Philip Young appears at Swindon magistrates court charged with 56 offences relating to 13-year period A former Tory councillor has appeared in court charged with drugging and raping his former wife over a period of 13 years. Philip Young, 49, and five other men have been accused of more than 60 rapes and sexual offences against Joanne Young, 48. She can be named as the alleged victim because she has waived her right to anonymity, which would otherwise apply in such cases. Norman Macksoni, 47, a black British national of Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, who has been charged with one count of rape and possession of extreme images. Dean Hamilton, 46, of no fixed abode, who is white British, has been charged with one count of rape and sexual assault by penetration and two counts of sexual touching. Conner Sanderson Doyle, 31, of Swindon, described as white British, has been charged with sexual assault by penetration and sexual touching. Richard Wilkins, 61, of Toothill, Swindon, who is white British, has been charged with one count of rape and sexual touching. Mohammed Hassan, 37, of Swindon, described by police as British Asian, has been charged with sexual touching. Continue reading...

Liverpool head coach claims tackle risked serious injury Record signing Isak out ‘for a couple of months’, Slot says Arne Slot has criticised Tottenham defender Micky van de Ven for the “reckless” challenge that left Alexander Isak with a fractured leg. Liverpool will be without their record £125m signing “for a couple of months”, Slot confirmed on Tuesday, after he was injured while scoring in the team’s 2-1 win at Tottenham on Saturday. Isak had surgery on Monday to repair an ankle injury that includes a fractured fibula. Continue reading...

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Bitmap Bureau/Reef Entertainment Arcade specialists Bitmap Bureau ply their craft in this retro remake of James Cameron’s action film. But Terminator 2D is at its strongest when colouring outside the director’s lines Like Arnie’s pulverised cyborg at the end of T2, the Terminator franchise has lumbered on long past the point of being properly functional. Every film since Judgment Day has been a disappointment or an outright disaster, and its video game spinoffs haven’t fared much better. While some half-decent ones have emerged, such as 2019’s Terminator: Resistance, there hasn’t been a great Terminator game in about 30 years. So it makes perfect sense for Terminator 2D: No Fate to attempt to fix our broken future by travelling back to the past. Developer Bitmap Bureau appeals to the series’ heyday by retelling the story of Judgment Day through a medley of retro 80s and 90s playstyles. The result is a charming and frequently thrilling action throwback, though ironically it is at its strongest when it strays furthest from James Cameron’s film. Continue reading...

An exceptional cast, astonishing directing and the talent discovery of the decade – not to mention a plot so of-the-moment it was discussed in parliament. This may actually have been perfect TV • The 50 best TV shows of 2025 • More on the best culture of 2025 How could it be anything else? Adolescence is the Guardian’s best television series of 2025. And you’d have to assume that we’re not the only ones who think so. In any available metric – story, theme, casting, performances, execution, impact – Adolescence has stood head and shoulders over everything else. So ubiquitous was Adolescence upon release that it would be easy to assume that everyone in the world has watched it. But just in case, a recap. Adolescence is the story of a terrible crime, and how its shock waves ripple out across a community. In episode one, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate. In episode two, we follow a pair of police officers through a school, and learn that Jamie was radicalised online. The third is a two-hander between Jamie and his psychologist, in which Jamie’s anger rushes to the surface. The fourth returns to Jamie’s parents, as they question what more they could have done to stop this from happening. Continue reading...

They are sustainable, contain nutrients and may deter pests, but you need to use them sparingly The problem Coffee lovers often wonder if waste from their morning habit can feed their plants. The internet says yes; coffee grounds are packed with nitrogen and organic matter, in theory making them a natural fertiliser and pest deterrent. But can the dregs from your cafetiere really replace plant food, or will they do more harm than good? The hack Adding used grounds to your plant’s soil provides a nutrient boost and improves soil texture. Some also sprinkle them directly on to the surface of pots to deter pests. It sounds like a sustainable dream come true – recycling waste into nourishment – but it’s not quite that simple. Continue reading...

Italy’s competition authority says Irish airline implemented technical obstacles to force sales through its own website Business live – latest updates Ryanair has been fined €256m (£223m) by Italy’s competition authority for abusing its dominant market position to limit sales of tickets by online travel agents. The authority said Europe’s largest airline had “implemented an abusive strategy to hinder travel agencies” via an “elaborate strategy” of technical obstacles for agents and passengers to make it difficult for online travel agents to sell Ryanair tickets and instead force sales through its own website. Continue reading...

Local government secretary writes to town halls warning them against ‘part-time work for full-time pay’ The secretary for local government has written to all councils to warn that adopting a four-day week for staff puts them at risk of being declared a failing authority, according to reports. Twenty-five councils have discussed a four-day week policy and one, South Cambridgeshire district council, has already moved to the pattern. Continue reading...

