, the story is – or can be – relatively simple: a player cleared by the courts is ready for a comeback. But the real reason Hart’s return will strike many as unsurprising is because, well, this is just how hockey works. That is, yes, everyone can talk about values and standards and expectations, but in reality hockey is still driven by silence.

Published: October 17, 2025, 8:30 am

Cooper Flagg can’t escape the ghost of the Great White Hope | Lee Escobedo

From Jack Johnson to Larry Bird, American sport has grappled with the racial myth of the Great White Hope. Now the Mavericks’ new phenom, 18-year-old Cooper Flagg, inherits the mantle – whether he wants it or not

Every time Jack Johnson’s big Black fists smashed into a white fighter’s face, he wasn’t just breaking the bones of his opponents, but the spirit of White America. Blow after blow after blow. Out of this shame, a mythos was born. One after another, white fighters propped up like scarecrows. One after another, collapsing. As cultural critic Gerald Early has argued, Johnson’s fights became less about sport and more about the drama of race in America, with every knockout symbolizing a direct challenge to white supremacy. For the next 100 years, across multiple sports, whites have tried to find the next champion to return them to glory. This myth-making even inspired Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer-winning play The Great White Hope.

In basketball, figures like Jerry West and “Pistol” Pete Maravich represented Anglo excellence before the NBA’s full desegregation revealed the overwhelming superiority of African-American players. By the time Larry Bird rose in the 1980s, the Great White Hope narrative had simply been repackaged for a new generation. Bird was a badass hick from Indiana. Bird was a godsend to Boston’s white working class. Bird was Magic’s equal. Bird was the Great White Hope disguised as the Great White Hope denier.

I don’t want to be seen as the Great White Hope. I just want to be a great basketball player, period.

Published: October 17, 2025, 8:00 am

Home Office offers extra resources in effort to undo Maccabi Tel Aviv fans ban

No 10 says talks happening ‘at pace’ over West Midlands police order banning fans from attending Aston Villa tie

The Home Office is offering extra support to West Midlands police in an effort to reverse its ban on fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv attending a match at Villa Park next month.

After a political outcry about the police decision that would stop the Israeli team’s fans going to the match, Downing Street said on Friday that discussions were happening “at pace across government” to resolve the issue.

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:12 pm

Joe Flacco leads Bengals past Steelers with late drive and McPherson field goal

• Flacco throws for 342 yards and three touchdowns

• McPherson’s kick with seconds lifts Bengals 33-31

• Chase hauls in 16 passes for 161 yards and a TD

Aaron Rodgers v Joe Flacco didn’t disappoint in the fourth-ever matchup of 40-plus-year-old NFL quarterbacks.

Evan McPherson’s fourth field goal, from 36 yards with seven seconds remaining, lifted the Cincinnati Bengals past the Pittsburgh Steelers 33-31 on Thursday night.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:57 am

Dodgers on brink of World Series return after topping Brewers for 3-0 NLCS lead

• Edman’s sixth-inning single puts LA ahead for good

• Dodgers lead series 3-0; Game 4 in LA on Friday

Tyler Glasnow had eight strikeouts, Tommy Edman hit a go-ahead RBI single in the sixth inning and the Los Angeles Dodgers took a commanding lead in the National League Championship Series with a 3-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday.

Mookie Betts had an RBI double in the first inning and Roki Sasaki delivered his third save of the postseason as the Dodgers never trailed on their way to a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series with Game 4 at Los Angeles on Friday.

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:29 am

US businessman tied to global football empire indicted in $500m fraud case

• Josh Wander accused of defrauding investors

• 777 Partners held stakes in global soccer clubs

• Case renews scrutiny of multi-club ownership model

An American businessman whose firm invested in several European soccer clubs that struggled under its ownership has been indicted in New York on charges of financial wrongdoing in an alleged $500m fraud scheme.

Josh Wander was a co-founder of Miami-based 777 Partners that owned stakes in an Australian airline plus soccer clubs Hertha Berlin in Germany, Genoa in Italy, Standard Liege in Belgium and Vasco da Gama in Brazil.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:16 pm

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

West Ham’s lack of forward planning, Rodri’s fitness concerns and a crunch clash at Anfield

• Top scorers: check out the latest standings

Ange Postecoglou is under increasing pressure at Nottingham Forest having failed to secure a win in his seven games in charge. Reports suggest Sean Dyche is waiting to take over, but history shows Evangelos Marinakis sways like the wind, and victory against Chelsea could be enough to save Postecoglou’s job for now. Goals have been a mounting concern for a team that have been beaten in four of their last five league matches and failed to score in any of those defeats. Failure to find their shooting boots will ensure Forest go three consecutive top-flight games without a goal for the first time since 1999. It will be a tough task against a buoyant Chelsea team, who entered the international break having beaten Liverpool. Moisés Caicedo was instrumental in the win against the defending champions, scoring the opener, and the 23-year-old leads the league in tackles (28) and interceptions (18). Elliot Anderson, whose total of 55 turnovers is also a league-high tally, will have his work cut out for him in what may be his toughest midfield battle of the season. Yara El-Shaboury

Nottingham Forest v Chelsea, Saturday 12.30pm (all times BST)

Brighton v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

Burnley v Leeds, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm

Published: October 16, 2025, 11:00 pm

Chess: Ukraine soldier grandmaster wins gold medal at European team championships

Igor Kovalenko, 36, the world No 48 with a Fide rating of 2669, has been a frontline soldier for three years and only began playing again a month ago

Ukraine was the most successful nation at this week’s European Team Championships, winning gold in the open event and silver in the women’s. It also sparked one of the most memorable results of recent years, as Igor Kovalenko, a serving army soldier who played no chess for three years, won the individual gold on fourth board with 6.5/8, the best percentage of the entire tournament.

