The US health secretary’s ‘digital affair’ with Olivia Nuzzi doesn’t need sombre analysis. Take it from this Brit: sometimes laughter is the only option

Literally nothing on this earth takes itself as seriously as American journalism. There are rogue-state dictators it’s more permissible to laugh at than the endlessly hilarious pretensions of newsmen and newswomen in the United States. The crucial difference between the British press and US press is that at least we in the British press know we’re in the gutter. The Americans have always imagined – and so loudly – that they are involved in some kind of higher calling. Guys, I love you and stuff, but get over it, because you’re missing one of the great jokes of the century. Yourselves.

I don’t deny that everything’s bigger in America. Our former health secretary had a knee-trembler up against his office door in the pandemic; their current one apparently wrote felching … poetry, is it … felching poetry? … to a superstar journalist who was worrying about his brainworm, yet the story is being written up like it’s Dante, instead of X-rated Italian brainrot.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

It used to be all boozy lunches and late-night carousing. Now it’s hyperbaric chambers and longevity chat. Andrew Carnie, CEO of the private club, explains how life and trends have changed since the Covid era

Friday night in the north of England. On the ninth floor of the old Granada Studios, a very chi-chi crowd is drinking tequila and eating crisps. Not Walkers out of the bag, mind, but canapes of individual crisps with creme fraiche and generous dollops of caviar. A young woman – leather shorts, chunky boots, neon lime nails, artfully messy bob – winks at me from the other side of the silver tray. “Ooh, caviar. Very posh for Manchester.”

Soho House’s 48th members’ club has caused quite the stir. Thirty years after Nick Jones opened the first club in Soho, London, the first north of England outpost of the empire is raising eyebrows. An exclusive club, in the city that AJP Taylor described as “the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery”. (The home, after all, of the Guardian.) An open-air rooftop pool, in the climate that fostered the textile industry because the rain created the perfect cool, damp conditions for spinning cotton. Will it work?

It’s love at first bite for diners. From cheese puffs to tuna eclairs, chefs are putting some of their best ideas on the snack menu

Elliot’s in east London has many hip credentials: the blond-wood colour scheme, the off-sale natural wine bottles, LCD Soundsystem and David Byrne playing at just the right decibel. The menu also features the right buzzwords, such as “small plates” and “wood grill”.

But first comes “snacks”. There are classics: focaccia, olives, anchovies on toast. But more creative options include potato flatbreads with creme fraiche and trout roe, mangalitsa saltimbocca with quince, and what became (and has stayed) the Hackney restaurant’s signature dish since around 2012, Isle of Mull cheese puffs: plump, gooey croquettes filled with Scottish cheddar and comté, deep-fried until crisp and topped with yet more grated cheddar. Only two other dishes have never left the menu: fried potatoes with aïoli and cheesecake.

Bleary-eyed in pyjamas in a new film, Jacinda Ardern’s pleas for compassion are hard to ignore. But in real crises, the fallibility of politicians can be terrifying

The camera catches Jacinda Ardern in her pyjamas, bleary-eyed with exhaustion. It follows her wiping crumbs off the worktops, breastfeeding, trying to take a phone call while simultaneously retrieving something her curious toddler has picked up off her desk. They are scenes many frazzled, distracted working parents will recognise, except that at the time she was the prime minister of New Zealand and these home movies – shot on her husband’s phone, originally for family consumption – have since been turned into a documentary premiering in British cinemas this December.

Prime Minister, the movie, is the latest step in Ardern’s campaign for politicians to be allowed to reclaim their humanity, which broadly means the public accepting that they are grappling with the same private pressures as the rest of us (and no doubt similarly making a hash of it at times). It was the message of her recent memoir, A Different Kind of Power, and in some ways of her time in office, made only more urgent lately by the avalanche of violent threats and abuse heaped on anyone in public life – as if by getting elected they had become instantly dehumanised.

Our cartoonist on a simple win over Spurs that boosted the Gunners’ title hopes, smug Australians and more

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At Maple Farm, nature is returning in droves: nightingales, grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects. All due to the vision of a group determined to accelerate its recovery

The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders, pointing to the woodland around us. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba, the group’s engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

Unpaid carers were pushed into debt and distress and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted

• UK politics live – latest updates

Repeated failures by Tory ministers and top welfare officials pushed hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers into debt and distress, and led to hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being wasted, a devastating review has concluded.

The independent review of carer’s allowance benefit overpayments identified “systemic issues” at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and said carers could not be blamed for falling foul of unclear and confusing benefit rules.

Official tells Reuters news agency sensitive issues still to be discussed between Zelenskyy and Trump

In other EU related news, a top European court on Tuesday ruled that an EU nation had to recognise a gay marriage recorded in another member state, after a complaint by two Poles married in Germany.

The couple, one of whom also has German nationality, were living there and married in Berlin in 2018, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The spouses in question, as EU citizens, enjoy the freedom to move and reside within the territory of the member states and the right to lead a normal family life when exercising that freedom and upon returning to their member state of origin.

“Sweden’s defence needs to be strengthened against threats such as robots, drones and helicopters. The best way to guarantee peace and freedom is to invest in defence. The orders also contribute to growth, jobs and security of supply. It also improves the possibilities of increasing production capacity in the defence industry.”

PM says party’s leadership should ‘have the courage to launch an investigation’

John McFall is standing down early as Lord Speaker in the House of Lords so that he can care for his wife, Joan, who has was Parkinson’s. According to Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson in their London Playbook briefing for Politico, the main candidates to replace him are Michael Forsyth, a rightwing Scottish secretary in the final two years of the John Major government, and Deborah Bull, a crossbencher and former Royal Opera House creative director. They reports:

Labour isn’t expected to put forward a candidate as McFall’s previous political affiliation means it’s seen as another party’s turn to rule the roost, Noah [Keate] writes in to say. Forsyth has garnered support from some Labour grandees who like his traditional approach and aversion to modernization while Bull has being promoted by some female peers keen for a woman to take charge. One Tory peer described Forsyth as a “political animal” who may struggle to encourage a consensus across the chamber. A list of candidates’ register of interests and election addresses (up to 300 words) will be emailed to all peers on Dec. 1. Watch your inboxes!

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander rejected a rival proposal from Arora Group, saying Heathrow’s own plans were “the most credible and deliverable option”.

The Heathrow proposals involve building a 3,500-metre runway and require a new M25 tunnel and bridges to be built 130 metres west of the existing motorway.

Following a comparative assessment of the remaining proposals for Heathrow expansion, the government’s view is that the Northwest runway scheme brought forward by Heathrow Airport Limited offers the most credible and deliverable option, principally due to the relative maturity of its proposal, the comparative level of confidence in the feasibility and resilience of its surface access plans, and the stronger comfort it provides in relation to the efficient, resilient and sustainable operations of the airport over the long-term.

The HAL scheme is considered comparatively more mature in its approach to road infrastructure. While the HAL scheme requires major works to the M25, assessment indicates that the HWL scheme would also have a considerable impact on the M25.

Health secretary tells MPs the government ‘will not look away as children get unhealthier’

• Business live – latest updates

Sweet-toothed consumers face paying more for their bottled milkshakes and pre-packaged lattes after the government confirmed plans for a tougher sugar tax.

Designed to tackle obesity, the levy currently applies to drinks with a sugar content of 5g for each 100ml. However, after a public consultation this is being cut to 4.5g for each 100ml.

Dutch writer Rutger Bregman says claim that Trump was ‘most openly corrupt president in US history’ was removed

The BBC has been plunged into a new row over its treatment of Donald Trump, after an academic accused it of censoring his remarks about alleged corruption by the US president.

Rutger Bregman, a Dutch author and historian, said the BBC had removed a “key line” from a flagship address he had been invited to give by the corporation.

Irish comedy writer cleared at Westminster magistrates court of harassing Sophia Brooks on social media

The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been cleared of harassing a transgender activist on social media but found guilty of criminal damage of their mobile phone outside a conference in London last year.

The 57-year-old flew from Arizona to appear at Westminster magistrates court in person on Tuesday, where the judgment was delivered.

Oliver Hutchings accused of threatening to disrupt UK shows and campaign against venues that booked Hopkins

A man who objected to comments by Katie Hopkins on gay and transgender people launched a blackmail campaign against venues that had booked her to appear, a jury has heard.

Oliver Hutchings, 31, told venues in Hampshire and Lancashire that he would make sure the media personality and commenter’s shows were disrupted, and would campaign against the theatres to try to shut them down if they did not cancel her appearances, the court heard.

Environmental body says modest investment and changes can help preserve long list of animals, fungi and lichen

Almost 3,000 species ranging from glorious birds to tiny lichen are in peril in Wales because they are clinging on in a handful of locations or even fewer, a groundbreaking report has revealed.

The report from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) highlights that since the millennium, 11 species have already been lost to Cymru, including the turtle dove and belted beauty moth. It warns that 2,955 other terrestrial or freshwater species are at serious risk because they are confined to five locations or fewer.

Firm says Andrew Rennie departs ‘by mutual agreement’ but it is thought he faced tensions with the board

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of Domino’s Pizza Group who suggested the UK may have reached peak pizza as he expanded the chain into fried chicken has been ousted after tensions with its board.

Andrew Rennie is leaving after just two years at the helm and will be replaced on an interim basis by the company’s chief operating officer, Nicola Frampton, while Domino’s searches for a new leader.

It took some oblique wording, but Saudi Arabia made a last-minute decision to sign deal that marks departure for Cop

Dawn was breaking over the Amazonian city of Belém on Saturday morning, but in the windowless conference room it could have been day or night. They had been stuck there for more than 12 hours, dozens of ministers representing 17 groups of countries, from the poorest on the planet to the richest, urged by the Brazilian hosts to accept a settlement cooked up the day before.

Tempers were short, the air thick as the sweaty and exhausted delegates faced up to reality: there would not be a deal here in Brazil. The 30th UN climate conference would end in abject failure.

Former head of British army is suspended from the House of Lords after being filmed breaking rules

• Two peers suspended from House of Lords for breaking lobbying rules

The flowers and hamper that arrived at the Tower of London had been sent by a small energy company based in Sierra Leone. They were a gift to Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British army, who a few months earlier had introduced the company’s executives to the minister for Africa. It was a move they hoped would smooth the way for the fledgling company’s grand plans to build a £500m hydroelectric dam.

With support from the UK government, the company had a better chance of getting the dam built. The dam, they said, would bring much-needed cheap electricity to many people in Sierra Leone. But it could also bring profits to the company, and Dannatt was not only to receive flowers and upmarket produce, he was also given shares.

Ultimatums sent to publications appear to intensify as Nigel Farage’s party rises in polls

“It was Trumpian,” said Mark Mansfield, editor and CEO of Nation.Cymru, a small English-language Welsh news service. “It has perhaps given us a flavour of how a Reform UK government would behave towards the media.”

