Exclusive: Scientists find a way to forecast hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which affects millions worldwide

Scientists are developing a simple blood test to predict who is most at risk from the world’s most common inherited heart condition.

Millions of people worldwide have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a disease of the heart muscle where the wall of the heart becomes thickened. It is caused by a change in one or more genes and mostly passed on through families.

Religious groups using banned drugs are increasingly testing the limits of faith and law – and winning

The Church of Gaia in Spokane, Washington, has all the makings of a traditional place of worship: regular gatherings, communal songs and member donations – except they also serve ayahuasca, a psychedelic substance that can induce nausea and, at times, projectile vomiting.

“This is a purely spiritual practice,” said Connor Mize, the ceremonial leader of the Church of Gaia. “It’s not a thing you do just for fun.”

The rules-based global order, its institutions and value system face a crisis of legitimacy and credibility as the US turns away

‘The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci once wrote. “And the new world struggles to be born.” In such interregnums, the Italian Marxist philosopher suggested, “every act, even the smallest, may acquire decisive weight”.

In 2025, western leaders appeared convinced they – and we – were living through one such transitional period, as the world of international relations established after the second world war crashed to a halt.

On that brilliant night at Ally Pally 21 years ago, Laura and I decided to go to Detroit on holiday. Since then there have been countless adventures: road trips, dive bars, rock camps …

Kicking-out time, January 2004, and Laura and I are sitting on the kerb waiting for a bus outside Alexandra Palace in north London. Not that we’re in a hurry to be anywhere else. We’re having the best time on our kerb, cheeks flushed from hard liquor and the exhilaration of the White Stripes show we’ve just seen. We’re busy communing with a fellow nocturnal creature, a woodlouse. It is one of those rare moments in my 20s when just about everything feels right.

Laura and I had quietly become office allies over a few years, a bond initially forming around our mutual shy diligence in the face of not fully fitting in. We would conspiratorially skip downstairs to the canteen together most lunchtimes and temper any work worries by chatting shit, laughing hysterically and plotting small acts of rebellion. (Like the time we childishly made a “FUCK CHESS” sign and left it on the office chess club’s shelf, which for some reason felt necessary and hilarious. If you’re reading this, chess club, we’re very sorry.)

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s daughters seen at Sandringham church as more details about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein emerge

Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice attended church with the royal family on Christmas morning, in a year where their father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was stripped of his royal titles.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s two daughters could be seen walking behind King Charles III and Queen Camilla on their way to church on the private Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

Officers closed Christmas event in Haifa, confiscating equipment and also arresting a DJ and a street vendor

Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man dressed as Santa Claus during a raid on a Christmas party in Haifa, a civil rights monitor has said.

Israeli officers closed an event celebrating Christmas on Sunday, confiscating equipment, and arresting the Palestinian Santa Claus, as well as a DJ and a street vendor. In a video, police can be seen pushing the men to the ground and handcuffing them as bystanders watched.

Government poised to officially protect 200,000 hectares of remote Patagonian coastline and forest

Chile’s government is poised to create the country’s 47th national park, protecting nearly 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of pristine wilderness and completing a wildlife corridor stretching 1,700 miles (2,800km) to the southernmost tip of the Americas.

The Cape Froward national park is a wild expanse of wind-torn coastline and forested valleys that harbours unrivalled biodiversity and has played host to millennia of human history.

Despair and disorder have engulfed the club since their title party, leaving all concerned in need of previous serenity

As Virgil van Dijk raised the Premier League trophy on a cool May afternoon at Anfield, the cap was sealed on a serenely glorious season for Liverpool. For sure there had been challenges en route to a 20th league title, but not many, and those that did arise were dealt with in a calm, orderly fashion. The ultimate prize had been captured with minimum sweat.

Cue the celebrations after a final‑day 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace: players and staff dancing on the pitch, supporters doing the same in the stands, and no sense this was as good as it was going to get for the just-crowned champions. It took less than 24 hours for everything to change and set in motion an astonishing seven‑month period in the history of a club where it was probably thought they had seen and done it all.