Kovalenko’s games included a key win against Serbia’s 2024 European individual champion, Aleksander Indjic, and a draw with Gawain Maroroa Jones in the final round when the Englishman was in pole position for third board gold.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:00 am

Gaza aid still critically scarce, say agencies, as Israel delays convoys

UN urges opening of all crossings with aid deliveries at less than half of agreed frequency, as WHO issues disease alert

Aid remains critically scarce in Gaza one week into the ceasefire, humanitarian agencies have warned, as Israel delays the entry of food convoys into the territory. The Israeli government and Hamas continue to trade blame over violations of the truce.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that it had brought about 560 tonnes of food a day on average into Gaza since the ceasefire began, but it was still below what was needed.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:14 pm

Mahmoud Khalil can freely travel within US, federal judge rules

Palestinian activist can speak across country at events while pushing back on Trump’s attempts to deport him

A federal judge has lifted travel restrictions within the US for Mahmoud Khalil, allowing the Palestinian activist to speak at rallies and other events across the country while he fights the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him.

Khalil, who was freed from a Louisiana immigration jail in June after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) amid student and activist roundups, had asked a federal magistrate judge to lift the restrictions that had limited his travel to New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, Louisiana and Michigan.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:45 pm

Burqa ban bill approved by Portugal’s parliament seen as targeting Muslim women

If signed into law, the bill proposed by far-right party would follow other European countries in banning face veils

Portugal’s parliament has approved a bill banning face veils worn for “gender or religious” reasons in public, in a move seen as targeting Muslim women who wear face coverings.

The measure was proposed by the far-right Chega party and would prohibit coverings such as burqas (a full-body garment that covers a woman from head to foot) and niqabs (the full-face Islamic veil with space around the eyes) from being worn in most public places. Face veils would still be allowed in airplanes, diplomatic premises and places of worship.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:18 pm

California Democrat to run for congressional seat held by Nancy Pelosi

Scott Wiener, the California state senator, will reportedly announce his candidacy in the coming weeks

• US politics live – latest updates

Scott Wiener, the California state senator, is expected to run for the San Francisco congressional district long held by Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, as young Democrats across the country are pushing for generational change.

Pelosi, 85, the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, stepped aside as the Democratic leader in 2022 but has not yet said whether she intends to seek a 21st term next year for the seat she has held since 1987. The San Francisco Standard first reported that the 55-year-old Wiener, a prominent San Francisco Democrat who had been waiting for Pelosi to retire to run for the seat, would announce his candidacy in the coming weeks.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:05 pm

Manhattan district attorney works to curb interstate gun trafficking: ‘It’s a national issue’

Alvin Bragg was appointed co-chair of Prosecutors Against Gun Violence and sets sights on addressing flow of guns

At a time of intense focus on high-profile and local incidents of gun violence in the US, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has been appointed to help lead Prosecutors Against Gun Violence (PAGV), a national group that has been trying to decrease shootings and violence since 2014.

Bragg says he plans to bring his “big city experience” to the national group, and wants to collaborate with his peers to address interstate gun trafficking.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:00 pm

Man who fought for Hamas in October 7 attack fled to US and lived in Louisiana, FBI alleges

According to complaint, Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi participated in attack on Israel, then applied for US visa

The FBI has accused a Louisiana resident of participating in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 – then lying about his past and fraudulently obtaining a visa to live in the US.

According to a recently unsealed FBI criminal complaint, Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi armed himself and gathered a group to cross from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel during the attack that left nearly 1,200 people dead.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:47 pm

Mississippi residents sue UK-owned biomass firm granted permit for more emissions

Nearby residents say they have had health concerns due to air pollution from Drax Biomass facility

Residents of a small Mississippi town are suing Drax Biomass after the company won a permit to become a “major source” of hazardous air pollution at a local wood pellet production plant.

The subsidiary of the FTSE 250 energy company was previously denied permission to increase emissions in the 900-person town of Gloster, Mississippi, after local residents warned that they had already suffered serious adverse health consequences because of the operation.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:03 pm

Olivia Williams says actors need ‘nudity rider’-type controls for AI body scans

Dune star says performers are regularly pressed to have bodies scanned on set with few rights over how data is used

• ‘Have we done ourselves out of a job?’: concerns in film and TV industry over on-set body scanning

Actors should have as much control over the data harvested from scans of their body as they do over nudity scenes, the actor Olivia Williams has said, amid heightened concern over artificial intelligence’s impact on performers.

The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown said she and other actors were regularly pressed to have their bodies scanned by banks of cameras while on set, with few guarantees about how the data would be used or where it would end up.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Mango founder’s son becomes alleged suspect in fashion tycoon’s death

Spanish media report Jonathan Andic’s status has changed from witness of father’s fatal ravine fall

The family of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, have insisted on his son’s innocence after media reports suggested he was a potential suspect in the billionaire’s death.

Andic died last December, aged 71, after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking at Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death prompted tributes from politicians, journalists and the fashion world.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:42 am

World’s oceans losing their greenness through global heating, study finds

Researchers say decline in phytoplankton suggests weakened planetary capacity to absorb carbon dioxide

The world’s oceans are losing their greenness owing to global heating, according to a study that suggests our planet’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide could be weakening.

The change in the palette of the seas is caused by a decline of phytoplankton, the tiny marine creatures that are responsible for nearly half of the biosphere’s productivity.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:00 pm

Shipping emissions levy shelved as countries bow to US pressure

Long-planned charge on greenhouse gas emissions postponed as Trump officials accused of intimidation tactics

Under intense pressure from Donald Trump’s government, countries have postponed plans to force shipowners to start paying for the damage they do to the climate.

US officials were accused of “bullying” and “intimidation”, as nations met in London for what should have been the rubber-stamping of a decision made months ago to place a small levy on the greenhouse gases from global shipping.

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:31 pm

Overconsumption and ruin: before and after images visualise how tech could harm our planet

From Venice to the Iguazu Falls, an exhibition in London illustrates the hidden cost of our gadgets and devices

Artists have created visualisations of the impact of the climate crisis on some of the world’s most recognisable landscapes, in a project to highlight the environmental effects of tech consumption.

