Frosty drops: sour cherry and vermouth granita and ouzo and citrus sorbet – recipes

A duo of sweet, sour and soused desserts from former My Kitchen Rules contestants Helena and Vikki Moursellas

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Sour cherries, known as “vissino”, hold a special place in Greek sweets and desserts. Our sour cherry and vermouth granita is inspired by a cocktail we had in Greece one summer. As soon as we drank it, we knew we had to turn it into a granita. You’ll find the sour cherry syrup and juice in specialty food stores. The granita is perfect enjoyed on its own – ideally on a warm summer’s day with good company.

We won’t be surprised if our ouzo and citrus sorbet becomes a favourite too. When we tested it with a bunch of friends, everyone loved it.

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Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 pm

Mental Health Is Real Wealth: how Black men prioritize healing in a Los Angeles community

The bi-monthly group gives Black men a safe space to share, reflect and support each other

Desmond Carter is on a mission to save the lives of Black men.

Carter, founder of Mental Health Is Real Wealth, leads a bi-monthly mental health group in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood, and on a recent Thursday, 15 Black men gathered inside a conference room without pressure and without women.

Published: October 18, 2025, 8:41 pm

Embrace the rain with a go-anywhere umbrella built to last

Lightweight and compact, the Davek Solo is sturdy enough for a nor’easter – here why it’s worth the hefty price tag

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If you were to ask me what you should invest your rainy day fund in, I have two answers. The first is a highly diversified index fund with fees of less than 1%. The second is a nice umbrella. For a variety of upsetting reasons, the weather is getting more unpredictable, so I think a nice umbrella needs to be easily portable, deployable and able to stand up to the rigors of everyday carry. The Davek Solo exemplifies all these qualities.

I’m Jon Chan, a tester and reviewer with over a decade of experience writing buying guides about pocket knives, bath towels, laundry detergents, and just about everything else in your home.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:15 pm

‘Indecency has become a new hallmark’: writer and historian Jelani Cobb on race in Donald Trump’s America

In a new essay collection, the dean of Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism makes a compelling argument that everything is connected and nothing is inevitable about racial justice or democracy

“From the vantage point of the newsroom, the first story is almost never the full story,” writes Jelani Cobb. “You hear stray wisps of information, almost always the most inflammatory strands of a much bigger, more complicated set of circumstances.”

The dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York could be reflecting on the recent killing of the racist provocateur Charlie Kirk. In fact, he is thinking back to Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American student from Florida who was shot dead by a white Latino neighbourhood watch volunteer in 2012.

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:00 am

Beyond chicken soup: what chefs and doctors eat when they’re sick (or just hungover)

Laid up with the flu? Suffering with a sore throat? From chicken bhuna to fire honey, this food should get you back on your feet

Hydrate with teas
For Dr Ricardo José, consultant in respiratory medicine, hydration is key: “It’s about taking frequent sips throughout the day to keep the mucous membranes moist.” Immunologist Dr Jenna Macciochi agrees, saying: “I often stir a spoonful of raw honey – nature’s soothing antimicrobial – into a cup of thyme tea (thyme steeped in water), which helps ease irritation and supports respiratory health. I also love marshmallow root tea, which is great for the mucous membranes.”

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?

From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently …

Step into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge, US, and the future feels a little closer. Glass cabinets display prototypes of weird and wonderful creations, from tiny desktop robots to a surrealist sculpture created by an AI model prompted to design a tea set made from body parts. In the lobby, an AI waste-sorting assistant named Oscar can tell you where to put your used coffee cup. Five floors up, research scientist Nataliya Kosmyna has been working on wearable brain-computer interfaces she hopes will one day enable people who cannot speak, due to neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to communicate using their minds.

Kosmyna spends a lot of her time reading and analysing people’s brain states. Another project she is working on is a wearable device – one prototype looks like a pair of glasses – that can tell when someone is getting confused or losing focus. Around two years ago, she began receiving out-of-the blue emails from strangers who reported that they had started using large language models such as ChatGPT and felt their brain had changed as a result. Their memories didn’t seem as good – was that even possible, they asked her? Kosmyna herself had been struck by how quickly people had already begun to rely on generative AI. She noticed colleagues using ChatGPT at work, and the applications she received from researchers hoping to join her team started to look different. Their emails were longer and more formal and, sometimes, when she interviewed candidates on Zoom, she noticed they kept pausing before responding and looking off to the side – were they getting AI to help them, she wondered, shocked. And if they were using AI, how much did they even understand of the answers they were giving?

Published: October 18, 2025, 10:00 am

Millions across all 50 US states march in No Kings protests against Trump

Crowds of Americans, many in costumes, aligned behind message that US is sliding into authoritarianism

• What to know about the anti-Trump protests attracting millions

• No Kings protests: in pictures

Americans across all 50 states marched in protests against the Trump administration on Saturday, aligning behind a message that the country is sliding into authoritarianism and there should be no kings in the US.

Millions of people turned out for the No Kings protests, the second iteration of a coalition that marched in June in one of the largest days of protest in US history.

Published: October 19, 2025, 12:16 am

Disgraced former congressman George Santos released from prison in New Jersey

Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year sentence for fraud and identity theft after he had served less than three months

Disgraced former US House member George Santos was released from prison in New Jersey late on Friday, hours after the Republican’s seven-year, three-month prison sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft was commuted by Donald Trump.

An X statement attributed to Santos’s lawyer, Joseph Murray, called Trump “the greatest president in US history”.

