With the government under pressure on the economy, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the consumer prices index eased to 2.5%, below a reading of 2.6% in November, meaning prices rose at a slower rate.
When returning US president Donald Trump eyes up Greenland, Panama and Canada, as Vladimir Putin once eyed Crimea and Xi Jinping eyes Taiwan, he is both symptom and cause of a new world disorder. Trumpism is just one variant of transactionalism, which is the leitmotif of this new disorder. Liberal democracies, especially those in Europe, need to wake up and smell the gunpowder.
Russia and China are now revisionist great powers, which aim to change or overthrow the existing order, while middle powers like Turkey, Brazil and South Africa are happy to play with all sides. This is also a world of wars – in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan. Most Europeans carry on pretty much as if we still lived in late 20th-century peacetime, but the world around us increasingly resembles the late 19th-century Europe of fiercely competing great powers and empires writ large. For the geopolitical stage is now planetary, and most of the players are non-western states. Trump’s United States is likely to behave more like those other transactional great powers than like, say, Germany or Sweden.
Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist. He co-authored the report on the ECFR global poll with Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard
Airbnb and Booking.com are the market leaders, but a new wave of smaller accommodation platforms are offering an alternative – and trying to give something back to local communities
Accounts of tenants illegally subletting rental properties by listing them on Airbnb and Booking.com, without the permission of their landlords, have hit the headlines in recent months. While there’s no denying that the convenience of these accommodation booking platforms has transformed holidays – making independent travel more accessible and affordable – that convenience often comes at a cost. In tourism hotspots like Barcelona, which banned short-term rentals in 2021 (and will ban all apartment rentals to tourists by late 2028), platforms such as Airbnb are being blamed for driving up rents and house prices for residents.
However, there are alternatives to these search engine and booking monoliths, with an increasing number of smaller websites offering hand-picked owner-run, independent B&Bs, home swaps, or rental properties that are primary homes (rather than fuelling a second home market). With a focus on passionate, local hosts who know their patch inside out, using these platforms can also take some of the pain out of researching a destination. Better for locals and better for your holiday; it’s often a win-win.
A classy cast plays it straight in this enjoyably daft action epic about the crossbow sharpshooter forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head
Nick Hamm lets rip with some gonzo Game of Thrones craziness in his retelling of the William Tell myth with a blue-chip cast. Limbs get chopped off in a style I haven’t seen since the days of Monty Python’s Black Knight. It’s the story of the 14th-century Swiss folk hero and crossbow artist, a peaceful farmer and huntsman who has endured continual tyranny and humiliation at the hands of his Austrian Habsburg masters, and finally rises up against them on a coward-of-the-county basis; the flashpoint being made to shoot an apple from his son’s head for the sneering amusement of the Habsburg nobleman Gessler.
It’s adapted by Hamm from the 1804 play by Schiller (not many action movies can boast that), but gives Tell a Muslim wife and adopted son that Schiller didn’t imagine; a flashback reveals this to be the result of Tell’s experiences in the Crusades, a time of bigoted cruelty. Hamm inserts into his movie some outrageous and enjoyable cod-Shakespearean dialogue.
When a neighbour let me see inside his hive, it set me on a path to an extraordinary life second act
I was first introduced to bees when I was invited to visit a neighbour’s apiary one April afternoon, 20 years ago. Like most people, I was terrified of stinging insects, but I was fond of the honey they produced, which I would drizzle into my tea to soothe a scratchy throat.
An invitation to meet honeybees was unusual. At the time, I was a freelance designer and illustrator, and spent my days working from my tiny red cottage in rural Connecticut. Occasionally, I took day trips into New York City to meet with clients and a few times each year travelled to China to oversee manufacturing of giftware for a small import company
Police came better prepared than for their first attempt two weeks ago while supporters on both sides of the political divide came out to protest
By 4.30am, the streets around Yoon Suk Yeol’s hilltop residence felt like rush hour, packed with police and protesters despite the early hour.
Roads were completely sealed off and thousands of officers were in position on the freezing winter morning, while hundreds of pro-Yoon supporters chanted aggressively while clutching red light sticks and American flags.
Briton showed grit in Australian Open first-round victory
Anisimova ‘incredibly dangerous’ rival in next round
Emma Raducanu says she has become more comfortable in her skin and learned how to enjoy her career journey rather than fixating on results as she prepares to face her friend Amanda Anisimova for a place in the third round of the Australian Open.