Venice in Italy, the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil, and the Seine River in Paris were among the locations used to explore to potential impacts of the climate crisis by the end of the century. The results are on display at an exhibition in London.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:46 pm

Gavin Newsom’s veto on bill to ban Pfas hands industry a win, advocates fear

Decision from governor, eyeing presidential bid, could echo across US as similar bans considered in states like New York

• Are Pfas in everything? What you need to know about ‘forever chemicals’

A decision by Gavin Newsom, the California governor, to veto a bill that would have banned the sale of cookware and some other consumer products made with toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” may reverberate across the US by slowing or killing similar legislation in other states, public health advocates fear.

California is often looked to for guidance by other states considering new environmental rules, and some legislatures, including large states like New York and Illinois, are weighing bans on Pfas in cookware.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:00 pm

Apple swoops on exclusive F1 US TV rights amid expansion into sports

Deal reportedly closed for $140m a year, on the heels of worldwide success of Apple-produced Brad Pitt film F1

Apple has landed US broadcast rights to Formula One in a five-year deal that would help the tech giant bolster its streaming service with one of the country’s fastest-growing sports, following the success of its Brad Pitt-starrer F1: The Movie.

The two sides did not disclose the financial details of the deal on Friday. CNBC reported it was for $140m a year, much higher than the $90m the Walt Disney-owned ESPN was paying each season for F1, which it has broadcast since 2018.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:25 pm

US anti-vax stance to blame for continent-wide surge in measles, say experts

The disease was eliminated across the Americas in 2024, but urgent vaccination drives are now under way as cases rise from Mexico to Bolivia after outbreaks farther north

Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.

Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:00 am

‘Time to take the big leap’: Reese Witherspoon’s first novel hits the shelves

Oscar-winning actor and producer has written Gone Before Goodbye with bestselling author Harlan Coben

For more than three decades, Reese Witherspoon has been many things to many people: the Oscar-winning star of Walk the Line; the pink-clad Elle Woods of Legally Blonde; the Hollywood producer who brought Gone Girl and Big Little Lies to the screen. Now, she’s adding another title to her résumé: novelist.

This month, the 49-year-old releases her first work of fiction, Gone Before Goodbye, co-written with the bestselling thriller author Harlan Coben.

Published: October 17, 2025, 1:26 pm

Three-year-old Michigan boy saves mother’s life with quick thinking after she has seizure

Cody James Williams used facial recognition to call for help as his mother suffered medical emergency

Authorities in Michigan are saying a three-year-old boy is a hero after he managed to unlock his mother’s phone using her face while she experienced a severe epileptic seizure and then summoned life-saving help on a video call.

Cody James Williams’ actions serve as “a good reminder for all parents that you should talk to your kids [about what to] do in an emergency”, the Oakland county sheriff, Michael Bouchard, said at a 14 October news conference where he honored the boy by symbolically deputizing him as a junior member of his office.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:00 am

Broken promises and political crises: how Emmanuel Macron fell from French favour

The president is seen to have accelerated the financial crisis, social inequalities and the rise of the far right

• Europe live – latest updates

Three French governments have collapsed in less than a year, and the political crisis looks likely to continue, overshadowing Emmanuel Macron’s last 18 months in power and his domestic legacy.

This week, the latest minority government narrowly survived its first vote of no confidence. But it remains the weakest cabinet in decades and could be toppled at any moment if opposition parties join together to oust it. France faces a brutal two-month battle in parliament to achieve what once seemed the most basic element of governance: passing a budget.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:43 pm

Giorgia Meloni condemns Italian union leader for ‘Trump courtesan’ remark

Prime minister says CGIL head is ‘clouded by resentment’ and accuses the left of hypocrisy towards women

Giorgia Meloni has condemned the boss of Italy’s biggest trade union after he referred to the prime minister as the “courtesan” of Donald Trump.

Maurizio Landini, the leader of CGIL, which organised several pro-Palestinian protests before the Gaza ceasefire deal, made the remarks on TV on Tuesday, the day after world leaders, including Meloni, met in Egypt for a Middle East peace summit.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:40 pm

Bank shares lead global market fall amid jitters over US private credit

Signs of credit stress send markets in Europe and Asia down, while investors turn to safe haven assets

European stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.

Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany’s Dax fell 1.8%, Italy’s FTSE Mib fell 1.5%, the Ibex in Spain was off 0.3% and France’s Cac 40 dropped 0.2%.

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:24 pm

Italian investigative journalism TV host targeted in bomb attack near Rome

Rudimentary but powerful device detonates outside home of Report presenter Sigfrido Ranucci in Campo Ascolano

A prominent Italian investigative journalist has been targeted in a bomb attack, with the rudimentary but powerful device almost destroying his car and damaging a neighbour’s home.

Sigfrido Ranucci, who hosts Report, an investigative programme aired by the state broadcaster, Rai, said the explosion happened about 20 minutes after he returned to his home in Campo Ascolano, close to Rome, on Thursday night.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:47 am

‘What I do with my body is none of your business’: musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland on trans rights, cult stardom and living with dementia

His music was ignored for decades. Now, at 81, he is collaborating with pop stars. He and his wife talk about his extraordinary life – and facing severe illness

When Beverly Glenn-Copeland was diagnosed with a form of dementia called Late two years ago, he was advised to stay at home and do crossword puzzles. He tried, but he doesn’t like crosswords, and it didn’t feel right. One day, recalls his wife Elizabeth, he said: “Honey, I know this is meant to be giving me more time, but I just feel like we’re not living a life. I have places I want to see and people I want to meet before I die. Since we have to make money, let’s make money doing what we love to do.”

