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Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Overall, new car registrations in the EU increased by 1.4% year-on-year in November, the fifth monthly rise in a row.
ACEA reports:
Despite the recent positive momentum, overall volumes remain well below pre-pandemic levels. The battery-electric car market share reached 16.9% YTD, in line with projections for the year, yet a level that still leaves room for growth to stay on track with the transition.
Hybrid-electric vehicles lead as the most popular power type choice among buyers, with plug-in hybrids continuing to gain momentum.
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© Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
© Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
© Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with mournful minimalism, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra’s 1982 album of Punjabi disco makes a comeback and Guatemalan duo Titanic serve up ecstatic tracks
• The 50 best albums of 2025
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A 40-minute suite of continuous, repetitive drumming might not sound like the most accessible music but south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar’s latest album, There Is Beauty, There Already, turns this concept of insistent rhythm into strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive language throughout the record’s 10 movements, channelling Steve Reich’s phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing and anchoring each in the repetition of a continual, thrumming refrain. As the album continues, the refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial rhythm, drawing us further into Korwar’s percussive world the longer we listen.
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© Photograph: Ada Navarro
© Photograph: Ada Navarro
© Photograph: Ada Navarro
Executed with trademark technical flair and empathy, this part-horror, part-fairytale set in a haunted orphanage from 2001 is one of the director’s best
He’s a household name now after The Shape of Water and his new Frankenstein, but 25 years ago Guillermo del Toro was a virtual unknown, still bruised from the Harvey Weinstein-produced Hollywood flop Mimic. But, as this overlooked follow-up attests, he was always a class act. In fact, this is one of his best: a rich, rousing ghost story shrouded in trademark gothic gloom but executed with technical flair and a good deal of empathy.
As with his later breakthrough Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s part-horror, part-fairytale, with children at its centre. The setting is a middle-of-nowhere boys’ orphanage in 1930s Spain, a leftist sanctuary from Franco’s fascists during the civil war. Newcomer Carlos (Fernando Tielve) must find his feet in this semi-surreal realm, with an unexploded bomb in the middle of the courtyard, some kindly adults (one-legged Marisa Paredes and kindly doctor Federico Luppi), some not-so-kindly adults (aggressive caretaker Eduardo Noriega), and junior bullies to win over. There’s also a ghost in the mix: a pale-faced boy named Santi, whose death no one seems to want to discuss, and to whose empty bed Carlos is ominously assigned.
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© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock
Hope appeal is raising funds for five UK charities that build trust, hope and change at grassroots level
Generous Guardian readers have so far raised more than £500,000 for the Hope appeal supporting inspirational grassroots charities that bring together divided communities, promote tolerance, and tackle racism and hatred.
The 2025 Guardian appeal is raising funds for five charities: Citizens UK, the Linking Network, Locality, Hope Unlimited Charitable Trust, and Who Is Your Neighbour?
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© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Exclusive: Campaigners say slashing overseas aid would leave UK unable to meet existing commitments
Plans by Reform UK to slash the aid budget by 90% would not cover existing contributions to global bodies such as the UN and World Bank, shredding Britain’s international influence and risking its standing within those organisations, charities and other parties have warned.
Under cuts announced by Nigel Farage in November, overseas aid would be capped at £1bn a year, or about 0.03% of GDP. Keir Starmer’s government is already set to reduce aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% by 2027, but even that lower proportion would still amount to £9bn a year.
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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Beijing’s push to dominate technology through state-backed industrial policy is reshaping global trade and could devastate European industry
Emmanuel Macron came back from China in early December empty-handed. The French president’s appeal to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to help stop the war in Ukraine was never going to gain traction given Beijing’s unqualified support for Russia.
Urging Xi to address China’s surging trade surplus, the result of the country’s economic and industrial policies, predictably also fell on closed ears.
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© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
The Harvard professor provides a ceaseless flow of startling details in this exhaustively researched, 1000-year account
In the early 17th century, the Peruvian city of Potosí billed itself as the “treasure of the world” and “envy of kings”. Sprouting at the foot of the Cerro Rico, South America’s most populous settlement produced 60% of the world’s silver, which not only enabled Spain to wage its wars and service its debts, but also accelerated the economic development of India and China. The city’s wealthy elites could enjoy crystal from Venice and diamonds from Ceylon while one in four of its mostly indigenous miners perished. Cerro Rico became known as “the mountain that eats men”.
