The UK has become the “most expensive place in the world” to build a nuclear power station because of overly complex bureaucracy and regulation, according to a government review.
The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by Keir Starmer in February after the government promised to rip up “archaic rules” and slash regulations to “get Britain building”.
Blazes that smoulder in the permafrost, only to reignite, are extending fire season though winter, leaving vegetation struggling to recover
In May 2023, a lightning strike hit the forest in Donnie Creek, British Columbia, and the trees started to burn. It was early in the year for a wildfire, but a dry autumn and warm spring had turned the forest into a tinderbox, and the flames spread rapidly. By mid-June, the fire had become one of largest in the province’s history, burning through an area of boreal forest nearly twice the size of central London. That year, more of Canada burned than ever before.
The return of cold and snow at the close of the year typically signal the end of the wildfire season. But this time, the fire did not stop. Instead, it smouldered in the soil underground, insulated from the freezing conditions by the snowpack. The next spring, it reemerged as a “zombie fire” that continued to burn until August 2024. By then, more than 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) had been destroyed.
The latest in our series of writers highlighting their all-time favorite comfort films is a 2012 indie romcom that begins and ends on the November holiday
I’ve watched this movie almost every November for about the last 10 years. It’s something of a rarity, a film about Thanksgiving, celebrating the awkward in-between holiday in a sea of clearcut Halloween and Christmas classics. Stuck in Love is an indie romcom from 2012, the directorial debut of writer-director Josh Boone, who would later go on to make The Fault in Our Stars. It boasts a stacked cast featuring Greg Kinnear, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff, Jennifer Connelly and Logan Lerman (and smaller roles for Kristen Bell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Glen Powell, as well as a cameo from author Stephen King).
The movie follows Bill Borgens (Kinnear), an unhappily divorced novelist who fosters his two teenage children’s literary ambitions by encouraging them to write – though he hasn’t written in years since becoming a divorcee – while he obsesses over his ex-wife, Erica (Connelly), who has since remarried.
European Council president António Costa said he spoke with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy “to get his assessment of the situation” ahead of today’s informal EU leaders’ meeting on Ukraine on the sidelines of the EU-Africa summit.
“A united and coordinated EU position is key in ensuring a good outcome of peace negotiations - for Ukraine and for Europe,” he added.
Blow to leftist coalition government of PM Pedro Sánchez, who appointed Álvaro García Ortiz in 2022
Spain’s chief prosecutor has announced his resignation after the supreme court found him guilty last week of leaking confidential information in a case involving a leading opposition figure’s partner.
The unprecedented case is a blow to the leftist coalition government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who appointed Álvaro García Ortiz in 2022 and has defended his innocence repeatedly.
Our muscles, bones and organs are held together by a network of tissue that influences our every move. Is there a way we can use it to our advantage?
Fascia, the connective tissue that holds together the body’s internal structure, really hasn’t spent all that long in the limelight. Anatomists have known about its existence since before the Hippocratic oath was a thing, but until the 1980s it was routinely tossed in the bin during human dissections, regarded as little more than the wrapping that gets in the way of studying everything else. Over the past few decades, though, our understanding of it has evolved and (arguably) overshot – now, there are plenty of personal trainers who will insist that you should be loosening it up with a foam roller, or even harnessing its magical elastic powers to jump higher and do more press-ups. But what’s it really doing – and is there a way you can actually take advantage of it?
“The easiest way to describe fascia is to think about the structure of a tangerine,” says Natasha Kilian, a specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Pure Sports Medicine. “You’ve got the outer skin, and beneath that, the white pith that separates the segments and holds them together. Fascia works in a similar way: it’s a continuous, all-encompassing network that wraps around and connects everything in the body, from muscles and nerves to blood vessels and organs. It’s essentially the body’s internal wetsuit, keeping everything supported and integrated.” If you’ve ever carved a joint of meat, it’s the thin, silvery layer wrapped around the muscle, like clingfilm.