And so the couple, who live in Hamilton, Ontario, are in London, midway through a tour that is the latest chapter in Glenn’s extraordinary late-in-life journey from unknown musician to revered cult icon. It has only been 10 years since his indefinably radiant music was rediscovered (not that it was ever really discovered in the first place), and he wants to enjoy it.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:00 am

Keeper review – a sparkling ecological fantasia of pure imagination

This whimsical action-adventure game sees you stomping through nature as a life-giving lighthouse – and it only gets weirder from there

The world of Keeper looms from the screen like a dream coloured by psilocybin. Here is a gnarled landmass of bubblegum blues, powder pinks and strange, luminous beasts, where evolution seems to occur at light speed. This world’s considerable beauty is amplified by how it is rendered: like a 1980s fantasy movie filled with charmingly handmade practical effects. Keeper is the latest title from Double Fine, maker of trippy platformer Psychonauts 2, Kickstarter sensation Broken Age and many other idiosyncratic titles. It is an action-adventure resplendent with the lumps and bumps of life’s imperfections, as if its 3D modellers had sculpted the setting from papier-mache rather than using computer software.

Even stranger than the setting is the protagonist: you play as a lighthouse, coming to appreciate this gleaming ecological fantasia by shining its beacon about the environment. Long shadows stretch behind illuminated objects, making the outlines of spectacularly supersized plants and tiny critters all the more pronounced. The casting of light is how you interact with the world: it often causes vegetation to grow before your eyes, and sometimes unusual inhabitants will feast upon it. As you lumber through this environment – calm lagoons and sun-baked canyons filled with prickly cacti – there is joy to be found in simply looking, taking the weirdness in, and then bringing it to even greater life.

Published: October 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Back of the net! Steve Coogan film roles – ranked

As Manchester’s finest turns 60, with new film Saipan coming soon, we rank the British comedy hero’s best big-screen performances, from Tropic Thunder and Mindhorn to Philomena and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. A-Ha!

Steve Coogan entered the unofficial British comedy hall of fame at the tender age of 30, when he joined four of the Pythons and the likes of Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood in this largely forgotten version of the classic children’s tale. Bedecked in a long scarf and wearing rimless specs, he puts in a respectably twitchy turn as Mole alongside Eric Idle’s Rat and Terry Jones’s Toad.

Published: October 16, 2025, 12:46 pm

Black Phone 2 review – hit horror sequel lumbers toward Elm Street

Ethan Hawke’s child-killing murderer returns from the dead to become a joke-free, low-rent Freddy Krueger in a follow-up that leaves us cold

Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was still churning out adaptations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its 1970s small-town setting, high school cast, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Funnily enough the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the character and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was clearly supposed to refer to, reinforced by Ethan Hawke playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare (even before his appearance, the word fag had also been liberally used). But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and too high on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Published: October 16, 2025, 9:01 am

Leonard and Hungry Paul review – this Julia Roberts-narrated comedy is the perfect antidote to modern life

Alex Lawther and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell star in this adaptation of Rónán Hession’s understated 2019 novel. Its quiet celebration of the gentle life is the opposite of today’s frantic TV – even if it does feature a Hollywood megastar’s voice

On a well-maintained driveway in an unremarkable suburb of Dublin, a small man in a sleeveless jumper is professing a desire to expand his horizons. “I feel myself getting quieter. More invisible,” says Leonard, blinking up at the night sky. “One thing’s led to another and now I feel like if I don’t do something I’ll just carry on in this …” – he searches for a fitting encapsulation of his life – “… minor, harmless existence.” Hungry Paul – Leonard’s best and, indeed, only friend – considers the implications of this announcement. “Nothing wrong with that, though,” he replies, bathrobe flapping thoughtfully in the breeze. “Better than trying to make a mark on the world only to wind up defacing it.”

For those exhausted by the bluster and rat-tat-tat of today’s TV terrain, here is Leonard and Hungry Paul with a foil blanket and warming mug of Ribena.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:00 am

Tame Impala: Deadbeat review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

(Columbia)
Australian indie’s breakout star takes a dancefloor diversion, but amid the four-four fun are fears about fame’s effect on his domestic life

In May, Dua Lipa introduced a special guest at her Sydney gig: Kevin Parker, who duetted with her on a version of The Less I Know the Better, the biggest hit Parker has ever released under the name Tame Impala. The pair have a longstanding creative relationship – Parker co-produced and co-wrote most of Dua Lipa’s last album, Radical Optimism – but nevertheless made for quite the study in contrasts. She was resplendent in a glittering lace catsuit, stiletto-heeled boots, a fake fur stole draped over her shoulder. Lank-haired, clad in a baggy multicoloured cardigan and a string of wooden beads, Parker looked not unlike a man who had arrived onstage direct from a very long night up at Glastonbury’s stone circle.

You could see it as a visual metaphor for Parker’s unlikely journey to pop’s upper echelons which began, improbably enough, while he was listening to the Bee Gees while tripping on magic mushrooms. The experience prompted him to pivot away from the guitar-led psychedelia of Tame Impala’s first two albums and embrace his love of “sugary pop music” on 2015’s Currents. As evidenced by the success of its single The Less I Know the Better – 2bn streams on Spotify and counting – the record vastly outsold Tame Impala’s previous work. Moreover, a succession of mainstream pop stars decided they wanted some of what it had to offer. Parker subsequently worked with Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Travis Scott and the Weeknd among others. Last year, he cropped up on the Australian Financial Review’s list of his homeland’s richest under-40s.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:01 am

Add to playlist: Conna Haraway’s deeply detailed dub techno and the week’s best new tracks

Listening to Shifted, a new EP from the Glasgow producer, is like running your hand over cool, subtly textured slate tiling

From Bath, now based in Glasgow
Recommended if you like Porter Ricks, Basic Channel, Robert Hood
Up next Manchester and Glasgow DJ sets this weekend, a China and Japan tour in November, and new collaborative project Department releasing an album in November

As autumn paints the British air, skies and seas grey-white, it’s time to colour-match your soundtrack accordingly. Dub techno is something I always reach for at this time of year, cold but with a crackle of heat at its heart. Pioneered in the early 90s and blending stern techno with kindlier ambient and the sagely nodding offbeat of dub, it has been a deep, slow current in dance culture ever since and still has excellent new proponents such as Purelink, Cousin and the Glasgow producer Conna Haraway (who also heads up the labels co:clear and Index:Records).

