I tried 10 laundry baskets to find the best hamper in the US – these are my favorites after at-home testing

With days’ worth of laundry, I trudged plastic, fabric, lidless and wheeled baskets up and down stairs and found winners

• The best bath towels in the US, from fluffy to quick drying – tested

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

A laundry basket is one of those household objects that you might not notice until something goes awry. Depending on the layout of your home and your laundry situation, you might use it to transfer clothes from room to room, up and down multiple flights of stairs, or just to collect items for the wash in one location.

But if you have a bad laundry basket – one that buckles under the weight of a full load of laundry or makes the task of transferring folded clothes more cumbersome than it has to be – you start noticing fast. Nothing makes the task of getting laundry done less pleasant than fighting with the container that’s supposed to be helping you.

Best overall:
Sterilite Ultra 2 Bushel Basket

Best collapsible laundry basket:
Sammart Collapsible Laundry Basket

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:15 pm

‘I’m still processing how awful it was’: your zero-star screen disasters

From a Dustin Hoffman performance less witty than a stunned mollusc to the worst piece of garbage ever inflicted on TV viewers, here are Guardian readers’ most atrocious watching experiences ever

• Our roundup of all 18 of the Guardian’s past zero-star reviews
• Peter Bradshaw picks three films that deserved the big 0

Playmobil: The Movie (2019)

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:21 pm

A refugee’s deportation rattles a deeply conservative town: ‘What Trump has done is not Christlike’

Binod Shah, a refugee from Bhutan, went to church, got married and started an auto shop in Twin Falls, Idaho. But an arrest record got him caught in the ICE dragnet

Stephanie Shah kept her eyes on the winding road as rain streaked across the windshield. Her husband, Binod Shah, sat in silence beside her, staring out the window. It was late evening in Washington state on 23 March, and they had been driving all day, trading shifts, barely speaking, while their nine-month-old son dozed beneath a blanket in the backseat. The sky hung low and gray, and evergreens, soaked and still, stood witness along the road. Inside the car, a Nepali-Christian folk song played quietly on repeat. At some point, Binod reached over and rested his hand on Stephanie’s leg. It wasn’t reassurance. It felt more like a final touch.

When the baby started to cry, Stephanie pulled over and together they changed his diaper, working without words. Then Binod leaned down, kissed his son’s forehead, and began to cry.

Published: November 12, 2025, 1:00 pm

Gen Z’s ‘first lady’: how Rama Duwaji, Mamdani’s wife, is reshaping political fashion

The 28-year-old artist’s style steers clear of the political wife cosplay of pastel skirt suits in favor of something more playful and youthful, yet still elegant

It is the most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters.

Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 am

‘Every account is slightly different’: who were the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gambler

There’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line.

“Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:45 pm

Longest US government shutdown in history set to end after House passes bill

Measure to restart federal operations passes narrowly, but excludes healthcare funding demanded by Democrats

• US politics – follow live

The longest US government shutdown in history is set to end on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators. The legislation restarts federal operations but does not include the healthcare funding the minority party demanded.

The compromise sets the stage for government operations to return to normal through January, while leaving unresolved the issue of expiring tax credits for Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare health plans, which most Democrats demanded be extended in any deal to reopen the government.

Published: November 13, 2025, 2:06 am

Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

In messages released by House Democrats, Epstein wrote ‘of course [Trump] knew about the girls’

• US politics live – latest updates

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.

The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:07 pm

US House to vote next week on bill compelling release of Epstein files

Mike Johnson announces move hours after swearing in Adelita Grijalva, Democrat whose signature triggered vote

Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said on Wednesday he would put the bill compelling the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor next week.

“We are gonna put that on the floor for [a] full vote next week, [as] soon as we get back,” Johnson told reporters, as the chamber gathered to debate legislation to reopen the government.

Published: November 13, 2025, 1:00 am

Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein

Karoline Leavitt defied the laws of moral physics to insist that the true wrongdoers were Biden and the Democrats

Donald Trump was described as “that dog that hasn’t barked” in an email by Jeffrey Epstein. Don’t tell Kristi Noem, who has a way of dealing with troublesome hounds.

The US president would love nothing more than to let sleeping dogs lie, but that hope was dashed on Wednesday when Democrats released emails suggesting that Trump was aware of Epstein’s conduct and had spent hours with one of the disgraced financier’s victims.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:54 pm

Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva sworn in after seven weeks in move that triggers Epstein vote

Mike Johnson, the House speaker, had prevented the representative from taking her seat after a special election

Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in by Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, on Wednesday, ending a contentious seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming representative from taking her seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

House Democrats burst into applause after Grijalva took the oath of office, in a floor ceremony that took place shortly before the chamber was poised to take up legislation that would end the longest federal government shutdown in US history. The House was already out of session when Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime representative Raúl Grijalva, who died in March. Johnson, who kept the House in recess as a tactic to pressure Senate Democrats to compromise with Republicans on legislation to fund the government, had said he would not swear in Grijalva until after the chamber returned.

Published: November 13, 2025, 12:18 am

Epstein emails thrust Trump back into spotlight over past ties

Newly released emails from Epstein’s estate reignite scrutiny of the US president’s old links to the sex offender

The release of previously unseen emails sent by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has thrust Donald Trump back into the center of the long-running Epstein controversy that has plagued his administration for months, inflamed parts of his own political base and offered Democrats an ongoing line of political attack.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House oversight and government reform committee released email exchanges from 2011, 2015 and 2019 that they say were provided by the estate of the late Epstein, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:11 pm

World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds

Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating

The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found.

Despite their promises, governments’ new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.

Published: November 13, 2025, 12:01 am

Judge orders release of hundreds arrested during Chicago immigration raids

Trump officials also cannot pressure detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while cases are pending, says judge

A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of people who were arrested over the last few months in the Chicago area amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids across the city.

On Wednesday, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the justice department to produce a list showing which of the 615 possible class members are still in custody by 19 November, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:42 pm

Ex-top aide to Newsom indicted over scheme to steal money from ex-US health secretary

Dana Williamson among five co-conspirators in scheme to steal more than $225,000 from Xavier Becerra’s campaign

A former top aide to California governor Gavin Newsom has been arrested over federal charges alleging her involvement in a scheme to steal campaign money from Xavier Becerra, the former US health secretary.