Conchologists, and citizen scientists team up to seek out endangered mollusc species along River Thames
It is tiny, hairy and “German” – and it could be hiding underneath a piece of driftwood near you. Citizen scientists and expert conchologists are teaming up to conduct the first London-wide search for one of Britain’s most endangered molluscs.
The fingernail-sized German hairy snail (Pseudotrichia rubiginosa) is found in fragmented patches of habitat mostly along the tidal Thames.
A young Austrian Jew hides out in the nightclub scene in this 1930s-set drama based on a real story – and inspired by countless other tales of Jews in exile in Europe
It is 1938 and the Austrian Anschluss is unfolding. In Vienna, the Jewish Knoller family must make some hard choices. While one brother is sent to stay in America, younger sibling Freddie (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) must fend for himself as his parents opt to stay behind – a choice that is clearly not going to end well. While the film cuts back and forth between periods, we see Freddie on a death march with other Jewish prisoners in one timeframe, and trying to make his way to the UK via France in another.
In the westward-bound section, Freddie ends up in Paris, broke and desperate but eager for a bit of glamour all the same. An encounter with raffish but slippery Christos (Fernando Guallar), another immigrant, results in Freddie securing a job in the Opéra neighbourhood persuading Nazi soldiers with his perfect fluent German to come to a nightclub he and Christos work for. This is how he hopes to raise enough money to pay for forged papers. What follows tracks closely to dozens of similar stories about Jews in exile in Europe during the second world war, compelled to keep their identities secret, and while the film is in fact based on the story of a real-life Freddie Knoller, the cliched treatment rather drains it of the plausibility it needs to make it distinctive.
Senior UK police officer says AI is accelerating violence against women and girls and that technology companies are complicit
One in four people think there is nothing wrong with creating and sharing sexual deepfakes, or they feel neutral about it, even when the person depicted has not consented, according to a police-commissioned survey.
The findings prompted a senior police officer to warn that the use of AI is accelerating an epidemic in violence against women and girls (VAWG), and that technology companies are complicit in this abuse.
The most successful quarterback of all-time approached his playing career with ruthless focus. He could do with the same intensity in his retirement projects
Tom Brady played for 23 NFL seasons with a single, maniacal goal: to become the greatest quarterback who ever lived. He achieved it. Now, in retirement, Brady has dabbled in everything. He calls games for Fox. He’s building chimneys in Birmingham. He’s flogged crypto. He’s spreading America’s Game to Riyadh. He has a thriving YouTube account. He cloned his dog. Brady’s post-playing portfolio has been diverse, or aimless, depending on your perspective.
Side hustles are one thing. But running a pro franchise is not a part-time job. Along with his other roles, Brady is also the de facto football czar of the Raiders, the most hapless team in the league.
Amid Liverpool’s deepening crisis and the growing scrutiny on Arne Slot, it is only right that Nottingham Forest’s role in it is given some attention and acclaim. Back-to-back league wins at Anfield for the first time since 1963 deserves recognition, as does the willingness of Forest’s players to embrace the gameplan of the third different managerial voice they have heard this season. Sean Dyche’s instructions were implemented to perfection as Liverpool disintegrated. “We changed the tactical side today,” said Forest’s recently appointed manager. “I told the players: ‘We’re not passing it, we are going long, because Liverpool were going to press the life out of you’ – which is exactly what they did at the start. We dealt with that quite well and we mixed it tactically, which is credit to the players.” Forest’s tactics may have been straight out of the Dyche playbook but they were also encouraged, inadvertently, by Slot, who has regularly told opponents how to play his Liverpool team this season. He has meanwhile not found any solutions. Andy Hunter
In western Chad, villagers are desperately trying to hold back the sand as the climate crisis wreaks havoc on one of the hottest countries in the world
On the ochre sands of Kanem, the neat vegetable gardens and silver-green palm trees of Kaou oasis stand out, incongruous in this desert province of 70,000 sq km in western Chad.
Oases such as this, on the edge of the Sahara, have sustained human life in the world’s deserts for thousands of years. Globally, an estimated 150 million people rely on the water, arable land and access to trade networks they provide. But in Chad, such oases are disappearing fast.