Review will request ‘commonsense’ system with most serious incidents recorded as antisocial behaviour The category of non-crime hate incidents is no longer fit for purpose and could be scrapped under plans to be presented to the home secretary. A review by police leaders will call for non-crime hate incidents to be replaced with a new “commonsense” system, the Telegraph reports. Under the new scheme, only the most serious incidents would be recorded as antisocial behaviour. Continue reading...

Traders on Clevedon’s Hill Road say they fear the proposals could hasten the decline of independent retail as councils across Britain look to raise income by forcing shoppers to pay to park The shop windows are decked out in their festive finery, there are carols on the stereos and the tills are ringing. The independent stores, cafes and restaurants lining Hill Road in the Somerset seaside town of Clevedon are hoping to take advantage of the crucial pre-Christmas period. The street’s colourful shops, along with the town’s Victorian pier, are among Clevedon’s best-known landmarks, making Hill Road popular with locals and visitors. It even stood in for the high street in the ITV drama Broadchurch. Continue reading...

As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony “I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode. The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages. Continue reading...

The American author uses fiction to explore the life of her Chinese mother as she seeks to understand the violence that marked their relationship At first glance, the protagonist of Gish Jen’s latest novel seems like many of the other Chinese American immigrants Jen has portrayed so astutely in her decades-long career. Loo Shu-hsin is born into privilege in 1924 – her father is a banker in the largely British-run International Settlement of Shanghai – but her life is marked by her mother’s constant belittlement. “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk,” she’s told, after speaking out of turn. “With a tongue like yours, no one will ever marry you.” Her only solace in the household is a nursemaid, Nai-ma, who vanishes one day without warning – a psychic wound that lingers even as she grows up, emigrates to the US and enrols in a PhD programme. In one striking way, however, Loo Shu-hsin is different from Jen’s previous protagonists: she happens to be Jen’s own mother. Bad Bad Girl is in part a fictionalised reconstruction of Jen’s mother’s life, in service of a searching attempt to excavate their troubled relationship. “All my life, after all,” Jen writes, “I have wanted to know how our relationship went wrong – how I became her nemesis, her bête noire, her lightning rod, a scapegoat.” Continue reading...

Two people killed in assault launched on country’s energy infrastructure as temperatures dip towards freezing Several Ukrainian regions suffered power cuts in frigid winter weather on Tuesday after Russia launched its latest deadly large-scale attack with drones and missiles, authorities said. Neighbouring Poland scrambled jets to protect its airspace during the strikes, the country’s military said in a post on X. Continue reading...

Ahead of his new album, My Days of 58, the US singer-songwriter will answer your questions for the Guardian’s reader interview In a career hardly plagued with lows, Bill Callahan has been on a hot streak recently. Since 2019’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, the Maryland-born songwriter has shared his beguiling meditations on being changed by parenthood and marriage, while his music has loosened and expanded accordingly. The latter is in part down to the chemistry that Callahan has formed with his live band – guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim White also of the Dirty Three – audible on the extraordinary 2024 live album Resuscitate! It’s this ensemble and their facility for improv that powers Callahan’s forthcoming solo record, My Days of 58, the first tastes of which offer up some Callahan wisdom. The song Lonely City, he said, was an odd one for him to write, being generally more concerned with “humans and the spirit within”. So writing about concrete and steel felt like a no go. Like I’m going to write a song about a car next? But of course cities are made by humans so they are human, too. You have a relationship with them, like friends. Continue reading...

The Populist by Nikolay Kononov traces science protege’s rise to tech visionary and free speech defender Tech visionary, Kremlin dissident, FSB agent, free speech absolutist, health guru. These are just some of the labels admirers and critics have attached to Pavel Durov over the past decade. The Russian-born tech entrepreneur founded Russia’s version of Facebook before going on to create the messaging app Telegram, launch a cryptocurrency ecosystem and amass a multibillion-dollar fortune, all while clashing repeatedly with authorities in Russia and beyond. Continue reading...

Political backbiting has led to accusations Fifa is running the show as calendar is squeezed ever tighter It was a decision that took many by surprise, although not those who have been watching closely since February 2020. Members of the Confederation of African Football’s (Caf) executive committee, along with various other dignitaries including George Weah, the former Ballon d’Or winner and president of Liberia at the time, were assembled in Rabat at a seminar to hear Gianni Infantino outline his plan for the development of competitions and infrastructure in African football. As well as improving standards in refereeing and mobilising investment in the continent’s infrastructure, the president of Fifa floated the prospect of holding its most important tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, every four years instead of every two and described the current arrangement as “useless”. The argument ran that it would be more beneficial for countries “at the commercial level” and would help to “project African football to the top of the world”. “Let us show the world what we can do,” added Infantino. “This day is special – it’s the start of a new chapter for African football.” Continue reading...

