Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Bitcoin has fallen to its lowest level since April, as the cryptocurrency sector is hit by a sharp selloff.

The world’s largest crypto coin dropped as low as $89,286 this morning, a seven-month low, meaning it has lost all its gains in 2025.

Bitcoin, the canary in the risk coalmine, slips below $90k for the first time in seven months as its decline starts to display more impulsive rather than corrective characteristics.

That said, it is notable that its ~29% pullback from the record $126,272 high of early October is now on par with the ~31.5% pullback witnessed at the $74,434 Liberation Day low, coming from the January $109,356 high.

“I think no company is going to be immune, including us.”

The author of The Employees goes back to 17th-century Denmark for an intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity

On 26 June 1621, in Copenhagen, a woman was beheaded – which was unusual, but only in the manner of her death. According to one historian, during the years 1617 to 1625, in Denmark a “witch” was burned every five days. The first time this happens in Danish author Olga Ravn’s fourth novel, the condemned woman is “tied to the ladder, and the ladder pushed into the bonfire”. Her daughter watches as she falls, her eye “so strangely orange from within. And then in the heat it explodes.”

The child is watched, in turn, by a wax doll who sees everything: everything in this scene, and everything everywhere, through all space and all the time since it was fashioned. It sees the worms burrowing through the soil in which it is buried; the streets of the world in which it was made. It inhabits the bodies that walked those streets: “And I was in the king’s ear, and I was in the king’s mouth, and I was in the king’s loose tooth and in the quicksilver of his liver, and did hear.”

Jeff Luhnow has moved on from baseball disgrace and is deploying his data-driven philosophy to develop African talent at Le Havre and Leganés

Jeff Luhnow left baseball under something of a cloud after his involvement in the 2019 Houston Astros sign stealing scandal. But now the former management consultant, who won three World Series as general manager of the Astros and St Louis Cardinals using a data-driven approach that was dubbed “Extreme Moneyball”, is applying his philosophy to a different sport.

The owner of a network of football clubs that includes Leganés in Spain and the Ligue 1 side Le Havre, Luhnow has big plans to revolutionise the development of players in Africa and provide them with a clearer pathway into Europe’s top leagues. “It was pretty clear from the beginning that Africa was going to be the best place for us to find talent that we can integrate into our European clubs,” he says. “It’s not too dissimilar to what I experienced in baseball where a disproportionately large portion of talent comes from places like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Africa has 54 countries and a wide diversity of opportunities.

Caitriona Jennings ran 100 miles in just over 12 hours and wants other women to follow her example – ‘it’s not actually that difficult’

Imagine being able to run a marathon in three hours and 17 minutes. That is certainly no mean feat. But now think about trying to sustain that same pace for another nine hours. To most of us, the idea veers somewhere between the fantastical and the insane. Yet that is what Caitriona Jennings, a 45-year-old ultrarunner from Donegal, did this month when breaking the women’s world record for 100 miles.

Her time for the Tunnel Hill 100 Mile in Illinois was 12hr 37min 4sec – an average pace of 7min 34sec a mile. Incredibly, until then Jennings had never run more than 60 miles in one go. Having smashed the record, she then jumped on a red-eye economy flight from Chicago that landed in Dublin at 5am. Then she cycled straight to the office, where she works for a company that trades and leases planes to global airlines.

Diplomatic dispute over Japan’s stance on Taiwan continues to rumble after Senae Takaichi’s comments

Chinese travellers are estimated to have cancelled hundreds of thousands of flights to Japan amid reports of suspended visa processing and cultural exchanges as a diplomatic dispute over Japan’s stance on Taiwan continues.

Under pressure from business groups, Japan has sent a senior diplomat to Beijing in an attempt to calm tensions after Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said her country could get militarily involved if China attempted to invade Taiwan. Her comments prompted fury from China’s government, which issued warnings against Chinese travellers and students going to Japan.

‘Parasocial’ crowned Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year as ‘unhealthy’ relationships with celebrities rise

If you’re wondering why Taylor Swift didn’t respond to your social media post offering congratulations on her engagement, then Cambridge Dictionary has a word for you: parasocial.

