It’s the liver – not the skin – that rids the body of the toxins in alcohol, but exercise can help manage the symptoms

Here’s a useful fact to quote to any smug relatives who say they went for a run the morning after their Christmas party: you can’t get rid of toxins by sweating. “Toxins” is a broad term, says Adam Taylor, professor of anatomy at Lancaster Medical School, covering anything that can damage the body – from heavy metals to chemicals found in plastics, as well as the normal byproducts of our own metabolism. The liver is designed to process the toxins in alcohol and either break them down into usable units or get rid of them. The waste products are then filtered from the blood and excreted in urine or stools.

Sweat, on the other hand, has a very different job. Although it can contain extremely small amounts of some metabolic byproducts, its purpose is temperature regulation (and, in some situations, to signal stress or fear). “Sweating is not the means to remove toxins,” says Taylor. “Going for a run or sitting in a sauna after a night of drinking won’t reduce the toxins produced by metabolising alcohol, and it won’t lower your blood alcohol level.”

His interference in the region has been aided by the collapse of the leftist forces that once pushed back against US imperialism

For the past generation, Latin America has been a place of unstable stability. Marked on the surface by protests, political pendulum swings and spectacular scandals, most of the region has, since the democratisation of the 1980s and 1990s, remained firmly democratic and free of war between states. Though scarred by the violence of armed groups and increasingly powerful criminal organisations, it has, by and large, lived up to its self-assumed moniker of a “zone of peace”.

Which is why this year has felt so jarring. Throughout 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, analysts have obsessively parsed potential US military incursions into a hemisphere once defined by its unified defence of national sovereignty. But the fixation on whether Washington’s escalating pressure on Nicolás Maduro presages a physical military invasion of Venezuela has distracted from the real story: the larger shift towards direct intervention has already happened, and it has faced remarkably little resistance. More than 100 people have been killed in US maritime strikes that experts characterise as extrajudicial executions, and the loudest objections have come not from Latin American presidents or regional organisations, but from the US Congress.

Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She compiles the Latin America Daily Briefing and is part of the Ideas Letter’s editorial team

Investigative Committee says it is looking into whether Ukraine intelligence services were behind the attack

A Russian general was killed on Monday morning after an explosive device detonated underneath his car in southern Moscow, investigators said.

Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian armed forces’ general Staff, died from his injuries, said Svetlana Petrenko, official spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.

The year ahead in numbers

As we say goodbye to 2025, let’s delight in its numerical charms one final time. The year was unique this century as being a square number.

44² = 1936

45² = 2025

46² = 2116

Five 9s

Six 8s.

Six 7s.

Six 6s.

Four 5s.

Six 4s.

Four 3s.

Four 2s.

a partridge in a pear tree. (Only joking)

A saucer of pomegranate seeds and something sprinkled with petals? No thanks: just give me dinner

It’s lovely going out for dinner in London. It’s a gastro capital with cuisines from all around the world. One night, Indian, French the next, Peruvian, Ethiopian. You can travel the globe without leaving Hackney.

This time of year, I’m super busy planning the un-Royal Variety show – a punk pastiche of the royal version – and so I can’t be bothered with meal prep and washing up, and find myself eating out an awful lot. Most food trends I can get behind (with the exception of truffle – yuck!). But one pernicious dining trend that refuses to go away and which I detest is “small plates”.

Jonny Woo is a performer, drag artist, writer, and co-owner of The Divine, he will be hosting his Un-Royal Variety at Soho Theatre Walthamstow 26-28 November 2026.

From exile to family dysfunction, street food to sex, this stylish novel about a mother visiting her estranged gay son in Tokyo explores familiar themes

While we now use it to mean a fuss or convoluted mess, the origins of the word palaver, the title of Bryan Washington’s third novel, lie in the Portuguese term palavra, which simply means “word”. Over time, and possibly coloured by the historical context of Portuguese colonists’ rampages across the globe, “palaver” came to refer to a complex debate or negotiation between two culturally distinct parties.