“I think I’m a lot more comfortable with myself, which helps,” said Raducanu. “I feel like I’m not necessarily trying to prove anything. I’m just doing it for myself. I feel like now I’ve come to the realisation that I just enjoy the process of what I’m doing.
The cash to match the prime minister’s ambition will have to come from other budgets long before any benefits are seen
Keir Starmer made two predictions at the start of his week. He said that artificial intelligence will transform Britain’s economy in the coming years and that Rachel Reeves will continue to run the Treasury. Those were safe bets, but not guarantees. One is a forecast the prime minister makes eagerly, the other was bullied out of him. He would have preferred to talk about AI improving productivity, generating jobs and improving services, without being asked if he plans to sack the chancellor.
He doesn’t, and wouldn’t say even if he did. The question isn’t serious. It is a contrivance, a lobby ritual for turning speculation into news. Demand official comment on an improbable scenario, then interrogate the answer until it surrenders a headline. Starmer isn’t poised to jettison Reeves, but economic pressure on the pair is real. There is no growth. The pound is depreciating and debt costs are rising, gobbling resources that can’t then be used to upgrade the public realm.
British arm of Heartland, which has taken oil and Republican funding, to be led by ex-Ukip head Lois Perry
Climate science deniers are lining up a political offensive in Britain after a US lobby group opened a UK branch which is already working with Nigel Farage.
The Reform UK leader was the guest of honour at the launch of Heartland UK/Europe, which is to be headed by a former leader of Ukip and climate denier.
As with US bond yields, the UK economy risks catching cold whenever anywhere else sneezes – but Britain can insulate itself better
The British government was right to describe the recent bout of market volatility in the UK as having been fuelled principally by “global factors” – in particular, a sharp rise in US bond yields. It was also right in touting how well UK markets have coped with the turmoil. But no one should downplay the additional challenges the UK economy will confront in the months ahead, the structural weaknesses that are compounding its vulnerability, or the policy action that is urgently needed.
The recent surge in US yields has three main causes: a string of data releases indicating that actual and potential economic growth are outpacing consensus estimates, higher-than-projected inflation (with a meaningful rise in consumers’ inflation expectations), and increased market sensitivity to the bond issuance that comes with large deficits and debt. Given that advanced economies compete for funding from global investors, it should be no surprise that higher US yields caused borrowing costs in most other countries to rise as well.
Latest SunLife study shows average total funeral cost at £9,797 with many selling off possessions to help pay
The “cost of dying” has hit a record high, prompting growing numbers of grieving UK families to turn to crowdfunding or sell possessions to help pay for a funeral, according to a report.
The average cost of a basic funeral has increased by 3.5% in a year to hit an “all-time high” of £4,285, according to the insurer SunLife, which has been monitoring UK funeral costs for two decades.
British firm in the vanguard of companies arguing SMRs are a quicker and cheaper option than large Hinkley-sized plants
The Hinkley Point C power plant in Somerset is gargantuan. The 176-hectare (435-acre) plant will provide 3.2 gigawatts of power, enough for 6m homes. It is not just the project that is huge: the cost is as well. With a price tag that has ballooned to a reported £48bn, and delayed by at least five years, it has become a symbol of the pitfalls of nuclear power.
But a clutch of companies argue they have a quicker, cheaper option than large Hinkley-sized plants in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs), which can be built in a factory and then slotted together on site.
Public service cuts and ‘stark impact of poverty’ are causing worse outcomes for children, according to survey
Poor parental mental health has overtaken domestic violence as the most commonly reported factor in social worker assessments into whether a child is at risk of serious harm or neglect, according to new research.
Growing rates of mental illness – in both parents and children – were an increasingly important driver of child safeguarding interventions in England, the latest comprehensive survey of children’s social care pressures found.
Law to stop armed groups profiting from trade in gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum is being breached, rights groups say
The European Union has been urged to clamp down on illegal imports of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after evidence was found that current regulations had been breached.
The advocacy group Global Witness (GW) said there remained a “high risk” of the EU’s mineral imports being used to fund militias and state repression in several countries.
Women with little formal education trained to become solar technicians, transforming villages and tackling patriarchal norms
In a dimly lit corridor of a mud-walled house nestled among coconut trees, Sharifa Hussein stripped red and black cables, a screwdriver voltage tester balanced between her lips and rolls of cable lying by her feet.