Mansfield is referring to what he described as an attempt by a figure at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party to “bully” his publication, but he believes a wider lesson might be learned.

As David Cameron receives treatment and backs calls for NHS screening, we look at the disease and its treatment

• More than 100 MPs urge Streeting to approve prostate cancer screening

David Cameron has become the latest high-profile figure to back growing calls for the NHS to start screening men, or at least those at highest risk, for prostate cancer after being treated for it himself.

He joined Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy and prostate cancer charities in saying that recent advances in diagnosing the disease mean that testing can be introduced that is much safer than traditional methods, which can produce both false-positive and false-negative results.

Evidence that the whales and other marine animals are particularly vulnerable to sound is driving calls for quieter vessels

The delicate clicks and whistles of narwhals carry through Tasiujaq, locally known as Eclipse Sound, at the eastern Arctic entrance of the Northwest Passage. A hydrophone in this shipping corridor off Baffin Island, Nunavut, captures their calls as the tusked whales navigate their autumn migration route to northern Baffin Bay.

But as the Nordic Odyssey, a 225-metre ice-class bulk carrier servicing the nearby iron ore mine, approaches, its low engine rumble gives way to a wall of sound created by millions of collapsing bubbles from its propeller. The narwhals’ acoustic signals, evolved for one of Earth’s quietest environments, fall silent.

Fans and historians have spent 60 years debating what the band means – and which member is greatest. Will the returning Anthology project and Sam Mendes’s planned biopics create new arguments?

The early notion of the Beatles as “four lads that shook the world” has been subject to many shifts in emphasis over the decades. They have been valorised, vilified, mythologised, misunderstood and even ignored. The release this month of the new Beatles Anthology – an expansion of the original mid-1990s compilation with CD, vinyl reissues and the documentary series streaming on Disney+ – is testament not just to their enduring appeal but also to how the constant reframing of their story reveals as much about our changing tastes. The 2025 edition arrives as a full-scale revisitation of the original project, bringing with it a remastered, expanded documentary series and a substantial reissue campaign.

What is more likely to reshape the way we see the band, though, is the addition of a brand-new ninth episode to the original TV series, built from recently excavated footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr working together in 1994–95. Far more intimate and informal than the original broadcast, this material captures the three surviving Beatles rehearsing, reflecting and simply spending time as old friends rather than cultural monuments, albeit still with the “kid brother” tensions between Harrison and McCartney. They work on Free As a Bird and Now and Then, jokingly speculate on a stadium reunion tour and generally talk about their history, loss and their unfinished musical ideas. It’s a rare, humanising coda to the well-worn story. With new material like this, and with more than that axiomatic 50 years of distance since the Beatles dissolved in a blizzard of lawsuits and “funny paper”, are we finally approaching a unified theory of everything fab?

From Minecraft chess and coding for kids to retro consoles and Doom on vinyl for grown-ups – hit select and start with these original non-digital presents

Gamers can be a difficult bunch to buy for. Most of them will get their new games digitally from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation’s online shops, so you can’t just wrap up the latest version of Call of Duty and be done with it. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful accessories and fun lifestyle gifts to look out for, and gamers tend to have a lot of other interests that intersect with games in different ways.

So if you have a player in your life, whether they’re young or old(er), here are some ideas chosen by the Guardian’s games writers. And naturally, we’re starting with Lego …

Cliff, who has died aged 81, took every opportunity that he was presented with, and created plenty more himself. It resulted in a career path like no other

• Jimmy Cliff: A life in pictures

When Jimmy Cliff died, reggae and the music world in general lost one of its most accomplished opportunists. The less sympathetic might have called him a chancer, but from the very beginnings there was little he wouldn’t try if he thought it would advance either himself or the music. Over the years I got to know him, both from interviews and sometimes just hanging out, so many of his anecdotes ended with the words: “Well I wasn’t going to say no, was I?” I wasn’t fully joking when I told him it should be his catchphrase.

But that was Jimmy Cliff, a charismatic combination of charm, bravery, humour and an ability to see beyond what was put in front of him. Throughout his career he frequently shifted away from standard reggae industry practice, often expanding the music’s horizons and options.

Peter Ruis discusses the chain’s £800m reboot, bringing ‘radical relevance’ – and that dance-driven Christmas ad

You may think the department store has had its day. Debenhams and Beales have left the high street, House of Fraser has closed almost two-thirds of its stores and Fenwick exited its prime London site.

Peter Ruis, the managing director of John Lewis, has a different view. After closing 16 stores during the pandemic and shedding thousands of jobs as it fought for survival, he says expansion is now “definitely something we are looking at”. The 161-year-old retailer is spending £800m by 2029 on giving its 36 remaining outlets a reboot.

Home perched in Hollywood Hills, constructed for $37,500 and made famous by Julius Shulman photo, listed for $25m

The Stahl house – a paragon of Los Angeles mid-century modern architectural design – is for sale for the first time in the home’s history.

The cantilevered home, perched in the Hollywood Hills, hit the listings market this week. The asking price: $25m.

Exclusive: NHS websites pointed women to factsheet featuring podcast by ‘dangerous’ influencers linked to baby deaths

• Full story: How the FBS is linked to baby deaths around the world

The NHS has been directing pregnant women to a website that connected them to the Free Birth Society, an organisation that has been linked to baby deaths around the world after promoting labour without medical support.

A number of NHS trusts are directing women who are contemplating a “free birth” to a charity website that until Monday referred to FBS podcasts as a source of “empowering stories” that can help British women “preparing for their own birth”.

Still largely viewed as a peaceful philosophy, across much of south-east Asia, the religion has been weaponised to serve nationalist goals

In the summer of 2023, I arrived in Dharamshala, an Indian town celebrated as the home of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. The place hadn’t changed much since my last visit almost two decades ago. The roads were still a patchwork of uneven asphalt and dirt, and Tibetan monks in maroon robes filled the streets. Despite the relentless hum of traffic, Dharamshala had a rare stillness. The hills seemed to absorb the noise. Prayer flags flickered in the breeze, each rustle a reminder of something enduring.

But beneath the surface, the Buddhism practised across Asia has shifted. While still widely followed as a peaceful, nonviolent philosophy, it has been weaponised, in some quarters, in the service of nationalism, and in support of governments embracing a global trend toward majoritarianism and autocracy.

Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson are increasingly espousing Christian ‘values’, and a wealthy US legal group is becoming influential – this could have dire consequences

Earlier this year, not long after Tommy Robinson embraced evangelical Christianity while in prison, the then Conservative MP Danny Kruger spoke in parliament about the need for a restoration of Britain through the “recovery of a Christian politics”. Less than two months later, Kruger joined Reform, and shortly after that, James Orr, a vociferously conservative theologian who has been described as JD Vance’s “English philosopher king”, was appointed as one of Reform’s senior advisers. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, now frequently invokes the need for a return to “Judeo-Christian” values.

The British right is increasingly invoking the Christian tradition: the question is what it hopes to gain from doing so.

Lamorna Ash is the author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever (Bloomsbury Publishing, £22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

There is nothing wrong with questioning the mighty cost of the lockdowns, but we can’t let hardline libertarians rewrite Britain’s pandemic history

That number will stay fixed for ever in public memory: 23,000 people died because Boris Johnson resisted locking the country down in time. As Covid swept in, and with horrific images of Italian temporary morgues in tents, he went on holiday and took no calls. With the NHS bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the virus, he rode his new motorbike, walked his dog and hosted friends at Chevening.

Nothing is surprising about that: he was ejected from Downing Street and later stepped down as an MP largely for partying and lying to parliament about it. Everyone knew he was a self-aggrandising fantasist with a “toxic and chaotic culture” around him. But this is not just about one narcissistic politician. It’s about his entire rightwing coterie of libertarians and their lethally dominant creed in the UK media.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

From public service broadcasting to an independent judiciary, these are the things that we must fight to keep

How can we defend our democracies against those who would destroy them? We talk a lot about strategies for keeping anti-liberal, nationalist populists out of power, but Donald Trump’s daily wielding of a wrecking ball shows that it’s equally important to reinforce your democracy so it can withstand a period of populists in power.

Germany has a concept called wehrhafte Demokratie, often weirdly translated as “militant democracy” but actually meaning a democracy capable of defending itself. Under this motto, some in Germany are proposing to ban Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), now one of the most popular parties in the country. That’s the wrong way to go. It would only reinforce the far-right party’s supporters in their conviction that the democratic state itself is a kind of liberal elitist conspiracy, and impart to the AfD the nimbus of martyrdom. The French experiment of a “republican arc”, in which virtually all the other parties agree only on keeping out Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, is also visibly backfiring. Such a wide range of parties unsurprisingly fails to agree on urgently needed reforms and the National Rally can go on criticising from the sidelines. So it’s worth contemplating the example of the Netherlands, where the party of the inflammatory populist Geert Wilders was allowed into power in a coalition government, failed to deliver, brought that government down by withdrawing from the coalition, and lost the subsequent election (albeit only narrowly) to a liberal party led by the young, dynamic Rob Jetten.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

I thought it would just be big news for me but I had reckoned without the TikTok generation, mums staring at the premixed cocktails and the yoga-mat brigade stalking every aisle

I’m a very staunch fan of the Marks & Spencer crisp combo mix, in every flavour (ready salted is the obvious exception, and the Christmas maple bacon is an acquired taste); the fact that some of the shapes are bad (the wheels) and some are magnificent (the shells) only adds to my admiration. It is random reinforcement, in crisp form. Consequently, when I saw an M&S was opening in Clapham Common, south London, I was pretty excited, but I thought it was just big news for me and maybe one or two other bar-snack connoisseurs.

I had reckoned without the TikTok generation, who have lost their minds over the new biscuits. I’d also overlooked the constituency of fancy people, who favour a shop that sells 17 different varieties of apple, and want to see everything in a fridge, even things that definitely don’t need refrigeration. I hadn’t given enough thought to the people who just like to go up to a wall of premixed cocktails and stare at it, but this turned out to be every single mum from the kids’ primary school, me included, so it was like a reunion. I don’t really associate M&S with health food, but the yoga-mat brigade stalked every aisle in pairs; it looked like Noah’s ark for people with very strong cores. This, my friend’s husband explained, is because middle-class people don’t worry about alcohol, or sugar, they only worry about palm oil and processing.

Maybe. Let’s hope it is not too late for Democrats to win back the working class and Washington

Since the Democrats’ sweeping victories on 4 November, a strange thing has happened among the party factions: a semblance of unity has emerged.

At first, “affordability” became the slogan of rapprochement. Moderates, populists and socialists agreed Democrats must campaign around the cost-of-living crisis and hang the broken economy around Donald Trump’s neck.