Published: October 18, 2025, 3:03 pm

Vermont Republican lawmaker resigns over racist and antisemitic group chat

State senator Samuel Douglass, 26, and wife, Brianna, both made comments in Young Republicans Telegram group

A Vermont state lawmaker has resigned over racist and antisemitic chat messages that circulated within the Young Republican political group, another substantial consequence in a scandal that on Friday saw the New York state Young Republicans’ charter revoked.

State senator Samuel Douglass, the only elected official known to have taken part in the leaked group chat exposed by Politico, resigned Friday over his participation.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:59 pm

Israel has violated ceasefire 47 times and killed 38 Palestinians, says Gaza media office

Authorities urge UN to intervene ‘to protect unarmed civilian populations’ after attack on bus that killed 11

Gaza’s media office has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire with Hamas 47 times since the truce came into effect in early October, killing 38 Palestinians and wounding another 143.

“These violations have included crimes of direct gunfire against civilians, deliberate shelling and targeting, and the arrest of a number of civilians, reflecting the occupation’s continued policy of aggression despite the declared end of the war,” reads the statement.

Published: October 18, 2025, 9:06 pm

Man seeking asylum in Canada trapped at US Ice facility after he says he crossed border by mistake

Canada isn’t helping to repatriate refugee applicant Mahin Shahriar, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi man, his lawyer says

A refugee applicant living in Canada is trapped at a US immigration detention facility after he says he mistakenly crossed the border, but his lawyer says Canada isn’t helping to bring him back.

Mahin Shahriar, 28, who came to Canada from Bangladesh in 2019, told the Canadian Press he accepted an invitation from a “friend” to visit a property near Montreal, which he now suspects was part of a broader human trafficking operation.

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:00 am

Inside San Francisco’s new AI school: is this the future of US education?

The private Alpha School says its students can learn faster and better – but experts warn not all may benefit from an AI boom in schools

In the world’s tech innovation epicenter, an “AI-powered” private school has made headlines for unabashedly embracing the technology.

Alpha School San Francisco, which opened its doors to K-8 students this fall, is the newest outpost of a network of 14 nationwide private schools. Its learning model entails just two hours of focused academic work per day, during which the school says students can learn twice as fast as their counterparts in traditional schools – with the help of artificial intelligence.

Published: October 18, 2025, 1:00 pm

US military to move survivors of strike on alleged drug boat in Caribbean to nearby countries

Releasing them from US custody evades thorny legal issues regarding military detention of suspected drug smugglers

The Trump administration is moving to send the two survivors of Thursday’s strike in the Caribbean overseas rather than seek long-term military detention for them, four US officials and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday.

The source, who like the US officials spoke on condition of anonymity, said the survivors were being sent to Colombia and Ecuador.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:24 pm

Ukraine war briefing: Repairs begin in bid to restore power to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

UN watchdog says Russia and Ukraine have established special ceasefire zones to allow the repairs to be safely carried out. What we know on day 1,334

Work has started to repair damaged power lines leading to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after a lengthy outage, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. The site, occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, lost its connection to the grid on 23 September for the 10th time – the longest outage of external power supply to the facility since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The repairs to the off-site power lines began after Russian and Ukrainian forces established “local ceasefire zones to allow work to proceed”, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a post on X. “Both sides engaged constructively with the IAEA to enable the complex repair plan to proceed,” Grossi said. “Restoration of off-site power is crucial for nuclear safety and security.” The agency said it expected the work to take about a week. Russia and Ukraine confirmed the repair works had begun.

Since the outage, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe has been powered by back-up diesel generators. The nuclear plant’s six reactors, which produced about one-fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before the war, were shut down after Moscow took control. But the plant needs electricity to maintain its cooling and safety systems to prevent a disaster.

Elsewhere, Russia continued its aerial bombardment of Ukraine, launching three missiles and 164 drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Saturday. It said Ukrainian forces shot down 136 of the drones. Two people were injured after Russian drones targeted a petrol station in the Zarichny district of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, local officials said Saturday. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that its air defences had shot down 41 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Ukrainians have shared their disappointment that the US may not provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, met Donald Trump at the White House on Friday after the US president signalled that Washington could provide Ukraine with the long-range missiles that Kyiv believes will help bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Yet Zelenskyy ultimately left empty-handed, an outcome that dismayed, but did not surprise, many in the streets of the Ukrainian capital, who maintained their determination to end Russia’s invasion of their country. One Ukrainian military serviceman, Roman Vynnychenko, told the Associated Press he believed the prospect of Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine was a political “game”. “Ukraine won’t get those missiles,” he said. Vynnychenko said Ukraine still needed to procure new weapons with or without American help, particularly as Russian drones and missiles continued to hit civilian infrastructure. “Every day civilians and soldiers die, buildings collapse, our streets and cities are being destroyed,” Vynnychenko said. Victoria Khramtsova, a psychologist, said “we just want peace” after being at war for more than three years. “To tell you the truth, I look at the news, but nowadays I read only the headlines. And even those make me sad.”

The exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has warned Trump that Vladimir Putin is not serious about negotiations over Ukraine. Tsikhanouskaya poured cold water on planned talks between the US and Russian presidents, telling AFP in an interview released on Saturday: “As neighbours of Russia, we understand that dictators don’t need peace … So I don’t think that Putin is negotiable at all.” She also urged Trump to step up efforts to support democracy in her country, saying that without a free Belarus, there could be no peace in the region. “Our task is to explain [to Trump] that it’s not only about [political] hostages. It’s about the whole future of our country. And a democratic Belarus is in the interest of the US as well,” she added.