Culture clashes, conflicted conversations, oppositions and exchanges are principal interests for Washington. His debut novel, 2020’s Memorial, was a sobering but sensitive consideration of a fracturing interracial gay relationship set between Houston and Osaka. This was followed in 2023 by Family Meal, again taking place in Houston, with its pithy observations of a combustible queer love triangle. Palaver centres on the tense relationship between protagonists “the son” and “the mother”. Guarded and prickly, the son is an American who has lived in Tokyo for the best part of a decade, teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout this period, he’s been estranged from his Jamaican-American mother back home in Texas. The novel opens with the equally crabby mother unexpectedly turning up on her son’s doorstep, and mostly covers the week and a half they spend together, moving between their two perspectives. Illuminated by Tokyo’s harsh neon, mother and son edge around reckonings with their bitter past of familial dysfunction, and make their way towards something resembling rapprochement.

Raisa K’s solo album is primitive and intimate, Saeko Killy adds a euphoric touch to her dimly lit sound and Bitchin Bajas get blissed out
• The 50 best albums of 2025
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Chicago minimalist trio Bitchin Bajas are experts in crafting the ultimate slow burn, with a discography full of soundscapes that often stretch languorously around or beyond the 10-minute mark. Their latest record follows suit with four winding, blissed-out tracks over a 40-minute run time. But it’s not just overindulgent lounge music: the analogue loops quietly build to transcendental heights, nudged along by wandering sax solos, spritely keys and other cosmic flourishes. It’s a lush, often moving odyssey which, towards the end of the epic 18-minute closer, climaxes in an effervescent flurry.

From Ronaldo’s legendary haircut to Argentina’s improvised 1986 away shirt – the odd stories behind football’s biggest trophy are explored. Plus, a smart series from the makers of Pod Save America

This series from football site Goal dedicates an episode to each one of the last 10 World Cups and pulls out an idiosyncratic moment. Take the story behind the bizarre 2002 haircut of Brazilian striker Ronaldo, or a profile of the shirts Argentina played in during the 1986 tournament, which were bootleg versions of their own shirts. It’s all narrated by commentator Martin Tyler, who has covered the last 12 tournaments. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes fortnightly

There’s no shortage of stunning scenery and daytime activities in the Lakes. Now, an observatory is offering stellar nocturnal events too

A tawny owl screeches nearby in the dark and her mate replies, hooting eerily from the forest below. A white dome floats in the gloaming above a plain black doorway outlined with red light, like a portal to another dimension. I’m in Grizedale Forest, far from any light-polluting cities, to visit the Lake District’s first public observatory and planetarium, which opened in May.

Grizedale Observatory offers immersive films in the planetarium and three-hour stargazing events that go on late into the night. There are sessions on astrophotography and, on moonless nights, dark sky astronomy with the chance to see “a glittering tapestry of stars, galaxies, nebulae and star clusters”. Its director, Gary Fildes, is a veteran in the field, having founded and led three UK observatories over two decades. The goal at Grizedale, he says, is to create “an immersive, year-round astronomy and science destination that brings the beauty of the Lake District skies to visitors”.

Houseplants appear to make conversation and yearn for lost friends in a witty yet luminous documentary from Jesse McLean

This experimental documentary by Jesse McLean about houseplants inspired me to go around my house and water all my vegetal housemates and treat the mealybug infections afflicting the jade plants in my office. Now I feel better for it in every way, while also basking in the afterglow of this luminous piece of film-making that is cinematic fertiliser for thought.

With a gentle touch that blends wonder and wit, prioritising none of the different voices and viewpoints we hear over any other (and that includes from plants themselves), McLean builds up an audiovisual collage of perspectives on plant-people relations. Some of the humans featured are merely silent subjects, often as still as the potted protagonists themselves. One woman is a bit woo-woo – but persuasively and charmingly so – about how one of her plants seemed to wither away with loneliness after being separated from her mother-in-law’s tongue plant it sat next to for years, only to become rejuvenated when they were reunited.

