Trump wins his peace prize from Fifa – any chance of a VAR review?

At a gaudy and gauche World Cup draw, Gianni Infantino went all out to flatter the world’s most precious ego

• Full report: Trump awarded inaugural Fifa peace prize at World Cup draw in Washington

It had about as much drama and suspense as reading a dictionary or watching election results come in from North Korea.

To the surprise of no one, Donald Trump won the inaugural Fifa peace prize on Friday at a cheesy, gaudy and gauche World Cup draw expertly designed to flatter the world’s most precious ego.

Published: December 5, 2025, 8:35 pm

19 unique small business gifts that beat predictable US big brands

From artisanal chocolate truffles from Buffalo to affordable candles poured in LA, here are the unique gifts small businesses are offering

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

Sure, you could dole out another round of Amazon gift cards this year.

Or you could surprise your loved ones with something truly unique and made with care: think artisanal chocolate truffles from Buffalo; art from a renowned Detroit printmaker; affordable candles poured in Los Angeles.

Our favorite gifts for moms

Our favorite gifts for teens and tweens

The best gifts for the person who has everything

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:15 pm

The end of big-screen cinema? What Netflix hopes to achieve by buying Warner Bros | Andrew Pulver

IP success stories such as Barbie and the DC Universe? That elusive best picture Oscar? Or perhaps the main goal is a good old-fashioned blockbuster

Corporate Hollywood has undergone huge upheavals in recent years – as consequential, perhaps, as the 1970s and 80s, when the studio marques that had made their names in the movies’ golden age were being bought up by international conglomerates. The acquisition of Warner Bros – legendary for crime pictures in the 40s and 50s, and Batman movies in the 90s and 00s – by a streaming service feels particularly significant, coming as it does on the back of the merger of Paramount with Skydance Media earlier this year and, in 2019, Disney’s purchase of fellow studio 21st Century Fox.

What is most evident in all these deals is how streaming services have changed the game. Disney’s buying spree – which had previously included Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar – in retrospect looks essentially like preparatory positioning to increase the marketability of their Disney+ player. It is significant that the new Paramount regime’s first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:59 pm

Just not that into ewes: ‘gay sheep’ escape slaughter and take over a New York catwalk

Designer Michael Schmidt’s 36-piece collection was made from the wool of rams who have shown same-sex attraction

When a ram tips its head back, curls its upper lip, and takes a deep breath – what is known in the world of animal husbandry as a “flehmen response” – it is often a sign of arousal. Sheep have a small sensory organ located above the roof of the mouth, and the flehmen response helps to flood it with any sex pheromones wafting about.

Usually, rams flehmen when they encounter ewes during the mating period, according to Michael Stücke, a farmer with 30 years of experience raising sheep in Westphalia, Germany. But on Stücke’s farm, the rams flehmen “all the time”.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:00 pm

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair – what does the new Tarantino cut offer?

The director’s two-part revenge saga has now been released as one mammoth movie with several tweaks and additions

Quentin Tarantino and his epic revenge saga Kill Bill had, as the vengeful lead character in the movie keeps saying, unfinished business. Actually, Tarantino mostly finished the business of re-integrating two volumes of Kill Bill into a single feature as early as 2006, just a couple of years after the release of Kill Bill: Vol 2. But while that version played at Cannes and had a few more recent runs at Tarantino-owned theaters in Los Angeles, it never reached home video (though some bootlegs attempted to recreate it) or a wide theatrical release. That’s all changed with this weekend’s debut of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, a four-and-a-half-hour version of the movie hitting over 1,000 screens across North America.

Tarantino made long movies before and after Kill Bill; features that run over two and a half hours make up the vast majority of his filmography. But in the early 2000s, Kill Bill represented a major pivot for the film-maker, away from his then-signature crime dramas with healthy helpings of black comedy. Tarantino and his Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman cooked up the character of the Bride – “Q & U” are named as providers of the source material in the credits – as a pregnant ex-assassin who becomes the victim of a vicious wedding-eve attack from her ex-boss/lover (that would be Bill) and their lethal colleagues (those would be the other four on her “death list five”, a phrase whose rhythm recalls Fox Force Five, the fictional TV pilot Thurman’s character in Pulp Fiction once starred in). The Bride unexpectedly survives the shooting, goes into a coma, and wakes up years later desperate for revenge, forming the backbone of a movie that pays extensive tribute to the kung fu, exploitation and revenge movies of Tarantino’s youth – and his dreams, if the vividly colorful look of the film is any indication.

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:43 pm

Rosa Parks’ vacant former home is an emblem of racist housing policies | Bernadette Atuahene

Seventy years after the Montgomery bus boycott, policies hiding in plain sight continue to ravage the Black community

Friday is the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, which began because Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person, as required by law. While her brave act brought national attention to the civil rights movement and triggered student sit-ins to end segregation across the south, it also subjected her and her husband, Raymond, to constant death threats. Consequently, like many other Black families fleeing Jim Crow south’s racial violence, in August 1957, Rosa and Raymond moved up north to Detroit.

When the Parks arrived in Detroit, they and other Black people did not have to sit at the back of the bus. Nonetheless, the city was permeated by a quieter but no less pernicious type of racism: racist policies, which are any written or unwritten laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity. In my book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America, I demonstrate how racial covenants, redlining, urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending and racialized property tax administration have stymied the Black community.

Bernadette Atuahene is the Duggan professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, the executive director of the Institute for Law and Organizing, and the author of Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:00 am

US supreme court to decide on legality of Trump birthright citizenship order

Justices to take up case amid legal fight over order to heavily restrict right to birthright citizenship in US

• US politics – live updates

The US supreme court agreed on Friday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship, the long-held constitutional principle that individuals born on US soil are automatically United States citizens.

The justices will hear the president’s request to uphold his executive order on birthright citizenship, issued just hours after Trump took office for his second term and immediately blocked from taking effect.

Published: December 5, 2025, 9:32 pm

CDC advisory panel votes to limit hepatitis B vaccines for newborns

Move from CDC advisers mirrors Trump team’s regressive approach to longstanding vaccine guidance

• Who’s allowed to get the hepatitis B vaccine in the US now?

Vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis B vaccines in a major move signaling the Trump administration’s regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.