Published: October 19, 2025, 12:53 am

US Senate poised to approve industry lobbyist to lead chemical safety at EPA

If Douglas Troutman is confirmed, the top four toxics office at the environmental agency will be held by ex-lobbyists

The US Senate is poised to approve Donald Trump’s nomination of an industry lobbyist to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office.

If the nominee, Douglas Troutman, is confirmed, the top four toxics office positions at the EPA will be held by former chemical industry lobbyists, raising new fears about the health and safety of the American public, consumers and workers, campaigners say.

Published: October 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

US tells airlines to disregard ‘X’ sex markers on passports and input ‘M’ or ‘F’

Customs and Border Protection implemented rule this week, sending Americans with ‘X’ marker into panic

US Customs and Border Protection implemented a rule this week that will require airlines to disregard “X” sex markers on passports and input an “M” or “F” marker instead, sending those people with an “X” marker into panic.

“X” markers became available to US passport holders in 2022, in an effort to allow people with gender identities other than male and female to obtain more accurate travel documents.

Published: October 18, 2025, 1:00 pm

Trump news at a glance: Trump cools on Tomahawk deal for Ukraine and commutes Santos sentence

US president said ‘we need Tomahawks and a lot of other things’ as he meets Zelenskyy; fraud sentence of disgraced serial fabulist Santos commuted – key US politics stories from Friday 17 October at a glance

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

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

Published: October 18, 2025, 1:39 am

Why do so many gen Z women across the US identify as ‘leftist’?

Generation Z women represent the most leftwing demographic in modern US history: ‘There’s definitely a gender divide’

When Emily Gardiner first started paying attention to politics, she was 15, just beginning high school in 2016. It was the start of the first Trump administration, a moment that politicized a lot of young Americans.

Now 23, Emily works as a library assistant in eastern Connecticut and is rewriting the second draft of her adult fantasy novel. She describes herself as “definitely leftist, not liberal”.

Published: October 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘I lost 25 pounds in 20 days’: what it’s like to be on the frontline of a global cyber-attack

The security chief of SolarWinds reflects on the Russian hack that exposed US government agencies – and the heart attack he suffered in the aftermath

Tim Brown will remember 12 December 2020 for ever.

It was the day the software company SolarWinds was notified it had been hacked by Russia.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 pm

Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here

An upside-down mindset is emerging around the world. We have to rethink our relationship with the environment and the technology that has caused it harm

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Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes a society inthrall to the values of science and technology. It is set in the futuristic World State, whose citizens are scientifically engineered to fit into a hierarchy. Eugenics, psychotropic pharmaceuticals and classical conditioning are employed to maximise stability and happiness. Huxley’s novel does not describe a conventionally authoritarian system, but one in which the desire for freedom and dignity has simply been eliminated. The World State is a radical technocracy.

It’s a satire on the consequences of importing scientific thinking into the realm of social policy. The Controllers of the World State preside over a society that has rationality and efficiency as its guiding principles, and when those principles conflict with human nature, it is human nature that is required to give way. Rather than building a society that engenders happy human beings, the Controllers seek to design human beings that can function in the society into which they are “hatched”.

The idea that we would invert our relationship with the world in this way strikes us as sinister, as antithetical to what it means to be human.

And yet something resembling this upside-down mindset is now emerging across the globe, particularly in the debate around climate change.

Having built a system that is destructive of the environment that surrounds and sustains us, we are now proposing to change … the environment! In his dystopia Huxley imagined a society that only worked when the humans within it were made into something not quite human. Today, many scientists and engineers imagine a planet that has been similarly transformed: nature itself must yield to the system. We need a technological fix.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 pm

The moment I knew: she made the life I’d overcomplicated suddenly straightforward

As Air’s Moon Safari played in background, Andrew Stafford watched himself falling in love, in a new way

• Find more stories from The moment I knew series

Although it’s now long deleted, my old X account served at least one useful purpose in life. My profile image had me looking up quizzically at a ragdoll kitten on my shoulder. That cat (once mistaken for a parrot by a bone-headed rightwing pundit) is no longer with me – but my other ragdoll, Priscilla, became a minor social media celebrity.

In April 2021 I was eight months post open heart surgery, seven months single, about to turn 50, and not about to die wondering. So, I hit Bumble. She didn’t fess up until later but the first woman to message me was one of my X followers – really, one of Priscilla’s. “Oh,” she said to herself, “it’s the man with the cat on Twitter.” And swiped right.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 pm

Breathtaking, unsettling, healing: how US artist Kara Walker transformed a Confederate monument

The sweeping exhibition Monuments, which features 19 contemporary artists, opens in LA on 23 October

In 2021, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, finally removed the Confederate statues that had inspired a series of violent and eventually deadly white supremacist rallies in 2017.

The statue of Robert E Lee, which had been surrounded by white men with torches in a famous far-right propaganda image, was melted down. But the statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which stood at the heart of a 2017 Ku Klux Klan rally, was given to a California-based arts non-profit, which pledged to use it for “transformation, not further veneration”.