The story of Potosí, in what is now southern Bolivia, contains the core elements of Sven Beckert’s mammoth history of capitalism: extravagant wealth, immense suffering, complex international networks, a world transformed. The Eurocentric version of capitalism’s history holds that it grew out of democracy, free markets, Enlightenment values and the Protestant work ethic. Beckert, a Harvard history professor and author of 2015’s prize-winning Empire of Cotton, assembles a much more expansive narrative, spanning the entire globe and close to a millennium. Like its subject, the book has a “tendency to grow, flow, and permeate all areas of activity”. Fredric Jameson famously said that it was easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. At times during these 1,100 pages, I found it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.
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© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto
This hidden gem has country inns, canalside walks, a stunning viaduct, the historic town of Market Harborough – and not a tour bus in sight
It was a chilly Sunday in November 2000 when the gods chose to smile on Ken Wallace. The retired teacher was sweeping his metal detector across a hillside in Leicestershire’s Welland valley when a series of beeps brought him up short. Digging down, he found a cache of buried coins almost two millennia old. He had chanced upon one of the UK’s most important iron age hoards, totalling about 5,000 silver and gold coins.
More than 25 years on, I’m staring at Ken’s find at the civic museum in the nearby town of Market Harborough. The now gleaming coins are decorated with wreaths and horses. They’re about the size of 5p pieces, but speak of a wild-eyed age of tribal lands and windswept hill forts.
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© Photograph: Darren Staples/Alamy
© Photograph: Darren Staples/Alamy
© Photograph: Darren Staples/Alamy
The Cameroonian professor made the Time most influential list in 2025 and saw the project he co-founded receive $100m for its virus detection work. Now he is on a mission to transform Africa’s genomics capability
Winning the world’s health lottery is a lonely business in the current climate. “It’s like being an orphan in a space where there used to be many kids playing – suddenly everybody’s gone and you’re just there with a ball,” says Dr Christian Happi.
The Cameroonian distinguished professor of molecular biology and genomics has just won $100m for his work – at a time when global health funding is being viciously slashed as part of wider aid cuts.
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© Photograph: Jennifer Graylock/Alamy
© Photograph: Jennifer Graylock/Alamy
© Photograph: Jennifer Graylock/Alamy
Cryptic festive fun …
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© Illustration: Phil Hackett/The Guardian
© Illustration: Phil Hackett/The Guardian
© Illustration: Phil Hackett/The Guardian
The US economy is pumped up on tech-bro vanity. The inevitable correction must prompt a global conversation about intelligent machines, regulation and risk
If AI did not change your life in 2025, next year it will. That is one of few forecasts that can be made with confidence in unpredictable times. This is not an invitation to believe the hype about what the technology can do today, or may one day achieve. The hype doesn’t need your credence. It is puffed up enough on Silicon Valley finance to distort the global economy and fuel geopolitical rivalries, shaping your world regardless of whether the most fanciful claims about AI capability are ever realised.
ChatGPT was launched just over three years ago and became the fastest-growing consumer app in history. Now it has about 800m weekly users. Its parent company, OpenAI, is valued at about $500bn. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, has negotiated an intricate and, to some eyes, suspiciously opaque network of deals with other players in the sector to build the infrastructure required for the US’s AI-powered future. The value of these commitments is about $1.5tn. This is not real cash, but bear in mind that a person spending $1 every second would need 31,700 years to get through a trillion-dollar stash.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene
Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.
According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.
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© Photograph: Maureen Bracewell/Getty Images/500px
© Photograph: Maureen Bracewell/Getty Images/500px
© Photograph: Maureen Bracewell/Getty Images/500px
CPS says new law marked ‘significant shift in recognising serious nature’ of offence, often linked to domestic abuse and sexual assault
The number of suspects charged for strangulation and suffocation in England and Wales has increased almost sixfold in the three years since the offence was first introduced, Crown Prosecution Service data has revealed.
Brought in under the Domestic Abuse Act, which came into force in 2022, the legislation closed a gap in the existing law, giving courts much greater sentencing powers.
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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Labour urged to accelerate reset with Brussels as many exporters struggling to trade in the EU after Brexit deal
Keir Starmer’s government has been told a closer EU trade deal is a “strategic necessity” for companies in Britain as growing numbers of exporters find it tougher to do business under the UK’s post-Brexit agreement.
Calling on Labour to accelerate its reset with Brussels, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said the UK’s existing trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) was failing to help them grow their sales in the EU.
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
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Warnings against travel abroad from the UK have been issued for countries including Mali, Russia and Syria
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Senior Russian diplomat says continent stands on 'edge of an abyss'
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© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
A24 sports drama will be released in theaters Christmas Day
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