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:00 am

Sebastian Rochford: Finding Ways review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(Edition)
Rochford showcases his signature alchemic touch, featuring seven electric guitarists in a fusion of improv, reggae and romantic pop

When Aberdeen-raised drummer and composer Sebastian Rochford’s star rose around the millennium, he quickly made an impact with his precocious and inclusive awareness of 1950-1960s Monk-and-Miles jazz grooves, rock, funk, global music and more. From 2002, Rochford’s unique sax-led quintet Polar Bear began earning nominations for Mercury, Mobo and Urban Music prizes, as well as the kind of fame rare in instrumental jazz. He also played key roles with Acoustic Ladyland, Basquiat Strings, Fulborn Teversham, Sons of Kemet, and as a sideman with Damon Albarn, Brian Eno and Adele.

Finding Ways follows 2023’s A Short Diary (a duo album in partnership with pianist Kit Downes) in dealing with the death in 2019 of Rochford’s beloved poet father Gerard. The title of Finding Ways is no accident: this sharply contrasting record features edgy, metal sounds from seven studio-mixed electric guitarists, including acid-to-improv musician Tara Cunningham, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and former Verve and Albarn sideman Simon Tong. But it’s Rochford’s signature, songlike chemistry – subtly transformed by rich textures, energised by his own unpredictably shifting ambiguities of rhythm – that still infuses his sound.

Published: October 17, 2025, 8:00 am

The Last Dinner Party: From the Pyre review – baroque’n’roll band’s speedily released second album is overheated

(Island Records)
The London five-piece throw the kitchen sink at these dizzyingly dense songs, often crushing their melodic pleasures in the process

In an era when new bands struggle to break into the mainstream, the Last Dinner Party’s unusually swift rise (they were supporting the Rolling Stones a mere eight months after their first gig, and won the Rising Star Brit award just two years later) meant they spent much of the press cycle for their Mercury-nominated, chart-topping 2024 debut rubbishing suggestions they’d been manufactured by the music industry. As its follow-up arrives, the London five-piece still seem defensive. “While it may seem to an outsider that we have moved quickly on to a second album,” they write in a self-penned press release, “this timing felt like a natural progression to us.”

From the Pyre certainly doesn’t sound opportunistically rushed out. Quite the opposite, in fact: this is a dizzyingly dense collection of long, intricate tracks that layer biblical imagery, baroque detailing and cacophonous 00s indie energy. From Kate Bush cosplay (Second Best) to slightly tortured metaphors (if This Is the Killer Speaking’s narrator has been ghosted, does that make her a murderer?), often all this sonic and lyrical extravagance seems to come at the expense of basic melodic pleasure. It’s only when the band restrain their instincts for maximalism and melodrama – as on the beautiful (and still stompingly anthemic) I Hold Your Anger, a brooding exploration of maternal instinct – that the Last Dinner Party’s erudite, elaborate pop is able to really sing.

Published: October 17, 2025, 7:30 am

Rumours of My Demise by Evan Dando review – eye-popping tales of drugs and unpredictability

An indie-pop darling details his rise to fame and subsequent public humiliations with appealing frankness

Evan Dando’s autobiography opens in early 2021. The singer is living in a mouldering trailer on Martha’s Vineyard. He has a $200-a-day drug habit and is subsisting off a diet of cigarettes and cheeseburgers that he can’t chew because the heroin, cocaine and amphetamine he’s injecting have caused his teeth to fall out.

It’s all a very long way from Dando’s brief burst of fame as frontman and solitary longstanding member of the Lemonheads: two big albums in 1992’s It’s a Shame About Ray, and 1993’s Come on Feel the Lemonheads, a huge hit cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson, an era with Dando’s face taking its place alongside the Betty Blue and magic eye posters on halls of residence walls, the Docs-shod female student’s pin-up of choice. But it’s also not totally unexpected, at least if you have even a glancing knowledge of the singer’s subsequent travails. Mainstream success was short-lived: Dando succeeds in sabotaging his own career in a blaze of hard drugs and wildly unpredictable behaviour. For the last 35 years, drugs and unpredictability – rather than music – is what Dando has become known for. The book’s blurb mentions “heroin chic”, but in truth, Dando’s dissipation is almost impossible to put any kind of romantic gloss on. To his credit, he doesn’t bother, instead recounting one public humiliation after another with a what-can-you-do? shrug.

A cocktail of heroin and cocaine puts paid to a show designed to impress investors who’ve just bought a share of Dando’s song publishing for $300,000, but it’s just one of many gigs that collapse into chaos: he falls offstage, or the police are called and he’s led away from the venue in handcuffs. The Lemonheads miss their slot at Glastonbury because Dando is holed up in a hotel, doing heroin: when he does eventually turn up, he performs an unscheduled solo set, but the crowd throw bottles and boo him offstage. He hangs around Oasis in their pomp, even writing a song with Noel Gallagher: it has to be removed from a Lemonheads album at the last minute, because Gallagher deems it an “embarrassment”.

Published: October 17, 2025, 6:01 am

Joelle Taylor: ‘I picked up The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in a swoon of nine-year-old despair’

The poet and playwright on queer classics, cinematic TS Eliot and the comforts of a ghost story

My earliest reading memory
I was around five when my mum first pulled out Clement C Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, a bumper blue book with vivid illustrations. There was such suspense in the poem, such inexorable music, the sonic possibilities matching the mystery.

My favourite book growing up
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. I used to spend every spare moment in Bacup library, Lancashire, bag of sweets to the right and a book open before me. I had read all of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books, thought Famous Five were all a bit dry, and picked up Weirdstone in a swoon of nine-year-old despair. The darkness was delicious, exciting because many of the landmarks in the story were from my local area.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:01 am

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan; The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves; The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer; Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet; The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek

Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, £20)
Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan’s excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What’s drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q’s old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are worthy of the Fleming canon – Napier’s revolutionary work may have terrible consequences – and even if you’re not a Bond fan, you can’t fail to enjoy this solidly plotted and unexpectedly funny blend of nostalgia and new technology.