Dana Williamson was indicted on 23 counts that include bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the US, and was scheduled to make her first court appearance Wednesday in Sacramento. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:18 pm

Waymo announces that its robotaxis will drive freeways for the first time

Google subsidiary to offer services on San Francisco, LA and Phoenix freeways as it scales expansion amid competition

Alphabet’s Waymo said on Wednesday that it would begin offering robotaxi rides that use freeways across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, a first for the Google subsidiary as it steps up expansion amid global and domestic competition in the self-driving industry.

Freeway rides will initially be available to early-access users, Waymo said. “When a freeway route is meaningfully faster, they can be matched with a freeway trip, providing quicker, smoother, and more efficient rides,” it said.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:57 pm

James Van Der Beek to sell Dawson’s Creek ‘treasures’ to pay for cancer treatment

Actor, 48, who revealed colorectal cancer diagnosis last year, to also auction memorabilia from Varsity Blues

Actor James Van Der Beek will once again be selling collector’s items from some of his beloved films and TV shows, including Dawson’s Creek, to help pay for his treatment for colorectal cancer.

“I’ve been storing these treasures for years, waiting for the right time to do something with them, and with all of the recent unexpected twists and turns life has presented recently, it’s clear that the time is now,” Van Der Beek told People.

The collection, which includes an outfit he wore in the Dawson’s Creek pilot, and a hat featured in the 1999 film Varsity Blues, will be auctioned at Propstore’s annual Winter Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, which runs from 5 December to 7 December.

Published: November 13, 2025, 2:53 am

Trump news at a glance: new batch of Epstein emails suggest Donald Trump ‘knew about the girls’

Release of messages by Democrats on House oversight committee likely to add to pressure on White House to release Epstein files – key US politics stories from 12 November 2025 at a glance

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.

The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files, which reportedly detail the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.

Published: November 13, 2025, 2:10 am

BBC prepared to apologise to Trump to resolve billion-dollar legal threat

The US president has threatened the BBC with a lawsuit over the editing of a Trump speech in an edition of Panorama

The BBC is prepared to formally apologise to Donald Trump as part of its efforts to resolve his billion-dollar legal threat over its editing of one of his speeches, the Guardian understands.

However, figures at the corporation are also minded to be robust in defending its journalism in the face of allegations from Trump that it made “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about him.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:21 pm

Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

Expert says military action may be ‘imminent’ in Venezuela, while others suspect deployment is a negotiating tactic

• Explainer: Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

When Donald Trump started sending warships, marines and reaper drones to the Caribbean in August to torment Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, the US’s former ambassador in Caracas, James Story, suspected the deployment was largely for show: a spectacular flexing of military muscle supposed to force the authoritarian leader from power.

But in recent days, as the world’s largest aircraft carrier and its strike group powered towards the region and the US president continued to order deadly airstrikes on alleged narco-boats, the diplomat’s thinking has shifted.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:38 pm

After a controversial trial, an Oklahoma man makes a final plea to avoid execution

Tremane Wood was convicted of a murder his brother had confessed to. Now a Republican governor will decide whether he dies on Thursday

It may be about to execute him, but Oklahoma’s department of corrections hasn’t even spelled Tremane Wood’s name right: it lists him on its official website as “Termane” Wood.

For 16 of his last 21 years in prison, following his conviction for the murder of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf, he has been confined, often alone, to a series of windowless concrete cells in the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, in an underground block that prisoners have compared to a tomb.

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:02 pm

Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

Once at the heart of record migration, the Texas border town now faces new fears over Trump’s sweeping deportation drive

Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.

Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

Donald Trump claims military buildup is necessary to stem flow of drugs to US but some believe goal is regime change

• Analysis: Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

The US has deployed the world’s largest warship to the waters of the Caribbean and Latin America in an escalation of the military buildup by the US and Venezuela.

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford has joined other warships and a nuclear-powered submarine in what was already seen as the largest US military presence in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. US airstrikes on boats in South American waters have killed at least 76 people since September.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:05 pm

‘We need an iron fist’: the Trump-inspired favourite to win Chile’s election

José Antonio Kast, 59, is appealing to voters with a hard-right pitch on crime and immigration

Even before José Antonio Kast popped into his high-altitude restaurant for a plate of alpaca ribs, Carlos Valdebenito Pacheco was set on voting for the ultra-conservative favourite to become the next president of Chile.

“Without a doubt – 100%,” enthused the 55-year-old waiter from Visviri, an isolated Andean outpost more than 4,000 metres above sea level on Chile’s triple border with Bolivia and Peru.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Christmas Karma review – Dickens adaptation has as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog

Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducing

Keen though I always am to indulge any and every new riff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and keen also to hear from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, this cynically Christmassy movie is leaden, unconvincingly acted and about as welcome as a dead rat in the eggnog. It’s the worst Christmas film since last year’s Red One, in which Dwayne Johnson played the head of security for Santa Claus and more or less had us all rooting for anyone who could beat up Father Christmas.

In this one, Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar lifelessly and joylessly plays a Scrooge variant called Mr Sood, part of the Ugandan south Asian community expelled by Idi Amin in his childhood, and embittered by early poverty. An early romance soured because of his obsession with money, and he has become a grasping and unpleasant old guy in London (cue stock footage of the London skyline) in the rather quaintly imagined business of moneylending, with his now dead partner Jacob Marley, played by Hugh Bonneville. But after petulant displays of boorish meanness with his nephew, employees and the cheerful Cockney Christmas-jumper-wearing cabbie played by Danny Dyer (surely Mr Sood knows that Ubers are cheaper?), he is visited by Marley’s ghost and then the spirits of Christmas past, present and future (played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter and Boy George).

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 pm

Colbert on Trump ‘building a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis’

Late-night hosts spoke about the president’s latest additions to the White House and his attacks on air traffic controllers

Late-night hosts spoke about the controversial behavior of a small group of Democrats and Donald Trump’s continued destruction of the White House.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:13 pm

The billionaire nanny boom: why gen Z is providing ‘private service’ for the super-rich

Is it time to start channelling Mary Poppins? Some graduates are eschewing entry-level jobs to earn £150k or more looking after the children of the absurdly wealthy

Name: Billionaire nannies.