While banning the burqa might play with the Sky After Dark audience, it is miles from a broad concern among punters

Nearly 30 years after she first entered politics with a firebrand maiden speech about Asian immigration, Pauline Hanson remains a committed fringe dweller, with narrow political interests and bad instincts.

Suspended from the Senate on Tuesday, her decision to don a burqa in the chamber a day earlier badly disrupted proceedings and drew near universal condemnation. It is only the fifth time since 1901 that a seven-day suspension has been put in place, and the first time since 1979.

The 28-point plan outlined last week by the US would have delivered peace on Putin’s terms. EU leaders must help Kyiv resist the bullying

There was a grim familiarity to the unveiling of Donald Trump’s latest peace proposals for Ukraine last week. As in August, when the US president invited Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies were excluded from discussions that ended up echoing Kremlin talking points. Yet again, Mr Trump publicly scolded Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not being more grateful for his ongoing mediation efforts. And as in the summer, Mr Zelenskyy and blindsided European leaders strove to stay polite while scrambling to limit the damage.

The salvage operation appears to have been relatively successful, following Sunday’s meeting in Geneva between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and a Ukrainian delegation. The 28-point plan reportedly drafted by Mr Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser, Kirill Dmitriev, was in effect a repackaging of Mr Putin’s maximalist demands. A deal premised on the handing over of new territory in the Donbas region to Russia, restrictions on Ukraine’s sovereignty, and drastic limits on the size of its future army, could never be acceptable to Kyiv. Mr Rubio, suggesting a more “refined” framework was now being developed, seemed to at least acknowledge this fundamental difficulty.

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A fragile Cop30 consensus is a win. But only a real bargain between rich and poor nations can weather the climate shocks that are coming

This year’s UN climate talks in Brazil’s Belém ended without a major breakthrough. The text of the final agreement lacked a deal to shift away from fossil fuels, delayed crucial finance and the “mutirão” decision contained no roadmap to halt and reverse deforestation. But the multilateral system at Cop30 held together at a point when its collapse felt close. This ought to be a warning: next year’s conference of the parties must strike a better bargain between the rich and poor world.

Developing countries are far from united on some issues. Over rare earth minerals China sees any move as targeting its dominance, while Africa sees it as essential for governance. Elsewhere petrostates did not support Colombia’s call for a fossil fuel phase-out. Yet the global south broadly coheres around a simple principle: its nations must be equipped to survive a climate emergency they did not create. That means cash to build flood defences, make agricultural systems resilient, protect coastlines and rebuild after disasters strike. They also demand front-loaded finance to transition to clean, green economic growth.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Countries that contributed least to historical emissions don’t seek charity but fairness, writes Nirbhay Rana. Plus, a letter by John Green

As a researcher working on sustainability and labour-intensive sectors such as fashion and textiles, I see every day how climate impacts are intensifying in regions that contributed least to historical emissions (Cop30’s watered-down agreements will do little for an ecosystem at tipping point, 22 November). In India, rising heat, unpredictable rainfall and water scarcity already disrupt cotton cultivation, small weaving clusters and garment production hubs. These communities are expected to adapt and decarbonise, yet they receive almost none of the meaningful support that would make such a transition viable.

The gap between what developing nations require and what is currently offered is not only a financial gap, it is also a structural gap created by unequal development. Treating climate finance as a loan-driven obligation rather than a shared responsibility undermines the very idea of a just transition. Debt cannot be the pathway to climate resilience for the global south.

The introduction of an intermediary court that has not been properly piloted is not the answer when other inefficiencies plaguing the system could be tackled first, says Barbara Mills of the Bar Council

Your report (MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul, 20 November) confirms that next month the government will respond to the first part of the Leveson review into criminal courts, which includes the potential curtailing of the right to jury trial for certain offences through the introduction of a new intermediary court – the crown court bench division (CCBD).

The Bar Council welcomes many of the recommendations in Brian Leveson’s report, but we regard the introduction of an intermediary court as a time-consuming measure that requires legislative change and hinges on increasing court resources that could be better diverted to the existing estate.

Airlines benefit from a tax system that helps them keep fares low, writes Anna Hughes

Your article (Why are flights in the UK so often cheaper than taking the train?, 19 November) states that “it can still come as a surprise when getting on a plane looks like the money-saving choice compared with taking the train”. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone, given that we’ve all seen eye-watering prices for rail travel and are bombarded with adverts for £20 flights to Nice. We’ve all read the stories of people who flew from one UK city to another via Mallorca or some such location because it was cheaper than getting the train.

It does come as a surprise, though, that there’s no tax on aviation fuel. I’m the director of the charity Flight Free UK and I speak to a huge number of people about air travel. They are almost always shocked to discover that there’s no tax on the fuel.

Bob Forster doesn’t think an anaesthetist’s wage is unreasonable. Plus a letter from Martin Ryle

Your correspondent (Letters, 19 November) recounts her career as a doctor in the NHS where, despite rising to senior consultant, her final year’s salary before tax was just over £100,000, a figure she defines as “a bit pathetic”. To most Guardian readers, that figure is a small fortune. By way of comparison, after 37 years as a primary school teacher, including 24 years as a head, my final salary was £50,000, a figure that I found perfectly acceptable as reward for a challenging and immensely satisfying role.
Bob Forster
Shipton under Wychwood, Oxfordshire

• Presumably the retired consultant anaesthetist Elizabeth Taylor was aware that many of those who worked with her on the wards would have been expected to get by on less than half that amount? I wonder what word she would use to describe their pay?
Martin Ryle
Lewes, East Sussex

Research is on ‘an upward curve’ and the next five years could be vital in trying to limit cruciate ruptures

Players who compete in the top two levels of German women’s football are four times more likely to rupture their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) than their male counterparts, according to the German Football Association (DFB).

The governing body has funded a central injury and illness registry in women’s football for three years. So far in the Frauen Bundesliga, Germany’s top flight, there have been a reported seven ACL injuries 10 games into the current campaign. In the men’s Bundesliga, meanwhile, there have been three such injuries.

• ‘You’ve got to stay in it and make most of middle session’

• Siddle and Law back tourists’ decision to skip Canberra

As they lick their wounds after a first-Test defeat in which they lost five wickets for 12 runs in their first innings and four for 11 in their second, England have been warned to prepare for conditions where “wickets fall in clumps” when the Ashes resume in Brisbane next week.

David Sundarski, curator at the Gabba, is preparing for a second day-night game in quick succession after the Sheffield Shield match between Queensland and Victoria, which ended on Monday with the home side winning by seven wickets inside three days.

• Gueye addressed players following 1-0 win at Old Trafford

• De Ligt accuses United of lacking urgency in Monday loss

Idrissa Gueye received a round of applause from the Everton squad after apologising for his extraordinary red card in Monday’s victory at Manchester United.

The midfielder became the first Premier League player to be dismissed for striking a teammate in 17 years when slapping Michael Keane at Old Trafford. Everton performed heroically with 10 men for 85 minutes, stoppage time included, to hand David Moyes his first win at Old Trafford as a visiting manager in 18 attempts and deliver only the club’s second victory at United in 33 years.

• Coach insists more opportunities needed for team

• Executive knocks back idea England will not be ready

England’s rugby league team will go into next year’s World Cup without playing a fixture for almost an entire year after it was confirmed there was no room in the 2026 Super League schedule to give the national team a mid-season international break.

Following their whitewash defeat to Australia in the Ashes earlier this month, England coach Shaun Wane – whose own position is under review – insisted that there needed to be more opportunities and priority given to the national team if they are to bridge the gap to the all-conquering Kangaroos.

• Defensive end died this month at age of 24

• Player’s car reached speeds of more than 145 mph

Body and dash cam footage from law enforcement officials have charted the events leading up to the death of Dallas Cowboys player Marshawn Kneeland earlier this month.

The 24-year-old was found dead in the early morning hours of 6 November hours after being pursued by officers who had attempted a traffic stop in suburban Dallas. Police say Kneeland took his own life.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Players are being worn down by a cluttered calendar and lack of unity over their welfare from governing bodies

Elina Svitolina simply could not go on. Her hopeful start to the 2025 season had given way to despair as the mental and emotional strain of constant competition, travelling and stress left its mark. The 31-year-old understood that competing would only make things worse and, in September, Svitolina decided to prematurely end her season, citing burnout.

The world No 14 is not alone in feeling suffocated by her sport. This has been another year filled with incredible performances and gripping matches, but the past 11 months have also been defined by the physical and mental ailments endured by many of the sport’s stars.

We turn the dial towards whimsy and revisit some of the moments that made the autumn internationals irresistible

South Africa and Ireland played out a slugfest for the ages and the discourse has been dominated by yellow cards and flying shoulders to the head. England held off a spirited Argentina to claim their 11th consecutive Test win and it seems all anyone can talk about is some alleged after-the-whistle shoving. Wales and New Zealand traded 11 tries in a ding-dong encounter and yet the narrative is weighed down by caveats concerning fading empires.

What, exactly, is the point of Test rugby? Beyond winning World Cups and regional crowns, does this chaotic sport hold any value? A bit of spice elevates almost every dish, sure, but it has felt as if this autumn’s brilliant rugby fare has been smothered in a sauce with a needlessly high Scoville count.

Twenty years after the league introduced its controversial policy, many players see it as helping them develop self-expression

Lonzo Ball’s froze in confusion. The question – “What do you think about the NBA dress code?” – hung in the air for a second before he cracked a sheepish grin.

“There’s a dress code?” he said, smiling.

Exclusive: High-profile lawyers suggest ex-City minister Tulip Siddiq has not enjoyed basic rights during her trial in absentia

The trial in Bangladesh of the former UK City minister Tulip Siddiq has been “contrived and unfair”, leading lawyers including a former Conservative justice secretary have told Bangladesh’s ambassador before Thursday’s verdict.

Siddiq, who resigned from the UK government in January, is due to receive her verdict and sentence in absentia, with the prosecution seeking a maximum life sentence term.

A year since deal agreed, UN calls for investigation into possible violations of international law by all parties

At least 127 civilians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire was declared nearly a year ago, the UN has said as it called for an impartial investigation into the strikes.

“We continue to witness increasing attacks by the Israeli military, resulting in the killing of civilians and destruction of civilian objects in Lebanon, coupled with alarming threats of a wider, intensified offensive,” said Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, at a Geneva press briefing.

Scheme includes plan to move the M25 and could mean up to 760 more planes in the skies around London every day

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Ministers have backed a plan for a third runway at Heathrow to be in operation by 2035 as they opted for the longer, costlier runway drawn up by the airport’s owners as the basis for its expansion.

The £33bn scheme for a 2.2-mile (3.5km) north-western runway crossing the M25 motorway was picked in preference as the “most credible and deliverable option”, ahead of a rival plan submitted by the Arora Group.

