The ‘queen of romantic comedy’ has died 18 months after announcing her brain cancer diagnosis
Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55.
Wickham, dubbed “the queen of romantic comedy” by novelist Jojo Moyes, wrote more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which have sold more than 45m copies.
Military personnel told they can return to Nigeria after actions described as ‘unfriendly act’
Authorities in Burkina Faso have released 11 Nigerian military personnel held after a cargo plane from Lagos made an “unauthorised” emergency landing in its second largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso.
The breakaway regional Association of Sahel States (AES) said on Monday that the C-130 aircraft had entered Burkina Faso’s airspace without clearance, calling it an “unfriendly act”.
The thieves who stole crown jewels from the Louvre in October evaded police with just 30 seconds to spare due to avoidable security failures at the Paris museum, a damning investigation has revealed.
The investigation, ordered by the culture ministry after the embarrassing daylight heist, revealed that only one of two security cameras was working near the site where the intruders broke in on the morning of Sunday 19 October.
Italian cooking added to ‘intangible cultural heritage’ list after campaign by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government
Unesco has officially recognised Italian cooking as a cultural beacon, an endorsement hailed by the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whose government has put the country’s food at the heart of its nationalistic expression of identity.
The announcement, made on Wednesday during the UN cultural body’s assembly in Delhi, means Italian cuisine – from pasta and mozzarella to wine and tiramisu – will be inscribed on the coveted list of “intangible cultural heritage”.
Administration says data shows national security strategy working, but analysts warn it does not give full picture
The average number of daily killings per month in Mexico has dropped by 37% since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, according to new government figures, but security analysts cautioned that homicide data may not indicate improved national security.
There was an average of nearly 55 murders a day in November compared with almost 87 when Sheinbaum assumed the presidency in September last year, the head of the country’s national public security system, Marcela Figueroa Franco, said during the president’s daily news conference on Tuesday.
Christmas tourists are noticing a growing military presence in Lapland, where Santa Park doubles as a bomb shelter
Billed as the official home town of Santa Claus, or joulupukki as he is known in Finland, the city of Rovaniemi offers every imaginable Father Christmas-related experience – from a visit to his “office” on the Arctic Circle to reindeer sleigh rides. He even has his own branch of the Finnish design house Marimekko.
But this Christmas season, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world coming in search of Santa, Finnish Lapland’s snow-covered capital is becoming an increasingly popular destination for international military visitors.
Footballer hopes to own world’s most expensive camel
‘I’ve watched my fair share of races on YouTube,’ he says
It is known as the sport of the sheikhs, with thousands of fans packing desert tracks to watch robot jockeys compete for huge prizes. Now professional camel racing has a new high-profile investor: Paul Pogba.
The Monaco midfielder said he had become a shareholder in the Saudi Arabia-based Al Haboob, the world’s first professional camel racing team competing across the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf, because he wanted to “elevate the sport on to a global stage”.
Barred from work and school in Bangladesh, thousands of refugees are making the perilous voyage to Malaysia by boat – with some beaten en route to extort even more money
Majuma Begum stayed awake until 3am waiting for her son to return from the market before accepting he was not coming home. The next day he phoned to say he was on the Bangladeshi coast, waiting to begin a boat journey to Malaysia that she had desperately tried to stop him taking.
It was the start of weeks of worry for the 58-year-old, whose fears deepened when a boat carrying Rohingya refugees capsized near Malaysia in early November, killing dozens. She felt as though she could finally breathe again when he finally reached his destination.
‘It’s going to be the club’s and his decision,’ midfielder says
Curtis Jones insists squad firmly behind Arne Slot
Dominik Szoboszlai has said the Liverpool dressing room will have no influence over Mohamed Salah’s next move because only the player and the club can decide how their standoff ends.
Salah missed Liverpool’s valuable Champions League win at Inter on Tuesday having been left out of Arne Slot’s squad in response to his highly critical interview at Leeds. The 33-year-old could also be absent when Liverpool host Brighton on Saturday. He is due to report for Africa Cup of Nations duty with Egypt on Monday.
