• Felipe Contepomi accused England flanker of being a ‘bully’

• Post-match incident follows anger over Curry tackle

Argentina have lodged a complaint and called for an investigation into the alleged tunnel scuffle involving England flanker Tom Curry and their head coach Felipe Contepomi following Sunday’s clash at Twickenham.

In an extraordinary press conference following England’s 27-23 victory, Contepomi described Curry as a “bully” and accused the flanker of shoving him in the tunnel and telling him to “fuck off”. Contepomi also claimed Curry had “broken” the knee of the Argentina fullback Juan Cruz Mallia with a “reckless” tackle - an incident that seemed to spark the bad blood after the final whistle.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Novo Nordisk finds its semaglutide drug fails to help in Alzheimer’s treatment

German business morale has unexpectedly fallen this month, as companies lose hope on a recovery of the German economy following two years of contraction.

The Ifo institute has reported that its business climate index fell to 88.1 in November from 88.4 in October, weaker than expected. It’s a blow to German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s efforts to revive growth through a major spending package.

“Companies have little faith that a recovery is coming anytime soon.”

Like U2 sang almost 40 years ago: the German economy still hasn’t found what it’s looking for.

The year 2025 has been another year of hope and disappointed optimism. A year which saw excitement and enthusiasm sparked by Germany’s unprecedented fiscal policy U-turn and its decision to invest significantly in infrastructure and defence this spring. But also a year that brought a rude awakening and a cringing feeling as we watched the new government undermine the positive impact of fiscal stimulus with clumsy budgetary decisions, new political tensions, and a lack of structural reforms.

Jon M Chu’s sequel, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, is the second biggest US opening of the year and the biggest international opening for a stage musical adaptation

The extraordinary promotional juggernaut for Wicked: For Good, Jon M Chu’s sequel to the 2024 first instalment of his Broadway adaptation, appears to have paid off, with the film this weekend smashing box office records held by its predecessor.

Its global total at the end of the weekend stands at $226m, considerably up on the $164.2m earned by its predecessor. The major change was in the domestic takings: while last year’s film took more than double its initial take in the US – $114m to $50.2m overseas – this concluding instalment has corrected that overindexing, with $76m banked from international territories.

US has used claims of a ‘war on drugs’ to justify its attacks, which have resulted in 83 deaths that the UN has called extrajudicial executions

Amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas, the US has gathered its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

Donald Trump’s administration has steadily increased pressure on Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of running the “Cartel of the Suns” drug-trafficking organization, and placing a $50m bounty on his head.

Firefighters call for long-term investment and say UK is dangerously underprepared as climate crisis worsens

Wildfires have devastated more moorland, forests and fields in the UK this year than at any time since records began, putting huge pressure on the country’s fire service, figures show.

The Global Wildfire Information System estimates that by November, wildfires had burned 47,026 hectares (116,204 acres) in 2025 in the UK – the largest area in any year since monitoring began in 2012, and more than double the area burned in the record-breaking summer of 2022.

Ash clouds from Hayli Gubbi volcano sent drifting across the Red Sea toward Yemen and Oman

A volcano in Ethiopia’s north-eastern region has erupted for the first time in nearly 12,000 years, sending thick plumes of smoke up to 9 miles (14km) into the sky, and across the Red Sea toward Yemen and Oman.

The Hayli Gubbi volcano, located in Ethiopia’s Afar region about 500 miles north-east of Addis Ababa near the Eritrean border, erupted on Sunday for several hours.

Democrats’ relentless focus on affordability welcomed in a group that had been seduced by an ecosystem of hucksters

Just a few months ago, it seemed that the political landscape was changing permanently, with young people shifting right – especially young men. Democrats spun up a vortex of efforts to win them back, but they often appeared to be flailing. This month’s elections, however, told a different story.

Young men in the US face a political identity crisis. It should not be controversial to say that the world that many were promised as children has not come to fruition. Two decades of war and a turbulent economy have combined with a massively changing workforce. Young men’s disaffection should come as no real surprise.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years

He called one a ‘piggy’ after being questioned about the files, and reacted furiously to another during a meeting with the Saudi crown prince

Since the early days of his political career, Donald Trump has been critical of the media, but in recent days his hostility has reached a new peak – particularly when it comes to questions about his association with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump invoked the phrase “piggy” – a term he has used before – to describe a female reporter on Friday, and has aggressively responded to at least one other female reporter over the past week, including threatening to revoke ABC’s license.