Defined as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know”, parasocial has been chosen by the dictionary as its word of the year, as people turn to chatbots, influencers and celebrities to feel connection in their online lives.

This warming casserole is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and comes with velvety white beans to soak up the rich meaty juices

My mum, Isabel, has always cooked slowly. Life on the family farm was busy, so a pot of lamb would often be bubbling away while she worked and, by the time we all sat down for lunch, the whole house smelled incredible. November takes me straight back there. It is the month for food that warms you, dishes made to sit in the centre of the table and to bring everyone close. Lamb shoulder loves a slow cook, turning soft and rich, especially when cooked with alubias blancas (white beans) to soak up the sauce, while a good splash of oloroso gives it a deeper, rounder flavour than any red wine ever could.

The focus should be on talking up this government’s achievements so far – and preventing a Reform victory

The dominant political force sweeping across Europe is the “throw the bastards out” party, whoever happens to be in power. Discontent and distrust spread as global democracy declines. Only 6.6% of the world’s people live in a full democracy, according to the Economist’s global index, down from 12.5% 10 years ago. Europe is still the most democratic place, but it’s turbulent.

Britain is an insular country that needs reminding it is not alone in its political turmoil after an omnishambles week for Keir Starmer’s government. The rumbling earthquakes beneath No 10 also shake the ground under the Élysée Palace and other official residences. A number of European countries have thrown out old governments in the past three years, including Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK (Starmer is Britain’s sixth prime minister in less than a decade). Most are still stuck in a state of post-2008-crash stagnation, more recently compounded by the pandemic, inflation, energy price rises, worsening housing crises and a cost of living squeeze.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

• Melbourne Storm backrower continues recovery at home

• Club refuses to put timeframe on return to playing after injuries

Melbourne Storm backrower Eli Katoa has been ruled out for the entire 2026 season as he recovers at home in Victoria, having returned from a prolonged stay in Auckland following brain surgery.

The 25-year-old suffered three head injuries in one afternoon while playing for Tonga in a Pacific Championship match against New Zealand and suffered seizures while on the sideline, triggering emergency medical attention.

Two-year study finds area of woodland in Devon to be ideal habitat to support a controlled release of the creatures

The prospect of European wildcats prowling in south-west England has taken a leap forward after a two-year study concluded a reintroduction was feasible – and most local people were positive about the idea.

Having been absent for more than a century, mid-Devon has been judged to have the right kind of habitat to support a population of Felis silvestris.

The south-west contains enough woodland cover connected by other suitable habitat to support a sustainable wildcat population.

Two surveys were conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter. In one, 71% of 1,000 people liked the idea of wildcat return. In the other, 83% of 1,425 who responded expressed positivity.

Wildcats pose no significant risk to existing endangered wildlife populations such as bats and dormice. Wildcat diets concentrate on widespread commonly found species, with 75% of their prey consisting of small mammals including voles, rats, wood mice and rabbits.

Wildcats pose no threat to people, domestic pets or farming livestock such as lambs. Commercial and domestic poultry can be protected from wildcats with the same precautions deployed for existing predators such as foxes.

An Indigenous journalist’s experience of entering the belly of Cop where time does not flourish, it is consumed

I feel as if I’ve been swallowed. And in the creature’s stomach, I walk with the sensation of being drowned. My nose hurts, with the same pain we feel when we are struggling to breathe. That’s my perception of the blue zone of Cop30, the official area for the negotiations. The architecture makes me think of the stomach of an animal.

My eyes hurt, seeing so many people coming and going through the main corridor. This is the scene of a makeshift forest. On the walls are large paintings of a jaguar, a monkey, an anteater and a lizard. In the middle of the corridor are plants that resemble açaí palm trees, and below them, small shrubs. The place of nature within the blue zone is ornamental.

UN logs 260 attacks in October alone, its highest monthly tally, as settlers attack farmers and burn olive trees

Violence has increased across the occupied West Bank as Palestinian farmers try to harvest their olive trees before the end of the season, in the face of a concerted campaign of harassment by groups of armed and aggressive Israeli settlers.

Dozens of new incidents have occurred in recent days across much of the occupied territory as settlers step up a broader effort to intimidate and harm Palestinian communities.