About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that
Cruising around on private jets, the ultra-rich are the world’s financial elite – but how many people actually occupy this exclusive wealth club? Could they all fit into a floating mega-yacht, or is the group much bigger, possibly the size of a dazzling mega-rich city?
Thanks to an inequality report out on Wednesday, we now have a snapshot of the size of the topmost layer floating above everyone else – the 0.001%.
The two European Nato countries clash in the third cod war over fishing rights in the Atlantic
After the second world war Iceland began to gradually extend the fishing zone around its coastline. The first cod war began in 1958 when it proclaimed a 12-mile fishing zone, followed by the second cod war in 1972, which extended the limit to 50 miles. In October 1975 Reykjavik decided to further increase its protected waters to a 200-mile zone, effectively cutting off British and German fishers from their best catch. This led to the third cod war which saw violent clashes and rammings. The dispute ended in June 1976 when Britain recognised the 200-mile limit.
The actor has criticised the creative team behind the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic, saying it lacked the moral core that defined the original Oscar-winning film
Russell Crowe has said that the makers of Gladiator II did not “understand … what made that first one special”.
In interview excerpts posted on social media by Australian radio station Triple J, Crowe said that the Gladiator sequel, which starred Paul Mescal and was released in 2024, was let down by “the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made that first one special”.
World No 1 says ‘biological men’ have a ‘huge advantage’
‘She hit the nail on the head’, says battle of sexes rival Kyrgios
Aryna Sabalenka has weighed into the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sport, the world No 1 saying it would be unfair for women to face “biological men” in professional tennis.
The WTA Tour gender participation policy permits transgender women to participate if they have declared their gender as female for a minimum of four years, have lowered testosterone levels and agree to testing procedures. These conditions may be further varied by the WTA medical manager on a case-by-case basis.
RootsAction report finds Harris courted moderates instead of working-class Democrats – and Gaza stance did not help
Kamala Harris lost last year’s US presidential election because she chased the wrong voters with the wrong message, ultimately demobilising the very base that she needed to win, according to an autopsy by a progressive grassroots advocacy group.
The vice-president focused on courting moderate Republicans over motivating core Democratic working-class, young and progressive voters, a misstep compounded by her failure to break from Joe Biden on Gaza, says the report by RootsAction.
The song contest continues with its mission of ‘unity and cultural exchange’ by rolling out the red carpet for Israel, even though at least four countries have pulled out in protest
A new acronym emerged a couple of months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza: WCNSF. “Wounded child, no surviving family”. That acronym is unique to Gaza, experts like paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj-Hasan with Médecins Sans Frontières have said. Normally it’s rare for doctors to treat a child who has lost their entire family. But there has been nothing “normal” about the genocide in Gaza, where whole bloodlines have been wiped out and there are more child amputees than anywhere else in the world. Nothing normal about scores of doctors coming back from a landscape of rubble with reports of kids being deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers.
Despite a supposed ceasefire being in place, Gaza remains hell on earth. Essential medical supplies are not getting in and Amnesty International has said Israel is still committing genocide. (Israel has denied this, of course, just as it denies everything it is accused of.) But while traumatised orphans are now freezing in makeshift tent camps, there is a little heartwarming news: nothing is going to stop the Eurovision song contest from continuing with its mission of “unity and cultural exchange.” Eurovision will continue to roll out a blood-red carpet for Israel, even though at least four European countries (Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia) have now pulled out in protest. Because this is what unity looks like, folks!
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The act of bowling is simple, the vocabulary used to describe it reflects the difficulty in pinning down its artistry and craft
Every act in cricket’s history has begun with a bowler delivering a ball to a batter 22 yards away. Delivering. Like a postman delivers a council tax bill. Like a waiter delivers a round of drinks. Of all the verbs used to describe the bowling of a ball, this one speaks to the deep-seated cultural inequity that has plagued this sport since its inception.
