She and her husband seem keen on their titles and accolades, and less enthusiastic about putting in the work that ordinarily goes with them

Meghan may be a resident of Montecito, California, but she is still the Duchess of Sussex, and she won’t let us commoners forget it. Despite their highly publicised separation from the royal family, Harry and Meghan remain extraordinarily loyal to their fancy titles. They have been asked before why they cling to their aristocratic honorifics and shrugged off the question. “What difference would that make?” Harry told Anderson Cooper in 2023, when asked why the couple didn’t renounce the titles.

The difference, Mr Duke, is that people might stop wondering why you and Megs are so keen on reminding everyone that you’re royals, while living in a country that famously has no monarchy. And this question isn’t going away. It keeps popping up and it’s back in the news now thanks to a Harper’s Bazaar cover story on Meghan.

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Trump has suggested on at least 28 occasions over past eight years that a national TV network’s license be revoked – even though it doesn’t work that way

Facing aggressive questioning from Mary Bruce, an ABC News White House correspondent, about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, Donald Trump last week suggested a form of punishment he thought would be appropriate for her “crappy company”: the Federal Communications Commission should revoke ABC’s license, the US president declared.

It wasn’t the first time he has done so. As he has sought redress for what he has considered to be unfair reporting about him and his administration, Trump has suggested at least 28 times over the last eight years that a television network should lose its license, according to analysis by the Guardian.

Underpowered David Michôd film fails to land the story of the groundbreaking 90s female boxing champion and the horrendous abuse she faced at home

An uninspired and undirected performance from Sydney Sweeney means there’s a fatal lack of power in this movie from director and co-writer David Michôd. It manages to be unsubtle without being powerful. His subject is Christy Salters Martin, who under the grinning tutelage of Don King became the world’s most successful female boxing champion in the 90s and 00s but faced a misogynist nightmare outside the ring.

The film fails to deliver the power of the traditional boxing movie, or the real importance of a story about domestic abuse and coercive control, or the sensory detail of true crime. It relies on the simple fact of a woman pioneeringly taking on what had once been solely a man’s sport and relapses into cliche. Christy, with her frizzy hair and brown contact lenses, doesn’t seem to plausibly develop as a character throughout the film, and it sometimes seems as if Michôd is slightly more engaged with her gargoyle of a husband-slash-manager Jim Martin, played by Ben Foster with a standard-issue combover and paunch.

National news organizations have treated the borough like flyover country. It’s time to change that

As the extraordinary Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani shows, there’s a new bellwether in American politics.

For years, Ohio played that role. In every election from 1964 to 2016, the state voted for the winning presidential candidate, and every four years journalists would travel there to interview voters in Columbus and Cincinnati, Dayton and Youngstown. But in 2020 Biden won without carrying the state, and today Ohio is deeply red, costing it its bellwether status. Several other states once considered battlegrounds – Iowa, Missouri, and Florida – have also turned firmly Republican.

Michael Massing is an American writer based in New York City. He is a former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review

Eke out that last stubborn scrape of Marmite and turn it into a dream glaze for crisp roast potatoes

I never peel a roastie, because boiling potatoes with their skins on, then cracking them open, gives you the best of both worlds: fluffy insides and golden, craggy edges. Especially when you finish roasting them in a glaze made with butter (or, even better, saved chicken, pork, beef or goose fat) and the last scrapings from a Marmite jar.

Millions of sexual violent survivors will not live a day longer with this torturous injustice

It began as I finished Nobody’s Girl, the torturous and devastating account of Virginia Giuffre’s life. It was what I can only describe as a kind of corporeal attack, an existential clutch followed by days of such powerful anxiety my body was taken in bouts of uncontrollable shaking. A sense of not mattering, a virulent dread and dissolving into an all-encompassing nothingness impossible to shake. How many times as a child, after being abused by my father, had I experienced this sense of erasure and disappearance?

Feeling that no matter what I did, what I accomplished, how hard I tried to lift my head above the parapet I would be cast out forever. This attack lasted days. Perhaps it was Virginia’s story, parts of which felt much like my own. Raped as a child by her father, then raped by her father’s good friend, then raped when she ran away, then the years of being raped by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, then being sexually trafficked to powerful and sadistic men to be raped again.

The final remains curious in a Celtic context because it is the showpiece occasion the club would rather forget

It feels cruel in part to use Thursday’s meeting of Feyenoord and Celtic to reflect upon illustrious times. The Dutch side are 29th in the 36-team Europa League table, with Celtic’s position in 27th only more slightly more palatable to supporters because Rangers are bottom of the pile.

Those fans disrupted an annual general meeting to the point of abandonment last week, demonstrating the disharmony that has engulfed Celtic for months. A club that progressed to the Champions League’s knockout phase last season, looking an overdue but serious European force, have starkly regressed. Celtic have the spending power to outshine clubs who routinely embarrass them in a bigger pond than St Mirren and Motherwell occupy.

Several people reportedly trapped inside burning towers as firefighters tackle huge blaze in Tai Po district

Four people have died after a massive fire engulfed several high-rise towers of a residential complex in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district, with thick grey smoke billowing out as emergency services tackled the blaze.