Age: Mid-20s, or thereabouts.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:10 pm

Did a meteor strike downtown New York? Jeff Mermelstein’s best photograph

‘This image gave me a jolt: his poker face, his grip on the bottle of window cleaner – and the boulder that might be a meteor that struck the flowerbed’

I made this image, Man with Windex, in New York City, in 1996. I was, and remain, obsessed with making photographs on the streets of New York. At that time, I was using a Leica Rangefinder with colour negative film because of its malleability and ease. One of the beautiful things about the Leica is its stealth qualities – it is quiet and small, though for me right now the iPhone is my camera.

I am the son of Holocaust survivors and grew up in suburban central New Jersey, moving to New York in 1979 when I was in my early 20s – which was like landing on Mars. This picture is part of my series and book Sidewalk, made between 1987 and 1999. I would walk the streets of Manhattan daily, ready for surprises. Out on the street you need calm alertness. Pictures that remain strongest for me have a sense of ambiguity, maybe that extra-rare quality of mystery, and that would give me a feeling of euphoria.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:38 pm

The BBC’s editing error was serious, but the response is way out of proportion | Margaret Sullivan

The broadcaster should not cave to Trump’s demands

You can’t be in the news business and avoid mistakes. That’s why responsible media organizations correct their errors and acknowledge them to the public. It’s why newsroom leaders take steps, internally, to repair broken processes. It’s why they sometimes go so far as to apologize or take stories down.

Some mistakes, of course, are worse than others. A misspelled name is one thing. Sustained coverage that is misleading or false is quite another. And there are plenty of gradations between those two poles.

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

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Yes, New York will soon be under new management. But Zohran Mamdani is just the start | Carys Afoko

Lina Khan outraged corporates and conservatives as head of the Federal Trade Commission. Expect more of the same now she’s with the mayor-elect’s transition team

A relatively unknown thirtysomething parachuted on to the national stage and into high political office. Energising to some of the Democratic base but lacking support from the party establishment. Not Zohran Mamdani but Lina Khan, who Joe Biden appointed to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021 when she was just 32. Khan, who left her role at the FTC when Trump returned to the White House, is now one of five women appointed to the mayor-elect of New York’s transition team.

Khan is the most exciting pick for a few reasons. She entered the FTC with an ambitious mandate to transform the government agency, broaden its focus to increase scrutiny of corporate mergers and do more to protect consumers – and got results. She brought down the price of inhalers (routinely being sold for hundreds of dollars) by tackling price gouging by pharmaceutical companies. She blocked a huge supermarket merger and returned more than $60m to Amazon drivers in unpaid tips. All of her achievements were delivered in four years, while navigating a bureaucracy that was sometimes hostile to her leadership.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Boyfriends are cringe. But is the #boysober trend a feminist reclamation or a neoconservative tilt? | Lisa Portolan

Young women are rejecting the idea of emotional dependence on men. But as with any online feminist movement, it exists in tension

A few years ago, I wrote about the rise of the “soft” and “hard” launch on social media, those curated posts that signalled a new relationship. Online platforms had become an extension of the romance plot, a public stage where intimacy was proof of worth and coupledom was still the ultimate status symbol.

Back then, my research showed that many people felt their lives had not truly begun until they’d met someone. Being single wasn’t just a relationship status; it was an existential pause. To “get a life”, as the old saying went, meant to find a partner. Romance was the scaffolding of selfhood.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

Celebrating literature is good – but I’m running out of patience with celebrity book clubs | Emma Brockes

Sarah Jessica Parker swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but is fame the best way to encourage reading?

In these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.

I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There is nothing wrong with an actor involving herself in literary life or using her cultural weight to promote literacy. And – it goes without saying – we are all weepingly grateful to anyone with a platform bigger than that of the dowdy stay-at-home novelist who harnesses her glamour and spotlight for good. That celebrity book clubs have become the natural PR extension of taking up animal charities or becoming a UN goodwill ambassador is, surely, something to be celebrated. Who among us can fail to welcome Mindy Kaling, or Emma Watson, or Jenna Bush Hager in their fight against dwindling attention spans and addiction to screens?

Emma Brockes 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: November 12, 2025, 5:29 pm

Covid vaccines may increase the lifespan of cancer patients – this could be a game changer | Devi Sridhar

A study suggesting mRNA vaccines help the body fight malignant cells raises the tantalising prospect of a low-cost, low-risk treatment that could help with all cancers

I’m often asked whether we’re better prepared for the next pandemic. It’s a mixed answer, but the bright spot is scientific progress on vaccines. The Covid vaccines were produced faster than any previous effort, and are credited with saving millions of lives from 2021 onwards. The mRNA vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna – were designed within days of the Sars-CoV-2 genome being published in January 2020, and went into safety trials over the following months before finally being approved in the UK at the end of 2020.

But could they have additional benefits? According to a recent study published in Nature, mRNA vaccines seem to trigger a powerful immune response that increases the median survival time by about 75% for certain cancer patients. These findings – which are being further developed – could indicate the power of repurposing vaccines and medicines that have already passed trials for safety and are available at reasonable cost.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Fit Forever: Wellness for midlife and beyond. On Wednesday 28 January 2026, join Annie Kelly, Devi Sridhar, Joel Snape and Mariella Frostrup, as they discuss how to enjoy longer and healthier lives, with expert advice and practical tips. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

To the cashier who left me absolutely speechless – I salute you | Adrian Chiles

Ours was a highly unusual interaction, and it made me question the way that British people speak to one another

It was Sunday morning and I was grumpy enough, filling up my mum’s car. It was one of those petrol stations which is also a supermarket, so you run the risk of joining a queue of people bearing baskets of slightly overpriced groceries. This is a dreadful thing to happen when all you want to do is pay for some fuel. Dreadful.

I was fourth in the queue. There was only one person serving, a young woman. There was something unusual about her. When the faffer at the front of the queue had finally paid for his Viakal, his sausage roll and his box of eggs, I could have sworn I heard the cashier wish him a wonderful day. Odd. Perhaps I’d misheard, or maybe she did say it and was being sarcastic. I wondered if she could even be an ally in my fight against faff, sharing my contempt for people who hold up simple fuel-buyers like me.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:14 pm

The Guardian view on special Trump treatment for Hungary: roll on the next election | Editorial

As polls suggest that Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian rule is under threat, Brussels can only wait and hope

During the US presidential election campaign of 2016, Viktor Orbán was the only European Union leader to back Donald Trump. Which was hardly surprising. Whether in relation to the the normalisation of great replacement theory, or the bullying and harassment of the media, Mr Orbán more or less wrote the playbook for the Maga movement. The former White House strategist Steve Bannon has eulogised Hungary’s prime minister as the “Trump before Trump”.