Then, with the help of three other women, she attached the two wires to an electronic device nailed on the wall.
Ebike rentals are thought to have reduced car use – but caused consternation among some pedestrians and other road users. How can everyone get along?
I love Lime bikes because I live next to a secondary school, and I see those tearaways in every mood. Coming in, grumpy; going home, cranky; yelling at each other, kicking bins for no reason. Ah, the sweet hell of teenagehood. But when they get on the Limes, you can see in them both the playful, primary school kids of the past, and the adults, with agency and a place to be, of the future. Let’s not trouble ourselves over whether or not they’ve hacked them and that’s what the funny clacking noise is.
But the relationship overall, between the pedal cyclist, the ebiker and the pedestrian – well, it’s mixed. Some are happy to welcome rented ebikers as allies against the greater enemy (the car). Others say they have been actively put off cycling because of them. Pedestrians have other complaints still, and drivers – well, I left drivers out of this. Some other time for their nonsense (our nonsense – I also drive).
We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week, from 2022: Despite the rise of headline-grabbing megafires, fewer fires are burning worldwide now than at any time since antiquity. But this isn’t good news – in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable. By Daniel Immerwahr
Gabrielle Canon reports from Los Angeles on the wildfires destroying homes and communities
As the Los Angeles wildfire spread closer to his home, George Elmaraghi was anxiously waiting for an evacuation order.
“When I saw the fire, from our backyard, almost parallel to our house, I was like, OK, we gotta go.”
George’s home in Altadena was destroyed in what is now the city’s most destructive wildfire. That fire is still burning and George and his family, along with 150,000 other displaced people, are now grappling with trauma, homelessness, insurance claims – and the ultimate decision of whether to rebuild or walk away.
For Gabrielle Canon, the Guardian’s extreme weather correspondent, this unprecedented fire must be understood as a compound climate disaster: the disastrous end result of a chain of events exacerbated by the climate crisis.
Gabrielle explains to Michael Safi why popular anger is growing around the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and unpacks the potential climate crisis implications of incoming US president Donald Trump’s record on misinformation, fossil fuel extraction and federal disaster response.
Author publishes statement after New York Magazine investigation, saying: ‘I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever’
Neil Gaiman has denied all allegations against him after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct in a New York Magazine article, writing in a lengthy statement: “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”
In July, a podcast investigation by Tortoise media reported allegations by two women of sexual assault against Gaiman. One of the women alleged that Gaiman had performed sexual acts on her without her consent when she was 22 and working as a nanny for the author’s family in New Zealand. Gaiman strongly denied any wrongdoing at the time, saying all of his sexual relationships were consensual.
Aryna Sabalenka breaks Jessica Bouzas Maneiro to 30 at the first attempt but the Spaniard bounces back immediately. Bouzas Maneiro pulls away to a 0-30 lead following a pair of unforced errors from Sabalenka, then takes the game to deuce and four break-back points – the third from a huge confidence booster with a sublime cross-court forehand winner. The world No 54 brings out a backhand winner to finally finish off the game and put the first set back on serve.
Jessica Pegula is up against Elise Mertens on Margaret Court Arena with the first few games quickly going to serve. Mertens leads the No 7 seed 2-1.
Australia would take “the strongest action possible”, including potentially expelling Russia’s ambassador, Anthony Albanese has warned, as the federal government scrambles to verify reports that Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins had been killed after being captured by Russian forces while fighting for Ukraine.
Albanese said on Wednesday that any harm to Jenkins would be “absolutely reprehensible”, and demanded Moscow immediately confirm the condition of the 32-year-old Australian citizen, after reports overnight that he had died.
Financial regulator alleges Musk later acquired shares of company at ‘artificially low prices’, stiffing shareholders
A US financial regulator has sued Elon Musk for allegedly failing to disclose his ownership of Twitter stock and later acquiring shares in the company at “artificially low prices”, stiffing other shareholders.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against Musk late on Tuesday in federal court in Washington DC for alleged securities violations. According to the suit, Musk did not disclose that he had acquired a 5% stake in the company in a timely manner, which allowed him “to underpay by at least $150m for shares he purchased after his financial beneficial ownership report was due”.
Gregory Rodriguez, 56, who faced 97 counts, convicted of crimes in one of state’s largest prison abuse scandals
Gregory Rodriguez, a former California women’s prison correctional officer, who was at the center of one of the state’s largest prison abuse scandals, was convicted of 64 sexual abuse charges on Tuesday.