Police said several people remained trapped inside the burning towers, the public broadcaster RTHK reported, while two people were in a critical condition with severe burns.

Gulf nation is accused of placing monitoring software on computers of two dissidents living in London

Bahrain is to tell the UK’s supreme court that it enjoys sovereign immunity from claims it placed surveillance software on the computers of two dissidents when they were living in London.

The Gulf country has lost the sovereign immunity claim both in the high court and court of appeal, and a decision to take the case further to the supreme court shows how important it is to the country’s reputation.

As the government, Marineland of Canada and activists remain at loggerheads over whales’ fate, health and freedom of beloved animals hangs in balance

Jelly Bean’s daughter Bertie Botts is an adorable little “ham sandwich”. Orion – nicknamed “Onion Ring” – is a large but fiercely protective friend. Zephyr has “ants in his pants” and wiggles like a worm. Lillooet is the “biggest cuddle bug” with a heart of gold.

Thirty captive beluga whales in a Canadian amusement park have become pawns in a tussle between a shuttered park, local and national governments and animal rights activists.

Music company representing Coldplay and Ed Sheeran had sued tech platform alleging mass copyright infringement

• Business live – latest updates

Warner Music has signed a licensing deal with the artificial intelligence song generator Suno after settling a copyright infringement lawsuit it launched against the service a year ago

Warner, the world’s third-largest music company and home to acts including Coldplay, Charli XCX and Ed Sheeran, is the first of the major record labels to partner officially with the company.

Kerry O’Keeffe has called the veteran left-armer ‘one of the most underrated cricketers Australia have produced’, and the figures back him up

When I close my eyes at night, Mitchell Starc is at the top of his run. It might be punishment for forgetting to vote for him in the Guardian’s all-time Ashes players list.

His 6ft 6in frame elongates and stretches until he’s uncomfortably filling my mind’s eye and then the legs start, a nightmare-beautiful rhythmic run. The arms piston, the eyes steady, the head as still as a marble mantelpiece. He’s a cheetah in giant white wristbands, a moon-marauding wolf, a river of melted chocolate, that expensive, unpalatable, 95% stuff.

Cheikh Touré died after being lured abroad in one of a growing number of extortion schemes tricking talented teenagers with dreams of making it big

The last time Diodo Sokhna spoke to her teenage son, he seemed subdued, his voice sapped of all the optimism he had set off with on a journey supposed to put him on the road to a career as a professional footballer.

After that call Cheikh Touré went silent. His mother’s WhatsApp messages to his phone received only the dreaded single tick, indicating they had not been received. Soon afterwards a man with a foreign accent rang her from a number she did not recognise. He told Sokhna her son was dead and then hung up.

The number of rental properties without a lounge is surging, and people are having to eat and socialise in kitchens, bedrooms and stairwells. How can you relax and build community without a communal area?

‘Without a living room, your world becomes quite small,” says Georgie, a 27-year-old climbing and outdoor instructor. When she moved into a house-share with four strangers in 2023, she wasn’t worried about the lack of a living room. “I kind of thought it would be fine – I didn’t have that many options, and the house was by far the cheapest.”

The property she rented was in Leeds, and what had once been a lounge had gradually been turned into an inaccessible storage space. To make things worse, the kitchen was tiny: “By the time you put a table against the wall, you couldn’t sit or stand without getting in the way of the sink or the oven.”

Nintendo Switch 2; Bandai Namco/Sora/HAL Laboratory/Nintendo
It takes some getting used to, but this Mario Kart challenger soon reveals a satisfyingly zen, minimalist approach to competitive racing

In the world of cartoonish racing games, it’s clear who is top dog. As Nintendo’s moustachioed plumber lords it up from his gilded go-kart, everyone from Crash Bandicoot to Sonic and Garfield has tried – and failed – to skid their way on to the podium. Now with no one left to challenge its karting dominance, Nintendo is attempting to beat itself at its own game.

The unexpected sequel to a critically panned 2003 GameCube game, Kirby Air Riders has pink squishball Kirby and friends hanging on for dear life to floating race machines. With no Grand Prix to compete in, in the game’s titular mode you choose a track and compete to be the first of six players to cross the finish line, spin-attacking each other and unleashing weapons and special abilities to create cutesy, colourful chaos.

The former England keeper discusses his sometimes borderline deluded outlook and being proud to defend the values of the club he loves

Tom Heaton wears a scowl. Sodden and frozen, he trudges off a pitch at Manchester United’s Carrington training base, gesticulating and muttering a goalkeeper-eyed analysis of the game his team have just lost. “We got pumped,” he says loudly, his annoyance clear.

Sometimes the obvious question must be asked: even on days such as this, does Heaton still enjoy it? “I love it,” is his response, his near-permanent grin reappearing.