Last week, ahead of crucial Hungarian elections in less than six months’ time, the US president returned some political favours. As Mr Orbán seeks a fifth consecutive term presiding over a nation which he boasts of having turned into an illiberal democracy, his Fidesz party trails in the polls. As well as a few signed Maga baseball caps, an Orbán visit to Washington yielded considerably more valuable pre-election gifts.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:25 pm

Anthony Joshua set to face Jake Paul in December heavyweight bout

• Joshua and Paul finalizing December bout

• Fight expected in Miami on 19 or 26 December

• Netflix to announce matchup on Monday

Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul are finalizing a deal to meet in a heavyweight fight in Miami this December, sources told the Guardian, with Netflix preparing to announce the bout on Monday. A source with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal is done and that the fight will take place on either 19 or 26 December.

Paul had originally been scheduled to fight Gervonta Davis on 14 November at the Kaseya Center, but the event was cancelled after Davis was removed from the card amid domestic violence allegations. Davis’s former partner, Courtney Rossel, filed a civil lawsuit in Miami-Dade County accusing the lightweight champion of battery, aggravated battery, false imprisonment, kidnapping and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Miami Gardens police confirmed they are investigating the alleged incident, which Rossel says occurred at the strip club where she works. She was granted a restraining order shortly afterwards.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:14 pm

Lions’ Amon-Ra St Brown apologizes for offense caused over ‘Trump Dance’ during game

• US president attended Sunday’s game at Commanders

• Wide receiver suffered backlash over dance on social media

Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St Brown has apologized to anyone who was offended by his “Trump Dance” during his team’s victory over the Washington Commanders on Sunday.

St Brown performed the dance – which has become popular with athletes over the last year – during the game, which the US president attended.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:50 pm

Sinner into last four of ATP Finals after straight-sets win over Zverev – as it happened

• Sinner beats Zverev 6-4, 6-3 to thrill home fans in Turin

• German must beat Auger-Aliassime to make the semis

It’s almost time … and out they come, the crowd going wild for Sinner. This arena is proper, steeply banked so it feels like everyone is on top of the action, and it makes a right racket.

Sinner, by the way, has won 27 indoor hard-court matches in a row. The predictable bounce is perfect for the way he moves and hits and in Turin, the thinner air is also helpful, giving the ball even greater pace. Zverev, though, quite likes all of that too, so we’ll see.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:15 pm

Susie Wolff: ‘I can be very punchy and pragmatic. If I have to fight for something, I’ll fight’

Head of F1 Academy explains how close she came to a grand prix debut, her quest to produce female drivers, and a frightening knock on her hotel room door by a powerful man in the sport

“There was a deep loneliness to karting, and then definitely in single‑seaters, because no one else was going through the same thing as me,” says Susie Wolff as she remembers her long struggle in motor sport, from racing as a teenager against Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to her determined, but unfulfilled, quest to become a Formula One driver.

“After the whole #MeToo movement, we forget what it was like before. But the way I heard boys talking about girls in the paddock made me think: ‘I never want to be spoken about in that way.’ I realised I’d have to be whiter than white to get through it unscathed.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:00 am

Off with a bang: Women’s 100m final moved up to LA28 opening day

• Sha’Carri Richardson hails athletics ‘having its moment’

• ‘Innovative schedule also honours tradition,’ says Coe

The women’s 100m final will headline the first day of competition at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics as part of organisers’ plans to “open with a bang”.

The surprise decision, which will lead to all three rounds of the 100m taking place on the same day, was welcomed by the US sprint star Sha’Carri Richardson, who said it showed that “track and field is having its moment”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:32 pm

Barcelona make Harry Kane first-choice target to replace Robert Lewandowski

• Kane has £57m summer release clause in Bayern contract

• Lewandowski’s contract with Barcelona expires in June

Barcelona have made Harry Kane their first-choice target to replace Robert Lewandowski. The Spanish champions regard the 32-year-old England captain as the ideal younger replacement for the 37-year-old Pole, whose contract expires in June, and may well be prepared to trigger the clause in Kane’s contract with Bayern Munich that would allow him to leave for £57m in the summer.

Kane has proven a huge success at Bayern since joining them from ­Tottenham for £100m in August 2023, scoring an astonishing 108 goals in 113 appearances. In September, he became the fastest player this century to reach 100 goals for a club playing in one of Europe’s top five leagues. He also ended his trophy drought in May after playing a key role in Bayern reclaiming the Bundesliga title.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:27 pm

Ex-NFL star Antonio Brown gets bail and GPS monitor in Miami attempted murder case

• Brown freed on $25k bail in Florida case

• Ex-NFL star must wear GPS ankle monitor

• Faces up to 15 years if convicted of shooting

Former NFL star wide receiver Antonio Brown will be released on $25,000 bail and must wear a GPS ankle monitor on an attempted murder charge in Florida, a judge ordered Wednesday.

Brown, 37, has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree attempted murder charge, which carries a potential 15-year prison sentence and a fine up to $10,000 if he is convicted. His lawyer, Mark Eiglarsh, said Brown would return to his home in Broward County, Florida, while the case proceeds.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:47 pm

Parking passes at 2026 World Cup will cost as much as $175 per vehicle

• Fifa already under attack for high ticket prices

• Costs are comparable to NFL parking passes

World Cup ticket holders can expect to spend big to park their cars at next year’s tournament, with prices on Fifa’s website reaching as much as $175 per parking pass.

First reported by the Athletic, the figures are significant in the car-dependent United States – one of the tournament’s three hosts, along with Canada and Mexico – where many venues are not easily accessible by public transport.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:58 pm

New bridge in south-west China collapses into mountainside

No casualties reported after section of 758-metre structure helping to link Sichuan province to Tibet falls to pieces

A newly opened bridge in south-west China collapsed on Tuesday, sending slabs of concrete and plumes of dust into the mountainside and water below. No casualties were reported.