Guardian investigation reveals at least 119 direct attacks on hospitals and delivery wards since start of wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan

Thirty women were sheltering in the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, on 28 October when the massacre began. Some had just given birth and others were still in labour.

Working at the hospital that night, lab technician Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, 28, was one of the few known survivors. “I heard the voices of women and children screaming,” he says. “They were killing everybody inside the hospital. Those of us who were able to run, did.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious film is now 50 years old, and its cavalcade of shocking cruelty and violence still leaves a stark impact on its viewers. Film-makers explain why Pasolini ‘was a saint to us’

Abel Ferrara was there at the beginning. In his new memoir, Scene, the cult director describes his experience at the American premiere of Salò, the hugely controversial final film from Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. At the beginning of the film – at which Ferrara and company arrived with wine and cheese, given its length – there were 15 people in the audience. Once the credits rolled, there were eight. “I was standing with like six people,” Ferrara says now. “And you know, two or three of those people I still see.”

When it comes to Salò, it seems that you never forget your first time. The film, which has reached its 50th anniversary in 2025, is known for its seemingly endless cavalcade of cruelty and violence, leaves a stark impact on those who come across it. “We had high expectations, but it went beyond that,” Ferrara says. “He had just died, so he was a saint to us.” But not everyone so readily embraces the film on first viewing. Film-maker Catherine Breillat says that at first, she didn’t like Salò, “regretted seeing it, [and] sort of wished that [I] hadn’t”. For Breillat, “you have to be ready to see Salò. Its like Arthur’s Round Table; it will come to you when you’re ready. There’s a moment where you can sit down with the knights of the Round Table, after following a dangerous path, and you don’t disappear into the abyss.”

A melancholy December vision in Liverpool invokes a Dickensian ghost with more worldly but still warm realism

Down on the canal on Christmas Day

Down on the canal on Christmas Day
a man walks towards me out of water-light,
upright, Cratchit-wrapped, a smile to say:
I know you. Hello Chris. Ghost in a time-ripped landscape
where a low solstice sun spills whisked
through a metallic staircase.
With joy, the man’s smile haunts me for miles —
a long blasted path, where a dead rat’s belly festoons
its purple crinoline Christmas hat.

MPs vote to investigate crash amid accusations from victims’ relatives of cover-ups and delays

South Korea’s parliament has launched an independent inquiry into the deadliest air disaster on its soil amid accusations of investigation delays and cover-ups of last year’s Jeju Air crash.

On 29 December 2024 all but two of the 181 people onboard a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 died when it crashed at Muan international airport, 288km south of Seoul, after reporting a bird strike during landing.

Milder weather led to a bloom in the invertebrates in south Cornwall and Devon, wildlife charity says

Record numbers of sightings of one of the world’s most intelligent invertebrates over the summer have led the Wildlife Trusts to declare 2025 “the year of the octopus” in its annual review of Britain’s seas.

A mild winter followed by an exceptionally warm spring prompted unprecedented numbers of Mediterranean octopuses to take up residence along England’s south coast, from Penzance in Cornwall to south Devon.

The Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif was the most prominent name among so many targeted for simply bearing witness to the truth

In January this year, Anas al-Sharif was filmed being lifted into the air after taking off his helmet and flak jacket to celebrate a ceasefire that would prove all too temporary in Gaza. This summer, the Palestinian journalist broke down while reporting on starvation in his home town that is now a war zone. A bystander told him: “Persist, Anas, you are our voice”.

But al-Sharif’s popularity in Gaza made him a target. In July, international agencies warned of the danger he was in as the Israel Defense Forces stepped up online attacks, falsely labelling him a Hamas terrorist. His employer, Al Jazeera, insisted he restrict his reporting to the more protected al-Shifa hospital after his father and many colleagues were killed. In August, a few months short of his 29th birthday, al-Sharif and six others were killed in a direct attack on a media tent next to the hospital. In a posthumous post he said: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”

Jane Martinson is professor of financial journalism at City St George’s and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group. She writes in a personal capacity

Government has vowed to end use of asylum hotels and plans to send first men to Crowborough site within weeks

The Home Office plans to send the first group of asylum seekers to a military site in East Sussex in the new year, the Guardian understands.