The fingerprints of Russia and Saudi Arabia are all over the decision text in Brazil. But a group of nations led by Colombia and the Netherlands offer hope
Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence
The 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC, just ended. Stakeholders are out in the media trying spin the outcome as a win. Simon Stiell, climate change executive secretary for the UN is, for instance, praisingCop30 for showing that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet”. But let us be clear. The conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, a form of climate denial.
In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) determined that the world had already developed, or planned to develop, too much fossil fuel to be able to halt global heating at 2C. It acknowledged that the capital assets built up around fossil fuels must be stranded – that is to say, abandoned and not used – if warming was to be limited to 2C. But the Cop30 decision text ignores all this. Indeed, it never even mentions fossil fuels.
Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence, and the author of The Language of Climate Politics
On paper, ‘horny teens do battle with mini demon snowmen’ sounds fun, but the jokes are dumb and the references to better films only draw attention to its weaknesses
It’s teenager Zach (Chris Cavalier)’s birthday and he plans to spend it watching Highlander and, well, masturbating – but an army of miniature demon snowmen have other ideas. It is the perfect jumping off point for a mashup of Gremlins and American Pie, and for quite a chunk of time the film manages to coast along on that kind of silly guilty pleasure energy, with zippy pacing and plenty of jokes so stupid they’re funny, plus cameos from icons such as Joe Dante (director of Gremlins).
Unfortunately the comedy writing isn’t quite there, and the jokes rapidly revolve back around to so stupid they’re stupid. Similarly, the introduction of a couple of sexy nymphomaniac nuns initially seems promising – you wonder what their deal is going to be, assuming they will be more than one-dimensional sex puppets – only to find that no, that really is their full extent. Maybe there’s something refreshing about characters existing purely as eye candy, without any hypocritical woke pretence that there’s more to it than that?
The Philippines is one of the countries most at risk of the climate emergency due to its low-lying island geography. With sea temperatures rising, the country deals with increasingly frequent and intense typhoons, rising sea-levels that threaten coastal communities, and changing rainfall patterns that disrupt agriculture. The country is one of the smallest contributors to climate change but one of the places most affected by its impacts. Gideon Mendel’s visceral portraits from his project Drowning World show people in Bulacan province dealing with the climate emergency in their daily lives
From stylish townhouses to characterful country piles, this selection of inns, B&Bs and hotels offer delicious food and a touch of luxury for £150 a night or less
Drakes, Brighton Keep an eye out for deals at this glamorous Regency seafront hotel (a November 30% discount won’t be a one-off). A sea-view balcony room, of course, will cost a bit, but even the snuggest, city-facing bedrooms have air conditioning, a king-size bed, wet room, bathtub and Green & Spring toiletries. For somewhere so fun and stylish, Drakes offers real value, including the shorter tasting menus in Dilsk restaurant. Or just treat yourself to a sundowner in the bar, then head out to dine. This is Brighton; the world is your oyster. Doubles from £143.50 B&B, drakeshotel.com
Michel Simon, who steals the show in Jean Vigo’s 1934 masterpiece L’Atalante, was a soft-faced, gravelly voiced clown capable of tremendous pathos – and total chaos
Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, his poetic and surreal 1934 romance about a young couple living on a canal barge, is one of the most beautiful, sensual films of all time. Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté play the newlyweds getting awkwardly accustomed to married life in close quarters, and their love story shapes the film. But it’s their bargemate, the uncouth Père Jules, played by Michel Simon, who steals the show: a well-travelled sailor speckled with tattoos, standing guard over a cabinet of risque and macabre curiosities, whose cabin teems with cats every bit as unruly as he is.