CBP press release calls seized drugs and lettuce ‘a salad unfit for this year’s Thanksgiving table’

Officials at Texas’s border with Mexico seized roughly $10.3m worth of methamphetamine hidden in a lettuce shipment on Friday, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

A press release from CBP officials called the seized drugs and lettuce “a salad unfit for this year’s Thanksgiving table”, adding that the 500 packages of meth in question weighed about 1,153lbs.

Trump plans to speak directly with Nicolás Maduro, Axios reports, even though the US designated the Venezuelan president as the head of a foreign terrorist organization

My colleagues, Amy Sedghi and Jakup Krupa, have been covering the latest developments out of Europe.

They note that a short while ago, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on social media that his delegation returned from Geneva yesterday, and have updated the “framework” of the 28-point peace. “Communication with the American side continues, and I am grateful for all of America’s efforts and personally for President Trump’s efforts,” Zelenskyy wrote.

Scarborough and Bognor Regis among places where water is so polluted it is not recommended for swimming

One in seven (13%) of England’s bathing waters are rated as polluted, and one in 14 so polluted they are not recommended for swimming.

Famous beaches including Bognor Regis, Scarborough’s South Bay and Littlehaven Beach in South Shields were all rated “poor” in the latest classifications from the Environment Agency, which means they are not recommended for swimming.

Trump puts US in unflattering company as lack of representative reveals disdain for climate progress

More than two decades ago, the US railed against the “axis of evil”. Now, after international climate talks spluttered to a meagre conclusion, the US finds itself grouped with unflattering company – an “axis of obstruction” that has stymied progress on the climate crisis.

Donald Trump’s administration opted to not send anyone to the UN climate summit in Brazil that culminated over the weekend – a first for the US in 30 years of these annual gatherings and another representation of the president’s disdain for the climate crisis, which he has called a “hoax” and a “con job.”

Campaigners say closure of loophole making it cheaper to export rather than recycle will boost circular economy

The UK could end its reliance on exporting plastic waste by 2030 to support the creation of 5,400 new jobs and take responsibility for the environmental impact of its waste, according to research.

The report said up to 15 new recycling facilities could be built by the end of the decade, attracting more than £800m of private investment. The increase in capacity would help generate almost £900m of economic value every year, providing at least £100m in new tax revenues annually.

As Mumbai sees increased energy demand from new datacenters, particularly from Amazon, the filthiest neighbourhood in one of India’s largest cities must keep its major coal plants

Each day, Kiran Kasbe drives a rickshaw taxi through his home neighbourhood of Mahul on Mumbai’s eastern seafront, down streets lined with stalls selling tomatoes, bottle gourds and aubergines–and, frequently, through thick smog.

Earlier this year, doctors found three tumours in his 54-year-old mother’s brain. It’s not clear exactly what caused her cancer. But people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop the illness, studies show, and the residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres down the road from one.

Mid and East Antrim council to start process of removing Carrickfergus street’s association with disgraced royal

A Northern Ireland council has agreed to rename a street called Prince Andrew Way after the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Mid and East Antrim council decided on Monday to start the “long overdue” process of removing the street’s association with the disgraced royal. It was named Prince Andrew Way in 1986 to mark his wedding to Sarah Ferguson but there were calls to rename it after the stripping of Mountbatten-Windsor’s royal titles last month.

Study suggests human brain development has four pivotal ‘turning points’ at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83

Scientists have identified five major “epochs” of human brain development in one of the most comprehensive studies to date of how neural wiring changes from infancy to old age.

The study, based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years.

Products sold by retailers including John Lewis and Very among those cheaper outside of November discount period

Shoppers holding out for a Black Friday bargain on 28 November may not get the best prices, according to Which? research that found none of the offers on the day were at their lowest level over a 12-month stretch.

The consumer group compared prices for 175 home, tech and health appliances across eight retailers, ranging from Amazon to John Lewis. Prices were tracked over a full year, from May 2024 to May 2025, including the 2024 Black Friday period.

Caroline Daniel tells MPs leaked memo by Michael Prescott that sparked resignations at BBC did not provide full picture

Claims of “serious and systemic problems” in the BBC’s coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans issues – which led to the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie – have been disputed by a former adviser to the corporation.

Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, also resigned after the allegations by Michael Prescott, a PR executive and former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee (EGSC).

Couple who married in Germany had their right to a ‘normal family life’ impeded, court of justice finds

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The EU’s highest court has ruled that same-sex marriages must be respected throughout the bloc and rebuked Poland for refusing to recognise a marriage between two of its citizens that took place in Germany.

The court said on Tuesday that Poland had been wrong in not recognising the marriage of the couple when they moved back to Poland, on the grounds that Polish law does not allow marriage between people of the same sex.

The infection is responsible for 800,000 newborn deaths each year, but clinics in eight countries are working together to find new treatments

Just a few minutes from the turquoise waters of Kenya’s Kilifi Creek, a world away from the tourists enjoying their time on the estuary, a team of clinicians, technicians and microbiologists is helping to shape a new era of care for newborns.

NeoSep1 is a pioneering clinical trial that aims to identify effective and safe antibiotic combinations to treat sepsis in newborns. One of the centres leading the second phase of this study is the Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kilifi.

The strikes come a day after a suicide attack on a security compound in Pakistan’s Peshawar city

Pakistan strikes on neighbouring Afghanistan have killed 10 people – among them nine children – a Taliban government spokesperson has said, a day after a suicide attack on a security compound in Pakistan’s Peshawar city.

“The Pakistani invading forces bombed the house of a local civilian resident ... As a result, nine children (five boys and four girls) and one woman were martyred” in Khost province, Zabihullah Mujahid said on X.

Designation of groups from Italy, Germany and Greece labelled ‘ridiculous’ as experts say no active threat posed

Experts have told the Guardian the same anti-fascist groups the US state department recently named as foreign terrorist organizations and accused of “conspiring to undermine foundations of western civilization” barely qualify as groups, let alone terrorist organizations, and pose no active threat to Americans.

“The whole thing is a bit ridiculous,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks extremist movements worldwide, “because the groups designated by the administration barely exist and certainly aren’t terrorists.”

Regulator assessing whether firm breached UK disclosure rules for listed companies, but is yet to launch formal investigation

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The City watchdog has contacted WH Smith to find out more about its accounting error that wiped almost £600m off the company’s stock market value overnight and led to the departure of its chief executive.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it had started making inquiries to assess whether the company had breached UK disclosure rules for listed companies, but was yet to launch a formal investigation.

Travel firm says most popular package destinations are Majorca, Tenerife, Costa Blanca, Dalaman and Lanzarote

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EasyJet has reported a rise in annual profits as strong demand for its package holidays to destinations including Tenerife and Lanzarote offset more difficult trading for its airline.

Europe’s second-biggest budget airline upgraded its outlook for its holidays division, where it raised prices by an average of 5% to £698 for each break.

New guidance from UK regulator aims to combat misogynist abuse and ‘revenge porn’

Social media platforms are being urged to limit internet “pile-ons” under new guidelines to protect women and girls online.

The guidance from Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, to combat misogynist abuse, coercive control and the sharing of intimate images without consent comes into force on Tuesday and includes recommendations to prevent women being harried online.

Senior UK police officer says AI is accelerating violence against women and girls and that technology companies are complicit

One in four people think there is nothing wrong with creating and sharing sexual deepfakes, or they feel neutral about it, even when the person depicted has not consented, according to a police-commissioned survey.

The findings prompted a senior police officer to warn that the use of AI is accelerating an epidemic in violence against women and girls (VAWG), and that technology companies are complicit in this abuse.

A RIBA report says “stark displays of sexism” are driving women from the profession. If we don’t fight this systemic misogyny, we won’t just lose dazzling designs – we’ll have a world only fit for 6ft tall policemen

If one were to think “Brazilian 20th-century modernist genius”, one might alight on Oscar Niemeyer, but see also the Italian émigré Lina Bo Bardi, who developed an Italian-style modernism with a Brazilian accent in her adopted homeland. Her Teatro Oficina, in São Paulo, was named by this paper as the best theatre in the world.

Five hundred miles away is one of my favourite residential buildings, A la Ronde; an eccentric 16-sided home in Exmouth, Devon. It was designed in 1796 by Jane and Mary Parminter (two “spinster” cousins, in the words of the National Trust) and relative John Lowder. The cousins, who were not professionals, had been inspired by their Grand Tour of Europe (an unusual undertaking for women at the time) and, in particular, the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. The critic Lucinda Lambton described the cottage orné with Byzantine inflection as embodying “a magical strangeness that one might dream of only as a child”.

Stephen Poliakoff’s 1991 film Close My Eyes, about incestuous siblings, echoes as the actors return in David Eldridge’s End, playing a couple facing a cancer diagnosis

First there was Beginning. Then Middle. And now David Eldridge’s superlative trilogy about different couples at successive stages has come to a close with End. All three can be appreciated individually but the final play, which opened last week at the National Theatre in London, poignantly overlaps with its predecessors. If you’ve seen the other two, you can’t help but draw connections between them as much as you may find familiarities with your own relationships. Before too long, an enterprising theatre should stage all three plays together.

Beginning charted the drunken burgeoning of romance between a pair at a house party who are on each side of 40. Middle is about a marriage in crisis, with a young child also in the equation. Tenderly directed by Rachel O’Riordan, End finds Alfie and Julie squaring up to his cancer diagnosis after spending decades together. But the casting of the new play gives it an extra resonance as it reunites Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves more than 30 years after they starred together in Stephen Poliakoff’s Close My Eyes. I found the memory of that 1991 film complements the play enormously.

The mightily stressful and incredibly close-to-the-bone BBC show traces the demise of four ancient worlds – and it’s wildly prescient stuff. Will we never learn?

Rome, 24 August, AD410. The empire that’s dominated Europe for five centuries is on the brink of collapse, its capital at the mercy of a barbarian leader. What do the people do? They do as they’ve always done. The rich scramble to hide their wealth. The poor run for their lives. The fateful decisions of a tiny number of power-obsessed men bring the mightiest civilisation on Earth to its knees. Sounds familiar? And yet. No one saw it coming … OK, apart from us, the hollow-eyed cynics of the future, watching the BBC’s latest iteration of a landmark series from the discomfort of our own civilisation’s real-time plummet.

The first, less-close-to-the-bone Civilisation aired in AD1969. An equally un-self-aware era when it was totally fine for a man in trilby and tie (Kenneth Clark) to chart western culture’s triumph over the barbarians. (Some may say: plus ça change.) Next, in 2018, came its well-intentioned successor fronted by Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga. Which, like a weak emperor, was trying to be everything to everyone and thus, not unlike ancient Rome’s Honorius, suffered mixed reviews and plunging ratings. Now the sumptuous threequel strides into the arena, all fire, war, disease, disaster and slick Netflix-era dramatic re-enactments. It also comes, somewhat aptly, at a time of deep existential crisis within the BBC itself. Which in less ancient times was the instrument of another empire that fell …

In this hypnotic, meditative film, a family’s breakdown sets a 12-year-old girl’s coming-of-age in motion as she constructs various ploys to reverse her parents’ separation

During a science class, 12-year-old Renko Urushiba (Tomoko Tabata) is confronted by her classmates for befriending Tachibana (Nagiko Tono), a girl from Tokyo who is shunned for having divorced parents. Refusing to give up her friendship, Renko hurls a laboratory burner on to her desk, setting it ablaze and throwing the class into chaos. Unbeknown to most of her friends, Renko’s parents are separated, too.