Discussions in Whitehall are under way to use Crowborough army training camp within weeks as part of efforts to end the use of hotels for asylum accommodation.

From corny adverts to snowy murder plots, test your knowledge with these seasonal questions

• In the mood for more? For all our crosswords and sudoku, as well as our new football game, On the Ball, and film quiz, Film Reveal, download the Guardian app. Available in the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Case of man who apparently targeted Christians is latest in series of incidents in Hampshire of animal remains being dumped

The people of the New Forest are accustomed to curious goings-on. The woods and heaths of the national park in southern England are the setting for all manner of tales of witches, pixies, cursed souls and rituals, and, even today, are a magnet for those fascinated by the otherworldly.

But residents are aghast at the case of a local man who hit the headlines after admitting dumping the carcasses of animals, including black lambs, near churches in and around the forest, apparently targeting Christian worshippers.

Quickfire lots fuel a booming business, but critics condemn gambling-style features and popularity with ‘scalpers’

Christmas is fast approaching, the shopping days are ebbing away, and in one corner of the internet, the rush to grab highly prized Pokémon trading cards is boiling over into a competitive frenzy.

“Got any cheap Mew?” asks one buyer, deploying the frantic tone of an addict, albeit one craving a rectangle depicting a creature from the all-conquering Japanese media franchise.

Backlash after broadcaster announces the program, which was due to air on Sunday night, ‘needs additional reporting’

CBS News is facing a backlash from one of its own correspondents, and others, after it cancelled an upcoming 60 Minutes investigation into El Salvador’s brutal Cecot megaprison to which the Trump administration deported hundreds of migrants.

The episode of its flagship program was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editors note” posted on X, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”

In Germany, the neo-Nazi terrorist Beate Zschäpe has made a public display of her remorse – but remains silent on key aspects of her crimes

It’s a strange season to talk about forgiveness. While streets glow with fairy lights and shop windows promise that compassion is only a gift-box away, Germany is once again confronted with the unresolved wounds of its recent past. The trap of the season is this: believing that every gesture of regret must be met with mercy. As if forgiveness was a resource available to anyone who is reasonable enough to move on, no matter how atrociously they have been treated.

It is certainly not that simple for the families of the victims of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). During the 2000s, the neo-Nazi terror organisation killed 10 people, nine of them immigrants, mostly small business owners, and one policewoman. Because investigators focused on probing the victims’ families and communities rather than on Nazis, the NSU was able to continue murdering without interference. German media reported on the atrocities as die Dönermorde the kebab murders, as if it was some exotic true-crime phenomenon.

Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist

He insisted he was OK, but he didn’t look it, and when he tried and failed to eat Christmas lunch we knew it was time for a mercy dash to hospital

Our family friend has always been a larger than life figure. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to another brandy. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about the latest scandal to catch up with a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years. He could make anything – a jacket potato, a broken relationship – funny, somehow.

We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, suitcase in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us in Sheffield, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky.

The art activists made headlines during the US president’s state visit when they shocked the waiting media with a short documentary – and were quickly arrested

When Donald Trump’s second state visit was announced, and when the finer details for the Windsor banquet on 17 September 2025 became known, there was no way Led By Donkeys was going to let that pass unprotested. It was just so craven, rolling out the red carpet for Trump. Their next art-activist event unfolded like clockwork.

Led By Donkeys made a nine-minute film about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein which ended: “The president of the United States was a long-time close friend of America’s most notorious child sex trafficker. He’s alleged to be mentioned, numerous times, in the files arising from the investigation into that child sex trafficker … Now that president, Donald Trump, is sleeping here, in Windsor Castle.” (Trump says that he fell out with Epstein years before Epstein was first arrested, and has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.)