© Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, was shot multiple times at his home, and no details about a suspect or motive have been released
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the “shocking” shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials.
Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney’s office said in a statement.
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© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP
© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP
© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP
NHS leaders warn ‘more patients are likely to feel the impact of this round of strikes than the previous two’
Resident doctors in England have begun five days of strike action after rejecting the government’s latest offer to resolve the long-running dispute over pay and jobs.
The British Medical Association (BMA), and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, met on Tuesday in a final attempt to reach an agreement, but failed to do so.
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© Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
© Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
© Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
A brilliant history of psychiatric ideas suggests we are on the cusp of a transformation in our understanding of severe mental illness
In 1973, an American psychologist called David Rosenhan published the results of a bold experiment. He’d arranged for eight “pseudo-patients” to attend appointments at psychiatric institutions, where they complained to doctors about hearing voices that said “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. All were admitted, diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. They immediately stopped displaying any “symptoms” and started saying they felt fine. The first got out after seven days; the last after 52.
Told of these findings, psychiatrists at a major teaching hospital found it hard to believe that they’d make the same mistake, so Rosenhan devised another experiment: over the next three months, he informed them, one or more pseudopatients would go undercover and, at the end, staff would be asked to decide who had been faking it. Of 193 patients admitted, 20% were deemed suspicious. It was then that Rosenhan revealed this had been a ruse as well: no pseudopatients had been sent to the hospital at all. Not only had doctors failed to spot sane people in their midst; they couldn’t reliably recognise the actually insane.
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© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF
© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF
© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF
Big K-pop stars and a teen-skewed subtext aims this squarely at a particular audience but this fantasy never really levels up
Starring the actor (Ahn Hyo-seop) who voiced the lead boy-band bad guy in KPop Demon Hunters, and one of the singers (Kim Ji-soo, also known mononymically as Jisoo) from real-world girl-band Blackpink, this Korean sci-fi-fantasy feature feels very skewed towards the young on all counts. Superficially, it appears to be about a guy named Kim Dok-ja (Ahn) who finds that the web novel he’s been following for years is turning into reality. That means the whole world becomes gamified, as if everyone has been turned into players compelled to kill to survive, while plagued by CGI monsters and puckish digital dokkaebi (demons) which explain things when the rules change.
But under the surface, this film is really about being popular, coping with traumatic childhood experiences such as being forced to beat up your best friend, getting a pimple, and building up enough gumption to tell authority figures – older people, your boss, the author of the book you’ve been a fan of for ages – that they suck.
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© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures
© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures
© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures
Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver launch ‘Bang in Some Beans’ campaign to highlight cost savings and health advantages
Beans have it all, according to some of the best-known chefs in the country. They are sustainable, plentiful, nutritious and a fraction of the cost of meats such as steak and chicken.
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© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian
© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian
© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian
This tiny country is awash with atmospheric castles, many of which you can stay in, making for a magical wintry break. And it won’t cost you a cent to travel between them
The top of the tower had disappeared in the mist, but its bells rang clear and true, tolling beyond the abbey gates, over the slopes of frost-fringed trees, down to the town in the valley below. Final call for morning mass. I took a seat at the back of the modern church, built when the Abbey of Saint Maurice and Saint Maurus relocated to this hill in Clervaux, north Luxembourg, in 1910. Then the monks swept in – and swept away 1,000 years. Sung in Latin, their Gregorian chants filled the nave: simple, calming, timeless. I’m not religious and didn’t understand a word, but also, in a way, understood it completely.
Although mass is held here at 10am daily, year-round, the monks’ ethereal incantations seemed to perfectly suit the season. I left the church, picked up a waymarked hiking trail and walked deeper into the forest – and the mood remained. There was no one else around, no wind to dislodge the last, clinging beech leaves or sway the soaring spruce. A jay screeched, and plumes of hair ice feathered fallen logs. As in the church, all was stillness, a little magic.
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© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.
© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.
© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.
In Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June, Timothy Spall, 68, plays the father of Toni Collette, who is 53 – and pregnant. But those liberties are nothing compared with North by Northwest, The Manchurian Candidate or Thanksgiving
To be able to enjoy Kate Winslet’s new Christmas movie, Goodbye June, you have to be able to do a couple of things. First, if you’ve ever suffered any form of bereavement, you may have to approach it slowly, since the film is explicitly about the death of a parent. But the other thing you need to do is not Google the age of any of the cast.
This is for good reason. The titular June is played by Dame Helen Mirren, and her husband is played by Timothy Spall. Fine actors and national treasures, the pair of them. However, Mirren is 80 years old, and Spall is 68. Again, this is fine. You have undoubtedly met couples with bigger age gaps than this, and in all probability they are perfectly happy together.