Equal parts perceptive and mischievous, little Renko is the protagonist of 1993’s Moving, the acclaimed 10th feature by the Japanese auteur Shinji Sōmai. Attuned to the sensibilities of childhood, Moving delicately traces the uncertainties that line the thorny path towards adolescence. With Sōmai’s signature long takes and elaborate camera movements, the film tries to keep up with Renko’s hurried footsteps as she dashes between her discordant parents.

The actor is a slightly distracting narrator in this documentary about a local ranger’s efforts to protect a group of rhinos from poachers – and from killing each other

Here is a rare wildlife success story. The world’s black rhino population has plummeted to just over 6,000 as rhinos are pushed to the brink of extinction by habitat loss and poaching. But conservation efforts have resulted in a rhino comeback in Kenya, where numbers are growing in fenced-off sanctuaries known as conservancies that employ local people and keep poachers out.

Tom Hardy provides a slightly distracting narration to this documentary, channelling David Attenborough with a dash of 19th-century aristo-explorer. The film opens with the fact that in the past three years, 1,900 rhinos have been poached across Africa, but not a single one in Kenya. In the Borana Conservancy we meet charismatic head ranger Ramson Kiloku, a man who knows every single rhino on his patch by its footprint and the nicks on its ears.

While we don’t necessarily need another film version of Bram Stoker’s story, Besson’s has ambition and panache, and Caleb Landry Jones and Christoph Waltz are perfectly cast

Perhaps there is no great enthusiasm out there for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the French maestro of glossiness and bloat. And yet it has to be said: his lavishly upholstered vampire romance has ambition and panache – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to it to Robert Eggers’s recent, solemnly classy version of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, including one shot that appears to show a land border between France and Romania.

Christoph Waltz plays a witty yet careworn vampire-hunting priest – I can’t believe he hasn’t played this role before – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 for the French Revolution centenary celebrations. So does the evil Count Dracula, played by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones with a mangled central European accent reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Gru from the Despicable Me comedies. This is a part that he too was born to take on.

One of the greatest stars of Jamaican reggae known for his 1969 hit Many Rivers to Cross and the film The Harder They Come

The singer and songwriter Jimmy Cliff, who has died aged 81, was one of Jamaica’s most celebrated performers. An itinerant ambassador who introduced the music and culture of his island to audiences across the world at a time when reggae was largely unknown, he was a pioneer with a distinctive high tenor voice whose themes of civil and human rights resonated with many.

The stirring optimism of his orchestrated Wonderful World, Beautiful People spent 13 weeks in the British singles charts in 1969, peaking at No 6, and his caustic Vietnam, in the same year, was a favourite of Bob Dylan’s that inspired Paul Simon to later record Mother and Child Reunion in Jamaica with the same backing band, after Dylan made him aware of it.

Depot, Cardiff
Twenty-five years on from their first UK tour, the Swedish band are at their cartoonish, snarling best, eager to prove themselves rather than wallow in nostalgia

‘I’m powering clothes, that’s how electric I am,” Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist quips, the trim on his LED-encrusted suit glowing as he climbs into the crowd. It’s funny, but on this evidence, it’s not really a joke. As an exhilarating Tick Tick Boom crashes back into the room, it’s easy to believe that the Hives could prop up the National Grid.

Twenty-five years on from their first UK tour, the Swedish punk’n’rollers are full of piss and vinegar, reinvigorated after breaking a decade-plus recording hiatus with two well-received albums in three years, all while playing some of the biggest shows of their career, from stadium support slots with Arctic Monkeys to an upcoming night at London’s Alexandra Palace.

The sportsman pretends to be a psychologist in a new show which sees him square up to his reality show pal. Plus, refugees share moving stories of hope

“This show is pseudopsychologist Joe,” announces Celebrity Traitors star Joe Marler as he introduces this weekly analysis of a different “client” (famous guest). “Pseudo meaning fake.” The first episode is a delight of an interview – with his “hundy P” Nick Mohammed. Be warned, though, it’s very much a video rather than audio experience. There are around six minutes of the show that rely on visual gags that don’t work for listeners. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
Noah Sebastian’s vocals switch deftly from croon to scream to whisper, but the genre-hopping US metalcore band lack chemistry on the big stage

Melodic metalcore band Bad Omens are pulling out all the stops for their first UK arena headline tour. In the first five minutes, we’ve experienced huge riffs, pillars of fire and supernatural horror-inspired visuals. Formed in 2015, the US band found mainstream success in 2022 with their third album The Death of Peace of Mind, which embraced the kind of hooky pop songwriting and complex storytelling that made the band irresistible on TikTok. Although their fourth studio album is yet to be released, this tour represents their graduation to the same league as genre titans Bring Me the Horizon, who they supported last year. Opener Specter is enough to justify this step up: an anthemic recent single as atmospheric as the dry ice crawling around frontman Noah Sebastian.

Although tonight’s set list is rooted in metal, it showcases the band’s ambitions towards other genres, incorporating elements of industrial, electronica and drum’n’bass. This fluid approach is anchored by Sebastian’s supremely adaptable vocals, which switch from croon to scream to whisper, even deftly mimicking the flow of metal princess Poppy during their collaborative single VAN. Dying to Love is pleasingly gothic, Nowhere to Go is relatively perky pop punk, and Impose finds commonality between breakbeats and double-kick metal drums. Drummer Nick Folio deserves a particular mention for balancing visceral crunch with expansive resonance. The band’s willingness to lean into zeitgeisty pop sounds is key to their mainstream appeal: The Death of Peace of Mind is reminiscent of the gloomy R&B of the Weeknd, by way of Bring Me the Horizon – all falsetto and moody beats with heavy metal drops.

In the fourth volume of the occult Morning Star cycle, a Faustian pact haunts a misanthropic artist who finds miraculous success

Karl Ove Knausgård’s Morning Star cycle may turn out to be even larger in scope than his six-volume autofictional bestseller, My Struggle. Four books deep, this gargantuan work of supernatural existentialism is an unsettling account of the occult phenomena that attend the appearance in the sky of a bright new star. Mysteries from the first three volumes include: who killed the musicians in the forest? What’s going on with the local wildlife? Why does no one seem to be dying any more? By the end of The School of Night, the most burning question may sound comparatively mundane: who is Kristian Hadeland?

Scattered references appeared in the saga’s first 2,000 pages. Kristian Hadeland was the 67-year-old man buried without mourners by doubting priest Kathrine Reinhardsen in The Morning Star (2021). In The Third Realm (2024), he was the sinister chap hitching a lift with Kathrine’s husband after the unloved man she buried is supposed to have died.

Genius and arrogance play leading roles in a new biography of the man who helped uncover the structure of DNA

Most people could tell you that Francis Crick, together with James Watson, discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and shaped our understanding of how genes work. Fewer know that Crick also played a key role in modern neuroscience and inspired our continuing efforts to understand the biological basis of consciousness.

Crick once said the two questions that interested him most were “the borderline between the living and the non-living, and the workings of the brain”, questions that were usually discussed in religious or mystical terms but that he believed could be answered by science. In his new biography of the Nobel prize-winning scientist, Matthew Cobb, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, does an admirable job of capturing the rare thinker who not only set himself such ambitious goals but made remarkable progress in achieving them, radically remaking two scientific disciplines in the process.

The moon becomes the witty image of an isolated and contemptuously neglected elderly relation

Missing You

The first scholarly biography in more than 100 years of the man who immortalised the Tudor court does not disappoint

Much of what we know, or think we know, about the court of Henry VIII comes directly from the paintings of Hans Holbein. There’s the famous portrait of the king himself – puffy, phallic and cruel, looking more like a murderer than a monarch. But there is also ascetic Thomas More, hiding his cruel streak behind fine bones, and sly yet thuggish Thomas Cromwell, with those shifty eyes and the beginnings of a double chin. “Hans the Painter” did the wives too – an appropriately sketchy drawing of Anne Boleyn, a saintly portrait of Jane Seymour who died after giving birth to Henry’s heir, and a pin-up version of Anne of Cleves.

It was this last portrait that caused an international incident in 1539 when Holbein was sent by Henry to the Low Countries to check whether Anne was pretty enough to be his next wife. Based on Holbein’s portrait, Henry committed to the marriage in absentia, only to be horrified when the actual Anne arrived on the Kentish coast, looking “nothing so fair as she hath been reported”. The union lasted six months.

The use of AI in the surprise game-of-the-year contender has sparked a heated cultural and ethical debate, and raised existential questions for artists, writers and voice actors

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Arc Raiders is, by all accounts, a late game-of-the-year contender. Dropped into a multiplayer world overrun with hostile drones and military robots, every human player is at the mercy of the machines – and each other. Can you trust the other raider you’ve spotted on your way back to humanity’s safe haven underground, or will they shoot you and take everything you’ve just scavenged? Perhaps surprisingly, humanity is (mostly) choosing to band together, according to most people I’ve talked to about this game.

In a review for Gamespot, Mark Delaney paints a beguiling picture of Arc Raiders’s potential for generating war stories, and highlights its surprisingly hopeful tone as the thing that elevates it above similar multiplayer extraction shooters: “We can all kill each other in Arc Raiders. The fact that most of us are choosing instead to lend a helping hand, if not a sign that humanity will be all right in the real world, at the very least makes for one of the best multiplayer games I’ve ever played.”

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the markets in Japan and the US. But in Europe, a technologically superior rival was making it look like an ancient relic

There’s an old maxim that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as it is anywhere else. Nowadays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you were brought up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this chunky contraption essentially was the only game in town – the company had Mario after all, and its vice-like hold on third-party developers created a monopoly for major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers ruled the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior rival.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the autumn of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based around the famed Z80 CPU (used in home computers such as the Spectrum, Amstrad and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it boasted 8kb of RAM, a 64-colour palette and the ability to generate 32 sprites on screen at one time – making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

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

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

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

Guitar Hero’s controllers let anyone become a star in their own living room – and made the bands featured in the game household names again

It is 20 years since Guitar Hero was launched in North America, and with it, the tools for the everyday gamer to become a rock star. Not literally of course, but try telling that to someone who has nailed Free Bird’s four-minute guitar solo in front of a packed living-room audience.