Videos of the collapse of part of Hongqi Bridge, in the mountainous Sichuan province, were shared widely on Chinese social media. Authorities had closed the 758-metre-long bridge on Monday after cracks appeared on nearby roads. A landslide on Tuesday caused part of the bridge to collapse completely.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:31 pm

High blood pressure rates in children nearly doubled in 20 years, global review finds

Poor diet, inactivity and obesity believed to have caused hypertension for millions of under-19s around the world

The rate of children and teenagers living with high blood pressure globally has nearly doubled because of a toxic combination of unhealthy diets, mass inactivity and soaring levels of obesity, according to the largest review of its kind.

Experts said 114 million children who have developed hypertension even before reaching adulthood were facing potentially deadly and lifelong harm, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and a myriad of serious health complications.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:30 pm

Israeli president condemns ‘serious’ attack by settlers on West Bank villages

Isaac Herzog makes rare statement on often-ignored violence as settlers injure Palestinians and attack soldiers

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, injuring four Palestinians and attacking Israeli soldiers in the latest incident of rising settler violence.

The settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, setting vehicles on fire and damaging property belonging to a Bedouin community, with charred remains of cars left behind the next day.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:26 pm

Northern lights visible across US as geomagnetic storm lights up skies

Aurora borealis reported in over a dozen states, stretching from New York to Texas and Tennessee

A powerful geomagnetic storm lit up skies across much of the US late Tuesday and early Wednesday, giving people in dozens of states a rare chance to see the northern lights, and forecasters say that more auroral activity could be visible on Wednesday night too.

The aurora borealis, commonly known as the northern lights, was reported in more than a dozen states, stretching from New York to Washington state to Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Photos of the glowing colorful skies also poured in on social media from Nevada, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, California, Louisiana, New Mexico, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, South Dakota and more.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:23 pm

Chinese scientist charged with smuggling pathogen into US to be deported

Yunqing Jian, temporary researcher at University of Michigan, was studying organism harmful to some crops

A Chinese scientist charged in Michigan with smuggling biological materials pleaded guilty on Wednesday, but was given no additional time in jail beyond the five months she already spent in custody.

Yunqing Jian, who was a temporary researcher at a University of Michigan lab, will be released and quickly deported. A judge called it a “very strange” case involving an “incredibly accomplished researcher”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:32 pm

India confirms deadly Delhi car blast being treated as terror incident

Cabinet says explosion near Red Fort that killed 12 is suspected to have been perpetrated by ‘anti-national forces’

India has confirmed it is treating the explosion that killed 12 people outside Delhi’s Red Fort on Monday as a “terror incident” perpetrated by “anti-national forces”.

The statement by the cabinet, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, confirmed mounting speculation that a terrorist attack was behind the blast that took place during peak time in one of the capital’s busiest areas and outside one of India’s major landmarks.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:46 pm

Former AOC staffer running for Pelosi’s seat promises to root out corruption – and Trump’s ballroom

Saikat Chakrabarti wants to turn Trump’s gilded ballroom into a museum on authoritarianism

Rooting out corruption in government is at the center of Saikat Chakrabarti’s campaign for Congress. And if elected next year, the 39-year-old former Silicon Valley engineer – now running to succeed Nancy Pelosi in her long-held San Francisco seat – says he would put it on display for every American to see.

As part of his anti-corruption agenda, Chakrabarti says he would introduce legislation to turn Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom into the “Smithsonian Museum on Corruption and Authoritarianism”. Looking ahead to a post-Trump Washington, Chakrabarti envisions filling the 90,000 sq ft structure, to be built in place of the now-demolished East Wing, with exhibits dedicated to the “modern dangers posed by the current wannabe dictator, the ongoing threat of authoritarianism, assaults on the rule of law and the pervasive corruption of the billionaire class”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:27 pm

Anthropic announces $50bn plan for datacenter construction in US

AI startup behind Claude chatbot working with London-based Fluidstack on building vast new computing facilities

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50bn investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new datacenters in Texas and New York.

“We’re getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren’t possible before,” Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said in a press release.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:29 pm

Epstein-Barr virus appears to be trigger of lupus disease, say scientists

Connection of near-ubiquitous EBV to autoimmune disease affecting about 1 in 1,000 people may spur hunt for vaccine

A common childhood virus appears to be the trigger for the autoimmune disease lupus, according to groundbreaking research.

The study suggests that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which for most people is harmless, can cause immune cells to “go rogue” and mistakenly attack the body’s own tissues. The team behind the work said that uncovering the cause of lupus could revolutionise treatments.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 pm

Western US states fail to agree on plan to manage Colorado River before federal deadline

Stakeholders have spent months ironing out disagreements over how to distribute water from the sprawling basin

State negotiators embroiled in an impasse over how to manage the imperiled Colorado River were unable to agree on a plan before a federally set deadline on Tuesday, thrusting deliberations deeper into uncertain territory.

Stakeholders have spent months working to iron out contentious disagreements over how to distribute water from this sprawling basin – which supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (8.9m hectares) of farmland, dozens of tribes and parts of Mexico – as the resources grow increasingly scarce.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:31 pm

‘There’s fire all around us, this is it’ – This is climate breakdown

Working with jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal was a huge source of joy. But the wildfires are getting worse. This is Abbie’s story

Location Pantanal, Brazil

Disaster Wildfires, a number of years

Abbie Martin splits her time between captaining a boat in the Virgin Islands and doing research in Brazil’s Pantanal, a region that includes the world’s largest tropical wetland and where she founded the Jaguar Identification Project. Fires in the Pantanal have reached new extremes, killing at least 17 million vertebrate animals and burning 27% of the vegetation cover in 2020. Climate breakdown made the Pantanal drier between 2001-21, increasing the occurrence of above-average fires in the region.

Published: November 12, 2025, 12:00 pm

Supply boom in cheaper renewables will seal end of fossil fuel era, says IEA

Watchdog’s flagship report says rise in low-carbon electricity will make transition ‘inevitable’, despite Trump’s calls to carry on drilling

Renewables will grow faster than any major energy source in the next decade, according to the world’s energy watchdog, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable”, despite a green backlash in the US and parts of Europe.

