Hundreds of police, rangers and military personnel deployed to tackle virus threatening pork export industry
Spanish authorities have deployed hundreds of police officers, wildlife rangers and military personnel in an effort to contain an outbreak of highly infectious African swine fever (ASF) outside Barcelona before it becomes a major threat to the country’s €8.8bn-a-year pork export industry.
Officials believe the virus, detected in the municipality of Bellaterra, may have begun to circulate after a wild boar ate contaminated food that had been brought in from outside Spain.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Russian forces have taken control of the strategic city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine, as he sought to project confidence before a key meeting on Tuesday with a US delegation to discuss a possible peace deal to end the war.
Dressed in military fatigues during a visit to a command centre on Monday evening, the Russian president hailed what he called the “important” capture of Pokrovsk – once a major logistical hub for the Ukrainian army – though Ukrainian officials later disputed the claim.
Leaving eight-year-old Lati-Yana Brown homeless and cut off from her mother should never have been sanctioned by the state
Britain’s long history with the Caribbean, from enslavement to the Windrush scandal, is marked by policies that have fractured families. The Home Office’s latest actions show little has changed. After the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, a tropical cyclone that made landfall across the Greater Antilles area in late October, eight-year-old Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown was left destitute in Jamaica. But after her UK-resident parents appealed for the Home Office to expedite her visa application, officials rejected it and Lati-Yana has been left to sleep on the floor of her elderly grandmother’s destroyed home.
But the rejection rested on factual errors, according to Lati-Yana’s mother, Kerrian Bigby. Dawn Butler, her MP, shared a letter with me raising concerns about “misrepresentations” in the decision notice, including the claim that Bigby does not have full parental responsibility for the child, which she says is false.
Nadine White is a journalist, film-maker and the UK’s first race correspondent
The former England cricketer Robin Smith has died at the age of 62 with his family and former county Hampshire saying they were devastated by his loss.
Smith played 62 Tests and 71 one-day internationals for England between 1988 and 1996 and was a resolute middle-order bulwark for the side during often difficult times for the team. He particularly excelled against pace, making his highest Test score of 175 against the fearsome West Indies attack at Antigua in 1994.
The revolutionary spirit in politics and architecture; histories of free speech and civil war; plus how the Tories fell apart and Starmer won
We live in a hyper-political yet curiously unrevolutionary age, one of hashtags rather than barricades. Perhaps that’s why so many writers this year have looked wistfully back to a time when strongly held convictions still made waves in the real world.
In The Revolutionists (Bodley Head), Jason Burke revisits the 1970s, when it seemed the future of the Middle East might end up red instead of green – communist rather than Islamist. It’s a geopolitical period piece: louche men with corduroy jackets and sideburns, women with theories and submachine guns. Many were in it less for the Marxism than for the sheer mayhem. Reading about the hijackings and kidnappings they orchestrated makes today’s orange-paint protests seem quaint by comparison.
Twenty-four tiny drawers of fun stuff sounds delightful – but not when you’re the one filling the thing
Maybe 10 years ago, I bought permanent Advent calendars for the kids: Scandi-looking Christmas houses with 24 tiny drawers, from Sainsbury’s. I think my original plan was that some of the draws could contain something other than chocolate, not because I’m the kind of almond mum who won’t let anyone eat sweets before breakfast, but because their dad and I are separated and have them half the time each, so it wasn’t unusual for them to wake up and have six Lindt chocolate balls to chomp through before they’d opened their curtains.
The tiny drawers are a curse. Some years I could only find stuff for one of the kids (erasers in the shape of hedgehogs; lip balm); other years, a different one was in luck (Lego Yodas; magnets). It was never, ever fair. One year, I found tons of different batteries for the drawers, and I thought it was the most genius thing I’d ever done, but they said: “How is this a fun gift? If we needed a battery, we’d just go to the kitchen drawer, which is supposed to have batteries in it.” I realised in about 2019 that I’d just have to start planning earlier, around July, if I wanted to strike the perfect balance of parity, festivity and usefulness, and that was a good year, actually. I found some tiny business cards with swear words on them that they could just leave around the house, and ear-splitting whistles and unisex lip balm. We have enough erasers and pencil sharpeners now to last until nobody ever makes a mistake because the written word is just a memory.
