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.”
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
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.”
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Marie Hald/The Observer
© Photograph: Marie Hald/The Observer
© Photograph: Marie Hald/The Observer
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Staff photographer
© Photograph: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Staff photographer
© Photograph: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Staff photographer
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Micki Colson/Colson Photography
© Photograph: Micki Colson/Colson Photography
© Photograph: Micki Colson/Colson Photography
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters
© Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters
© Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters
‘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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP
© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP
© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Florence Blair. Food assistant: Emma Cantlay.
© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Florence Blair. Food assistant: Emma Cantlay.
© Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Florence Blair. Food assistant: Emma Cantlay.
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
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters
© Photograph: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters
© Photograph: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: TOM_MASON/Tom Mason/Wildlife Trust
© Photograph: TOM_MASON/Tom Mason/Wildlife Trust
© Photograph: TOM_MASON/Tom Mason/Wildlife Trust
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty Images
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.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Connexion