The world is expected to build more renewable energy projects in the next five years than has been rolled out over the last 40, according to the flagship annual report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

The man on a mission to save Mauritania’s ‘city of libraries’ from encroaching desert sands

Desert settlement of Chinguetti faces rising sands, dwindling tourism and insecurity due to conflict in neighbouring Mali

On a recent afternoon, 67-year-old Saif Islam made his way into the courtyard of a library in Chinguetti, a tiny desert settlement nestled in the Sahara in Mauritania.

Decked in a flowing boubou gown striped in two shades of blue, his steps unsteady but his presence still commanding, he sat on a handwoven mat stroking his grey beard, with his black croc sandals neatly placed to the side.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

Common cents: US Mint to press its final penny

Last one-cent coin to be pressed in Philadelphia after Trump ordered them to be canceled, citing rising costs

The US Mint in Philadelphia is set to strike its last circulating penny on Wednesday as Donald Trump has canceled the one-cent coin.

The US president has ordered its demise as costs climb to nearly four cents per penny and the one-cent valuation becomes somewhat obsolete.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:01 pm

Kim Kardashian’s Skims valued at $5bn after raising new funding

Skims plans to use new capital to broaden its intimates lines, and expand further into apparel and activewear

Skims, founded by reality TV star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian along with CEO Jens Grede, said on Wednesday it had raised $225m in new capital, valuing the shapewear label at $5bn.

Kardashian’s ventures, including her cosmetics brand SKKN, have attracted young shoppers and benefited from her vast social media following. Similarly, other celebrity-backed brands have also drawn venture capital investment, as firms bet on the marketing power and built-in audiences of high-profile founders to drive consumer demand.

Published: November 12, 2025, 4:54 pm

The Devil Wears Prada 2: first teaser trailer for hotly anticipated sequel

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway reunite in the first look at the follow-up to hit comedy set to be released in May 2026

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway have reunited in the first teaser trailer for the much-anticipated follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada.

The Oscar-winning actors are reprising their antagonistic roles for The Devil Wears Prada 2 which is set for release next summer.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:50 pm

Florida air force base orders residents to take down Christmas decor

Families say the housing contractor’s strict timing rules dampen holiday spirit on the base

Military families living on an air force base in Florida have been ordered to dismantle their Christmas decorations under a strictly enforced regulation that tells them when and where they are allowed to celebrate.

Residents of Tyndall air force base received a tersely-worded memo from their landlords, private housing contractor Balfour Beatty Communities, informing them that a de facto patrol of the installation had uncovered infractions of their lease agreements in the form of early holiday inflatables, lights and other festive adornments.

Published: November 12, 2025, 1:48 pm

US strikes against boats in Caribbean ‘disregard international law’, French minister says

G7 foreign ministers questioned Marco Rubio about the attacks on what the Trump administration claims are drug smugglers

• Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

• Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is facing questions from his fellow G7 foreign ministers about the legality of the US strikes in the Caribbean on ships it says it suspects of carrying drugs.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, criticised the military operations, saying they could contribute to instability in the region, but his suggestion that the attacks were unlawful was also a rare criticism of the Trump administration.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:53 pm

French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal pardoned and to be released from prison

Eighty-one year-old, who has prostate cancer, can now be transferred from Algeria to Germany for medical treatment

The French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has been pardoned and is to be released from prison, the Algerian presidential office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The move, which will mean Sansal can be transferred to Germany for medical treatment, comes after the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged Algeria to free Sansal.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:23 pm

Zelenskyy fires ministers accused of involvement in bribery scheme as public outrage grows

Ukraine president also calls for sanctions against friend and former business partner, saying ‘there must be maximum integrity’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has moved to contain growing public outrage in Ukraine over a corruption scandal in the energy sector by firing two ministers who are accused of involvement in a large-scale bribery scheme.

Ukraine’s president said the justice minister Herman Halushchenko and energy minister Svitlana Grynchuk could no longer remain in their jobs. He also called for personal sanctions against his friend and former business partner Timur Mindich, the scheme’s alleged organiser.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:59 pm

Italian ‘mystic’ faces fraud trial over claim Virgin Mary statue wept blood

Gisella Cardia allegedly made €365,000 in donations from pilgrims to shrine in lakeside town near Rome

A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:58 pm

A Merry Little Ex-Mas review – Netflix’s season of cheapo festive fare begins with a shrug

Alicia Silverstone is latest 90s star to lead a film for the streamer but her charm can’t save another bland addition to their pile of festive fare

• ‘Hypnotically terrible’: readers on 15 so-bad-they’re-brilliant Christmas movies

There’s not quite enough charm to go around in Netflix’s festive season opener A Merry Little Ex-Mas, a film that might have benefited from a release date a little closer to the big day. Maybe by then, we might have been more enveloped in the all-consuming excitement of Christmas to overlook its failings, but here in the post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving netherworld, there is no amount of fake snow or eggnog that can convince us to get on board.

It’s yet another one of the streamer’s mechanically assembled seasonal box-tickers – lead best known from the 90s/2000s, a budget of what looks like $13, some unfunny pratfalls, some city v small town tension, a visibly Canadian shoot, regressive gender roles – and will probably be lapped up by the same crowd who come back every year knowing exactly what to expect. It’s thankfully not as hideous as these can be (2023’s Heather Graham/Brandy sled-wreck Best. Christmas. Ever! remains as bad as things on both Netflix and in life itself can get) but it’s also not quite as passably fine as it should be (last year’s Christina Milian and Lindsay Lohan vehicles just about doing the job on that front).

Published: November 12, 2025, 8:01 am

Sex, lies and pistachio shells: the disturbing dream worlds of artist Joseph Yaeger

The American takes strange film stills and turns them into monumental watercolours, full of Catholic guilt and paranoia – and it’s made him the most talked-about painter of the moment

‘All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions,” says Joseph Yaeger. “It’s what Polygrapher is about.” This is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, his first since joining the prestigious London gallery Modern Art in 2024, for whom it marks the opening of new premises in St James’s.

Honesty is important to Yaeger, whose upbringing in the US in Helena, a town that he says ambitiously calls itself the capital of Montana, was as decent as it was unremarkable. “We’d sit down for dinner together every night, we’d go to church every Sunday, we’re polite almost to a fault, and traditional in almost all senses of the word.”