The panel of advisers, hand-picked by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, decided to remove the well-established and far-reaching recommendation that all newborns in the US receive a hepatitis B vaccine.

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:06 pm

US and Ukrainian officials agree any ‘real progress’ in peace talks depends on Russia – US politics live

US envoys Witkoff and Kushner to continue talks with the Ukrainian delegation in Florida on Saturday

Lauren Gambino and Melody Schreiber

After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory panel is expected to vote today whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be immunized against hepatitis B.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:56 pm

Frank Gehry, legendary Canadian-American architect, dies aged 96

The architect, whose work included the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, died after a brief illness

• From Bilbao to Las Vegas: Frank Gehry’s incredible architecture – in pictures

Frank Gehry, one of the most influential and distinctive talents in American architecture, died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles following a brief respiratory illness, his chief of staff confirmed. He was 96.

Gehry, the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the first to embrace the potential of computer design, and pioneered a distinctively exuberant style of bravura power, whimsical and arresting collisions of form. His most famous work remains the Guggenheim Museumin Bilbao, a fantastical, titanium-clad composition on the Nervión River which received international acclaim upon its opening in 1997, heralding a new era of emotive architecture.

Published: December 5, 2025, 8:38 pm

World Cup 2026 draw: USA to face Australia and Paraguay in group stage

• World Cup draw 2026: live reaction

• Turkey, Romania Slovakia or Kosovo is other opponent

• Co-hosts begin their campaign on 12 June in LA

A full 1,098 days since exiting the 2022 men’s World Cup with a loss to the Netherlands in the heat of Qatar, and 189 days until they open the 2026 World Cup in the midsummer heat of Los Angeles, the US men’s national team found out who they’ll face next in the world’s most popular sporting event on a cold, snowy day in Washington DC. Games against Australia, Paraguay, and one of Turkey, Romania, Slovakia and Kosovo will await the US in the 2026 World Cup, which they will co-host with Mexico and Canada, after the draw for the competition at the Kennedy Center on Friday.

The United States’ opening game in the competition is set for 12 June in Los Angeles, with subsequent group games in Seattle on 19 June and in Los Angeles again on 25 June. Fifa will announce the order of opponents and the kickoff times for those games on Saturday at 5pm ET.

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:07 pm

‘Cultivate resistance’: policy paper lays bare Trump support for Europe’s far right

Text signed by president seems to echo ‘great replacement’ theory, saying Europe faces ‘civilisational erasure’

Donald Trump’s administration has said Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.

Billed as “a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth”, the US National Security Strategy makes explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s nationalist far-right parties.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:55 pm

Arizona congresswoman says she was ‘pepper sprayed’ at protest against ICE

Adelita Grijalva, a Democratic representative, said she was ‘sprayed in the face’ at demonstration outside a restaurant

Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona congressperson, said she was “sprayed in the face” during a protest against a federal immigration raid at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson on Friday.

In a video filmed after the incident, Grijalva said she joined a group of protesters assembled outside of Taco Giro, a “small mom-and-pop” restaurant in Tucson Grijalva said she visits weekly. By the time she arrived, she said they had “stopped” a squadron of dozens of mostly masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:40 pm

US federal judge orders release of Epstein grand jury materials

Ruling compels unsealing of documents from 2006-2007 federal investigation into Epstein in Florida

A federal judge in Florida ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking cases on Friday, citing the recently enacted federal law that overrides traditional secrecy protections.

US district judge Rodney Smith ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month by Donald Trump, overrode federal rules prohibiting the disclosure of grand jury materials.

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:54 pm

‘This merger must be blocked’: Netflix-Warner Bros deal faces fierce backlash

US politicians and Hollywood guilds have voiced concerns against the proposed $83bn purchase of the studio

The news that Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros in an $83bn deal has led to backlash among figures in and out of the entertainment industry.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, called it “an anti-monopoly nightmare” in a statement released soon after the announcement.

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:31 pm

DoJ moves to eliminate sexual abuse protections for LGBTQ+ people in prisons

Memo says the policy shift, which advocates call ‘reckless’, was designed to align with one of Trump’s anti-trans orders

The US Department of Justice has moved to eliminate rules protecting LGBTQ+ people from sexual abuse in prisons, a shift advocates say is “reckless and dangerous” and will lead to increased assaults behind bars.

A justice department memo issued on Tuesday said “effective immediately”, prisons and jails will no longer be held responsible for violations of standards meant to shield LGBTQ+ people from harassment, abuse and rape. It also directed inspectors to stop auditing facilities for compliance with those protections. The justice department is in the process of seeking formal updates to the rules, the memo said.

Published: December 5, 2025, 9:55 pm

Pam Bondi tells law enforcement agencies to investigate antifa groups for ‘tax crimes’

Move is part of Trump’s broader crackdown on leftwing groups, including designation of antifa as ‘domestic terrorism’ group

• US politics live – latest updates

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, instructed law enforcement officials on Thursday to investigate antifa and other supposed domestic terror groups, and specifically directed them to search for “tax crimes” the groups may have committed, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

The document signals how the Trump administration and Bondi are ramping up efforts to crack down on leftwing groups. Antifa, short for antifascist, is not a clearly defined organization, but rather a loose network of activists. Trump signed an executive order in September declaring it a domestic terrorism organization – something legal experts say he does not have the authority to do.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:02 pm

Ilhan Omar says Trump made racist anti-Somali tirade because he ‘knows he is failing’

The congresswoman from Minnesota responded to Trump’s dismissal of Somali Americans as ‘garbage’

Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman, has said Donald Trump is lashing out at her and her community with bigotry because he “knows he is failing”.

The US president dismissed Somali Americans earlier this week as “garbage” in a racist rant.

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:35 pm

Who’s allowed to get the hepatitis B vaccine in the US now?

Advisers for the CDC voted to limit the vaccines – here’s what happened and why the vote is so significant

Vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis B vaccines to most babies in a major move signaling the Trump administration’s regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.

What is the situation now and what does this mean?

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:53 pm

‘Don’t normalize this’: after deadly gunfire at children’s party, advocates urge focus on violence tearing US apart

Community fears shooting will be written off as gang violence and says examination of complex factors such as online feuds is required

Tashante McCoy was celebrating her grandson’s fifth birthday in Stockton, California, on Saturday, when she learned that masked men had opened fire at another child’s birthday party on the other side of town.