Published: October 18, 2025, 12:55 am

Six great reads: Virginia Giuffre’s story, the truth about chatfishing, and Peter Thiel’s search for the antichrist

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

A congressman’s ex got a protective order against him. His boss has little to say about it | Arwa Mahdawi

This isn’t the first time Cory Mills has faced allegations of misconduct – but the House speaker wants to talk about ‘serious’ things

Meet Cory Mills, a Republican congressman representing Florida. He is rabidly anti-abortion, incredibly anti-immigration, and obsequiously pro-Trump. Earlier this year, perhaps in a desperate bid to get Dear Leader to notice him, he introduced a bill, dubbed the “DON-ument Act”, which would make the wall on the US-Mexico border a national monument.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Published: October 18, 2025, 1:00 pm

Gaza’s children needed a ceasefire – now they desperately need the aid that will keep them alive | Alison Griffin

The youngest and most vulnerable have suffered extreme mental and physical trauma. We can help – but we must be granted immediate access

• Alison Griffin is head of conflict and humanitarian campaigns at Save the Children UK

In the last few days, we have seen celebrations alongside cautious optimism about a future for Gaza without bombs and bullets. This much needed pause in hostilities is providing children with the chance to sleep without the fear of drones above their heads, airstrikes on nearby buildings or fires breaking out in their tents. Families in Gaza are slowly returning to their neighbourhoods and trying to salvage what they can of their lives from the rubble.

But crucially, what they are still not currently getting is full and sustainable access to aid supplies and vital services. This is about fundamental basic rights for children in the occupied Palestinian territory, which we have been demanding and advocating for since 1953.

Alison Griffin is head of conflict and humanitarian campaigns at Save the Children UK

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Published: October 18, 2025, 11:00 am

Shows such as Stranger Things and Yellowjackets have become bloated. I’m all for the one-and-done series | Priya Elan

Fans who moan when a show is axed after its first season should be careful what they wish for. If only my TV obsession had ended a long time ago

It’s an all-too-familiar feeling. The second series of your favourite TV show has just begun streaming and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended sooo perfectly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?) In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. Cut to the second episode, and your favourite cast member has done something that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. And by the disappointing finale, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

Priya Elan writes about the arts, music and fashion

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 am

A prophetic 1934 novel has found a surprising second life – it holds lessons for us all | Charlotte Higgins

Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross was written and set during the rise of nazism. It shows both how extremism takes hold, and the moral certainty needed to resist it

A few days ago I asked an American acquaintance – as one does these days – where he sees “it”, by which I meant the political situation, heading. He took a breath. “In my opinion, the US is in a very similar position to Germany in 1933-4,” he said. “And we have to ask, could 1936, 1937, 1938 have been avoided? That’s the point we are at. You can try to say fascism couldn’t happen in the US. But I think the jury’s out.”

His words seemed especially resonant to me because I had just finished reading a remarkable novel precisely to do with Germany in 1933-4, a book written in the former year and published in the latter. Forgotten for decades, Sally Carson’s Bavaria-set Crooked Cross was republished in April by Persephone Books, which specialises in reviving neglected works. Since then, it has been a surprise hit, a word-of-mouth jaw-dropper, passed from hand to hand.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

Shorn of title, status and dignity, it’s the new Prince Andrew. A life he was born to replaced by a life he will hate | Stephen Bates

Nothing will ever be the same for the disgraced royal or the other Windsors. He can still live in Royal Lodge, but it’s a terrible blow to his sense of entitlement

The saga of Andrew Windsor, the ex-Duke, who henceforth will be known as only plain old Prince, may have finally reached its end. At least the rest of the royal family will hope so. But even that is likely to depend on what may further emerge from any more releases of Epstein files, letters, records and emails in the US. His image, such as it remains, may yet be tarnished further.

It is the loss of titles that will certainly hurt him most. Andrew has not formally lost them – removal of his dukedom requires an act of parliament, which neither government nor Buckingham Palace will want, taking up as it would embarrassingly public lengths of time – and he can’t shed his princely tag since he indubitably is the son of a monarch.

Stephen Bates is a former royal correspondent of the Guardian

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:31 am

Verstappen takes F1 US GP pole after sprint victory to turn up heat on Norris and Piastri

• Lando Norris is second on grid, Oscar Piastri is sixth

• Max Verstappen won sprint after McLarens collided

Max Verstappen claimed pole position for the US Grand Prix with an immense lap for Red Bull at the Circuit of the Americas. However the day was marked by yet another incident between the two world championship contenders Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, with the latter crashing into Norris on the opening lap of the sprint race taking them both out and leaving McLaren with a headache as to how they manage their drivers.

Verstappen had been all but untouchable throughout qualifying, his lead over Norris in second place was a full three-tenths, an age on this track. However in what is an increasingly tense title fight Piastri’s difficult weekend continued as he managed only sixth on the grid. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton took third and fifth for Ferrari, with Mercedes’ George Russell in fourth.

Published: October 18, 2025, 10:39 pm

Leandro Trossard sinks Fulham to keep Arsenal riding high at top of table

This was a mechanical performance from Arsenal but it was enough. Enough to see off Fulham, enough to avoid a row over a questionable refereeing decision and enough for Mikel Arteta’s side to increase the pressure on Liverpool before the champions look to move past their slump when they host Manchester United on Sunday afternoon.

It never came close to capturing the imagination. There was the inevitable corner to decide a drab contest, Leandro Trossard popping up with an opportunistic goal just before the hour, but there was nothing memorable from Arsenal in open play. They created few openings and for all his graft there was concern about another blunt outing for Viktor Gyökeres, who returned from a troubled international break with Sweden and saw his goalless streak for club and country run into a ninth game.