Mortified documentarian James Blake meets young men who have drifted towards misogynist influencers – and finds them lonely, heartbreaking and on ‘semen retention journeys’ to control their sex drives

Just as you can accurately measure the quality of a documentary about pornography by the number of examples of its subject that it does not show, so too you can judge a programme about “incel” culture/the manosphere/toxic masculinity by the amount of time it does not devote to the noxious leaders of the subculture. Porn documentary makers often seem to use their commission to indulge their own murky fascinations, or at the very least fill the screen with naked women as an easier way to hook viewers than constructing a decent programme. Similarly, stuffing any programme with footage of the poster boys’ diatribes, generally about pussies (female, metonymically; males metaphorically), power and the need for men to wield one over the other is a titillating opportunity and an easy shortcut to engagement.

Belfast broadcaster James Blake admirably avoids this trap in his hour-long film Men of the Manosphere. It has snippets of the loudest, vilest voices, doing their loudest, vilest thing, telling young, disaffected, vulnerable men what they want to hear: that the problems in their lives are the fault of women, feminism, woke society, beta men and anyone who is not full of ambition, independent spirit and willing to subscribe to the influencer’s latest course on how to be a successful man. If you have spotted any inconsistencies here, you are probably a blue-pilled cuck and not the target market, so please move along.

Tremane Wood was prepared to die by lethal injection. A minute before he was to be put to death, a call came in

• After a controversial trial, an Oklahoma man makes a final plea to avoid execution

The signature at the bottom of the email about witnessing an execution said cheerfully: “Oklahoma Corrections. We Change Lives!”

I had received the email three weeks earlier. It explained that I was being invited to participate in a lottery, from which five media representatives would be selected to witness the execution of Tremane Wood in the Oklahoma state penitentiary on 13 November. I had never heard of Wood, who had been convicted of the murder of Ronnie Wipf, 19, in 2002.

London and Moscow’s rivalry stretches back to the imperial era, but the Ukraine war has brought relations to a new low

In recent years, Britain has become the villain of choice in Moscow’s eyes. It has been accused of plotting drone strikes on Russian airfields, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, directing “terrorist” raids inside Russia, and even abetting last year’s gruesome Islamic State concert attack in Moscow.

This week, a new charge was added to the pile: Russian authorities claimed that British intelligence had tried and failed to lure Russian pilots into defecting to the west.

The EU is under US pressure to unravel its hard-won online safety laws. We must not give in

Protecting our digital sovereignty is crucial. The challenge is why European decision makers are meeting in Berlin on Tuesday at the behest of the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. As individuals, we spend four to five hours a day accessing the internet via our smartphones and other devices, from social networks to online shopping to AI assistants. It is essential, therefore, that we have control over how the digital space is organised, structured and regulated.

Europe has already set to work. Between 2022 and 2024, EU digital laws were adopted by an overwhelming majority of MEPs and unanimously by all member states. The Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Data Act and the AI Act form the common foundation protecting our children, citizens, businesses and democracies from all kinds of abuses in the information space. These four major laws mirror our core values and the principles of the rule of law. They make up the most advanced digital legal framework in the world. Europe can be proud of it.

Thierry Breton was the European commissioner for the internal market and digital affairs until September 2024 and is a former minister for the economy and finance in France

Three women tell of blacking out, feeling dazed and dizzy, and of ongoing memory issues and fatigue

• UK survey shows ‘choking’ becoming normalised in sex

• Warning: this article includes graphic content

When Sophie* woke up on the floor after having a seizure, it took a while before she could comprehend that it had been caused by a man strangling her during sex.

“I blacked out, my legs were kicking, I broke a glass,” she says. At 19, it was the first and only time anything like that had happened to her. “When I came to, I couldn’t work out who he was, where I was, what was going on. And it was utterly terrifying.”

As GenAI becomes the primary way to find information, local and traditional wisdom is being lost. And we are only beginning to realise what we’re missing

• This article was originally published as ‘Holes in the web’ on Aeon.co

A few years back, my dad was diagnosed with a tumour on his tongue – which meant we had some choices to weigh up. My family has an interesting dynamic when it comes to medical decisions. While my older sister is a trained doctor in western allopathic medicine, my parents are big believers in traditional remedies. Having grown up in a small town in India, I am accustomed to rituals. My dad had a ritual, too. Every time we visited his home village in southern Tamil Nadu, he’d get a bottle of thick, pungent, herb-infused oil from a vaithiyar, a traditional doctor practising Siddha medicine. It was his way of maintaining his connection with the kind of medicine he had always known and trusted.