Armed men had walked into the banquet hall where at least 100 people had gathered to celebrate a toddler’s birthday, a friend of McCoy’s who was at the event would later tell her. At least one man opened fire just as partygoers were preparing to cut the cake.

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:00 pm

US leader of global neo-Nazi terrorist group signals retribution for arrests

Rinaldo Nazzaro says detention of suspected Base members in Spain justifies ‘resistance … by any means necessary’

After Spanish police and Europol’s counter-terrorism section arrested three suspected members of the Base – a globally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group – in the eastern province of Castellón, its American leader living in Russia was defiant and signaled further actions.

In a text message to the Guardian, Rinaldo Nazzaro called the arrests another “example of political persecution” by world governments that are “further justifying our resistance to its hegemonic rule by any means necessary”.

Published: December 5, 2025, 12:00 pm

Fackham Hall review – Downton Abbey spoof is fast, funny and throwaway

Period drama parody has some decent and often smart gags and benefits from a game cast including Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie

Perhaps it’s the feeling of end times in the air: after years of inactivity, spoofs are making a comeback. This summer saw the resurgence of the lighthearted genre, which at its best sends up the pretensions of overly serious genre with a barrage of pitched cliches, sight gags and stupid-clever puns. The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in a spoof of a buddy-cop spoof, opened to moderate box office success; the hapless rock band dialed it back up to 11 in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Reboots of the horror spoof gold-standard Scary Movie and the Mel Brooks Star Wars rip Spaceballs were greenlit, and there were rumors of a return for international man of mystery Austin Powers. Unserious times, it seems, beget appetite for knowingly unserious, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.

The latest of these goofy parodies, which premieres on the beyond-parody day that Fifa awarded Donald Trump an inaugural peace prize and Netflix announced its plan to buy Warner Bros, is Fackham Hall, a Downton Abbey spoof that pokes at the very pokeable pretensions of gilded British period dramas. (Yes, Fackham rhymes with a crass kiss-off to the aristocracy.) Co-written by British Irish comedian and TV presenter Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O’Hanlon, Fackham Hall has plenty of material to work with – the historical soap’s grand finale just premiered in September, 15 years after Julian Fellowes’s series started going upstairs-downstairs with ludicrous portent – and wastes none of it. From ludicrous start (servants rolling joints for the household and responding to calls from the “masturbatorium”) to ludicrous finish (someone manages to marry a second cousin rather than a first!), this enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich satire.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:28 pm

How many spiders and pseudoscorpions does it take to make one of the world’s greatest taxonomists?

Former Perth curator Mark Harvey is one of the few people on Earth to have described 1,000 new species, many of them arachnids. Colleagues say his legacy is ‘unquantifiable’

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For most people around the world, 16 August 1977 was memorable because it was the day Elvis Presley died.

“We turned the radio on when we got back in the car and that was the headline. Elvis was dead,” remembers Dr Mark Harvey.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:00 pm

Nancy Reagan’s rehearsal dinners and Bush Sr’s overfed dog: chief usher’s White House memories

Gary Walters managed the president’s official residence for 37 years – now he’s sharing his most vivid recollections

Gary Walters has a “special feeling” about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors’ office there. But asked to contemplate the wing’s destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.

“All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another – some larger than others,” Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. “One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:00 am

Russell Crowe’s 20 best roles – sorted!

With Nuremberg out in Australian cinemas, we cast an eye over Rusty’s eclectic, varied and downright impressive oeuvre. Are you not entertained?

Russell Crowe’s hair-raising performance as Hermann Göring in Nuremberg is the latest example of the veteran actor’s high-risk, high-reward approach. He has a knack for taking on difficult, baggage-laden roles that could have gone spectacularly badly – only to deliver the goods and make you want to stand up and yell “bravo!” You’ll struggle to find many other actors working today with an oeuvre as eclectic, varied and downright impressive as the Wellington-born star’s. Here are his 20 greatest performances.

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:00 pm

I spent hours listening to Sabrina Carpenter this year. So why do I have a Spotify ‘listening age’ of 86?

Many users of the app were shocked, this week, by this addition to the Spotify Wrapped roundup – especially twentysomethings who were judged to be 100

“Age is just a number. So don’t take this personally.” Those words were the first inkling I had that I was about to receive some very bad news.

I woke up on Wednesday with a mild hangover after celebrating my 44th birthday. Unfortunately for me, this was the day Spotify released “Spotify Wrapped”, its analysis of (in my case) the 4,863 minutes I had spent listening to music on its platform over the past year. And this year, for the first time, they are calculating the “listening age” of all their users.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:07 pm

Scarlett Johansson joining the Batverse is good news for the franchise – but who will she play?

The actor who marries box office ratings with Wes Anderson cool should revive the Batman series, but trying to guess who she might play is a thankless task

For years the follow-up to Matt Reeves’ slick but glacially paced 2022 comic-book epic The Batman has existed in a dimly lit rumour void. We know it will eventually get here (supposedly in October 2027), but nobody knows quite what it will look like. Entire geological epochs may come and go before the film-maker finally decides which doyen of Batman’s infamous rogues’ gallery he wants to unleash next. The foundations of Gotham itself may shift before Reeves works out which brooding, rain-soaked grunge ditty will form the basis of the new soundtrack.

And then – out of nowhere – comes this week’s news that Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the cast of the sequel. We have no idea who she’s likely to play but it matters not: this feels consequential, a bat-signal flickering to life over a city long abandoned. Johansson is more than just an A-lister; she’s one of the few actors who still puts bums on seats and appears in Wes Anderson movies. She retains a veneer of golden-era Hollywood cool that feels exactly right.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:59 pm

The Trump administration sinks to a new low – opening fire on drowning men | Jonathan Freedland

These deadly US boat strikes are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality

The Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise – and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description.

On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats – vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US?
On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path.
Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:12 pm

Martin Rowson on Israel’s participation in Eurovision – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:01 pm

The Liz Truss Show will confront the big issues of the day. For example: who on earth would watch Liz Truss? | Marina Hyde

Everyone’s favourite former PM is back! Her mission? To save Britain from its current ‘doomloop’ with, you guessed it, a YouTube talkshow

Will you be seeing a pantomime this year? Birmingham’s got Gok Wan and Biggins in Robin Hood, Bradford has Sinitta in Snow White, while Bromley landed Su Pollard for Beauty and the Beast. And at the end of YouTube’s infinite pier, there’s The Liz Truss Show, starring She’s-Behind-You herself. Curtain up on that one is tonight at 6pm.