The jury’s guilty verdict includes convictions for rape and sexual battery on behalf of 13 incarcerated women.
Obesity is one of the world’s biggest health challenges, causing a mass of shorter, unhappier lives and a mounting burden on already overstretched healthcare systems.
There is no doubt that more people than ever before are living with excess body fat, and there is no doubt about the dangers of doing so. Obesity has the ability to harm every single organ in the body, and increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and mental illness.
Doctors are proposing a “radical overhaul” of how obesity is diagnosed worldwide amid concerns that a reliance on body mass index may be causing millions of people to be misdiagnosed.
More than 1 billion people are thought to be living with the condition that for decades has been diagnosed by measuring a person’s BMI (their ratio of height to weight) to estimate the amount of excess body fat they have.
Abuse allegations – which he denies – pile up against the shock rocker in this chilling documentary, not helped by some of the sexual comments he makes about pre-teens
Roll up, roll up – fun times are here again, especially for us ladies! Last week we had 2025’s first addition to the bulging files of true-crime stories, with the documentary series about rapist and serial killer Todd Kohlhepp (The Amazon Review Killer). Now we have the first documentary about a high-profile star claimed by multiple women to be a violent sexual predator long enabled by his fame, money and power to do exactly as he liked, to as many young women as he liked, without fear of consequence.
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked is a meticulously assembled three-part account of the shock-rock musician’s career and what was allegedly happening behind the scenes. All of which, I should say, is denied by Manson (real name Brian Warner) and on screen by his quietly terrifying lawyer Howard King, whose favourite expression seems to be “complete fabrication”.
Bundesliga strugglers win 4-2 and add to Dortmund woes
Milan recover to win at Como and Juventus draw again
Struggling Holstein Kiel scored three times in a dominant first half but had to survive a late comeback from Borussia Dortmund before beating the visitors 4-2, capped by a breakaway fourth goal into an empty net, in a second straight Bundesliga loss for the Ruhr valley club.
The result saw Dortmund, who had also lost 3-2 to Bayer Leverkusen on Friday, drop to eighth in the standings while piling more pressure on already-embattled coach Nuri Sahin.
It was just as West Ham imagined it when they spent more than £100m last summer. Lucas Paquetá as a false nine. Two left-backs on the pitch at the end. A defence so fragile that Alex Iwobi can score direct from two crosses. The new man in the dugout watching and wondering if life at the London Stadium is always this baffling.
This ended up being a game that West Ham tried very hard not to win, even though they led 2-0 and 3-1 after a host of comical errors from Fulham. As it was, all that mattered for Graham Potter was taking the points and finding logic in the puzzle.
Lawyer for Northern Ireland MP Sorcha Eastwood said posts were made the day after Commons debate on violence against women and girls
A Northern Ireland MP has launched legal action against the self-styled misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother over social media posts made in the past week.
A lawyer for Sorcha Eastwood, an MP for the Alliance party, said the posts were made on Friday, the day after she had told MPs that she was a “survivor of abuse” and had received rape threats.
Kevin Winters, one of Northern Ireland’s best-known solicitors with a series of cases against the state in relation to deaths during the Troubles, confirmed he was acting for the MP.
“We are instructed to issue legal proceedings against Andrew and Tristan Tate over their continued publication of social media postings on 10 January 2025,” he said.
“We can confirm service of correspondence on today’s date to their solicitors. In light of the sensitivities of the issues engaged, we have no further comment at this stage.”
The posts that prompted Eastwood to launch the legal action were made on social media the day after a debate on violence against women and girls in the House of Commons.
Eastwood’s lawyer did not provide details of the claim but Tate’s timeline shows he commented on Friday on posts she had made in October about male role models. During the Commons debate she revealed that a member of the public had “came up and said they wanted to rape” her during a school visit she was leading at Stormont.
Just when it seemed nothing was dropping for Liverpool in a captivating contest, Arne Slot turned to his substitutes’ bench midway through the second half and exhibited his seemingly golden touch. Kostas Tsimikas and Diogo Jota entered, the former teeing up the latter at a corner to equalise courtesy of their first touches and keep Nottingham Forest, who continue to take great pleasure at gatecrashing the title race, at arm’s length. Even if it was an imperfect night for Liverpool, it felt a significant takeaway. Jota’s header was Liverpool’s first effort on target and the first goal Forest had conceded in more than 500 minutes.