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:40 pm

Naive Ange Postecoglou could be the least effective Premier League manager ever | Barney Ronay

At no stage did the Australian coach seem to understand the assignment he had been given at Nottingham Forest

Well, the Chelsea fans were wrong anyway. Ange Postecoglou was not sacked in the morning. Instead he was sacked in the afternoon. So, another small win there for Ange, even in defeat. Not to mention further proof of the notion to which he has always seemed so fatally in thrall, that he is at any given moment the smartest guy in the room. Even when, as of Saturday afternoon, he’s no longer in the room at all.

The official version seems to be that Postecoglou was fired 18 minutes after his final defeat at the City Ground. In reality he was fired in real time, a live-action televised touchline sacking, gone from the moment Evangelos Marinakis disappeared from his seat midway through the second half with the look of a gamekeeper required now to wring the neck of a dying pheasant.

Published: October 18, 2025, 8:36 pm

Shohei Ohtani powers Dodgers back to World Series with two-way masterpiece

• Two-way star powers LA sweep of Brewers in NLCS

• Dodgers chase first repeat title since 2000 Yankees

• Ohtani hits three HRs, fans 10 in Game 4 clincher

Shohei Ohtani has propelled the Los Angeles Dodgers back to the World Series with a two-way performance for the ages.

Ohtani hit three mammoth homers and struck out 10 while pitching into the seventh inning, and the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers out of the NL Championship Series with a 5-1 victory in Game 4 on Friday night.

Published: October 18, 2025, 3:43 am

Eugenio Suárez slam puts Seattle Mariners one win from first World Series

• Suárez hits go-ahead grand slam in five-run eighth

• Mariners move within one win of first World Series

• Seattle take 3-2 lead as ALCS heads back to Toronto

Eugenio Suárez’s second home run of the game, an eighth-inning grand slam, broke a tie as the Seattle Mariners defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 6-2 Friday to regain control of the American League Championship Series.

Cal Raleigh sparked the rally with a leadoff homer in the eighth as the Mariners took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Published: October 18, 2025, 1:26 am

‘Those final few hours were brutal’: British duo end epic journey in Australia after rowing across Pacific Ocean

Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne have set a new record with their five-and-a-half-month crossing from Lima to Cairns

One more day. One more day up and down the pitiless slide. One more day of blistered hands gripping unforgiving oars.

But after more than 8,000 nautical miles (15,000km) at sea – an epic five-and-a-half-month journey across the Pacific that included close encounters with whales, failing beacons and chocolate shortages – the sea had one more challenge.

Published: October 18, 2025, 9:32 pm

Tchaouna firecracker adds sheen to Burnley’s French-inspired defeat of Leeds

When Lesley Ugochukwu and Loum Tchaouna were scholars in the Rennes youth team, they were probably fantasising about playing in the Premier League, but probably not for Burnley. They have reunited at Turf Moor, where the club and French duo are living out their dream. It was their goals that downed Leeds and offered further proof the Clarets have a chance of staying up.

Burnley have now defeated the two teams that came up with them from the Championship at home and have collected all of their seven points here. They showed they have improved since promotion, epitomised by a goal-of-the-season contender from Tchaouna to add to his old mate’s opener.

Published: October 18, 2025, 4:04 pm

Bus crashes in north-eastern Brazil, killing 17 people, say police

Driver lost control of bus in Saloá in Pernambuco state and cause of accident is under investigation

A passenger bus in north-eastern Brazil has crashed into a sand embankment and flipped on its side, killing 17 people, local authorities have said.

The bus was carrying about 30 passengers, police said on Saturday, but the number of injured, who were taken to nearby hospitals, was not immediately clear. The vehicle departed from the state of Bahia and crashed in Saloá, a city in the neighbouring state of Pernambuco.

Published: October 18, 2025, 4:43 pm

United plane clips tail of another aircraft at Chicago’s O’Hare airport

No one was hurt in the incident when a wing from one plane struck the tail of another United aircraft

A United Airlines plane heading for its gate clipped the tail of another United aircraft at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, authorities said.

No one was hurt in Friday’s incident, and the 113 passengers on flight 2652 from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were able to leave the plane normally after a delay, United officials said in a statement.

Published: October 18, 2025, 2:34 pm

What is private credit, and should we be worried by the collapse of US firms?

First Brands and Tricolor failures raise concerns for wider financial sector, including traditional banks

The collapse of two US firms, First Brands and Tricolor, has shone a light on private credit and its growing influence in the global economy.

The failures have led to ballooning losses at traditional banks, and, coupled with worries about the health of US regional banks, have raised concerns about weak lending standards and potential threats from an opaque corner of the so-called shadow banking sector.

Published: October 18, 2025, 2:00 pm

Iran announces official end to 10-year-old nuclear agreement

Tehran terminates 2015 deal under which sanctions were lifted in return for curbs on country’s nuclear programme

An international deal with Iran designed to keep the world safe from the spread of atomic weapons has officially ended, with Tehran announcing the termination of the decade-old agreement.

Iran said on Saturday that it was no longer bound by the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which international sanctions were lifted in exchange for limitations on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Published: October 18, 2025, 10:23 am

Sahel-based jihadists are extending their reach. Can a fractured region push back?

Counterinsurgency approaches have splintered in west Africa at the same time as terror threats have shifted southward

Among the thousands of refugees who have fled Mali since a jihadist uprising began more than a decade ago, one group is bound together by a grim commonality: their husbands are presumed dead or captured.

Amina (not her real name) is one of them.