According to the producers, Liz’s show “confronts the issues that others tiptoe around”. Wow. The lives, loves, and clinical explanations? Let’s just say I’d watch that. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the format. Instead, like all seasonal entertainment, The Liz Truss Show is based on a fairytale. “The deep state and their allies in the media and politics tried to destroy me,” madam explains in a statement, “now I’m back.” Are the gilt markets the deep state now? Honestly, I can’t keep up. You’ll remember that the irony of Truss’s flameout at the hands of market forces was particularly acute given that she had spent an entire career explaining that free markets were the greatest judge of absolutely everything. Small ideological adjustment: free markets are now the greatest judge of everything except the ideas and personage of Liz Truss.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: December 5, 2025, 1:46 pm

The Great European Bake-Off: if the EU wants closer integration, how about using pop culture? | Paula Erizanu

The commission wants Moldova to join the union – so it should drop its dry bureaucratic culture and instead meet people where they are

• Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău

It was both enjoyable and strange to see the EU enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, present the news on Moldovan TV a couple of months ago. For one thing, she is Slovenian – and she is also a diplomat, not a news anchor. But there she was, announcing that Moldova had made more progress in the last three years than it had in the previous 30, and that negotiations for our country to join the European Union would open soon.

It was equally surprising to spot Kos in the Instagram stories of leading Moldovan influencer siblings Emilian and Nina Crețu at the end of August – she had invited them to her house in Brussels for a Moldovan pie-making workshop. Kos even brought together the two heads of Moldova’s biggest Orthodox churches for a meeting, in spite of their mutual animosity. This is not the way we are used to EU officials communicating.

Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău

Published: December 5, 2025, 5:00 am

World Cup 2026: a look at the United States’ group-stage opponents

A manageable World Cup draw hands the co-hosts matches with Australia, Paraguay and a European playoff winner – familiar opponents posing very different challenges

The United States were placed in a World Cup group with Australia, Paraguay, and the winner of a European play-off between Turkey, Romania, Kosovo, and Slovakia in Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw in Washington DC. Here’s what to know about the co-host’s opponents.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:25 pm

Trump awarded inaugural Fifa peace prize at World Cup draw in Washington

• Trump praised by Infantino at DC ceremony

• President’s peace claims disputed by critics

• Follow the live blog of the World Cup draw

Donald Trump has been named the first winner of the newly created Fifa peace prize, claiming “the world is a safer place now” as he received the award at the draw for the 2026 World Cup in Washington DC.

Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president and one of Trump’s closest sporting allies, presented the honour onstage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, saying Trump had been selected “in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world”.

Published: December 5, 2025, 5:53 pm

Norris’ date with F1 destiny arrives as he aims to keep Verstappen and Piastri at bay

He has a 12-point lead before Sunday’s Abu Dhabi GP but the British driver vows to ‘crack on’ if the title goes elsewhere

The atmosphere at a season-deciding finale in the Formula One world championship is like no other. The paddock positively hums with a febrile, pulsing excitement and sense of expectation that is impossible to ignore. Amid all of which the title favourite, Lando Norris, finds himself at the moment he has dedicated his life toward, destiny lying in his own hands.

After a gruelling 23-race trek around the world, the conclusion of all the work, sacrifice and effort will be decided in just an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon in Abu Dhabi.

Published: December 5, 2025, 8:00 pm

World Cup draw: group-by-group analysis for the 2026 tournament

How each team qualified, who will be favourites to progress to the knockout stage and which games to look out for

The opening game in the Azteca will be a repeat of the opener in 2010 when South Africa drew 1-1 with Mexico in Soccer City, Soweto. Mexico have won one knockout game at the World Cup, beating Bulgaria last time they hosted, in 1986. Their manager, Javier Aguirre, was a forward in that side and will be targeting their third quarter-final as hosts. South Africa, coached by the veteran Belgian Hugo Broos, qualified for their first World Cup since hosting, finishing above Nigeria and Benin, despite having a game against Lesotho they appeared to have won awarded against them for fielding a suspended player.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:09 pm

LeBron James’s 18-year double-digit scoring streak ends but Lakers clinch win over Raptors

• James scored 10 or more in 1,297 consecutive NBA games since 2007

• Game-winning assist sets up Rui Hachimura’s 3-pointer

• ‘You always make the right play,’ James says

LeBron James knew his record streak of double-digit scoring efforts was in jeopardy. And in the moment, he didn’t care.

The right play was to pass the ball – so he did. And with that, his streak ended.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:33 am

Three-year-old chess prodigy becomes youngest player to earn official rating

• Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha plays up to five hours a day

• Indian boy beats adults to secure record-breaking status

India’s Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has become the youngest player in chess history to earn an official Fide rating at the age of three years, seven months and 20 days.

The chess prodigy edged out the previous record of compatriot Anish Sarkar, who was three years, eight months and 19 days when he reached the milestone in November last year.

Published: December 5, 2025, 1:26 am

Jahmyr Gibbs’ three scores fire Detroit Lions past Cowboys to revive playoff bid

• Gibbs treble powers Lions back into playoff push

• Detroit sack Prescott five times in dominant win

• Cowboys’ playoff odds plunge after costly defeat

Jahmyr Gibbs and a defense that suddenly generated pressure and turnovers helped the Detroit Lions stay in contention for a playoff berth.

Gibbs ran for three touchdowns, including a 13-yarder with 2:19 left that sealed the Lions’ much-needed 44-30 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday night.