For Forest, this is simply a ride supporters do not want to step off. At the final whistle their players were greeted with applause from all four corners of a throbbing stadium. This was another resounding display under Nuno Espírito Santo, another impressive step in an extraordinary season and a point lifts them to second, six points behind the pacesetters, who also have a game in hand. On this evidence, Forest may prove Liverpool’s fiercest challengers, especially with both Chelsea and Manchester City dropping more points.
A high-budget series set in the Outer Hebrides – it’s hard to believe it’s taken this long, given how popular subtitled TV is. It’s a good, solid series, even if the plot stretches credulity
It is difficult to imagine An t-Eilean being made even 10 years ago. It is billed as the UK’s first ever “high-end” Gaelic drama series, which means, I think, that it was expensive to make (a report last year put it at £1m for each of its four episodes). The title translates as The Island, and it is set mostly on the Western Isles, which makes it breathtakingly beautiful and means that everyone is in possession of a good solid coat. An t-Eilean exists thanks to renewed interest in and support for the speaking of Gaelic and, with subtitles no longer being seen as a barrier to enjoyment, has a strong shot at winning over an audience far larger than the 60,000 or so fluent speakers in Scotland.
Local businessman and boy-done-good Sir Douglas Maclean (Iain Macrae) is one of the richest men in Scotland, having outgrown his humble beginnings as “the proud son of a bin man”, and he and his family now live in a baronial mansion on the shoreline of Harris. The Macleans and their more loyal members of staff appear to lord it over the local people, some of whom are their tenants, and there is a distinct tension brewing between rich and poor. When Sir Douglas and his wife, Lady Mary, are attacked at home, there is one obvious suspect, and no shortage of potential others who might have been eager to dole out his comeuppance.
An t-Eilean aired on BBC Alba and is on BBC iPlayer now.
From title challengers to top-four contenders to reviving the undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the club’s direction, quite the recent slide for Chelsea. Thomas Tuchel, on an England scouting visit, will have seen few of the players he left behind in 2022. He will, though, have been reminded of the permanent jeopardy of the Chelsea manager.
Previously the safe pair of hands guiding the Chelsea project, Enzo Maresca’s cachet is wobbling after five winless games. Chelsea paid for a combination of callowness and profligacy against a bare‑bones Bournemouth. “The game was completely in our control,” Maresca said. “And it’s something we need to improve.”
When Brentford spurned their first couple of chances Thomas Frank showed his approval and encouragement with applause. But they kept missing them: by the end of the first half he was burrowing his head into his hands; by the time Yoane Wissa somehow shot into Nathan Aké with the goal at his mercy and 20 minutes remaining he was prostrate, forehead pressed into the turf in supplication. Maybe someone was listening.
Phil Foden had opened the scoring moments earlier, and shortly afterwards he tapped in a second after Savinho’s shot was saved. If at that moment Brentford looked beaten they did not feel it, and with one final heave the pendulum swung: three minutes later Mads Roerslev’s volleyed centre found Wissa all alone on the edge of the six-yard box to pull a goal back, and in stoppage time Christian Nørgaard headed Keane Lewis-Potter’s right-wing cross just beyond the grasp of Stefan Ortega.
Deal negotiated through Catholic church will involve ‘gradual’ release of 553 political prisoners, says Havana
The Biden administration has notified Congress that it will remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in a deal the country’s communist government said would involve the “gradual” release of 553 political prisoners.
The deal, which administration officials said was negotiated through the Catholic church, was announced on Tuesday, just five days before Biden exits the White House and Donald Trump is inaugurated as the country’s 47th president.
South Korea’s impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested and is being questioned over his ill-fated declaration of martial law last month, anti-corruption investigators said on Wednesday, bringing to an end an early-morning standoff outside his official residence in Seoul.
His detention makes him the first sitting president in the nation’s history to be arrested.
Authorities piece together timeline of radicalization of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the US army veteran behind the attack
Before plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans and killing 14 people, the man who carried out the Islamic State group-inspired attack had researched how to access a balcony on the city’s famed Bourbon Street and looked up information about a similar attack at a Christmas market in Germany, the FBI said.
Nearly two weeks after Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s rampage, the FBI continues to uncover new information detailing the extensive planning by the 42-year-old US army veteran who scouted out the area multiple times in the months leading up to the attack. Authorities have also been piecing together a timeline of his radicalization.
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