High inflation and a cost of living crisis mean that the familiar favourite has become a rare Detty December treat for many in the country

In Lagos, the holiday season is well under way. For weeks, the roads have been jammed with traffic, concerts headlined by Afrobeats superstars are drawing crowds, and choice spots are filled with residents, returnees and tourists looking to indulge in the month-long enjoyment of Detty December.

But the spotlight is on the contents of kitchen pots as much as it is on those shuffling to the trendy Oblee dance steps in clubs and street parties.

Matriarchs, absent fathers and troubled childhoods: 2025 was the year French literature focused on family

In my neighbourhood bookshop, La Galerne, the shelves are well organised. On the ground floor, there’s a corner for foreign literature and another for French literature, with the latest releases right at the front. For nonfiction and essays, you used to have to go downstairs. But two years ago, they put a new table in front of the French literature corner for feminist essays and memoirs. A prime spot for people to grab a piece of the revolution without thinking about it too much. This change took a wild turn when local genius Annie Ernaux won the Nobel prize in 2022. Where should we put her work: in the crowded space for new French literature or the feminist memoir table?

This dilemma is now a regular question in France. The Anglosphere and other European countries have been wrestling with it over the past two decades, but here the line between fiction and nonfiction has only just begun to vanish in the minds of authors and their editors. Should we put a new table between the two? It would be a perfect spot for great autofiction such as Édouard Louis’s or Christine Angot’s novels. Or deeply personal nonfiction such as Alice Coffin’s Le Génie Lesbien or Adèle Yon’s bestseller Mon vrai nom est Élisabeth – her first novel and a literary quest to reveal the patriarchal violence suffered by the author’s great-grandmother. More than 150,000 copies have been sold since its release in February.

Anne-Laure Pineau is an independent writer based in Le Havre, France

Sarah Harper says society must create new ways of living and working amid potential ‘silver economy’

Concerns over an ageing population are overblown and society should learn to celebrate and capitalise on its “massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults”, a leading population expert has said.

While pundits and pressure groups have raised concerns over falling fertility rates, highlighting the challenges for the economy and healthcare, others are more upbeat, arguing the rise of the “silver economy” brings new opportunities for growth.

Several teams got their hands on silverware at last in 2025. Here supporters talk about the pain and pleasure of finally winning

16 March 2025: Won Carabao Cup, beating Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley, their first trophy in 56 years

It wasn’t until 7pm that anyone noticed the unfolding crisis. As our hunger grew, my Mum came up with an unlikely and audacious plan

The first sign that something was amiss was the smell – or rather, the lack of it. The roasted turkey aroma that usually wafted throughout the house on Christmas Day was conspicuous by its absence. My mum had spent the morning meticulously plucking fresh herbs and seasoning our plump bird but, so far, no scent.

It was 2010 and the entire family, including aunts and cousins, had come to our house for dinner. After a morning gorging on chocolate and an afternoon snacking on picky bits (mainly crisps), appetites were peaking. The much-anticipated Christmas roast had been in the oven for about four hours and it was nearing 7pm. My mum, who had been busy keeping everybody happy by handing out snacks and managing the festive playlist, had taken only a scant look through the oven doors and assumed the meal was progressing nicely. As dinner time approached, she went to put in the roast potatoes and herby vegetables, expecting the turkey to be nearly golden, oozing its juices after sizzling away at 190C. Instead of a blast of hot air, she was greeted by a stone cold breeze. The turkey was pink and raw. Our oven was broken.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

As his epic crime thriller Heat turns 30, the director talks about pairing acting legends, his thoughts on AI and what’s happening with Heat 2

Hannibal Lecter’s first movie appearance was in 1986’s Manhunter, starring Brian Cox. It took director and writer Michael Mann just five weeks to adapt Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon for the screen.

But when it came to adapting his own work – Heat 2, co-authored with Meg Gardiner as both a prequel and sequel to his 1995 film Heat – Mann discovered the pain of self-editing. “I thought OK, 10 weeks, 12 weeks,” he reflects in a Zoom interview from Los Angeles. “Instead, it took like 10 months and it was arduous because I wanted the same effect as the novel, which required recombining events to fit within a two-and-a-half-hour timeframe. That selection became agonising to say the least.”