Dad’s tumour showed signs of being malignant, so the hospital doctors and my sister strongly recommended surgery. My parents were against the idea, worried it could affect my dad’s speech. This is usually where I come in, as the expert mediator in the family. Like any good millennial, I turned to the internet for help in guiding the decision. After days of thorough research, I (as usual) sided with my sister and pushed for surgery. The internet backed us up.

They can be garish and ostentatious, or a sign you are softer than you might first appear. From the catwalk to the high street to the big screen to the rugby pitch, you just can’t miss them right now

Wuthering Heights is a story about pain, revenge and the Yorkshire moors as a metaphor for bad life choices. But if Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation is anything to go by, it’s also about bows.

In the two-minute trailer for the film, Cathy wears red bows and black bows, navy bows and pink bows. There are bows around garden pots, and bows around “baddy” Edgar Linton’s throat. Some bows flutter in the fell wind, others are unlaced at speed. In one memorable shot straight from the Jilly Cooper precoital playbook, a pretty white bow is cut from Cathy’s bodice using a labourer’s knife, which would be unforgivable hamminess were it not incredibly hot. Never mind that Emily Brontë rarely mentions bows in the book; that one is an entire plot device.

Political rivals say PM’s divisive politics have encouraged voters to ditch the Social Democrats for the far right

The centre-left could lose control of Copenhagen for the first time in the city’s electoral history as residents of the Danish capital go to the polls amid growing disillusionment with the divisive politics of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

Frederiksen’s Social Democrats have ruled the city for more than 100 years - producing every lord mayor that the municipality has had since the current system was introduced in 1938.

In Paris, a group of those returned from UK as part of the immigration scheme say they feel frightened and hopeless

Afran, an Iranian asylum seeker, sits forlornly across the road from a Paris shelter, hemmed in between vast slabs of concrete and thundering trains above. He has been here before – seven weeks ago, to be precise. The second time, he says, is as terrifying as his first.

Afran – not his real name – hit the headlines when he became the first asylum seeker to return to the UK in a small boat after being removed to France under the controversial “one in, one out” scheme on 19 September. He was sent back to Paris for the second time on 5 November.

Eminem claims consumers may mistakenly think he is linked to the Sydney beach brand – but Australia is no stranger to lawsuits from US rappers

Eminem has launched legal action against the Australian beach brand Swim Shady, alleging its name is too close to that of his trademarked alter ego, Slim Shady.

The 53-year-old rapper, real name Marshall B Mathers III, filed a petition to cancel Swim Shady’s US trademark days after it was successfully granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in September.

Til, the remotest of three villages in the Limi valley on the Tibetan border, was already wrestling with a dwindling population but a series of natural disasters has led many to consider where their future should be

On the night of 15 May this year, the usual quiet of the Himalayan village of Til in the far north-west of Nepal was broken by a strange rumbling. Pemba Thundup came out of his house, barefoot, to see a deluge of earth, water and rocks coming down the mountainside towards the flat-roofed mud houses. The whole village was soon awake and, carrying the elderly people on their backs, members of 21 families scrambled to safety in a nearby field.

After two weeks of sheltering in tents, with no sign of any government help to rebuild or resettle, they reluctantly moved back into their broken homes, but unanimously agreed to leave the centuries-old settlement for a safer location by the end of the year.

Communications undersecretary Claire Castro says claims from the president’s sister may be an attempt to distract from investigations into a corruption scandal

Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr has denied accusations made by his estranged sister that he is longtime drug addict, whose alleged cocaine dependence has led to governance issues, including corruption, a spokesperson for the president has said.

Communications undersecretary Claire Castro described the comments by the president’s sister, senator Imee Marcos’, as baseless, and suggested they may have been a desperate attempt to distract ongoing investigations into a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that may implicate her allies in the Senate.