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:00 am

US podcaster who helped convict ‘Queen of the Con’ disappointed at short sentence

Johnathan Walton, who was a victim of Marianne ‘Mair’ Smyth, had helped UK authorities track her down

A US podcaster and author who helped UK authorities convict a woman derisively known as the “Queen of the Con” of defrauding a group of Northern Irish mortgage advice customers has expressed disappointment in her being sentenced on Friday to only four years in prison.

“She scams or tries to scam everyone she meets, and she will never change,” Johnathan Walton said in a statement after Marianne “Mair” Smyth’s sentencing closed the books on a transatlantic case against her.

Published: October 18, 2025, 8:00 am

‘There were stoats in kitchen cupboards’: AI deployed to help save Orkney’s birds

Stoats have been an existential threat to Orkney’s rare birds but technology is helping to eradicate them

At first, the stoat looks like a faint smudge in the distance. But, as it jumps closer, its sleek body is identified by a heat-detecting camera and, with it, an alert goes out to Orkney’s stoat hunters.

Aided by an artificial intelligence programme trained to detect a stoat’s sinuous shape and movement, trapping teams are dispatched with the explicit aim of finding and killing it. It is the most sophisticated technology deployed in one of the world’s largest mammal eradication projects, which has the aim of detecting the few stoats left on Orkney.

Published: October 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

World’s landscapes may soon be ‘devoid of wild animals’, says nature photographer

Margot Raggett, whose latest compilation shows animals scrubbed from natural habitats, calls for rethink on UK accelerated housebuilding

Margot Raggett has spent the past decade raising money for conservation efforts around the world but now she feels nervous about the future. “It does feel like we’ve taken a backward step,” she said.

The wildlife photographer has raised £1.2m for the cause in the past 10 years through her Remembering Wildlife series, an annual, not-for-profit picture book featuring images of animals from the world’s top nature photographers. The first edition was published in 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was being drafted but, in the years since, efforts to tackle the climate crisis have been rolled back.

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:54 am

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds

Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

Mainstream parties are increasingly allowing the far right to set the agenda, researchers in Germany have found, describing it as a shortcoming that had unwittingly helped the far right by legitimising their ideas and disseminating them more widely.

The findings, published in the European Journal of Political Research, were based on an automated text analysis of 520,408 articles from six German newspapers over the span of more than two decades.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

Chemical linked to low sperm count, obesity and cancer found in dummies, tests find

BPA, a synthetic chemical used in production of plastics, found in baby products made by three big European brands

A chemical linked to impaired sexual development, obesity and cancer has been found in baby dummies manufactured by three big European brands.

Dummies made by the Dutch multinational Philips, the Swiss oral health specialists Curaprox and the French toy brand Sophie la Girafe were found to contain bisphenol A (BPA), according to laboratory testing by dTest, a Czech consumer organisation. Philips said they had carried out subsequent testing and found no BPA, while Sophie la Girafe said the amount found was insignificant.

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:00 am

Israel identifies body of 10th hostage recovered from Gaza

Remains of Eliyahu ‘Churchill’ Margalit, who was killed on 7 October 2023, identified after being passed to Red Cross by Hamas

The body of a 75-year-old hostage handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza late on Friday has been identified by Israel’s military as Eliyahu “Churchill” Margalit.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Margalit was killed at Nir Oz kibbutz on 7 October 2023 during Hamas’s assault on southern Israel and his body taken into the Gaza Strip. His death was confirmed in December 2023. His daughter, Nili Margalit, was also kidnapped and returned as part of a deal in November 2023.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:05 am

Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy ‘realistic’ about chances of Tomahawk missile deal

Ukraine president suggests after talks that the door may not be entirely closed on deal for US long-range missiles; Zelenskyy has ‘productive’ call with European leaders. What we know on day 1,333

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine needs American long-range missiles for an offensive against Russian targets but that he was “realistic” about his chances of getting them. The Ukrainian president was speaking after talks with Donald Trump at the White House on Friday during which the US president appeared cool on the prospect of supplying Kyiv with Tomahawk missiles. However, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press,” Zelenskyy suggested the door was not entirely closed. “It’s good that President Trump didn’t say ‘no,’ but for today, didn’t say ‘yes,’” he said. Zelenskyy added that Ukraine needed Tomahawks because “it’s very difficult just to operate only with Ukrainian drones.”

After the meeting, Trump implored the combatants to “stop the war immediately”, even if it means Ukraine conceding territory. “Stop the killing. And that should be it,” he told journalists after arriving in Florida. On social media he suggested freezing the conflict, saying: “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide!” When asked about the social media post, which he had not seen, Zelenskyy said: “The president is right we have to stop where we are, and then to speak.”

Zelenskyy had what British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer described as a “productive” call with European leaders on Friday, hours after Zelenskyy met Trump at the White House. “I shared details of my conversation with US president Donald Trump. We discussed many important issues,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X. “The main priority now is to protect as many lives as possible, guarantee security for Ukraine, and strengthen all of us in Europe. That is exactly what we are working for. Our national security advisers will discuss the next steps. We are coordinating our positions. I am grateful for the conversation, for all the support, and for the readiness to stand with Ukraine.” Starmer reiterated the UK’s “unwavering commitment to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression”, and said it would “continue to send humanitarian aid and military support” to Kyiv. Leaders from Germany, Finland, Italy, Norway, and Poland were on the call, along with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Nato Secretary Gen Mark Rutte and European council president Antonio Costa.