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:00 am

Holy see: three of Pope Leo’s favourite films are divine. The fourth is hard to forgive

Praise be for The Sound of Music, Ordinary People and It’s a Wonderful Life! But the sinfully twee and queasy Life is Beautiful must be renounced

Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful.

These are a few of his fav-our-ite films … Pope Leo’s that is. This white-bread movie playlist has been released in advance of His Holiness’s “meeting with the world of cinema” on Saturday, part of a longstanding Vatican policy of engaging with creatives.

The pope has, according to a Vatican statement “expressed his desire to deepen the dialogue with the world of cinema, and in particular with actors and directors, exploring the possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church and the promotion of human values.” The pope will chat with movie notables including Cate Blanchett, Spike Lee, George Miller, Gus Van Sant and Giuseppe Tornatore.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 am

Adele to make acting debut in star-studded Tom Ford movie

The singer will star alongside Adolescence breakout Owen Cooper, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Colin Firth, Thandiwe Newton and Nicholas Hoult in an Anne Rice adaptation

Adele is set to make her acting debut in the new film from Tom Ford.

According to Deadline, the fashion designer and film-maker’s third feature will be an adaptation of Anne Rice’s 1982 novel Cry to Heaven, a drama set in 18th century Italy.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:51 pm

Being Eddie review – reverential Netflix doc paints limited portrait of Eddie Murphy

There’s great access in this look at the comedian and actor’s life, from time with the subject himself to his many peers, but there’s depth missing

Being Eddie, a new Netflix documentary on Eddie Murphy, isn’t his best movie. It isn’t his worst. It’s something to justify signing the 64-year-old to a $70m production deal in hopes that he might finally be moved to return to his standup comedy roots and deliver the long-anticipated follow-up to his seminal 1987 special Raw. With access to the subject and his archival material bought and paid for, Being Eddie is free to focus on other aspects of Murphy’s life, opening with indulgent shots of his gothic mansion and its retractable roof. While the camera gawks at the spoils of Murphy’s 40-plus year career, he remains at pains to tell viewers that his day-to-day routine isn’t much different from theirs: he goes to work, hangs out with his family and falls asleep to MTV’s Ridiculousness. He thinks it’s the funniest show on TV, in fact, and would much rather binge that blooper series (which he likens to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s avant-garde work) than reruns of his greatest hits.

That would be a bold confession to share even if it wasn’t coming from arguably the funniest person who has ever lived, and Being Eddie wastes no time in making Murphy’s claim to that title ironclad. For confirmation, director Angus Wall starts out by consulting with other recipients of major Netflix deals: Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld. It’s just hard to digest all this reverence for Murphy from comedians who have grown increasingly out touch and comfortable with punching down at marginalized groups.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:03 am

Trapped review – rough and ready abuse story that piles bleakness upon bleakness

This occasionally nuanced tale of a woman’s tough existence has some raw power, but is stymied by crude production and ropey performances

Raye, played by Gina Jones is, as the title of the film suggests, trapped. She is trapped in a bleak job, in a bleak relationship and in a bleak house. The bleakest element of this trifecta of bleakness is the relationship: she is involved with the utterly unlovely Frank (Shane McCormick) who, as one character observes, is the sort of guy who throws his entire life away then lashes out in every direction, blaming everyone but himself for how things have turned out. It’s hard to fathom why she stays with someone so awful – except, well, that’s the way the world works sometimes. Their dynamic is an abusive one, and in modern therapeutic parlance, they share the trauma bond of unstable, abusive childhoods. It’s not that Raye doesn’t know Frank’s no good; it’s that she doesn’t believe she deserves better, or that better exists.

While Trapped’s poster art promises some sort of Captivity-style torture porn slasher horror, it may be interesting to know that the film was originally called Beneath the Silence, a title that gestures towards more serious dramatic aspirations. In fact, Trapped’s understanding of abuse is considerably more sophisticated than the rest of what it offers. It is a low-budget affair that, at times, has a rough-and-ready raw power that transcends its limited production values, but too often the standard of performance and crudeness of the craft makes it hard to take seriously. The script is littered with exposition – for example, a half-brother reminds his sibling that they have “different mums”, a fact that would perhaps be very well known to the characters; it’s clearly there for the benefit of the audience.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:00 am

Loren Ipsum by Andrew Gallix review – chronically funny satire of the literary scene

Full of word games, in-jokes and grisly murders, this debut pours gleeful scorn on the pretensions of contemporary literary life

Freud would have had a lot to say about a novel in which the central premise is writers being murdered. A manifestation of a repressed desire to eliminate rival literary talent? A clear case of the death drive? Either way, there’s some twisted business going on in Andrew Gallix’s chronically funny debut novel, Loren Ipsum.

The morbid if intriguing premise quickly becomes secondary to an insouciant satire on the vanity fair of present-day literary culture. Not since Paul Ewen’s How to Be a Public Author has so much gleeful scorn for pretentious authors, critics and scenesters been poured on to the page. Taking its title from the placeholder text used while preparing a book for print, the novel features an eponymous protagonist, a journalist resident in Paris, who is researching a monograph on the reclusive English author Adam Wandle. Loren Ipsum somehow manages to be both the book’s moral centre and a shapeshifting cipher for everything that’s wrong with contemporary literary life. With “a heart of frosted glass”, she is “all blurred features and radio static”. Her own first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey Matter, was published by Galley Beggar in 2019. Her favourite bookshop is Shakespeare and Company (“she had all their totes”), and her best party frock is “part Mondrian, part Battenberg”. The knowing list of Loren’s favourite things is peak Bougie London Literary Woman and wickedly spot-on. It’s that kind of book. By the end, you can’t see the modernism for all the posts fencing it in.

Published: November 12, 2025, 9:00 am

We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins review – a legend with a temper

The Oscar-winning actor’s autobiography combines vulnerability with bloody-mindedness and belligerence

It’s the greatest entrance in movie history – and he doesn’t move a muscle.

FBI rookie Clarice Starling must walk along the row of cells until she reaches Dr Lecter’s reinforced glass tank, where the man himself is simply standing, his face a living skull of satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit – immobile, that is, until such time as he launches himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A billion true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are very boring, with nothing like Anthony Hopkins’s screen presence.