The site isn’t exposing misleading reporting – it’s revealing the bubble Trump increasingly inhabits
Donald Trump has used the mainstream press as a punching bag for many years, but in recent weeks his jabs have become even more frequent – and more ill-tempered.
Four years after workers at a Starbucks store in upstate New York became the first to unionize, hundreds of outlets followed – defying intense resistance from the coffee chain. What happened next?
2000Thousands of Starbucks baristas are on strike across the US, warning the world’s largest coffee chain to brace for the “longest and biggest” bout of industrial action in its history.
Barely a year after Brian Niccol, the Starbucks CEO, tried to draw a line under bitter divisions between its management and unionized workers, pledging to “engage constructively” with them, the American coffee giant is now grappling with an escalating strike during its lucrative holiday trading season.
Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s highest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities
British No 1 on home comforts of Bromley, joys of commuting and being ‘creeped out’ by paparazzi
Emma Raducanu has garnered many endorsement deals in her nascent career, but there is perhaps one elusive sponsorship that would be most pleasing to the British No 1 women’s tennis player: ambassador of the London Borough of Bromley.
During a roundtable discussion with tennis journalists at the end of a gruelling yet satisfying season, Raducanu is merely attempting to describe a quiet off-season spent in her family home when she finds herself delivering a sales pitch about the benefits of living in Bromley. “I’m just so settled,” she says. “I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but I think just spending really good quality time with my parents has been so nice. I have loved just being in Bromley. It just reminds me of when I was a younger kid and it’s the same bedroom, same everything.
Artist Naima Green has explored the concept and expectations of motherhood in a solo exhibition called Instead, I spin fantasies which is currently on show at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City. The photos, which are a mix of real and semi-fictional, feature Green herself with a prosthetic pregnant belly and others in her life and community. ‘I’m trying to explore a very expansive picture across different geographies, different classes, different ideas of family, just as a way of seeing, understanding or creating different possibilities for family-making,’ she said in a recent interview
The use of ‘nudify’ apps is becoming more and more prevalent, with hundreds of teachers having seen images created by pupils, often of their peers. The fallout is huge – and growing fast
‘It worries me that it’s so normalised. He obviously wasn’t hiding it. He didn’t feel this was something he shouldn’t be doing. It was in the open and people saw it. That’s what was quite shocking.”
A headteacher is describing how a teenage boy, sitting on a bus on his way home from school, casually pulled out his phone, selected a picture from social media of a girl at a neighbouring school and used a “nudifying” app to doctor her image.
Ease your houseplants into winter by giving them a seasonal reset and moving them away from radiators
The problem
As soon as the heating is switched on, houseplants start to struggle. Warm, dry air strips moisture from leaves, dries soil faster, and turns cosy corners into arid microclimates. Many people mistakenly think radiator heat is similar to sunlight – warm and life-giving – but it isn’t. Sunlight provides energy for photosynthesis, while radiator heat is dry, stagnant and relentless, closer to a slow cooker than sunshine.
The hack
Before turning on the heating, give your plants a seasonal reset. Move them away from radiators or vents (at least half a metre, ideally). Group plants together to create a pocket of humidity, or place a bowl of water nearby to counteract dryness. Top-dress tired soil with fresh compost, trim off any yellowing leaves and wipe dust from the foliage so the plants can breathe. Water lightly, then let them rest in bright, indirect light to adjust before winter sets in.
As the Xbox 360 turns 20, we celebrate its most influential and memorable games – both exclusives, and those that came to the console first
Originally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade.
The revelation that Trinidad and Tobago has approved the installation of a US military radar installation has stoked fears that the Caribbean could be drawn into the escalating crisis between the US and Venezuela.
Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, had attempted to allay concerns about a US C-17 aircraft that had landed in the country, claiming it was carrying marines to assist with a road construction project. She also claimed she was told that no marines remained in the country.
Tillies coach Joe Montemurro was asked on the Paramount broadcast about the level of experimentation in tonight’s Matildas XI.