Russia and the US should build a “Putin-Trump” rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link their countries, unlock joint exploration of natural resources and “symbolise unity“, a Kremlin envoy has suggested. The proposal by Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, envisages a construction project costing US$8bn (£6bn), funded by Moscow and “international partners”, to build a 70-mile (112-km) rail and cargo link in under eight years. Dmitriev floated the idea late on Thursday after Putin spoke to Donald Trump by phone and agreed to meet in Budapest to discuss stopping the war against Ukraine.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday its forces had taken control of three more villages in eastern Ukraine, one in the Dnipropetrovsk region and two in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, closer to the Russian border. Ukraine has acknowledged fighting around at least two of the settlements but has not said that any of the areas have changed hands. According to the Russian ministry, Moscow’s troops took control of Pryvillia in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and captured the villages of Pishchane and Tykhe.

Published: October 18, 2025, 2:47 am

Nobody Wants This: we can’t get enough of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody’s heartstopping treat of a show

The millennial crowd-pleasers return with a second helping of their sizzling romcom … and it’s just as much of a pleasure. We already know exactly which spin-off we want too!

For a while, it seemed as if the romcom as an art form died and had been replaced by Marvel sequels and issue-led dramedies. Rachel and Ross were a distant memory (and not just because it was 20 years ago). Luckily, the genre – and our collective broken hearts – has been given CPR by a flurry of new releases. Few have been more affecting than Nobody Wants This (Netflix, from Thursday 23 October), the stomach-flipping story of rabbi Noah and relationship podcaster Joanne.

When the first series appeared on Netflix last year, the success was somewhat unexpected. With the streaming giant focused on content viewers could watch after a lobotomy, few expected a mega hit that would create a genuine emotional connection. Then we met Noah (millennial nostalgia-fix Adam Brody) and Joanne (Kristen Bell) and the combination of acting, lovable characterisation and tight writing saw critical acclaim, Emmy nominations and – most importantly – old-fashioned longing. The internet had a new boyfriend. Fleabag’s Hot Priest was old news. Hot Rabbi was here to save us. And he was a really good listener who could also cook pasta.

Inspired by creator Erin Foster’s experience of converting to Judaism for her husband, Nobody Wants This boils faith, family and modern dating into 26 tightly packed minutes. On top of ex-girlfriends and formidable mother-in-laws, our two lovers have a central obstacle to overcome: if he wants to be head rabbi, Noah needs to marry a Jewish woman.

When we last saw the couple, they were at a crossroads: Noah had been offered his dream job and Joanne had done the selfless act of leaving him so he could take it. The final scene of the two reuniting and kissing in the street perfectly set up a second season and with it pressing questions. Will Joanne convert? Will Noah quit his vocation? Will Noah’s mum murder Joanne when she finds out?

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:00 am

‘A world detached from struggles of urban life’: a rare exhibition of Renoir drawings

Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Famed impressionist painter’s lesser-seen drawings are the focus of a major new exhibition that invites us into the stages of his artistic process

His luminous colours and sensual brushwork adorn countless mugs, posters and tote bags as well as blockbuster exhibitions. But the commodification of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his fellow impressionist painters has been missing something.

Renoir was an accomplished draftsman who produced a distinguished but largely unheralded collection of drawings, pastels, watercolours and prints.

Published: October 18, 2025, 9:01 am

Giant review – Prince Naseem biopic with Pierce Brosnan on hand misses the punch

London film festival
Despite the odd laugh, the story of the boxer’s path from Sheffield gyms to global stardom and his break with mentor Brendan Ingle feels dramatically underweight

There’s a really good cast here, in a movie with a real-life story to tell: how Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle mentored a cheeky Sheffield kid from migrant Yemeni parents, “Prince” Naseem Hamed, teaching him to stand up to racist bullies and turning him into a media-friendly world champ in the late 90s, nurturing his showboating arrogance and his lethal fists. But, after becoming wealthy, Hamed brattishly turned against Ingle, cutting him out of the action, and turning him into a combination of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose. Pierce Brosnan plays Ingle; Amir El-Masry is Hamed and Toby Stephens is bullish London promoter Frank Warren who saw the goldmine that Ingle had discovered.

But the movie frankly lacks the Prince’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences run smoothly but the all-important drama between them is repeatedly flat and one-note. There is no nuance or light and shade in the depiction of Hamed himself, and that otherwise outstanding performer El-Masry isn’t given the chance to show any subtlety or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the ring.

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:20 pm

‘A glimpse of genius’: what do unpublished stories found in Harper Lee’s apartment tell us about the To Kill a Mockingbird author?

When she died, the writer left behind a cache of notebooks and manuscripts. Her biographer reveals what they tell us about her unlikely rise to literary stardom

When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in the summer of 1960, it seemed to have sprung from nowhere, like an Alabamian Athena: a perfectly formed novel from an unknown southern writer without any evident precedent or antecedent. The book somehow managed to be both urgently of its time and instantly timeless, addressing the era’s most turbulent issues, from the civil rights movement to the sexual revolution, while also speaking in the register of the eternal, from the moral awakening of children and the abiding love of families to the frictions between the self and society.

But no writer is without influences and aspirations: Harper Lee had, of course, come from somewhere and worked tremendously hard to become someone. It was only because she did not like talking about herself that her origins seemed so mysterious, and inevitably, the better To Kill a Mockingbird did – becoming a bestseller and then winning a Pulitzer prize, selling 1m copies and then 10m and then 40m – the more theories and rumours rushed in to fill her silence. In the years after the book came out, the public image of Lee swung between two of her beloved characters: she was either the living incarnation of her feisty, tomboyish heroine Jean Louise “Scout” Finch or, in her seeming reclusiveness, a version of that shy shadow figure, Arthur “Boo” Radley.