Restoration presented as rebuilding, but many see it as part of a broader Russification effort in occupied Ukrainian city

The Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed in a Russian airstrike in 2022 while hundreds of civilians were sheltering in its basement, is to open its doors again, with Russian occupation authorities heralding the reconstruction as a sign of renewal, while former actors at the theatre denounced the reopening as “dancing on bones”.

The Kremlin has made the reconstruction of Mariupol a calling card of its rule in occupied Ukraine, but Moscow’s oversight is accompanied by arrests or exile of critics, along with property seizures that have stripped thousands of Ukrainians of apartments they legally owned.

The pressure to conform in Japanese society made being a punk risky – even before you factor in the flamethrowers. As a new rash of reissues arrives, 80s stalwarts Lip Cream, Death Side and the Nurse recall the thrills and threats

A few short years after punk’s initial shock-and-awe inspired thousands of teenagers to spike their hair and learn three chords, the genre mutated into hardcore: a leaner, meaner and fiercely independent hybrid that would soon be tearing up squats, church halls and dive bars around the world.

Forty-five years on, hardcore is enjoying a moment in the mainstream thanks to bands such as Turnstile, Speed and Knocked Loose. There are hardcore bands on talkshows, in fast-food ads and on $40 T-shirts – all things that the 1980s artists would probably have gobbed at.

Exclusive: Planners behind postwar new towns hit out at government over lack of ambition and commitment to social housing

Senior planners involved in building the country’s postwar new towns have raised concerns about the government’s new towns programme, criticising a lack of ambition and insufficient commitment to social housing.

Lee Shostak, former director of planning at Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) in the 1970s and later chair of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), said the current plan for the new towns may not help people who need homes the most.

Date a vending machine, watch intergalactic television and make the most out of your short existence as a fly. Here are the best games you weren’t playing this year
• The 20 best video games of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC
Have you ever wanted to romance your record player? Date Everything! offers players the chance to develop relationships with everyday objects around your house, in a fully voiced sandbox romp featuring over 100 anthropomorphised characters. Wonderfully meta; you can put the moves on the textbox, or even “Michael Transaction” (microtransaction – get it?) himself. Meghan Ellis

Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine, which has no affiliation to direct action group, informed by deputy mayor

A grassroots pro-Palestinian organisation in the UK has been told its bank account was frozen because of “an investigation into Palestine Action”, despite it having no affiliation to the direct action group.

Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine (GMFP), which organises peaceful protests and vigils, had access to its funds cut off indefinitely by Virgin Money after Palestine Action was banned under the Terrorism Act and the account remains blocked.

Brutal stabbing of Karen Carter, 65, in France has been followed by talk of affairs and speculation over the culprit

The quiet village of Trémolat nestled in the Dordogne valley is best known for its “cingle”, where the sinuous river forms an Instagrammable loop.

Home to about 700 people, along with restaurants, a cafe, boulangerie and wine bar, it is a picture-perfect French idyll and a popular place for a getaway or even retirement.

The conventions and rituals that define the way we do politics rapidly eroded this year – setting the UK on a course into the unknown

Was this the year that British democracy as we have known it began to turn into something else? Politicians, voters and journalists have made this claim before – when their side has been out of power for a long while, or when an elected government has been unusually dictatorial – and their warnings have usually been overstated. But this time the evidence of a fundamental shift away from a century-old status quo seems stronger.

Familiar landmarks have disappeared: Labour and Tory dominance, two-party electoral contests, the decisive power of a big Westminster majority, the patience voters usually show towards a new government, the predictable pendulum swing between right and left, the red lines between mainstream and extreme politics and even the central role of parliament.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Midfielder will be part of the conversation for a Ballon d’Or if he continues his ascent with trophies for club and country

Declan Rice likes to call it “clean feedback”, which sounds like a euphemism for a bollocking, though he would probably say that is a misconception. Rather, it is part of the reason why Rice is being discussed as one of the best players in the world.

“You can’t eff and blind, you can’t bully people,” says Terry Westley, the head of West Ham’s academy when Rice was there. “But we should be able to have a conversation and say: ‘Look, that ain’t quite good enough and we want to help you because this is what we need to do.’