Developed by Harmonix, published by RedOctane and inspired by Konami’s GuitarFreaks, Guitar Hero gave players a guitar-shaped controller with which to match coloured notes scrolling down the screen in time with a song. Each riff or sequence corresponded to specific notes, creating the feel of a genuine performance.

Polka theatre, London
This spellbinding adaptation uses a bulging dramatic toolbox of clever effects and manages to be both epic and intimate

Some children’s books – simple stories from familiar worlds – transfer to the stage without much creative heavy lifting. Philip Pullman’s fairytale of volcano scaling, talking elephants and “The Greatest Firework Show in the Galaxy” isn’t one of them. But with buckets of imagination and a sterling cast, Lee Lyford’s new production for six-to-12-year-olds is both epic and spellbindingly intimate. My seven-year-old guest, Artie, isn’t familiar with the book but is immediately enthralled and, at times, so far on the edge of his seat I fear he’ll collide with the woman in front.

Lila dreams of becoming a firework-maker like her dad; he isn’t so keen. So when he’s tricked into revealing the final secret to his craft – winning Royal Sulphur from a fire fiend atop a volcano – Lila’s off like a rocket, via jungles and pirates. Her friend Chulak, learning more about the dangers in store, goes in search of protective water with the king’s vociferous white elephant, Hamlet.

Aardman studios to put props, sets and storyboards on show for its 50th anniversary event at the Young V&A

Aardman studios is known around the world for its seamlessly animated stop-motion train chases, hacked “smart gnomes”, tea-consuming heroes and villainous penguins.

Now fans will get a behind-the-scenes look at the studio’s best-known projects and see how they went from rough ideas sketched out on a kitchen table to Oscar-winning films in a major exhibition at the Young V&A in east London.

In three thrilling works by Caravaggio, the same boy’s face crops up. As one – the astonishing Victorious Cupid – arrives in Britain, we ask: who was this anarchic model and muse?

The boy howls as his head is held down, a huge thumb pressing into his cheek as his father’s mighty hand holds him by the neck. This is The Sacrifice of Isaac and I am looking at it in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, feeling distressed by how Caravaggio has so chillingly rendered the face of this suffering child from the biblical tale. It looks as if Abraham, who has been told by God to kill his son, could break his neck with just one twist. Yet Abraham’s preferred method is with the silvery grey knife he holds in his other hand, ready to slit Isaac’s throat. One thing’s for certain – whoever posed as Isaac for this astonishing work was a great actor. There is not just dread, shock and pleading in his darkened eyes but also grief that a guardian could betray him so utterly.

Standing in front of the painting, I know this is a real face, an accurate record of a young model, because the same boy – recognisable by his tousled hair and almost black eyes – appears in two other paintings by Caravaggio. In each, that richly expressive face steals the show. In John the Baptist, he looks mischievously out of the shadows while cuddling a ram. In Victorious Cupid, he grins with a hardness learned on Rome’s streets, his black feathery wings demonic, a naked kid running riot in a well-to-do house.

Resin fruit peel, bronze bin bags and marble loo rolls are among the items of detritus being immortalised by artists – and fetching a high price

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On the second floor of Hany Armanious’s exhibition at Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne, a curl of tangerine peel lies on a shelf, its yellowing, pithy insides facing upwards. It looks as though it should be cleaned up, but it won’t be. The rind is not rubbish discarded by a careless visitor: it’s a perfect resin cast made by Armanious.

Placed carefully around the gallery are resin recreations of other items more commonly seen in bins: a group of melted candles, blobs of Blu-Tack, crumbly chunks of polystyrene. These might seem unlikely subjects for an exhibition, but Armanious is one of several artists who have turned their eye to trash in recent years. Gavin Turk, Ai Weiwei, Susan Collis and Glen Hayward, among others, all go to similarly painstaking – and often expensive – lengths to recreate items that most people would not look twice at. Trompe l’œil sculptures of rubbish have been exhibited in museums around the world and fetched high prices at galleries and auctions. In October, a pile of six garbage bags cast in bronze by Turk sold for £82,550 (roughly AU$167,000) at Sotheby’s in London.

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The Nature inFocus photography competition 2025 announced its winners at the Nature inFocus festival hosted at Jayamahal Palace in Bengaluru, India.

Close to 16,000 images were submitted by more than 1,250 photographers from more than 38 countries.

In Initiative, a group of young people in the early 2000s finds themselves via the role-playing game, the latest example of its undying popularity

It sounds like a big ask, the idea of presenting an audience with a five-hour play. (Or even a four-and-a-half-hour play with several intermissions.) Yet Initiative, a new off-Broadway coming-of-age epic of sorts, flies right by, as emotionally immersive as the Dungeons & Dragons games that enrapture most of its seven teenage characters. Playwright Else Went doesn’t seem worried about the show’s length. “It was very much part of the intent,” they said. (Went is non-binary and uses they/she pronouns.) “When you sit in the theater for long enough – without feeling like the thing that you’re watching is failing you – there’s a certain point that you cross as an audience member, where you enter a new type of commitment. And it is in that state that new things can happen, dramatically.”

Initiative certainly does new things with material that could have been familiar. It arrives, after a lengthy workshop period, at a time when Dungeons & Dragons seems resurgent in visibility, thanks in part to the Netflix smash-hit Stranger Things, which uses D&D players (and game-derived terminology) in its own ‘80s-set fantasy-adventure-horror story. (There’s even a Stranger Things prequel play on Broadway.) Initiative defies some of the cultural cliches about the game, starting with its setting; rather than a self-consciously retro ‘80s, it takes place during the early years of the millennium, following its characters between 2000 and 2004. More subtly but equally bold, the show doesn’t begin with a tight-knit nerd crew role-playing together before life pulls them in separate directions, a standard narrative for these types of stories. In fact, no one in the show plays the game until late in the first of three 90-minute acts, when Riley (Greg Cuellar) acts as Dungeon Master for his younger friends Em (Christopher Dylan White), Tony (Jamie Sanders), and Kendall (Andrea Lopez Alvarez). Eventually, they’re joined by Riley’s best friend Clara (Olivia Rose Barresi), who finds the game to be an unexpected escape from her self-applied academic pressure, romantic/sexual traumas, and the horrors of a post-9/11 United States.

As the Harry Potter actor brings Draco Malfoy to Broadway and is set to star in a Jimmy Carr-penned spoof period drama alongside Damian Lewis, the eternal bad boy will answer your questions

It can’t be easy being best known for always playing the bad guy. After starting out more mildly, as Jim Broadbent and Celia Imrie’s son in The Borrowers and Jodie Foster’s offspring in Anna and the King, Tom Felton was cast as Harry Potter’s nemesis Draco Malfoy when he was 12. In spite of propelling him to worldwide fame, Felton says that it led to a tough time at his real muggle school: “I was walking around with dyed hair and played an evil wizard. It wasn’t cool.”

Post Potter, Felton has mainly continued down the antagonist route, be it abusing the captive apes with his dad Brian Cox in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes; cheating on the golf course in 2011’s sports drama From the Rough; behaving inappropriately towards Gugu Mbatha-Raw in 2013 period drama Belle; stabbing Hamlet to death in 2018’s Ophelia; or scaring everyone as the bogeyman in 2020’s A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting. Some may say he had his just deserts when he was sucked into the nothingness in 2012 supernatural The Apparition.

They wear Victorian dresses and make daring moves riding side-saddle. Photographer Constance Jaeggi on how she documented an all-female Mexican tradition

Young people talked, and we listened. Here are their dream picks of gym gear, games consoles, stationery, beauty products – and lots of joggers

• 305 best Christmas gifts for 2025

Buying for teenagers is a gear shift: life post-Santa isn’t only a little less magical, it’s also a little more expensive – with longer, more specific wishlists.

From makeup and skincare to musical instruments, homeware and a lot (like, a lot) of clothes, it’s clear that when you ask a teen what they want for Christmas, they know what they like. It will probably involve a pair of joggers, too.

Here’s how to spot a genuinely good laptop deal, plus the best discounts we’ve seen so far on everything from MacBooks to gaming laptops

• Do you really need to buy a new laptop?
• How to shop smart this Black Friday

Black Friday deals have started, and if you’ve been on the lookout for a good price on a new laptop, then this could be your lucky day. But with so many websites being shouty about their Black Friday offers, the best buys aren’t always easy to spot. So before you splash the cash, it might pay to do some research – and look closely at the specification.

I know this may not be welcome advice. After all, the thought of drawing up a spreadsheet of memory configurations and pricing history might put a slight dampener on the excitement that builds as Black Friday approaches. But buy the right laptop today and you can look forward to many years of joyful productivity. Pick a duff one, and every time you open the lid you’ll be cursing your past self’s impulsive nature. So don’t get caught out; be prepared with our useful tips – and a roundup of the Filter’s favourite laptop deals.

We’ve cut through the noise to find genuinely good early Black Friday 2025 discounts on Filter-recommended products across home, tech, beauty and toys

• Big savings – or big regrets? How to shop smart this Black Friday
• The best Black Friday beauty deals

Like Christmas Day, Black Friday has long since ceased to be a mere “day”. Yuletide now seems to start roughly when Strictly does, and Black Friday kicked off around Halloween, judging by the landfill of exclamation-marked emails weighing down my inbox.

Black Friday is a devil worth dancing with if you want to save money on products you’ve had your eye on – and it can pay to start dancing now. Some of the Filter’s favourite items are already floating around at prices clearly designed to make them sell out fast. Other deals won’t land until the big day itself on 28 November, or even until the daftly named Cyber Monday (1 December).

We’ve tasted, sniffed and inspected more than 300 presents to bring you our ultimate Christmas gift guide – from must-have Lego and smoky mezcal to Meera Sodha’s favourite knife

Don’t you just love Christmas shopping? There’s a massive thrill in finding a present you know they’ll love and won’t have thought to ask for, but the pressure is enough to drive any sane person to hibernation.

We’ve gone the extra (2,000) miles to help you find the perfect gifts: we’ve tested out the latest products to see which ones are worth the hype (and which aren’t); trawled shops in person; enlisted babies (OK, their parents), tweens and teens to test out toys and give us their must-haves; tasted the good, bad and the did-I-really-put-this-in-my-mouth; and rounded up some of the products that were tried and tested by us this year.

Discover your perfect coffee maker with our tried-and-tested recommendations, from top-rated brands such as Sage and Nespresso to capsule and manual machines

• The best espresso machines to release your inner barista

When it comes to something as earth-shatteringly important as coffee, everyone has an opinion. Some crave a single perfect shot of espresso, while others seek the milkiest latte; some love Starbucks and others, well, don’t. This is why the idea of there being a single best coffee machine is fanciful – everyone’s idea of the perfect coffee couldn’t be more different.