“If there was ever a word that proves we live in a batter’s world, this is it,” says Steve Harmison, the fearsome fast bowler turned commentator who delivered 16,313 balls for England across eight years. “But not every delivery is the same. Some come gift-wrapped like a present at Christmas. Some can jump up and smack you in the face.”
Los Blancos host Manchester City on Wednesday with head coach’s job on the line after one win in five league games
“This is a team, it is a club, and we all go together hand in hand,” Xabi Alonso insisted, protesting perhaps a little too much. “When you’re Real Madrid coach you’re ready,” he added on the morning before Manchester City return to the Santiago Bernabéu for the latest of a very modern classic against one of the many managers who made him.
“I’m looking forward to what’s coming and that starts tomorrow, [an opportunity] to turn round the anger. In our heads, there’s only City. In football, for better or worse, things change quickly.”
Thousands of social media posts were traced to deliberate attempts to misrepresent the singer – and showed ‘significant user overlap’ with the campaign to attack actor Blake Lively
Analysis has found that a coordinated online attack sought to align Taylor Swift and her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, with Nazi and rightwing imagery and values, from accounts feigning leftist critique and designed to encourage outrage.
The AI-driven behavioural intelligence platform Gudea produced a report examining more than 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts across 14 social media platforms between 4 October, the day of the album’s release, and 18 October. These posts accused Swift of sowing dogwhistle references in her lyrics and alleged that a lightning bolt-style necklace from her merchandise line – a reference to the album track Opalite – resembled SS insignia.
Australian psych-rockers, who removed their music from Spotify in protest against the streaming service, lament the appearance of AI band King Lizard Wizard
Spotify has removed an AI impersonator of popular Australian rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard from the streaming service, with the band’s frontman voicing despair at the situation.
King Gizzard removed their music from Spotify in July in a protest against the company’s chief executive Daniel Ek, who is the chair of military technology company Helsing as well as a major investor.
Peace prize winner Machado has been seen only once in public since going into hiding in August last year
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is now delivering his opening speech.
It’s a damning verdict on Maduro’s authoritarian rule in Venezuela, as he talks about a number of figures facing repression and torture from the regime.
“As we sit here in Oslo City Hall, innocent people are locked away in dark cells in Venezuela. They cannot hear the speeches given today – only the screams of prisoners being tortured.”
Venezuela has evolved into a brutal, authoritarian state facing a deep humanitarian and economic crisis. Meanwhile, a small elite at the top – shielded by political power, weapons and legal impunity – enriches itself.
“A quarter of the population has already fled the country – one of the world’s largest refugee crises.
Those who remain live under a regime that systematically silences, harasses and attacks the opposition.”
“Venezuela is not alone in this darkness. The world is on the wrong track. The authoritarians are gaining.
We must ask the inconvenient question:
“Authoritarian regimes learn from each other. They share technology and propaganda systems. Behind Maduro stand Cuba, Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah – providing weapons, surveillance and economic lifelines. They make the regime more robust, and more brutal.”
Parents of Madeleine McCann among dozens to sign letter to PM urging him to revive second part of Leveson inquiry
Madeleine McCann’s father has called for greater scrutiny of the UK media as he told how “monstering” by sections of the press had made him feel as if he was being “suffocated and buried”.
Gerry McCann said his family was tormented by press “abuses” and that the media had “repeatedly interfered” with the investigation into his daughter’s disappearance in 2007.
This season calls for a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate, traditional baubles on the tree and a host of wooden nutcracker soldiers. ‘Ralph Lauren Christmas’ has gone viral, and gen Z has fallen hard for nostalgia and the 1990s
It is December, which everyone knows is the time to get your Christmas on. So what is it to be this year? An ironic wreath made from brussel sprouts? Oh-so-zeitgeist decorations in the shape of Perelló olive tins or Torres crisp packets? Or are we thinking a minimalist all-white theme?
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. My front door wreath – it went up two weeks ago because I’m a Christmas superfan – is huge and trad, with a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate. There are wooden nutcracker soldiers the size of toddlers by the fireplace. When I put my tree up this weekend, it may well collapse under the weight of old-fashioned round baubles.
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