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:08 am

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Van de Ven may be key for Spurs, Wissa could make Newcastle debut and Dyche deserves warm Everton welcome

Arsenal’s recent memories of Aston Villa are of awkward opponents. Mikel Arteta’s side squandered a two-goal lead at the Emirates Stadium when the teams last met, in January, Arsenal dropping two points, their title charge dented. With such little margin for error, it was the kind of day that boosted Liverpool and crystallised the sense that the Gunners would come up short. Villa also defeated Arsenal in 2023-24, abruptly halting a six-game winning streak. Now Arsenal are in a different position, at the summit with a five-point lead – and six clear of Unai Emery’s team. Victory at Villa Park on Saturday, against a side that have lost only once in the league since August, would offer another significant indication that this could be the season Arsenal take the crown. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Arsenal, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Bournemouth v Chelsea, Saturday 3pm

Everton v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Manchester City v Sunderland, Saturday 3pm

Published: December 5, 2025, 12:01 am

Inter Miami’s journey to MLS Cup has been methodical, and Messi-centered

Ever since the club’s very beginning, David Beckham and Jorge Mas have had moments like this Saturday in mind

Back on 27 February 2020, days before Inter Miami’s first-ever fixture in MLS, I stood next to the club’s managing owner, Jorge Mas, and co-owner David Beckham as part of an MLS press junket in New York City. I was there for Sports Illustrated and my show Planet Fútbol TV, which I co-hosted with my friend, the late, great Grant Wahl. We were adamant that the Inter Miami story was riveting, not just because of Beckham’s influence in MLS, but also because his new club was about to introduce the unique culture of Miami and south Florida – the Latin American capital of the world – to the league.

The conversation in 2020 was my second meeting with Mas and my first with Beckham. I remember the sense of excitement from both men, knowing that this Inter Miami project – seven years in the making before their debut in the league – was about to come to fruition after a long, arduous journey. From legal battles with Internazionale over the trademark of the word “Inter” to political and structural problems as they tried to make a stadium, Miami Freedom Park, a reality. Now, the club was finally starting life in MLS.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:00 am

Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’

Exclusive: Yinka Bankole says he felt compelled to speak out after Reform leader’s attempts to ‘dismiss’ hurt of alleged targets

• I’ll never forget the look of hatred Nigel Farage had for me at school, simply for existing

A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.

Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:17 pm

People flee DR Congo fighting one day after peace deal signed in Washington

Hundreds driven into Rwanda as M23 militia battles Congolese army and Burundian soldiers for border town of Kamanyola

Fresh fighting in eastern DR Congo has forced hundreds to flee across the border into Rwanda, a day after a peace deal was signed in Washington DC.

Thursday’s agreement was meant to stabilise the resource-rich east but it has had little visible effect on the ground so far, in an area plagued by conflict for 30 years.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:17 pm

Trump administration moves to deny visas to factcheckers and content moderators

Action detailed in a state department memo directs officials to deny visas to any applicant engaging in ‘censorship’

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration has moved to formalize a crackdown on the issuance of visas for people who it deems to have engaged in censoring the free speech of US citizens.

The action, detailed in a state department memo sent to overseas missions this week, first reported by Reuters and then NPR, directs consular officials to deny visas to any applicant “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:41 pm

Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi part ways amid scandal over RFK Jr relationship

‘Mutual’ decision follows controversy over relationship with presidential candidate and claims of ethical breaches

Vanity Fair is ending its association with Olivia Nuzzi, who had briefly been the magazine’s west coast editor, as the publication distances itself from controversy tied in part to her relationship with the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year,” publisher Condé Nast said in a statement on Friday shared with the New York Times.

Published: December 5, 2025, 9:35 pm

Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘serious ethical concerns’

Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence

The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.

Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.

The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:42 pm

Weather tracker: Heavy snow blankets parts of US as winter storms hit

Snowfall moves south-east over Wyoming and Colorado and combines with dense fog in some areas

A cold spell continued to grip parts of the US this week. After a winter storm brought 20-30cm of snow across Wisconsin, and even up to 35cm in places last weekend, the focus of the winter weather hazards shifted elsewhere early this week.

A storm system moving south-east over Wyoming and Colorado brought a continuous period of snowfall until Thursday morning. Central Colorado and northern New Mexico bore the brunt of the snowfall with accumulations reaching 30cm in places. The heavy snowfall across the Denver region was its first of the winter and caused widespread disruption to flights into and out of Denver on Wednesday and Thursday. Almost 1,000 flights were delayed or cancelled as a result of the treacherous conditions.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:20 am

60,000 African penguins starved to death after sardine numbers collapsed – study

Climate crisis and overfishing contributed to loss of 95% of penguins in two breeding colonies in South Africa, research finds

More than 60,000 penguins in colonies off the coast of South Africa have starved to death as a result of disappearing sardines, a new paper has found.

More than 95% of the African penguins in two of the most important breeding colonies, on Dassen Island and Robben Island, died between 2004 and 2012. The breeding penguins probably starved to death during the moulting period, according to the paper, which said the climate crisis and overfishing were driving declines.

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:00 am

New York Times sues AI startup for ‘illegal’ copying of millions of articles

Perplexity AI also faces lawsuit from Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and New York Post for its use of copyrighted content

The New York Times sued an embattled artificial intelligence startup on Friday, accusing the firm of illegally copying millions of articles. The newspaper alleged Perplexity AI had distributed and displayed journalists’ work without permission en masse.

The Times said that Perplexity AI was also violating its trademarks under the Lanham Act, claiming the startup’s generative AI products create fabricated content, or “hallucinations”, and falsely attribute them to the newspaper by displaying them alongside its registered trademarks.

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:19 pm

Tenured US professor fired over pro-Palestinian protests contests dismissal

Sang Hea Kil is first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to the protests

A tenured professor at San José State University in California is fighting for her job after the university fired her last month over her pro-Palestinian activism – the first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Sang Hea Kil, a longtime member of the university’s justice studies department and a faculty adviser for its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, is the latest in a growing list of university professors and staff who have been suspended, investigated and in some cases dismissed or forced out in connection to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that swept US campuses in the first year of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:00 pm

US airstrike survivors clung to boat wreckage for an hour before second deadly attack, video shows

Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say

• Experts say Trump’s ‘drug boat’ war is legally shaky

Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according to a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.

The men were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible radio or other communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.

Published: December 5, 2025, 12:37 pm

From ‘terrorist’ to national treasure, renowned Māori activist finally tells his own story

Tāme Iti’s colourful memoir covers his decades-long fight for Indigenous rights in New Zealand and takes aim at ‘saboteurs’ in the government

There are so many ways to begin telling the story of Tāme Iti, arguably New Zealand’s most recognisable Māori rights activist, who was once branded a terrorist by the state and is now considered by many a national treasure.