As a selfless service to coffee drinkers everywhere, I’ve spent the past year researching and trialling coffee machines to produce a shortlist of tried-and-tested recommendations. The list spans all the main types of coffee maker: manual espresso, filter, bean-to-cup and capsule. (Not sure what all of this means? Read our dedicated guide to the different types of coffee machine.)

Best budget manual machine:
De’Longhi Stilosa EC230

Her commitment to food directly connected to its source shaped the tastes and thinking of a generation of cooks. We all wanted to sit next to her at dinner

Spring is a season of transition, when bare earth transforms into something alive with promise. It was also the name chef Skye Gyngell, who has died at age 62, chose for her London restaurant. She said it was her favourite season, but the truth is she embraced all four and lived them wholly.

Gyngell was singular: she had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist. Those twin gifts met in food that was painterly in its composition, delicate in its details and tuned to nature’s shifting notes.

Our muscles, bones and organs are held together by a network of tissue that influences our every move. Is there a way we can use it to our advantage?

Fascia, the connective tissue that holds together the body’s internal structure, really hasn’t spent all that long in the limelight. Anatomists have known about its existence since before the Hippocratic oath was a thing, but until the 1980s it was routinely tossed in the bin during human dissections, regarded as little more than the wrapping that gets in the way of studying everything else. Over the past few decades, though, our understanding of it has evolved and (arguably) overshot – now, there are plenty of personal trainers who will insist that you should be loosening it up with a foam roller, or even harnessing its magical elastic powers to jump higher and do more press-ups. But what’s it really doing – and is there a way you can actually take advantage of it?

“The easiest way to describe fascia is to think about the structure of a tangerine,” says Natasha Kilian, a specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Pure Sports Medicine. “You’ve got the outer skin, and beneath that, the white pith that separates the segments and holds them together. Fascia works in a similar way: it’s a continuous, all-encompassing network that wraps around and connects everything in the body, from muscles and nerves to blood vessels and organs. It’s essentially the body’s internal wetsuit, keeping everything supported and integrated.” If you’ve ever carved a joint of meat, it’s the thin, silvery layer wrapped around the muscle, like clingfilm.

In her quiche-pie hybrid, Alice Zaslavsky chooses kataifi for its exquisite crunch, eggs and feta for the filling, and a herby honey for the finish

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Of all the styles and shapes in the pantheon of pastry, kataifi is the most playful. It loves to be twisted and turned, bathed in butter or oil, baked or fried until glowing with the promise of crispy flakes on your chin, lap and heart as you crunch into its golden, glassy fuzz.

Since they’re often interchangeable doughs, it’s easy to assume that kataifi pastry is simply shredded filo. But rather than being rolled and stretched into paper-thin sheets like filo (or phyllo, depending who you ask) kataifi begins as a light, pourable batter which is streamed through fine nozzles on to a rotating heated plate, where it cooks almost instantly into a cascade of fine vermicelli-like strands, delicate yet strong, like spun silk.

For a dessert with just three basic ingredients, mousse-making certainly has its fair share of snags. Our panel of experts unpicks them one by one

I always order chocolate mousse in restaurants, but it never turns out quite right when I make it at home. Help!
Daniel, by email
“Chocolate mousse defies physics,” says Nicola Lamb, author of Sift and the Kitchen Projects newsletter. “It’s got all the flavour of your favourite chocolate, but with an aerated, dissolving texture, which is sort of extraordinary.” The first thing you’ve got to ask yourself, then, is what kind of mousse are you after: “Some people’s dream is rich and dense, while for others it’s light and airy,” Lamb says, which is probably why there are so many ways you can make it.

That said, in most cases you’re usually dealing with some form of melted chocolate folded into whipped eggs (whites, yolks or both), followed by lightly whipped cream. And, with so few ingredients, you need to make them count, Lamb says: “What you’re doing by making chocolate mousse is extending the flavour of the chocolate, so first off always go with a bar you really like.” And, for her, that means 70% dark chocolate.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

A comforting bowl of soupy curry noodles that’s ready in well under an hour

As in many Japanese families, we had curry regularly when I was growing up. It was the standard Japanese curry of potatoes, onion, carrot and pork, usually thickened with S&B Golden Curry blocks. It made a weekly appearance in our house, and now I regularly make it for my own family, too. However, my kids are a little fussy: one likes it with tonkatsu on top and the other doesn’t want any meat at all. So I now make curry with no meat in it, and more vegetables, which means that I have to make only one version (and whoever wants to add tonkatsu can do so!).

This recipe is an edited extract from The Japanese Pantry, by Emiko Davies, published by Smith Street Books at £30.

These excellent little puff pastries are really just a case of fill, fold and bake

These moreish little pastries are as lovely for a snack as they are for dinner, and they take just minutes to put together. I like to fill squares of pastry and fold them into little triangular puffs, but if you prefer more of a Cornish pasty look (*food writer cancelled for suggesting paneer is an appropriate pasty filling!*), by all means stamp out circles, fold into half-moons and crimp the edges.

It is said to be harder to make friends as you age. But I found that a mix of apps and other tools, as well as a happy attitude, led to a world of potential new pals

Tonight, Rachel, Elvira and I will meet for dinner. A year ago, none of us knew the others existed. Six months ago Rachel and Elvira were strangers until I introduced them. But now, here we are, something as close to firm friends as is possible after such a short time.

If you’ve ever consumed any media, you would be forgiven for thinking that life after 35 is a burning wasteland of unimaginable horrors: the beginnings of incessant back pain, an interest in dishwasher loading, the discovery that you’re ineligible for entire industries billed as “a young person’s game”, and, apparently, an inability to make friends.

Andy, who is in a sexless marriage, has become besotted with Rita – and their sexual chemistry is incredible. But how long can they go on like this?

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

What makes the sex incredible is our chemistry, and the complete lack of judgment and pressure

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions. This week, the knotty issue of home boundaries, and what the saying was intended to mean

They say “good fences make good neighbours”, presumably meaning that the stronger the boundary between you and people you need to deal with, the more robust the relationship. Is this really true? Jamila, via email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Henry, 28, a student, meets Sarah, 30, an operations manager

What were you hoping for?
A fun, easy-going evening with some yummy grub.

As a doctor I stepped in to tend to an elderly passenger … but it won’t waive £100 transfer fee to rebook

I was due to fly from London Stansted to Pescara, Italy. I was nearing the departure gate when an elderly woman fell down an escalator. I am a doctor and stopped to help. She had sustained a broken wrist, deep cuts and a worrying head injury and I had to stem the bleeding until staff and paramedics arrived.

I asked for gate crew to be made aware that I was delayed by a medical emergency, but when I reached the gate 15 minutes before my flight departed, it had closed.

Two out of five illegal streamers have fallen prey to fraud, likely via a ‘modded’ USB stick that exposes users to data theft and cybercrime

The big fight is on TV on Saturday night but you really don’t want to shell out to watch it on pay-per-view. Luckily, you bought a cheap Amazon Fire Stick online that gives you access to all the sports you want as well as TV streaming services.

While the quality of the picture is not brilliant, you are saving on monthly subscriptions and the one-off fees to watch big sporting events. The stick was a bargain – or so you think.

Could you keep the markets calm and your MPs happy as you pull the economic levers to deliver a budget?

On 26 November, Rachel Reeves will deliver this year’s budget to parliament. As in all years, the chancellor has to strike a balance between:

Raising the money needed to fund the services that voters demand.

Keeping taxes at levels that are acceptable to voters.

Persuading the government’s creditors in the bond markets that it will continue to be able to pay its debts.

Billions will be spent on credit over the discount weekend but experts say the payment option is ‘not risk-free’

Black Friday bargain-hunters should be wary of the flood of “buy now, pay later” offers at the checkout, money experts have warned, amid record numbers of people seeking help with shopping debts.

Billions of pounds will be spent online and in shops over the coming weeks, with more than one in three Britons said to be planning to use this form of credit to help stagger their Black Friday spending.

Experts unpack the common myth of menstruating people’s cycles synchronizing when they’re in close proximity for long enough

• Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

To be someone who menstruates means continuously trying to untangle fact from fiction. Is it true that you can’t swim on your period? No. Does the scent of a person menstruating attract bears? Also no.

There is one period rumor I’ve always kind of enjoyed, though: when women are in close proximity for long enough, their menstrual cycles will eventually sync up, also known as “menstrual synchrony”. I’ve had several friends over the years claim that my period had yanked them on to my cycle.

Body composition: a high BMI is associated with irregular cycles, says Kling.

Age: “Menses can be irregular in adolescents and as people approach menopause,” says Jensen.

Psychological stress: depression can disrupt a person’s cycle.

Medication, such as birth control.

Medical conditions, such as thyroid disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome or menopause.

Lifestyle factors, such as smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, diet and physical activity.

I can’t dance. Not even a little bit. But the terrible moves my friends mock are an antidote to the racing heart and quivering breath that arrive in my more anxious moments

The first time I started dancing at home was a happy accident. I’d just had a terse conversation with an ex, and my body was reacting in its usual way: racing heart, quivering breath and trembling fingers. I needed to calm down. Looking around for quick fixes in my flat – my bed, some stale chocolate digestives and a packet of cigarettes – I settled on the kitchen radio, which had been humming faintly in the background all morning.

Tuned to BBC Radio 6 Music, it was playing a disco track I didn’t recognise. But the beat was steady and intermingled with the sounds of tambourines, synths and drums. I turned up the volume, and then my body was moving: limbs swinging, feet tapping, hips wiggling. I continued into the next song, leaning into the feeling and becoming more animated to the sounds of another upbeat 70s track, imagining myself on a crowded, sweaty dancefloor. It was all very silly. But by the third song, my anxiety had melted away. I was smiling. And I felt more like myself again.

It can cause physiological and emotional problems, but none of us can avoid it entirely. Here are some of the best ways to react when stress hormones start coursing through your body ...

Most people contend with stress in some element of their lives. What can you do when you are overwhelmed by it and your coping mechanisms no longer seem to work? Here, psychotherapists share their techniques for managing in the moment, seeking help, and minimising everyday stress.

Since I was a teenager I had struggled in winter, experiencing excessive tiredness and low mood. A specific instruction lifted the gloom

I’m pretty sure I must be half human, half plant – how else to explain why I need the light to thrive? During the brighter seasons I feel fine, but when winter comes and the light begins to fade, I start drooping.

I have struggled with seasonal affective disorder (Sad) since I was a teenager. The symptoms of Sad are similar to regular depression, with low moods and lethargy, and can be equally debilitating. Over the years I’ve experienced the full Sad spectrum, from moments of excessive tiredness and carb cravings (yes, those are official Sad symptoms), to a low point of breaking down crying on the kitchen floor after school because it was so cold, dark and bleak.