The final season of the epic Netflix 80s show is about to air. But how much can you remember about the world of the Upside Down? Test your knowledge with our fiendish quiz

Drone footage shows Hat Yai in southern Thailand inundated by flood waters. Heavy flooding continued to damage cities and provinces near the Malaysian border, causing dozens of deaths and prompting evacuations with more rains forecast

• 2nd Test: SA, 489 & 260-5d, bt India, 201 & 140, by 408 runs

• Spinner takes 6-37; Markram takes nine catches in Test

South Africa completed a memorable 2-0 series sweep against India after the off-spinner Simon Harmer claimed six for 37 to bowl the Proteas to a 408-run victory in the second Test in Guwahati.

Chasing an improbable 549 to win, India were all out for 140 in the second session on the final day, with only Ravindra Jadeja (54) offering some resistance with the bat. Aiden Markram took a record nine catches in the match for the world Test champions, who won the opening Test in Kolkata inside three days.

• Own goal and red card contribute to Blues’ 3-0 victory

• Brazilian hails ‘the most special moment of my career’

Estêvão Willian relished the biggest night of his short career after powering Chelsea to a 3-0 victory against Barcelona in the Champions League with a special solo goal.

The 18-year-old Brazilian struggled to make sense of his emotions after a special night at Stamford Bridge. Estêvão, who joined Chelsea from Palmeiras for £52m last summer, convincingly won his battle with Barca’s Lamine Yamal and stole the limelight when he put Enzo Maresca’s side 2-0 up early in the second half.

Chancellor to deliver fiscal statement, billed as decisive moment for fate of Starmer government, at 12.30pm

• Tax, pensions, savings: what to expect in the budget

• Reeves’s high-stakes budget in five key charts

• Could you do better than Reeves? Play our game

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has rejected the concerns raised by the Resolution Foundation (see 9.54am) about the rise in the minimum wage rates. Asked about the thinktank’s comments, Nowak told Times Radio:

I don’t accept those concerns ...

First of all, that recommendation is based on the Low Pay Commission, which brings together employers, unions, independent experts, they’re tasked with making a recommendation on the minimum wage, which balances getting money into people’s pockets and the impact on unemployment.

Working in a bookshop while failing to write a novel, the narrator admits to being a ‘living cliche’ in this bitter black comedy

“I had become a living cliche: the cantankerous bookseller,” the narrator declares a third of the way through John Tottenham’s debut novel. “No book or movie that included a scene set in a bookstore was complete without such a stock ‘character’.” That’s one way to pre-empt criticism, and Sean Hangland is just such a stock figure. Embittered, rude, apathetic, resentful of the success and happiness of others and intellectually snobbish, he’s a 48-year-old aspiring writer who makes ends meet, just about, working in an independent bookshop in a gentrifying part of LA.

He worries about turning 50 having made nothing of his life. He notes, lugubriously, that he barely seems to get any writing done and that – having no gift for plot, characterisation or prose – the novel he claims to be trying to produce will be lousy anyway. He keeps bumping into old friends whose books are being published by hip independent presses or who have acquired nice girlfriends, or both. His teeth are in bad shape.

Three ICC judges have been put on a sanctions list with terrorists after approving an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister. This is the charade of the ‘rules-based order’

The fate of one French judge is a case study in the west’s long unravelling. Nicolas Guillou cannot shop online. When he used Expedia to book a hotel in his own country, the reservation was cancelled within hours. He is “blacklisted by much of the world’s banking system”, unable to use most bank cards.

Guillou, you see, has been sanctioned by the United States, putting him on a 15,000-strong list alongside al-Qaida terrorists, drug cartels and Vladimir Putin. Why? Because alongside two other judges of the international criminal court pre-trial chamber I, he approved arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Deif, the former commander of Hamas’s military wing. Guillou and his colleagues had “actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel”, the US claimed when imposing the sanctions in June. All are now barred from entering the US – but that is the least of the consequences.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

A game cast and some decent twists help to elevate this passably entertaining London-set Christmas offering about a department store robbery

We’re a few weeks into the annual Netflix Christmas dump and standards have already fallen below freezing. In both Alicia Silverstone’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas and Minka Kelly’s Champagne Problems, motions were lethargically, and cheaply, gone through without any seasonal sparkle added, a low bar once again set for the next month and change.

So while there’s nothing all that remarkable about the streamer’s latest festive effort, crime caper turned romcom Jingle Bell Heist, there’s just about enough to give it an edge over its more anemic peers. Rather than being set in Snowflakeville or some other absurdly named small town in Middle America (while being clearly filmed in Canada), it’s shot on location in London during Christmas 2023 (directed by Mike Flanagan’s long-time cinematographer Michael Fimognari). The city does a great deal of heavy-lifting with every pub, caff and high street helping to conjure up a real sense of place usually absent in such territory (it also means no need for increasingly distracting fake CG snow). There are roles for British comedy stars like Peter Serafinowicz and Amandaland’s wonderful Lucy Punch and the soundtrack opts for alternative holiday songs from Low and Run-DMC over yet another easily affordable cover of All I Want for Christmas is You. There’s also a plot that isn’t quite as rote as we’re used to with no career-minded woman waiting to be tamed by a family-craving hunk. These might not sound like major, applause-worthy diversions but in the hopelessly generic, and at times unforgivably lazy, world of Netflix Christmas fodder, it’s not nothing.