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© Photograph: Album/Alamy
© Photograph: Album/Alamy
© Photograph: Album/Alamy
Moving from one avant garde movement to another during the 1920s, the American photographer’s work helps tell the story of the birth of modernism
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© Photograph: Edward Weston
© Photograph: Edward Weston
© Photograph: Edward Weston
Open letter to Reform UK leader expresses ‘dismay and anger’ at his response to racism and antisemitism allegations
Nigel Farage has been told to apologise for his alleged teenage racism by 26 school contemporaries who have written an open letter telling of their “dismay and anger” at his response in recent weeks.
In a united challenge to the Reform UK leader, the alleged victims and witnesses condemn him for what they describe as his refusal to acknowledge his behaviour at Dulwich college.
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© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Sydney man, 24, charged with 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act after waking from coma
The alleged Bondi attacker who survived a shootout with police has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been “inspired by Isis”.
New South Wales police charged Naveed Akram, 24, on Wednesday, after he was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries on Sunday night.
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© Composite: X
© Composite: X
© Composite: X
Susie Wiles has spoken to Vanity Fair magazine in a series of 11 interviews that she has since dismissed as a ‘hit piece’
The president’s chief of staff Susie Wiles has given her own, unvarnished thoughts about Donald Trump’s administration, in a series of interviews published by Vanity Fair magazine, revealing details and opinions that presidential aides usually save for memoirs long after they have left power.
From calling out attorney general Pam Bondi over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, to criticising Elon Musk over the dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Wiles has offered an unusually candid look inside the White House, after maintaining a low profile for much of Trump’s term.
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© Photograph: Tom Brenner/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Tom Brenner/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Tom Brenner/AFP/Getty Images
A meet-cute between Humanity and Earth, a mod ballet and Nick Mohammed’s career-best standup set – our critics pick the best stage shows of the year
10. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Staging a bestselling book that has already been adapted into a film starring bona fide national treasures (Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton) might have been daunting. But, in Chichester, Katy Rudd’s musical of a man’s Bunyanesque journey to visit a dying woman met that challenge with lo-fi eccentricity and folksy songs with a foot-stomping spirit (composed by Michael Rosenberg, AKA Passenger). In the West End from 29 January. Read the review
© Composite: Tristram Kenton/ Marc Brenner/ Mark Senior
© Composite: Tristram Kenton/ Marc Brenner/ Mark Senior
© Composite: Tristram Kenton/ Marc Brenner/ Mark Senior
Britain has had more than 1,600 recorded hours of sunshine this year after record-breaking spring
The UK has already had its sunniest year on record, the Met Office has confirmed, after the country battled droughts and sweltered in heatwaves.
Though the country is currently swathed in December gloom, the rest of the year brought vast amounts of sunshine.
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© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
The Russian strategy of exporting chaos to provoke extremism only works if liberals succumb to cynicism and despair
I once spent an exasperating week showing a Russian friend around London. He insisted on seeing everything and admiring nothing. Museums, monuments, shops – all compared unfavourably with St Petersburg and Moscow. This got tiresome after a few days, so I asked my friend if there was anything at all about Britain that impressed him. “The stability,” he said without hesitation. “You can feel the stability.”
That was a different world; the late 1990s. I don’t remember the year, but I remember knowing what my friend was talking about because I had felt the same culture shock in reverse when first visiting Russia.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing liquid on the rim of its pitchers that tempts its prey into a deadly trap
A carnivorous pitcher plant has recently been found to use a chemical nerve agent to drug its prey and lead them to a deadly end, being consumed in digestive juices at the bottom of the pitcher traps.
The pitcher plant Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing sweet nectar on the rim of its pitchers for visiting insects, particularly ants, to feed on to lure them into the trap. But the nectar is laced with a toxic nerve agent called isoshinanolone, which strikes at the ant’s nervous system, leaving it with sluggish movements, weakened muscles, and causing it to groom itself excessively. Eventually the prey falls upside down in spasms, with the nerve agent sometimes killing it outright. But apart from isoshinanolone, the nectar also contains three types of sugars that can all absorb water and make the rim of the pitcher especially slippery, so the prey is more likely to slide down into the pitchers.
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© Photograph: carla65/Alamy
© Photograph: carla65/Alamy
© Photograph: carla65/Alamy
Have a very chewy yuletide with this sumptuously layered meringue smasher that pumps pavlova up a level
I’m switching up my usual Christmas pavlova this year for a slightly different but equally delicious meringue-based dessert. Discs of pistachio meringue are baked until crisp, then layered with pistachio cream and cherry compote. The meringue softens a little under the cream as it sits, giving it a pleasingly chewy, cake-like texture. A very good option if you’re after a Christmas dessert without chocolate, alcohol or dried fruit.
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© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Laura Lawrence.
© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Laura Lawrence.
© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Laura Lawrence.
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