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.

Goalkeeper’s unorthodox tactics got in Inter captain’s head as Allegri’s side held on for all three points at San Siro

It had taken 73 minutes, and a VAR review, but Inter finally had their breakthrough in the Milan derby, the referee, Simone Sozza, pointing to the spot after he saw replays of Strahinja Pavlovic treading on Marcus Thuram’s foot inside the box. Now all that remained was for Hakan Calhanoglu to convert and make the score 1-1.

A formality. Since arriving in Serie A, the Turkey captain had been practically automatic in these situations – scoring 27 out of 28 penalties taken for Inter, and three out of three for Milan before that. Entire newspaper columns and late-night TV broadcasts were given over to analysing his infallibility, before he finally smacked one against a post in a draw at home to Napoli last year.

India’s prime minister among those paying tribute to celebrated actor whose career spanned six decades

Dharmendra, one of the most enduring stars of India’s Bollywood cinema, has died at the age of 89.

Born Dharam Singh Deol, but later known as Dharmendra, he rose to fame in the 1960s and became one of the most celebrated and popular stars of Indian cinema in a career that spanned six decades.

From a newer, greener Top Gear to the greatest comedy of all time, here are the series Guardian readers most want back on our screens

As Line of Duty and Doctor Foster both return for new series, we asked what TV programmes you’d like to see revived next. Here are your responses.

Hat-trick against Dortmund showed striker’s instinct and invention as Sebastian Hoeness finds a solution yet again

This had felt like one of those weeks not in which momentum was shifting, but in which it had already shifted. It was ultimately a positive one for Germany; they had entered Monday’s reception of Slovakia, who had beaten them in the teams’ first game in Bratislava, with need of a point and not without some trepidation. Those worries were emphatically scrubbed out in Leipzig, 6-0. It was night and day next to the laboured win in Luxembourg three days before, but those contrasting displays had one thing in common. They were marshalled by the goals and the sang-froid of Nick Woltemade.

That the towering striker was Stuttgart’s for a season feels almost a dream already; a super, surprise single season of future fable to be filed alongside Didier Drogba’s solo campaign at Marseille as he power-walked the path to global domination. Yet if any team in Germany are equipped to deal with sudden, painful personnel losses it is Sebastian Hoeness-era Stuttgart.

Disqualifications of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri bring unnecessary stress for McLaren in the final two F1 races of the season

As misjudgments go, McLaren’s error in calculations that led to the disqualification of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri from the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Sunday could barely have been more cataclysmic nor more poorly timed. Quite how they got it wrong just when they wanted to close out the drivers’ championship with as little fuss as possible will take no little explanation.

Norris and Piastri, second and fourth respectively to Max Verstappen’s win in Nevada, had been solid enough results until the FIA discovered the skid blocks on their cars had been worn beyond the 9mm limit. In one fell swoop, Verstappen was right back in the fight, alongside Piastri, 24 points back from Norris.

Militias are coercing, bribing and kidnapping young people in remote areas to be fighters, drug sellers, informants or sex slaves

In spring last year, Ana’s* friends began to disappear. Members of an armed group had begun recruiting children in her village in Colombia’s north-west region of Norte de Santander, promising them food, money, mobile phones and motorcycles.

“They began taking all of the young people, the boys and the girls, my friends from school. I was so scared, I had to shut myself away,” says Ana, then 14.

Trump administration labels Maduro as member of foreign terrorist organization and could impose fresh sanctions on country

The president was online early today, and fired off a Truth Social post at 5:38am touting the economic impact that his sweeping tariffs will soon have on the country. He also noted that countries’ efforts to stockpile US goods ahead of the levies kicking in was “wearing thin”.

“These payments will be RECORD SETTING, and put our Nation on a new and unprecedented course,” he wrote. “This Tariff POWER will bring America National Security and Wealth the likes of which has never been seen before.”

Those opposing us are serving hostile foreign interests that are not aligned with the success, safety and prosperity of the USA. They couldn’t care less about us. I look so much forward to the United States Supreme Court’s decision on this urgent and time sensitive matter,” he added.

Lord Evans of Watford and Lord Dannatt were filmed breaking rules, in undercover footage recorded by Guardian

• UK politics live – latest updates

Two long-serving peers are to be suspended from the House of Lords after a parliamentary watchdog ruled that they had broken lobbying rules.

Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army, and David Evans (Lord Evans of Watford), were filmed breaking the rules in undercover footage recorded by the Guardian.

The two remaining members of the groundbreaking, politically revolutionary group talk about the state of hip-hop and the US government’s attacks on people of color

For the first time in 35 years, Billboard’s Hot 100 chart does not include a rap song among its top 40 hit records. Anyone who’s been listening to the music for at least that long can list myriad reasons why that’s now the case: all the beats sound the same, all the artists are industry plants, all the lyrics are barely intelligible etc. For hip-hop forefather Abiodun Oyewole, though, it boils down to this: “We embraced ‘party and bullshit’, my brother.”

Fifty-seven years ago, on what would have been Malcolm X’s 43rd birthday, Oyewole cliqued up with two young poets at a writers’ workshop in East Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) to form what would become the Last Poets, a collective of bard revolutionaries. They outfitted themselves in African prints, performed over the beat of a congo drum and advocated for populism in their verses. The group has had many configurations over the years, but Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan abide as the standout members. The trio is all over the band’s self-titled first album – which was released in 1970 and peaked at No 29 on the Billboard 200. Their follow-up album, This Is Madness, made them ripe targets for J Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro campaign against the emerging figures the then-FBI director deemed politically subversive. Notably, Oyewole could not contribute to that album because he had been incarcerated for an attempted robbery of a Ku Klux Klan headquarters, serving 2 1/2 years of a three-year sentence. (He was trying to raise bail for activists who had been arrested for striking back at the klan.)

Political elites in Europe’s ‘mature’ democracies warn of external threats – but at home they normalise racism and undermine the rule of law

Europe’s leaders cannot stop talking about democracy. President Emmanuel Macron says he wants to kickstart a democratic “resurgence”, and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has warned of an “axis” of autocratic states targeting liberal democracy in Europe. Having promised to “fight” for what she calls European “values”, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has just announced a new “democracy shield” and a Centre for Democratic Resilience to prevent foreign interference and deal with external threats. I keep hoping for similar scrutiny of democratic backsliding within the EU – but so far it has not happened.

Foreign interference, disinformation and the creeping illiberalism of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia deserve attention. But lost in this fretting is a more inconvenient truth: within Europe’s “mature” democracies, there is a steady corrosion of the rule of law, a degradation of political discourse and the normalisation of racism, xenophobia and discrimination.

Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company

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”.

Temperatures over 35C break November records in Israel while some areas of Vietnam have nearly 2 metres of rainfall

Exceptionally high temperatures have roasted Israel in recent days, breaking records for late November. During the heatwave, which peaked over Friday and Saturday, temperatures soared to between 10C and 12C above average, as low-lying parts of the country widely reached between 30C and 35C and exceeded 35C more locally. Israel’s previous record for the latter third of November was 34.9C.

On Friday, temperatures reached 36.2C in Beit Dagan, near Tel Aviv, where the average November high is around 24C, while on Saturday they reached a peak of 37.3C in Eilat on the Red Sea coast, where the average is 27C. Though temperatures were less extreme at higher altitudes, they were still well above average; Jerusalem, at an altitude of more than 700 metres, reached around 27C, in comparison with an average November high of 19C.

Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now

Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81.

A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.

• Only three fringe players will go to Canberra

• Rest of squad to have extra sessions at the Gabba

To hell with the optics was the message from England on Monday after confirmation that none of the players who collapsed to the shattering two-day defeat in the first Ashes Test will change tack and travel to Canberra.

In a move that risks drawing further ire, only Jacob Bethell, Josh Tongue and Matthew Potts – all unused in Perth – will join the Lions at Manuka Oval, where Andrew Flintoff’s shadow touring party will take on a Prime Minister’s XI in a two-day floodlit fixture that starts on Saturday.

Amy Redford thanks fans for ‘love and support’ but takes issue with ‘AI versions of funerals, tributes and quotes from members of my family that are fabrications’

Robert Redford’s daughter Amy Redford has criticised the proliferation of artificial intelligence tributes to her father, who died in September, calling them “fabrications”.

Redford posted a statement on social media in which she thanked fans for their “overwhelming love and support”, adding: “It’s clear that he meant so much to so many, and I know that my family is humbled by the outpouring of stories and tributes from all corners of the globe.”