Published: October 18, 2025, 8:00 am

Ruel: ‘A fan gave me one of their teeth on a necklace – I was definitely a little freaked out’

The pop star on the craziest thing he has done for love, his strong opinions about kids wearing sunglasses and the movie that scarred him as a child

What are you secretly really good at?

When I hold water in my mouth, I’ve got a perfect space in between each of my teeth. So when I point my neck to the sky and blow out water, it looks like a full fountain. It’s all perfect streams, and it creates some sort of water feature. It’s like, 10 streams! It’s quite beautiful but also pretty disgusting to witness.

Published: October 18, 2025, 7:00 pm

My cultural awakening: ‘The Specials helped me to stop fixating on death’

After several people close to me died I became obsessed with fitness and gripped by panic attacks. But then a ska cover taught me life doesn’t have to be serious all the time

My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness. But soon after it was her son, and then her granddaughter (my cousin). The latter two were shocks, completely upending my nervous system, one compounding the other. From there, two more followed. Death was all around. It wasn’t just a part of life by that point – it was something to expect soon and often.

At first I seemed fine. Despite concerned friends and partners asking if I was hiding anything, I didn’t think I was. But soon I retreated from fun, becoming very fixated on things like my resting heart rate and body fat percentage. I skipped social events for high-intensity interval training sessions followed by the sauna followed by meditation – not a bad thing, but not a balance, either. I cut out caffeine, including dark chocolate. When I didn’t stick to my new routine, I would have a panic attack, which I’d assume was a heart attack, which would lead to more frequent episodes of panic.

Published: October 18, 2025, 6:00 am

David Ajala: ‘Ageing doesn’t scare me. It’s a gift’

The actor on an elevator encounter with Helen Mirren, an apology to a teacher and the lie he told to see Arsenal

Born in London, David Ajala, 39, trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School. He joined the RSC in 2008, went on to work at the National Theatre and this year appeared in the West End with Ewan McGregor in My Master Builder. He has had roles in the films Kidulthood, Adulthood and Brotherhood, The Dark Knight, Fast & Furious 6 and Jupiter Ascending. Currently he is in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue on BBC One and The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix. He lives in Essex with his wife and two children.

When were you happiest?
When I was naive to the complexities of life.

Published: October 18, 2025, 9:00 am

I can’t stop watching videos of people discovering Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil. Send help

Like all good addicts, I couldn’t tell you how much time I’ve spent with First Time Hearing clips on YouTube. They sucked me in and didn’t let me go

• Read more in the Internet wormhole series

Oh the pleasant pain of waiting impatiently for someone to understand the point! Oh the power of dramatic irony; the smug joy of knowing something they don’t.

Oh how I wallowed in these feelings and more, when YouTube sucked me into a genre I had previously known nothing about: First Time Hearing videos, where people film themselves watching the music video of a song they’ve never heard before and grace viewers with their impromptu reactions, thoughts and facial expressions.

Published: October 18, 2025, 2:00 pm

Tim Dowling: I’m in Greece with my band and the weather’s awful … but I can’t complain

The gig is at a literary festival, which makes me anxious. I’m never at ease among people who don’t suffer fools gladly

Many months ago the band I’m in was invited to play a gig at a literary festival in Greece. The date slotted nicely into our international tour schedule, between Brighton and Plymouth. But it butted up against my already booked holiday; I would have to fly home, spend 36 hours repacking and then fly straight to Greece. Mind you, I’m not complaining.

“It sounds like you’re complaining,” my wife says as we negotiate the duty free chicane at Gatwick. It is 4.30am, and the airport is rammed.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

Blind date: ‘It was hard to know how to react to his enthusiasm for a Vegas wedding’

Emma, 32, a doctor, meets Julien, 41, an advertising creative

What were you hoping for?
Big love … but I was happy to settle for an evening of exchanging ideas and learning what makes a person tick.

Published: October 18, 2025, 5:00 am

Pushy parents are ‘biggest problem in sports performance’, say psychologists

Unsportsmanlike conduct in grassroots football and on the sidelines at school events is on the rise. How can parents support their child in the right way?

Pushy and shouty parents are the “biggest problem in sports performance”, sports psychologists have said, amid growing concern that pressure and abuse is hampering competitive sport in the UK.

This week parents were banned from attending sports events at a number of south London primary schools due to “concerning behaviours”, including abuse towards officials and children and creating “too much pressure around performance and winning at all costs”.

Published: October 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

The platform exposing exactly how much copyrighted art is used by AI tools

From 007 to Elsa, Vermillio claims it can trace percentage of AI-generated image drawn from pre-existing material

Ask Google’s AI video tool to create a film of a time-travelling doctor who flies around in a blue British phone booth and the result, unsurprisingly, resembles Doctor Who.

And if you ask OpenAI’s technology to do the same, a similar thing happens. What’s wrong with that, you may think?

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:00 am

The amazing world of fungi – in pictures

Dr Tom May, a mycologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens and an expert witness at the Erin Patterson trial, has collaborated with renowned fungi photographer Stephen Axford for Planet Fungi, a new book from CSIRO Publishing full of incredible macro-photography

Published: October 18, 2025, 11:00 pm