The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, £22)
Bestseller Cleeves’s latest novel is billed as the return of Jimmy Perez, as Perez and his life partner DI Willow Reeves, now living on the Orkney Islands with their young son, team up to solve a murder. It’s nearly Christmas when Jimmy’s old friend Archie Stout is found dead at the site of an archeological dig, felled by a Neolithic stone purloined from the local heritage centre. Suspects soon proliferate: the artist with whom roving-eyed Archie may have been having an affair; teacher and local history enthusiast George Riley; mediagenic archeology professor Tony Johnson, and even the deceased’s wife. With an evocation of place that is second to none, Cleeves keeps the narrative plates spinning beautifully to create a complex plot that takes in both the thorny issue of who controls heritage and the pernicious effects of online misogyny.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:00 am

Hekate by Nikita Gill review – the ancient Greek goddess works magic in this retelling

Hekate is a traumatised youngster looking for love and a sense of belonging in this novel imagined in verse

Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and the underworld, is the prototypal witch known to many from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where she chastises the weird sisters for their meddling. Along with witchcraft and necromancy, Hekate is also associated with boundaries and crossroads, acting as protector and guide to lost travellers. In art, she is commonly depicted holding torches to show the way, and accompanied by a black dog or serpent.

In Hekate the Witch, the poet Nikita Gill reimagines the life of this enigmatic goddess in verse. Born during a war between the old Titan rulers and new Gods of Olympia, Hekate is birthed alone by her Titan mother, Asteria, who tells her she is destined for greatness. The pair live alone in a dilapidated palace but are forced to flee when Zeus and Poseidon come to enslave them. Seeking refuge in the Underworld, Asteria is denied entry but Hekate, still a Godling, is admitted and taken into the care of Styx and Hades. There, she briefly meets her father, Perses, chained to a mountain after the Titan defeat, who predicts a future for his daughter in which “the dead will bow to you as you move in their wake”.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

Silent Hill f review – fascinating horror game maims the monsters teenage girls face

PC, PS5, Xbox; Konami
After an apocalyptic supernatural fog descends, school girl Hinako wakes up in a town populated by psychosexual beasts and gaslighting men in masks

There are some horror games you can finish in a couple of days of intense play; they almost invite that sort of frenzied consumption. But there are others that need to be savoured, and sometimes even suffered. Silent Hill f is in the latter category, which is why our review is somewhat delayed. This slowburn descent into psychological horror is set in 1960s Japan, but it also has pertinent things to say about the modern era and the tendrils of misogyny crawling out of the basement of the culture wars.

Lead character Hinako Shimizu is a school girl in the small conservative town of Ebisugaoka. Her father is a bully who treats his wife like a servant and his daughter like an inconvenience, and her best friend is Shu, a boy who may harbour deeper feelings for her – much to the frustration of another friend Rinko, who has a serious crush on him. It reads like a teen drama, which in a way it is, until an apocalyptic supernatural fog descends on the town and almost everyone goes missing.

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:00 am

ROG Xbox Ally X review – like nothing handheld gaming has seen before, for better or worse

Xbox’s portable console combines the openness of PC gaming and Microsoft’s desire for you to play its titles anywhere – but it doesn’t come cheap or without hitches

The ROG Xbox Ally X, the handheld console collaboration from Asus and Microsoft, is an impressive, yet expensive, piece of gaming tech. The pricier of the two portable gaming devices dropping on 16 October, the all-black ROG Xbox Ally X will cost you a cool £799 (€899/$999/A$1599) to sample its splendour. (The less powerful ROG Xbox Ally, which comes in white, will run you £499/€599/$599/A$999.) Thankfully, the pricier option has said splendour in spades.

I’ve put the ROG Xbox Ally X through its paces for the last few weeks, playing indie darlings and massive role-playing games throughout my apartment. Though the price tag is certainly a shocker (the Steam Deck OLED, a direct competitor, costs £479/€569/$549/A$899 for its cheaper model), the power packed into this comparatively smaller frame (291 x 122 x 51mm) is like nothing the portable gaming market has seen before.

Published: October 16, 2025, 1:21 pm

Without Ace Frehley, Kiss could not have achieved their extraordinary greatness | Michael Hann

The guitarist was the most proficient musician in the original lineup and his bludgeoning ‘monster plod’ was central to their sound

• Ace Frehley, Kiss lead guitarist and band’s cofounder, dies aged 74

Ace Frehley was the last of the quartet to join Kiss, and when he left, the band were beginning their slow descent through the 80s. By the time Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley wrestled the brand back to the big stages, Frehley – who has died aged 74 – was little more than a face-painted pattern to the generations of new fans who came to gawp at the fireworks.

But one shouldn’t underestimate his contribution to Kiss: almost all of Kiss’s setlist to the end was made up of songs he had played on. And though he was not a prolific writer, one of his compositions – Cold Gin – remained in their setlist until Stanley and Simmons quit in 2023, more than 40 years after Frehley left the band (the less said about the 1998 reunion album, Psycho Circus, the better).

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:27 am

& Sons review – Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton’s riveting showdown rescues a laborious plot

London film festival: Nighy stars as a boozy literary has-been and Staunton his estranged wife in Pablo Trapero’s unconvincing adaptation of David Gilbert’s 2013 novel

No movie with Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy can be entirely without interest – and they’re heading up a mighty cast here under the direction of the great Argentinian film-maker Pablo Trapero, making his English-language debut. He has co-written the screenplay with another A-lister: Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley.

And yet the resulting picture, adapted from the 2013 novel by David Gilbert, feels nebulous and laborious. It is dependent on a giant twist-reveal, which is bafflingly implausible and strangely uncompelling even if taken at face value, and which tends to undermine the emotional reality of the whole film and its big confrontation scenes – though there is one riveting showdown between Staunton and Nighy, two black-belts each at the top of their game.

Nighy is Andrew Dyer, a cantankerous old literary lion revered throughout the world for the brilliant novels of his youth, who has published nothing for years and is now marooned like a bearded, drunken hermit in his huge Oxfordshire mansion, boozing, playing jazz LPs too loud and shouting at the walls. He lives with his longsuffering Czech housekeeper Gerde (Anna Geislerová) and high-schooler Andy (Noah Jupe), the product of an affair that destroyed his marriage to Isabel (Imelda Staunton).