You could begin with his formative school years at the foot of Te Urewera ranges, where he was made to write the lines “I will not speak Māori” as punishment for speaking his language – lines that have since become a prominent feature of his art and activism.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:00 pm

AI deepfakes of real doctors spreading health misinformation on social media

Hundreds of videos on TikTok and elsewhere impersonate experts to sell supplements with unproven effects

TikTok and other social media platforms are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation.

The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions of doctors and influencers directing viewers to Wellness Nest, a US-based supplements firm.

Published: December 5, 2025, 6:45 pm

Austria to go ahead with Eurovision despite financial impact of boycott

Host broadcaster says show will not suffer after four countries withdraw from 2026 contest over Israel and Gaza

Austria has said it will continue with plans to host next year’s Eurovision, in spite of its budget being hit by four countries boycotting the song contest over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza.

At a meeting in Geneva, the national broadcasters that make up the European Broadcasting Union gave the all clear for Israel to take part in next year’s event in Vienna, the contest’s 70th anniversary edition.

Published: December 5, 2025, 4:29 pm

The week around the world in 20 pictures

Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, floods in Colombo, the cold moon in Gaza and Trump at the World Cup draw: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:19 pm

This Is Lorelei: Holo Boy review – sweet-sad songs from a new pearl of the US alt scene

(Double Double Whammy)
One half of Water From Your Eyes re-records songs from the back catalogue of his other band, resulting in acoustic fare touched with regret and darkness

As one half of Brooklyn-based duo Water From Your Eyes, Nate Amos makes left-field pop that feels hypermodern: wry, memey lyricism; post-ironic genre-hopping; the kind of jilted chaos and tonal jumble that characterises a social media feed. Yet the band had actually been plugging away for seven years before their 2023 breakthrough. Amos’s solo project This Is Lorelei has been going even longer, only gaining proper traction with last year’s belated debut album Box for Buddy, Box for Star.

Now Amos is capitalising on this recent momentum with another release, this time a compilation of re-recorded songs dredged from his extensive Bandcamp back catalogue. Unlike his WFYE output, these tracks are mainly gentle folk-rock numbers that deal in honeyed melancholy. They tend to be brief and narratively vague, glancing at regret, disappointment and darkness (“you don’t want to know what my dreams are about,” he claims on But You Just Woke Me Up). His most obvious stylistic counterpart is indie-rocker Alex G, but while Amos can’t rival him for lyrical punch, he can match his knack for pleasingly diverting detail: see Name the Band’s chunky pop-punk bassline or the bright guitar twang on Dreams Away.

Published: December 5, 2025, 8:00 am

‘He played with language better than anybody’: Terry Gilliam and John Boorman on Tom Stoppard

Two film-makers who worked with the late playwright recall a man of extraordinary wit, endless invention and innate elegance

I was utterly knocked out by the way Tom Stoppard’s mind worked, his brilliance and by the fact he made Brazil out of a big lump of stone that I’d spent a year or two preparing. I gave that to him and out of that he carved a beautiful Michelangelo David.

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:22 am

Add to playlist: DJ Moopie’s charmingly moody experimental compilations and the week’s best new tracks

Connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt will love the music put out by A Colourful Storm, the Melbourne-based DJ’s indie label

From Melbourne
Recommended if you like the C86 compilation, AU/NZ jangle-pop, Mess Esque
Up next Going Back to Sleep out now

Melbourne-based DJ Moopie, AKA Matthew Xue, is renowned for engrossing, wide-ranging sets that can run the gamut from gelid ambient music to churning drum’n’bass and beyond. He also runs A Colourful Storm – a fantastic indie label that massively punches above its weight when it comes to putting out charmingly moody experimental pop music, from artists as disparate as London-based percussionist Valentina Magaletti, dubby Hobart duo Troth, and renowned underground polymath Simon Fisher Turner.

In 2017, the label released I Won’t Have to Think About You, a compilation of winsome, C86-ish indie pop. Earlier this year, it put out Going Back to Sleep, a quasi-sequel to that record which also functions as a neatly drawn guide to some of the best twee-pop groups currently working. Sydney band Daily Toll, whose 2025 debut A Profound Non-Event is one of the year’s underrated gems, contribute Time, a seven-minute melodica-and-guitar reverie. Chateau, the duo of Al Montfort (Terry, Total Control) and Alex Macfarlane (the Stevens, Twerps), push into percussive, psychedelic lounge pop on How Long on the Platform, while Who Cares?, one of Melbourne’s best new bands, channel equal parts Hope Sandoval and Eartheater on Wax and Wane.

Elsewhere, Going Back to Sleep features tracks from San Francisco indie stalwarts the Reds, Pinks and Purples; minimalist Sydney group the Lewers; and sun-dappled folk-pop from Dutch duo the Hobknobs. It’s an unassuming compilation that’s almost certain to become well-loved and frequently referenced among connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt. Shaad D’Souza

Published: December 5, 2025, 12:00 pm

Melody’s Echo Chamber: Unclouded review – an enchanted, balmy garden of dreampop

(Domino)
Blooming strings, mellifluous guitars and airy vocals make Melody Prochet’s fourth album a calming place to visit – even if there’s a lack of standout tracks

French musician Melody Prochet, AKA Melody’s Echo Chamber, never struggles to find a supporting cast. Her self-titled 2012 debut was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. On second album Bon Voyage (2018) she teamed up with Swedish psychedelic rock band Dungen, whose guitarist Reine Fiske popped up again on 2022’s Emotional Eternal and now features on Unclouded. Prochet’s fourth album is produced and partly co-written by composer Sven Wunder, and its dizzying array of contributors also includes Josefin Runsteen (opulent strings) and DJ Shadow collaborator Malcolm Catto (percussive fizz).

Still, somehow Prochet retains her own singular vision. Borrowing a title from a quote by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki – “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good” – Unclouded takes her airy vocals and baroque dreampop into brighter terrain. Some tracks have a 90s vibe, reminiscent of Saint Etienne or Lush. Others have a feel that can only be accurately described in horticultural terms: the blooming strings of the really lovely Broken Roses, or the sprinkles of xylophones that make Burning Man sound like, well, a Japanese garden.