The Swiss actor Michel Simon was one of the most distinctive presences in 20th-century French cinema: a soft-faced, gravelly voiced clown capable of tremendous pathos, and true chaos. Charlie Chaplin called him “the greatest actor in the world”. He worked with the best European directors on some timeless films. As well as acting for Vigo, he played the timid man transformed by his affair with a sex worker in La Chienne (1931) and the incorrigible tramp in Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) for Jean Renoir. He worked with Marcel Carné in films such as Le Quai des Brumes (1938), with Carl Theodor Dreyer in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), with René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, Julien Duvivier, GW Pabst … even John Frankenheimer in The Train (1964). “When Michel Simon plays a part,” said Truffaut, “we penetrate the core of the human heart.” He spent five decades working in the cinema, starting out in the silents, and received his highest accolade, the Berlinale’s Best Actor award in 1967, for his role as an antisemitic peasant befriending a young Jewish boy during the war in The Two of Us (Claude Berri). Reviewing that movie, Renata Adler called Simon “an enormous old genius … the general impression is that of an immense, thoughtful, warm-hearted and aquatic geological formation”.
The first scholarly biography in more than 100 years of the man who immortalised the Tudor court does not disappoint
Much of what we know, or think we know, about the court of Henry VIII comes directly from the paintings of Hans Holbein. There’s the famous portrait of the king himself – puffy, phallic and cruel, looking more like a murderer than a monarch. But there is also ascetic Thomas More, hiding his cruel streak behind fine bones, and sly yet thuggish Thomas Cromwell, with those shifty eyes and the beginnings of a double chin. “Hans the Painter” did the wives too – an appropriately sketchy drawing of Anne Boleyn, a saintly portrait of Jane Seymour who died after giving birth to Henry’s heir, and a pin-up version of Anne of Cleves.
It was this last portrait that caused an international incident in 1539 when Holbein was sent by Henry to the Low Countries to check whether Anne was pretty enough to be his next wife. Based on Holbein’s portrait, Henry committed to the marriage in absentia, only to be horrified when the actual Anne arrived on the Kentish coast, looking “nothing so fair as she hath been reported”. The union lasted six months.
Nervous flyer considered driving from Perth to Brisbane
Tourists yet to decide if Test players will play tour match
Mark Wood has considered driving straight from Perth to Brisbane – a 2,500 mile (4,000 km) journey over four days – just to fill the extra time created by the chastening start to England’s much-hyped Ashes moonshot.
Feral cats are already caught and killed in some areas but will now be subject to coordinated targeting, with large-scale eradication programs
New Zealand aims to eradicate feral cats by 2050, the country’s conservation minister has announced, in plans that a decade ago generated a fierce backlash from environmentalists.
The conservation minister, Tama Potaka, announced the addition of feral cats to the world-leading Predator-Free 2050 strategy on Friday, the first time a predator has been added to the list since its inception in 2016.
Forward Trust patron says ‘compassion and love’ are needed to end fear and shame felt by those affected
The Princess of Wales has called for an end to the “stigma” surrounding addictions, saying the experiences of those dependent on drugs, alcohol or gambling are “shaped by fear, shame and judgment”.
Catherine, who is a patron of the charity Forward Trust supporting recovering addicts, said more open conversations were needed to bring the issue “out of the shadows” and for society to show “compassion and love” to those affected.
Let’s put aside the schooldays accusations and look, instead, at the Reform leader’s path since then. I think a pretty clear picture of the man emerges
When I see the allegations of racism against Nigel Farage from his schooldays, I can’t say I am greatly surprised. There are those who believe that the Reform UK leader’s persona must have been developed to win over working-class voters, or the “red wall”. I know that it is quite in keeping with the sentiments expressed by plenty of young men in elite institutions like English public schools – the kind of men who run the world.
Farage was educated at Dulwich college from 1975 to 1982; there, fellow students have told the Guardian, he allegedly used racist insults about fellow pupils and sang a song with the lyrics “Gas ’em all”. I attended Eton a couple of decades later, but the attitudes of some of the people I encountered there were not very different. One pupil, having fallen out with me over some perceived slight, boasted that his great-grandfather was a slave driver. A Jewish friend who was there with me at the same time told me how common it was to hear “Jew” or “rabbi” being used to describe anyone who was thought to be mean with their money. When I later saw Old Etonian Boris Johnson referring to black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”, I thought back to the peers of mine who would erupt into rants filled with racist stereotypes whenever they saw the West Indies cricket team on the TV.
Musa Okwonga is an author and football podcaster based in Berlin
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