Andy is (possibly) like Smerdyakov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: the non-canonical brother to his other, older siblings, would-be documentary film-maker Jamie (George MacKay) and recovering alcoholic screenwriter Richard (Johnny Flynn). The entire family is imperiously summoned to the mansion by Dyer.

Andy and Richard are furious with the old man for how he treated their mother but self-hatingly aware they are still using him for their various careers. The film shows that their intense dislike of Dyer is not helped by the extraordinary claim he now makes about Andy – is it just a delusional, self-serving excuse for his infidelity and the only imaginative effort of which the raddled old man is now capable? Or could it be true?

Either way, there isn’t much drama to be had from it. The whole situation circles around Dyer’s revelation without satisfactorily fleshing out its claims to the truth, or its implications as fiction. Jupe, MacKay and Flynn transmit their roles strongly enough, though the male cast are perhaps upstaged by Staunton as Dyer’s estranged wife; it is actually Flynn’s character Richard, furiously obsessed with what Dyer owes him, who delivers the film’s second disclosure, which would be quite enough on its own for most stories.

There are memories here of other films about ageing, conceited toxic-male authors: Bjørn Runge’s The Wife (2017) and Alice Troughton’s The Lesson (2023). Although as a movie about a dysfunctional family, it isn’t anywhere near the quality of Trapero’s own tremendous crime-family movie The Clan from 2015.

& Sons doesn’t deliver on the promise of all its film-making talent but Nighy is always amusing, especially when he crisply orders his nephew Emmett (Arthur Conti) to fix him a whisky. In his untutored way, the kid fills the glass almost to the brim and Dyer grinningly congratulates him on an excellent “Scotch-to-air ratio”.

Published: October 17, 2025, 10:53 am

Palestine 36 director Annemarie Jacir: ‘We don’t want a state, we just want to live’

Fresh from a 20-minute ovation at Toronto, the film-maker’s historical drama reveals how Britain’s 1936 crackdown created the blueprint for the ongoing genocide in Gaza

It is a black hole, the director and writer Annemarie Jacir tells me of the year 1936. Our discussion has fallen back in time to the start of the first mass Palestinian revolt against British rule and Zionism. It’s the year from which her latest film, Palestine 36, takes its name, a year she’s heard about her entire life. It’s also the origin, she believes, of today’s reality – even if for others it’s a historical void. “A lot of people don’t even know, surprisingly, that the British were even in Palestine,” Jacir says incredulously. “This film is for Palestinians. It’s our story that hasn’t been told.”

The veteran film-maker is undoubtedly well placed to tell it: this is her fourth feature to be selected as Palestine’s Oscar entry. And although a period film, it does not belong to the past. While years have passed since the executions, widespread detentions and demolished villages under Britain’s 30-year rule, she argues that history is alive. At one point in the film, a young Palestinian man is tied to the front of a vehicle by British soldiers, as a human shield. While filming the scene in Nablus, a city in the West Bank, the very same day Israeli soldiers strapped a wounded Palestinian man to a military vehicle during a raid in Jenin. “Everything that is going on now was set up back then in 1936; everything that the Israeli army does, in fact, is all taken from that moment,” says Jacir.

Published: October 17, 2025, 12:00 pm

Elliott Gould remembers Diane Keaton – ‘We snuck into a bush and she said: “This is called making out”’

Gould and Keaton made three movies together. He recalls a co-star who was professional, original, and remarkably down to earth

• Diane Keaton obituary

• Peter Bradshaw on Diane Keaton

I was shocked when I heard about Diane’s passing. I loved her. There was nobody like her. Bright, talented, generous, and very smart and witty. She had more than just a sense of humour; she was hysterical. Whatever it was, she just had it.

The first time I saw her was in a deodorant commercial where she bit somebody’s ear. Everything about her was original. I’d be interested in anything she was involved in because she was so keen and so smart and so witty. And anybody who got to work with her was in for a treat – as I later found.

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:00 am

Experience: I am the air guitar world champion

For 60 seconds I gave everything – explosive energy, perfect mime and rock star charisma. I think I blacked out from shock when they said I’d won

I was 10 when I read an article in the local paper about the Air Guitar World Championships, which take place every year in my home town of Oulu, Finland. My parents had helped out at the very first contest back in 1996 – my mum gave out flyers, my dad sorted the music. Since then, national championships have been held all across the world, with the winners assembling in Oulu every summer.

At the time, I asked my parents if I could compete. At first they were hesitant; the event was in a bar, and there would be a lot of adults. They thought it might be an intimidating atmosphere, but I was determined.

Published: October 17, 2025, 4:00 am

Night owls versus early birds: who is superior according to science?

And is it actually possible for your body clock to change? Am I really turning into an early bird or have I just been forced into a child-dictated schedule?

We all know that early birds get the worm. But who wants a worm? Not me. For most of my life I have identified as a night owl, clambering out of bed as late as possible and not so much seizing but reluctantly easing into the day.

US work culture is not really optimal for night owls. Rather, it favours CEOs who get up at 4am and run a marathon while the rest of us hit the snooze button. Still, I always consoled myself with the idea that night owls are actually more intelligent and creative than their early bird counterparts. Franz Kafka and Thomas Wolfe wrote at bedtime; Bob Dylan recorded at night. Even scientific studies indicated it was true.

Published: October 16, 2025, 4:00 pm

The eight best showerhead filters in the US for every budget and bathroom

Shower filters claim to help with the chlorine and chemicals in the tap water we rinse with – here are the ones we recommend

• Can I pop this? 18 common skincare questions, answered by dermatologists

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

Most of us jump in the shower without giving it much thought. Lather, rinse, repeat. But what’s in that water you’re being sprayed with, and what effect is it having on your skin and hair? Tap water contains a laundry list of chemicals and minerals, some of which may be detrimental. Chlorine is the most common concern, which can dry out your skin and hair and possibly even aggravate asthma.