Published: December 5, 2025, 10:30 am

Laura Cannell: Brightly Shone the Moon review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month

(Brawl)
The violinist sets out on her darkest exploration of yuletide yet, giving a murky and melancholy twist on familiar Christmas standards

Traditional music finds its popular, cosy home in the carol, despite the uncanniness that surrounds the nativity story, and the fraying thread back to the past that each winter brings. A veteran explorer of the season (in 2020’s sparkling Winter Rituals EP with cellist Kate Ellis, and 2022’s starker New Christmas Rituals, with amplified fiddle-playing from André Bosman), Laura Cannell sets out on her best and darkest journey yet here, exploring the time of year when, as she writes on the liner notes, “joy and heartache try to exist together”.

Named after the line in Good King Wenceslas before the cruel frosts arrive, Brightly Shone the Moon begins at the organ – a nod to Cannell’s childhood Christmases in the Methodist chapels and churches of Norfolk. Cannell’s fiddle then quivers around the 16th-century folk melody of O Christmas Tree/O Tannenbaum, as if the carol is swirling in a snowglobe, trying to settle in memory. All Ye Faithful follows, full of murky repetitions of the pre-chorus passages, where choirs usually sing “come let us adore him”. But here, love feels stuck, rooting around like an animal in the ground, a sonic reminder of how smothering and strenuous the winter can be for many.

Published: December 5, 2025, 9:00 am

The best music books of 2025

From an enraging indictment of Spotify to Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie’s account of Parkinson’s and a compelling biography of Tupac Shakur, here are five titles that strike a chord

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
Liz Pelly (Hodder & Stoughton)
Enraging, thoroughly depressing, but entirely necessary, Mood Music offers a timely, forensically researched demolition of Spotify. In Pelly’s account, the music streaming giant views music as a kind of nondescript sonic wallpaper, artists as an unnecessary encumbrance to the business of making more money and its target market not as music fans, but mindless drones who don’t really care what they’re listening to, ripe for manipulation by its algorithm. Sharp business practices and evidence of its deleterious effect on the quality and variety of new music abound: the worst thing is that Pelly can’t really come up with a viable alternative in a world where convenience trumps all.

Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty
Kate Mossman (Bonnier)
There’s no doubt that Men of a Certain Age is a hard sell, a semi-autobiographical book in which the New Statesman’s arts editor traces her obsession with often wildly unfashionable, ageing male artists – Queen’s Roger Taylor, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Perry of Journey, Jon Bon Jovi among them – through a series of interviews variously absurd, insightful, hair-raising and weirdly touching. But it’s elevated to unmissable status by Mossman’s writing, which is so sparkling, witty and shrewd that your personal feelings about her subjects are rendered irrelevant amid the cocktail of self-awareness, affection and sharp analysis she brings to every encounter. In a world of music books retelling tired legends, Men of a Certain Age offers that rare thing: an entirely original take on rock history.

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:00 pm

Five of the best science fiction books of 2025

An eco-masterpiece, icy intrigue, cyberpunkish cyborgs, memory-eating aliens and super-fast travel sends the world spinning out of control

Circular Motion
Alex Foster (Grove)
Alex Foster’s novel treats climate catastrophe through high-concept satire. A new technology of super-fast pods revolutionises travel: launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, they fly west and land again in minutes, regardless of distance. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, our globe starts to spin faster. Days contract, first by seconds, then minutes, and eventually hours. It’s a gonzo conceit, and Foster spells out the consequences, his richly rendered characters caught up in their own lives as the world spirals out of control. As days become six hours long, circadian rhythms go out of the window and oceans start to bulge at the equator. The increasing whirligig of the many strands of storytelling converge on their inevitable conclusion, with Foster’s sparky writing, clever plotting and biting wit spinning an excellent tale.

When There Are Wolves Again
EJ Swift (Arcadia)
There are few more pressing issues with which fiction can engage than the climate crisis, and SF, with its capacity to extrapolate into possible futures and dramatise the realities, is particularly well placed to do so. Swift’s superb novel is an eco-masterpiece. Its near-future narrative of collapse and recovery takes us from the rewilding of Chornobyl and the return of wolves to Europe, through setback and challenge, to 2070, a story by turns tragic, alarming, uplifting, poetic and ultimately hopeful. Swift’s accomplished prose and vivid characterisation connect large questions of the planet’s destiny with human intimacy and experience, and she avoids either a too-easy doomsterism or a facile techno-optimism. We can bring the world back from the brink, but it will require honesty, commitment, hard work and a proper sense of stewardship.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:00 am

The best poetry books of 2025

From Seamus Heaney’s collected poems and Simon Armitage’s animal spirits, to prizewinners Karen Solie and Vidyan Ravinthiran

Many of 2025’s most notable collections have been powered by a spirit of wild experimentation, pushing at the bounds of what “poetry” might be thought to be. Sarah Hesketh’s 2016 (CB Editions) is a fabulous example: it takes 12 interviews with a variety of anonymous individuals about the events of that year and presents fragments of the transcripts as prose poems. The cumulative effect of these voices is haunting and full of pathos, as “they vote for whoever, and their life stays exactly the same”.

Luke Kennard and Nick Makoha also daringly remixed their source material and inspirations. The former’s latest collection, The Book of Jonah (Picador), moves the minor prophet out of the Bible into a world of arts conferences, where he is continually reminded that his presence everywhere is mostly futile. Makoha’s The New Carthaginians (Penguin) turns Jean-Michel Basquiat’s idea of the exploded collage into a poetic device. The result? “The visible / making itself known by the invisible.”

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:00 am

Horror game Horses has been banned from sale – but is it as controversial as you’d think?

Pulled by Steam and Epic Games Store, indie horror Horses shook up the industry before it was even released. Now it’s out, all the drama surrounding it seems superfluous

On 25 November, award-winning Italian developer Santa Ragione, responsible for acclaimed titles such as MirrorMoon EP and Saturnalia, revealed that its latest project, Horses, had been banned from Steam - the largest digital store for PC games. A week later, another popular storefront, Epic Games Store, also pulled Horses, right before its 2 December launch date. The game was also briefly removed from the Humble Store, but was reinstated a day later.