“There’s a little bit of experimentation tonight. A little bit more. I need to tick off one little moment, or one little scenario that we think we could get at the Asian Cup.
So, we’re close, we’re close to solidifying the situation with in terms of the squad. But the reality is, is that we’ve still got a little bit of work to do. And tonight we’ll still do a little bit more work leading into it, we’ve got that opportunity.”
We would like to hear about the best album you have heard this year and why
There have been bold British rap breakthroughs from Jim Legxacy and John Glacier, highly personal grief-stricken albums by Blood Orange, Jerskin Fendrix, Jennifer Walton and the Tubs; breakup albums for the ages by Rosalía, Lily Allen and Cate Le Bon; proof there’s life in Britpop yet from Pulp and Suede; emphatic arrivals on pop’s main stage from CMAT and Olivia Dean.
As the Guardian prepares to count down the best albums of 2025, we’d like to know what your top records were, and why: the returns to form, bolts from the blue, slow-burners and surprises. Let us know and we’ll run the best submissions after the Guardian’s No 1 is unveiled later in December.
In this documentary, high schoolers camp out in subzero temperatures, making their own fires and driving sledges in the wild
The Pasvik Folk high school in remote northern Norway teaches teenagers to grow as young adults and escape the pressures of toxic social media by challenging them to get back in touch with their “stone age brain” and live like hunter-gatherers in the snowy wild. This is the subject of a documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Over winter months of almost continuous darkness, the teens cleanse themselves with tasks such as camping out in subzero weather, making their own fires and driving sledges with huskies.
Prior to all this of course is presumably a solemn promise to do without their phones, tablets and laptops, although there are no scenes of the kids actually having to surrender these gadgets (this isn’t rehab, after all). They have to swim in icy water; and they make it look like fun. What doesn’t look like fun is the camping out and there is one tense moment when a whingeing student is told that he cannot avail himself of his teachers’ fire and will have to build his own. As for the hunting part, well, yes, they do hunt, though the moment of the kill isn’t shown on screen.
Independent inquiry into fire and media questions to leader would not happen in mainland China, but crackdown on dissent has begun
As Hong Kong mourns the victims of its worst fire in decades, the response to the disaster reveals the ways in which the semi-autonomous city retains differences from mainland China – and how some of those differences are being eroded.
Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, announced on Tuesday the creation of an “independent committee” to investigate the blaze, which killed 151 people at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
A flock of Father Christmases share the seasonal songs that capture the magic, merriment and occasional heartbreak that comes with donning the red suit
My father was a Santa and my wife got me into doing it. It’s the best thing I ever did. I do schools, universities, supermarkets, Christmas lights switch-ons … As soon as Santa comes along, everybody melts. One little girl brought her guinea pig, who leapt off her hand and dived straight into my Santa beard. The parents were in stitches while we tried to get him out. My favourite Christmas songs are Eartha Kitt’s sultry version of Santa Baby, because it gets all the adults in the mood to get up and have a boogie with Santa, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because the lyrics are so pure. No Christmas songs drive me mad. It’s Christmas: they’re all great. Paul Fessi
In parallel to Witkoff’s meeting in Moscow, we will also follow Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first visit to Ireland.
He has arrived in Dublin last night, and has a busy schedule today, paying a brief visit to the country’s new president Catherine Connolly, before meeting with key government figures including the taisoeach, Micheál Martin, and addressing both chambers of the Irish parliament in the afternoon.
Australia opener will not be replaced in the squad in Brisbane
38-year-old’s absence paves way for Travis Head to open at the Gabba
Usman Khawaja’s back injury has ruled the veteran opener out of the second Ashes Test and thrown his future in the Australian team further into doubt.
The 38-year-old’s place in the XI had been under intense scrutiny since back spasms forced him from the field in the victorious first Test and prevented him from opening the batting.
“I just kept smelling this horrible, nasty smell … like animal excrement, and I was wondering what it was,” says Jess Brown, from Fleetwood, Lancashire.
Brown’s mother suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and she believes the smells make it worse. She also worries for her eight-year-old daughter, whose asthma worsens when the odour seeps indoors.
Connexion