Published: November 12, 2025, 7:00 am

What does my love for impossibly difficult video games say about me?

From Demon Souls to Baby Steps, challenging games keep a certain type of player coming back for more. I wonder why we are such suckers for punishment

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Most people who really love video games have the capacity to be obsessive. Losing weeks of your life to Civilization, World of Warcraft or Football Manager is something so many of us have experienced. Sometimes, it’s the numbers-go-up dopamine hit that hooks people: playing something such as Diablo or Destiny and gradually improving your character while picking up shiny loot at perfectly timed intervals can send some people into an obsessional trance. Notoriously compulsive games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, meanwhile, suck up hours with peaceful, comforting repetition of rewarding tasks.

What triggers obsession in me, though, is a challenge. If a game tells me I can’t do something, I become determined to do it, sometimes to my own detriment. Grinding repetition bores me, but challenges hijack my brain.

Published: November 12, 2025, 3:00 pm

I thought there was something wrong with my body – until I shared a shower with 50 strangers

Naked in a forest, among people of every age, race, gender and physique, I finally shook off the self-doubt that had haunted me since my teens

When I was 15, I grew nine inches in nine months. My bones ached at night. I grew out of my clothes at a rapid clip, exposing skinny ankles beneath the bottom of my blue jeans. I went from being average height to towering over everyone in my class.

I had been uncomfortable in my own skin even before that. I grew up in the US in the late 70s, and my body type was not in fashion. I was curvy in places that were not celebrated, with thighs and a butt that announced themselves in ways I found uncomfortable. I was a teen when I first started dieting, and women’s critiques of their bodies, and the bodies of others, quickly became a constant refrain of my youth.

Published: November 12, 2025, 6:55 am

Jelly’s back! Here are three worth making – and three that should wobble off to the bin

The traditional treat is all over Instagram and TikTok. But does it always taste as impressive as it looks? And why is it so hard to get it to set rather than slump? Time for a deep dive …

Jelly has a dowdy reputation, but it may well be the perfect food for the Instagram age: when it works, it’s incredibly photogenic, so who cares what it tastes like?

There can be no other explanation for recent claims that savoury jellies – the most lurid and off-putting of dishes, reminiscent of the worst culinary efforts of the 1950s – are suddenly fashionable. This resurgence comes, according to the New York Times, “at a time when chefs are feeling pressure to produce viral visuals and molecular gastronomy is old hat”.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: exosomes are all over TikTok, but are they really the next big thing in anti-ageing skincare?

They’ve been shown to influence regeneration and healing, but you may want to read this before splashing out

I attended a big skincare industry event in New York last autumn, at which people seemed to be discussing exosomes as though all other anti-ageing skincare products and methodology would soon be rendered redundant. I’ve read countless roundups of new exosome products since then (£430 for a serum!), and felt the inescapable buzz of a perceived major breakthrough in skincare, and so you know what I’m about to do, again. I’m going to suggest everyone calms the hell down and finds something more worthwhile to spend their money on.

Exosomes, in very basic terms, are tiny, naturally occurring parcels of material used as a communication device between skin cells. They can positively influence skin cell behaviour, such as regeneration and healing. Studies into whether extracted exosomes work in treatments for skin inflammation, hair growth and scarring are so far mostly small, pre-clinical and it must be said, very promising, albeit far from conclusive. We don’t yet know how best to extract exosomes, how stable they are, how they should be used to best effect, whether they will work topically, or what impact they may have on things like skin cancers.

Published: November 12, 2025, 10:00 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: party season is coming but all that glitters is not gold

Every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ

I am all in favour of getting the festive season started as early as possible. I get an actual physical thrill out of booking my Christmas food delivery slot in September, and the morning after Halloween I fire the starting gun on mince pie season. I know it makes me sound deranged and/or six years old, but I just absolutely love everything about Christmas. I’m here for all of it and I want it now.

But fashion? That’s my one holdout. At this time of year every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ.

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

My petty gripe: autoplay trailers – give me more than 10 seconds before trying to make me watch The Diplomat

Even at the end of Schindler’s List, after a message honouring the memory of 6 million Jews murdered, I have four seconds before Binge is telling me to watch NCIS

• Read more petty gripes

Much like Keri Russell and probably all my friends’ dads, Netflix really wants me to watch The Diplomat right now. Like, really wants me to. The problem is, I don’t want to watch The Diplomat. This doesn’t seem to matter to Netflix.

Netflix wants me to watch The Diplomat so badly, I can’t even have 10 seconds for a little cry after finishing Adolescence without being forced to dive for the remote to stop Netflix autoplaying the trailer for The Diplomat. I timed it; Netflix has decided 10 seconds is enough time for you to wallow in your feelings, reflect on society, and credit the hundreds of people who spent years making that show, before you need to be directed to more content, more content, MORE CONTENT.

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Published: November 12, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did’: the intersex campaigners fighting to limit surgery on children

What should be done about the small proportion of babies born with genitals that are neither typically male nor typically female? Many of those affected believe parents and doctors are often too quick to schedule operations

Small Luk was initially “so happy” to be offered genital reconstruction surgery, aged eight. Doctors had told her she was a boy, but that she had an illness, which was why she couldn’t urinate standing up. “They told me this is a problem,” the 60-year-old from Hong Kong says. “And that in the future, you cannot marry, you cannot have a baby, so you need to have surgeries.”

Having been bullied at school for her ambiguous gender presentation, she found the idea that she could be “modified back to normal” a compelling one. But it wasn’t as simple as the doctors made out: Luk had an undeveloped uterus and vagina in her body as well as underdeveloped male genitals.

Published: November 12, 2025, 5:00 am

Share your pub quiz cheating confessions

We would like to hear your guilty secrets and suspicions around cheating in pub quizzes

A pub owner and landlord has outed a team of pub quiz cheats in a social media post but without naming them, which has since led to massive online speculation.

With this in mind, we would like to hear your guilty secrets and suspicions around cheating in pub quizzes. Have you ever cheated? Or have you suspected another team of doing so? You can share your confessions, anonymously if you wish, below.

Published: November 12, 2025, 11:47 am

Rubble of Syria’s civil war and a rickshaw driver: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Published: November 12, 2025, 2:07 pm