Its popularity is as enduring as its fabrics – and it allows men to age stylishly without worrying about their waistlines. One collector delves into the reasons the ordinary clothes of workers past live on in men’s wardrobes today

We’ll never know who designed much of the workwear worn by the labouring classes of yesteryear. But they might well be bemused that the ordinary garments they cut generously, to allow movement while operating a machine or driving a train, are now highly collectible and sought after – worn by men who do little more than swivel on an office chair.

If you’ve not noticed the prevalence of the dull tan of the Carhartt barn jacket or the triple-patch pocket of the chore coat, then perhaps you’ve been living in a cave with no signal to receive Instagram ads. Marks & Spencer is abundant with chore jackets and, in this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, the dad has his suitably saccharine emotional moment wearing one, too.

Shades of green, pink and glitter accompany sold out screenings as Wicked: For Good’s release prompts wave of themed dressing

Outside one of Leicester Square’s main cinemas, small crowds gathered in shades of green, pink and glitter, a loose palette of fairies and witches.

As Wicked: For Good lands in UK cinemas on Friday and this weekend, some fans have decided that simply watching the film isn’t enough. They want to wear it.

The haircut of the moment is ‘The Claudia’, but not everyone has the luscious locks of la Winkleman. Not a problem. Fake fringes are everywhere – and I tried one out

The 70s had “the Fawcett.” In the 90s it was all about “the Rachel.” But now there’s a new era-defining hair cut. “The Claudia.” Yes, the glossy inky-black block fringe that mostly shrouds the face of its owner, the presenter Claudia Winkleman, has become a seminal moment on and off TV screens.

It is a fringe that has spawned memes, online forums dedicated to debating its length and a fan account on X. “Thoughts and opinions from the highest paid fringe on the BBC” reads the bio. Alan Carr has described it, not Winkleman, as a national treasure.

The folding of the progressive youth-focused magazine into Vogue comes at turbulent time for journalism and the crumbling of feminist media

In late 2016, just a few weeks after Donald Trump won his first presidential election, Teen Vogue published a story that set the internet ablaze: “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America.”

The story garnered more than 1.3m hits, making it the magazine’s most-read story of the year. Elaine Welteroth, then the editor-in-chief, told NPR that the day it published, Teen Vogue sold “in that month, more copies of the magazine than we had that entire year”. It was a transformative moment for the publication: proof that a magazine long associated with Disney child stars and headlines like “Prom Fever!” could shine light on the political dimensions of young people’s lives.

The Alicante region is renowned for its rice and seafood dishes. Less well known is that its restaurant scene has a wealth of talented female chefs, a rarity in Spain

I’m on a quest in buzzy, beachy Alicante on the Costa Blanca to investigate the rice dishes the Valencian province is famed for, as well as explore the vast palm grove of nearby Elche. I start with a pilgrimage to a restaurant featured in my book on tapas, New Tapas, a mere 25 years ago. Mesón de Labradores in the pedestrianised old town is now engulfed by Italian eateries (so more pizza and pasta than paella) but it remains a comforting outpost of tradition and honest food.

Here I catch up with Timothy Denny, a British chef who relocated to Spain, gained an alicantina girlfriend and became a master of dishes from the region. Over a fideuá de mariscos (seafood noodles, €20), we chew over local gastronomy. “For me, Alicante epitomises the Mediterranean – for rice, seafood and artichokes,” he says. “But there are curiosities, too, like pavo borracho.” Tim explains that so-called “drunken turkeys” are cooked in vast amounts of cognac plus a shot of red wine and eventually emerge as a hefty stew, perfect in winter.

From stylish townhouses to characterful country piles, this selection of inns, B&Bs and hotels offer delicious food and a touch of luxury for £150 a night or less

Drakes, Brighton
Keep an eye out for deals at this glamorous Regency seafront hotel (a November 30% discount won’t be a one-off). A sea-view balcony room, of course, will cost a bit, but even the snuggest, city-facing bedrooms have air conditioning, a king-size bed, wet room, bathtub and Green & Spring toiletries. For somewhere so fun and stylish, Drakes offers real value, including the shorter tasting menus in Dilsk restaurant. Or just treat yourself to a sundowner in the bar, then head out to dine. This is Brighton; the world is your oyster.
Doubles from £143.50 B&B, drakeshotel.com

Poor weather couldn’t spoil my high-altitude walking trip amid these stunning peaks, especially with delicious, hearty Tyrolean cuisine to keep me going

When you come to the Dolomites for winter walking, it’s with the intention of having spellbinding snow-streaked peaks that are unlike anything else in the Alps as your constant companion. But with impenetrable cloud and heavy rain forecast, it was hard not to feel deflated.

Then again, this was Italy, where it’s easy to make the best of things whatever the weather. And the 3 Zinnen Dolomites ski resort and nature park – right on Italy’s border with Austria, about two-and-a-half hours north of Venice, is always charming, with the usual jumble of cultures you see in South Tyrol. Part Italian, it’s more Austrian thanks to the legacy of the Habsburgs, who ruled this part of Italy until 1918. Hence most places have an Austrian and an Italian name, 3 Zinnen or Tre Cime (meaning three peaks) being a case in point. It’s the home of Ladin, an ancient Romance language, too.

For the explorer and author, the desert outpost, irrigated by water from the Atlas mountains, is the perfect place to decompress

The first thing I notice when I walk into the oasis is the temperature drop. Then, I hear the birdsong and the rustling of the palm trees. The harsh sun dims and there’s water and the smell of damp earth. It’s easy to understand why desert travellers yearned to reach these havens and why they have become synonymous with peace. I’m an explorer who’s walked through many oases with loaded camels, crossing Morocco and the Sahara on foot, but Skoura, a four-hour drive from Marrakech, is a place I visit to decompress.

You may be imagining some kind of cartoon mirage oasis – a sole date palm shimmering above the endless sands. In fact, Skoura has a population of around 3,000 people living in a small town on the edge of the palms with 10 sq miles (25 sq km) of agricultural land. Many visitors to Morocco start in Fez or Marrakech and stop off in Aït Benhaddou, then go down to the Sahara towns of Zagora or Merzouga. Skoura, less than an hour from Ouarzazate, is an ideal stop-off point for a couple of days, or you could combine it with a Marrakech city break. The bus from Marrakech (CTM or Supratours) takes six hours, or you can hire a car (or car with driver) from Marrakech or Fez.

I followed the obvious signs but an enforcement officer had to point out a notice on the back of the entrance sign and it cost me £140

Our car was clamped while parked at the NET Forest Tram Park and Ride in Nottingham, and we had to pay £140 to have it freed.

The prominent signs displayed at the entrance state that those parking without using the tram will be clamped. We did use the tram to and from the city centre after walking in the adjacent park.

Venues designed for people to smash things up safely are seeing an enormous rise in bookings. But why? And what explains the pronounced gender gap?

Name: Rage rooms.

Appearance: Full of old appliances and angry women.

The “solution” to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set a puzzle which is extremely hard to answer if you are not a soap bubble.

The four towns

We have differing views on my contribution to our book club: I see myself as its beating heart; my wife says I’m an interloper

For the first time in the history of book club, I can’t make it to book club. The scheduling conflict arises late in the day, which is galling because I’ve already read the book, and I can’t very well unread it.

“You won’t be missed,” my wife says.

Alan, 87, has devoted his life to trying to defy death, and has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death to be reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.

Experts say councils face limits on cuts as Reform’s savings on IT deals, office moves and EV projects are disputed

Reform UK has ignored requests to share the evidence for its claim to have saved £331m since it took charge of 10 English councils in May, prompting questions over whether the figure is true.

The party has boasted that it had achieved £331m worth of savings at English councils it controls. Warning of a “blob” of vested interests devoted to “ripping off” taxpayers, Richard Tice, the new head of the party’s self-styled ‘Doge’ cost-cutting unit, added: “We’re going to war with these people”.

Musicologist Peter Wollny chanced upon the manuscripts in 1992 and authenticating them took half of his lifetime

The best fictional detectives are famed for their intuition, an ability to spot some seemingly ineffable discrepancy. Peter Wollny, the musicologist behind last week’s “world sensational” revelation of two previously unknown works by Johann Sebastian Bach, had a funny feeling when he chanced upon two intriguing sheets of music in a dusty library in 1992.

His equivalent of the Columbo turn, from mere hunch to unravelling a secret, would take up half his life.

It has been a difficult week for those working with refugees and migrants in the UK, after Labour announced controversial new plans. Sadly, Solomon is used to such turmoil. He discusses hostility, hope and asylum hotels

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, is at his home in London when I meet him. It’s the start of a gruesome week. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has just announced that refugees could have their status revoked at any time if the country from which they fled is deemed safe; the pathway from being granted asylum to getting citizenship would increase to 20 years; AI would be used to establish a refugee’s age; and – a strikingly nasty idea – the jewellery of those arriving in the UK could be seized.

While media commentators puzzled over whether this would be enough red meat for Labour to see off Reform, this must surely have been a new low for Solomon? “There’s been lots of terrible weeks,” he says. “So I’m used to it.” He looks neat, open and determined, and his kitchen is incredibly yellow and cheerful, which I put down to sheer effort of will to look on the bright side.

Guardian column the Pet I’ll Never Forget is returning and we’d like to hear your stories about the amazing pets that you’ve loved

After a one year hiatus - and due to popular demand - the Guardian will soon be resuming the Pet I’ll Never Forget, a column celebrating the magnificent creatures and mischievous critters who have left an indelible mark on their owners.

It’s a real who’s who of pet royalty. There’s Nelson, the unapologetic one-eyed cat; Verity, the kleptomaniac pug; Thumper, the frisky rabbit who got pregnant through her cage; Rambo, the Dexter-watching tarantula, to name but a few.

From stargazing to swimming, we’d love to hear how you beat the winter blues by getting out into nature – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

With the days getting shorter (and colder), it’s tempting to go into hibernation mode. But winter can feel like a special time of year if you get out and embrace it. We’d love to hear about your favourite UK-based outdoor winter activity, whether it’s cold-water swimming, stargazing, birdwatching or simply wrapping up and going for a bracing walk or off-road bike ride.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

We’d like to hear about your favourite recipes that have passed down through generations

Recipes carry stories, and often when they have been passed down from generation to generation, these tales have a chapter added to them each time they are made. Family members concoct elaborate treats and seasoning mixes, which in some cases travel across oceans to end up on our dinner tables.

We would like to hear about the recipes that have stood the test of time for you, and never fail to impress. Who first made it for you? Did you stick to the recipe that was passed down or have you improvised? What are the stories you associate with your favourite family recipe?

We’d like to hear from people in Britain who have turned to family or friends to borrow money instead of to banks, and how this has affected them

Britons often turn to family and friends to borrow money now, a new survey has suggested.

The survey of more than 4,000 adults commissioned by non-profit Fair4All Finance found that while 25% of respondents had taken out a Buy Now Pay Later loan, 26% had borrowed from family and 15% from friends this year.

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