Fortunately, it can be removed with filters, which claim to solve all of these problems and sometimes more. One calls itself an “essential beauty wellness tool”; another is “step zero of your self-care routine”. When I began researching, the claims of beautification were so varied and extreme that I half expected to begin as a middle-aged man with thinning hair and end up as Jacob Elordi. No such luck.

Best overall:
Canopy Handheld Filtered Showerhead

Published: October 16, 2025, 7:15 pm

Instant coffee just beat drip – we were stunned too

Sometimes simple wins: why instant coffee might deserve a second look

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

Each week in the Filter US newsletter 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.

As the Filter US’s new editorial coordinator, I was thrilled that my first assignment allowed me to write about something I can’t live without: coffee. And I’ll confess, I consider myself quite the coffee snob. Every morning, I sit at my tiny New York City kitchen table, trying (and often failing) to solve a crossword puzzle, while enjoying my first cup of the day.

Published: October 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘A 360 turn’: concern as fashion shows feature fewer plus-size models

Vogue report finds fall in number of ‘curve’ models, while widespread use of weight-loss drugs credited with normalising thinness

Fashion insiders have expressed concern that efforts towards size inclusivity are being eroded, with experts saying the industry has “done a 360 turn” back to promoting thinness.

This week a report by Vogue Business found that out of the 9,038 looks presented across 198 shows in the womenswear collections earlier this month, 97.1% were shown on straight-size models who measured between a US size 0-4 (the equivalent of a UK 4-8). Only 0.9% of models were plus-size, also known as curve (UK 18+), while 2% were mid-size (UK 10-16).

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:31 pm

‘We keep wine in caves and cathedrals’: an eating and drinking tour of Burgos, Spain

A Norman Foster-designed ‘wine cathedral’, Hobbit-style cellars and a Petra-lookalike church are drawing attention to this tasty corner of the Ribera del Duero in northern Spain

‘We can talk about culture, churches, monasteries, whatever, but the main thing here is eating and drinking.” My guide, Loreto Esteban Guijarro, is keen to ensure I have my priorities straight. I’m with Loreto to discover the food and wine culture of Spain’s Burgos province, a high-altitude area ringed by distant mountains. In summer the days are hot, and at night temperatures plummet. To thrive in these extremes, the food, the wine, and even perhaps the people, are robust and straight-talking.

I’m staying deep in wine country at the rural Posada de Pradoray, built as a hunting lodge for the Duke of Lerma in 1601. The thick stone walls, dark polished wood and heavy doors leading to simple rooms with vineyard views suggest little has changed in this landscape for centuries. Burgos is part of the Ribera del Duero wine region which stretches for 71 miles following the Duero River through the provinces of Burgos, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid.

Published: October 16, 2025, 6:00 am

You be the judge: should my housemates bring the bins in?

Mohammed alleges that his flatmate Ben isn’t doing his bit when it comes to the garbage. You decide who is talking rubbish
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

If the bins are left out for ages, our neighbours don’t like it and random people chuck rubbish in

Published: October 16, 2025, 7:00 am

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for baked leek and egg gratin | A kitchen in Rome

Soft leeks topped with halved boiled eggs and smothered in a blanket of cheesy bechamel: what’s not to like?

While sorting out some books the other day, as well as gathering a pile to give away or sell, I spent a large part of two hours looking for books I know I once had, and trying to remember if I had loaned or lost them. And then, in the case of one particular book, ordering another copy. Ten out, one in: not terrible.

The book I (re)ordered was Beaneaters and Bread Soup, by Lori de Mori and the photographer Jason Lowe. Gathered over decades of living just outside Florence, the book is a collection of wonderful, practical Tuscan recipes, and also tells a story of Tuscan food through portraits of photogenic local artisans: a chestnut grower, a bee keeper, a man who makes knives … I would mention more if I could find the book, which I suspect was borrowed and never returned – you know who you are! (Unless I have got this wrong and it is behind the bookcase.)

Published: October 16, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Teach kids internet bollocks, not my old rubbish,’ says Shakespeare: the Stephen Collins cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: October 17, 2025, 9:30 am

‘Gen Z gave us the victory’: how young protesters toppled Madagascar’s leader

There is jubilation in Place du 13 Mai in the capital but concern about army’s intentions after military takeover

As the sun set on Place du 13 Mai in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, thousands of people danced, waved and cheered to pulsating rap and reggae beats and rousing speeches.

When young people started protesting on 25 September, first against water and power cuts, then demanding a complete overhaul of the political system, military police stopped them from reaching the square. The site has been a symbol of democracy and the focal point of anti-government protests on the Indian Ocean island since 40 student demonstrators were killed there by security forces in May 1972.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:18 am

‘Legacies condensed to AI slop’: OpenAI Sora videos of the dead raise alarm with legal experts

The video app can produce realistic deepfakes of Marx shopping and MLK Jr trolling. Some say using ‘historical figures’ is the company’s way of testing the legal waters

Last night I was flicking through a dating app. One guy stood out: “Henry VIII, 34, King of England, nonmonogamy”. Next thing I know, I am at a candlelit bar sharing a martini with the biggest serial dater of the 16th century.

But the night is not over. Next, I am DJing back-to-back with Diana, Princess of Wales. “The crowd’s ready for the drop,” she shouts in my ear, holding a headphone to her tiara. Finally, Karl Marx is explaining why he can’t resist 60% off, as we wait in the cold to get first dibs on Black Friday sales.

Published: October 17, 2025, 11:00 am

Tell us your favourite TV romcom of all time

TV writers have told us their favourite television romcoms of all time – now we’d like to hear yours

The Guardian has asked TV writers for their favourite television romcoms of all time – and now we’d like to hear yours.

You can tell us about your favourite series and why below.

Published: October 17, 2025, 2:11 pm

The week around the world in 20 pictures

The hostage release, floods in Mexico, protests in Madagascar and polar bears in an abandoned research station: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Published: October 17, 2025, 5:52 pm