The controversy has helped the game rocket to the top of the digital stores that are selling it, namely itch.io and GOG. But the question remains – why was it banned? Horses certainly delves into some intensely controversial topics (a content warning at the start details, “physical violence, psychological abuse, gory imagery, depiction of slavery, physical and psychological torture, domestic abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and misogyny”) and is upsetting and unnerving.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:04 pm

Stephen Colbert on Pete Hegseth’s Venezuela scandal: ‘Frantically pointing the finger’

Late-night hosts discussed Hegseth’s deflection of international outrage on to his admirals, Trump’s changed auto standards and new photos of Epstein’s island

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s renaming of the Institute of Peace, Pete Hegseth’s ongoing Venezuela scandal and a new batch of photos from Epstein Island.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:46 pm

Eurovision has faced political boycotts before – how does the latest compare?

Decision by four countries to pull out over Israel’s inclusion is significant for the contest but crisis may not be existential

The decision by four European broadcasters to boycott next year’s Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion is undoubtedly a watershed moment in the 70-year history of the song contest.

One of the few genuinely popular, non-elitist and pan-European cultural events will be without Spain, one of the “big five” nations in terms of financial contributions; Ireland, which has won the contest more times than any other country bar Sweden; the Netherlands, a 1956 founding member; and Slovenia, symbolic of the EU’s eastward enlargement.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:52 pm

‘He’s the new Daniel Day-Lewis’: Margot Robbie defends Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights

Robbie addresses backlash to casting Elordi as a character described by Brontë as ‘dark-skinned’, while Fennell praises her female star’s ‘big dick energy’

Margot Robbie has come out in defence of Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, in which she is playing Cathy opposite Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff.

Despite being months away from release, the film has attracted criticism for its casting as well as alterations that Fennell has made to the characters. In an interview with Vogue magazine, Robbie said: “I get it … there’s nothing else to go off at this point until people see the movie.”

Published: December 5, 2025, 2:35 pm

‘I’ve had all the luck you can get’: Michael Caine retires for the fourth time

The 92-year-old actor made the announcement again as he received an award at the Red Sea international film festival in Saudi Arabia

Michael Caine has offered an update on his possible retirement from acting at the Red Sea international film festival in Saudi Arabia, appearing to call time on his career for the fourth time.

Taking to the stage to accept a lifetime achievement award, the actor said: “I kept going until I was 90, which was two years ago, and I thought to myself I’m not going to do anything else because I’ve had all the luck you can get.”

Published: December 5, 2025, 1:11 pm

Experience: I gave birth to the world’s first IVF boy

My husband and I were unable to have children, and then we heard about a new experimental technique

I was 26 when my gynaecologist told me that my fallopian tubes were blocked and there would be no way I could get pregnant. I was devastated. I had always wanted children. It was 1972; I was living in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, and working as a college lecturer. IVF didn’t exist, and when my husband and I put our names down to adopt a baby, we were told we had very little chance because few babies were available to adopt at the time. Meanwhile, my gynaecologist tried to open my fallopian tubes. It didn’t work.

I refused to accept that I had no options. I read every article I could about fertility treatment. After three years, I heard about a medical breakthrough by gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards. It was described as very experimental and new.

Published: December 5, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Look what you’ve done to my children!’: a tale of winter wonderland disasters

These events are meant to make Christmas magical, and while many do, a few fall spectacularly short. Here, in no particular order, are some of the worst offenders

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the season where British people traditionally complain about spending too much on rip-off Christmas events. This year’s festivities have already kicked off in earnest, thanks to the malfunctioning Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer drone show in Haywards Heath this week. By all accounts the drone show was a classic of the genre. It made big promises, offering families “a night of magic and wonder” complete with “state of the art production [and] 600 LED drones”. Then it charged big money, with some families paying hundreds of pounds to attend. And then, of course, it comprehensively underdelivered.

Reports describe the event as not only being too short – about just 15 minutes – but also, due to the failure of several drones, completely unintelligible. “From the beginning, large numbers of drones were missing, which left huge gaps in the formations and made it nearly impossible to understand what the images were even supposed to represent!” wrote one aggrieved attendee on social media. “The ‘finale’, the moment the entire audience was waiting for, didn’t even happen. Just a black sky.”

Published: December 5, 2025, 5:00 am

Composting for your garden? This ancient method requires minimal effort

Digging a trench alongside your vegetable bed is an easy way to dispose of food and plant waste, and enrich soil for next year’s crops

On a visit to our friends’ house recently, the subject of food waste came up. They haven’t got a tucked-away spot to set up a compost bin or heap in their garden, and their local council doesn’t collect. They had put their effort into bokashi composting in the past, but with a baby on the way I suspect they’ll have more than enough to do without taking on the added responsibility of caring for a bucket of fermenting kitchen scraps.

But as they’re already accustomed to burying their bokashi-ed vegetable peelings, it got me thinking about how low effort and high impact trench composting can be for those without room for a larger system. Trench composting is the simple process of putting your compostable matter – fruit and vegetable waste, plant material from the garden, grass clippings, leaves, etc – into a trench near where you’re planning to grow your crops next year. Over the coming months, this organic matter will slowly decompose, enriching the soil and improving its structure, making it ready to welcome the following season’s plants. No further effort is required from you to engage in this ancient approach.

Published: December 5, 2025, 11:30 am

‘One of the most breathtaking cathedrals in the world’: readers’ favourite churches in Europe

Wonderful art, amazing design and beautiful locations have drawn our tipsters to chapels, churches and cathedrals from Norway to Bulgaria

• Tell us about a great charity challenge you’ve taken part in – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

The Tromsøysund parish church, commonly called the Arctic Cathedral, in Tromsø is a modernist delight. The simple, elegant exterior that reflects the surrounding scenery and evokes traditional Sami dwellings is matched by an interior that has the most comfortable pews I have ever sat on. The stunning glass mosaic titled the Return of Christ at one end may not be to everyone’s taste, but to me had power and majesty. Exiting this magnificent building after an organ recital to be met by the northern lights flickering overhead was awe-inspiring.
Bruce Horton

Published: December 5, 2025, 7:00 am

What would you write in a very last letter and why?

If you had the chance to write just one last letter, to whom would you send it?

The Danish postal service will deliver its last letter at the end of this month to focus on packages, citing the “increasing digitalisation” of society.

While the public will still be able to send letters through the distributor DAO, it made us think about how we would use that last chance to send a letter.

Published: December 5, 2025, 3:23 pm

Cold moon over Gaza, snow in Seoul and the Olympic flame: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: December 5, 2025, 1:57 pm