The Croatia legend on his return to Dinamo Zagreb, his fall out with Uefa and the ‘shameful’ actions of Gianni Infantino An afternoon mist is descending over Maksimir Stadion, enhancing the severity of its dramatic, precipitous angles. In a building across the way, Zvonimir Boban is explaining what brought him back. We are eating squid ink risotto in one corner of a room now configured as Dinamo Zagreb’s canteen; diagonally opposite is the spot where, fighting through the club’s youth system, a young arrival from Dalmatia used to sleep. “Emotionally it’s the biggest story of my life, this one,” Boban says, memories of this former dormitory leaping into his mind’s eye. “Where, if not here?” He has, in some shape or form, been almost everywhere else. Boban has burned brightly but briefly in each of his various lives as a football administrator. The sport would look different were it not for his influence in senior roles at Fifa and Uefa across the past decade. Almost two years have passed since his high-profile resignation from the latter and there was always the sense Boban, opinionated and deeply principled, had further rungs to climb. Continue reading...

For many of the performers in the 12-month circus, the tour can be soul-destroying and lonely with only the promise of untold wealth to keep them chasing the dream “It’s a lonely place,” Stephen Bunting reflected as he sat quietly in Alexandra Palace on Saturday night, the tears welling in his eyes. “If things don’t go right, you can look at your family, your management, you can look at your sponsors. But it’s down to you. And yeah, I’m getting a bit emotional, but … ” These are stories darts is less keen on telling. Ever since this sport burst out of the smoky pubs and on to our television screens, it has possessed a kind of hedonistic, hyperreal quality, a game in which normal guys slip on their superhero suits and take a shot at unimaginable riches, unimaginable fame. The crowds dress up, get the drinks in and chase the ultimate high. The winners are brought into the press conference room to be feted; the losers slip out through the back door. From its start, darts has been conceived as a vehicle for joy and transformation. Continue reading...

The chaos is undeniable, but where else are you going to get a pair of jeans and a pistachio-cream panettone cake for such a reasonable price? ‘Oh it’s a mess!” my mum says, shaking her head. “It’s like a jumble sale.” I’m fresh from a trip to TK Maxx, and all I’m getting is negativity. A couple of days later I’m watching Educating Yorkshire when it happens again: one of the teachers tells his pupils to tidy up, lest their classroom look like one of its stores. Quite frankly, I’m sick of the slander. Sure, I’ve been in some branches that do look like a tornado has just blown through them. But, these days, they’re few and far between. My local TK Maxx, in a nice enough London suburb, is tidy and organised – so much so that when I hid a pair of Good American jeans the other day to “have a think” and then circled back for them, they had already been moved. Hannah J Davies is a freelance culture writer and editor Continue reading...

Denise Coates’s gambling empire reports turnover of £4bn in year to March 2025, up from £3.7bn Denise Coates, the billionaire boss of Bet365, a self-described “ultimate gambler” and Britain’s highest-paid woman, took home at least £280m in pay and dividends in 2025 despite a slump in pre-tax profits. Coates’s Stoke-based gambling empire recorded turnover of £4bn in the year to March 2025, up from £3.7bn the year before. Pre-tax profits fell to £349m from £627m in the previous year. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Tesla’s sales didn’t fall everywhere last month, though. The Norwegian market was a bright spot – Tesla’s sales in Norway rose 34.6% in November year-to-date, led by the mass market crossover Model Y. Continue reading...

Executed with trademark technical flair and empathy, this part-horror, part-fairytale set in a haunted orphanage from 2001 is one of the director’s best He’s a household name now after The Shape of Water and his new Frankenstein, but 25 years ago Guillermo del Toro was a virtual unknown, still bruised from the Harvey Weinstein-produced Hollywood flop Mimic. But, as this overlooked follow-up attests, he was always a class act. In fact, this is one of his best: a rich, rousing ghost story shrouded in trademark gothic gloom but executed with technical flair and a good deal of empathy. As with his later breakthrough Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s part-horror, part-fairytale, with children at its centre. The setting is a middle-of-nowhere boys’ orphanage in 1930s Spain, a leftist sanctuary from Franco’s fascists during the civil war. Newcomer Carlos (Fernando Tielve) must find his feet in this semi-surreal realm, with an unexploded bomb in the middle of the courtyard, some kindly adults (one-legged Marisa Paredes and kindly doctor Federico Luppi), some not-so-kindly adults (aggressive caretaker Eduardo Noriega), and junior bullies to win over. There’s also a ghost in the mix: a pale-faced boy named Santi, whose death no one seems to want to discuss, and to whose empty bed Carlos is ominously assigned. Continue reading...

Hope appeal is raising funds for five UK charities that build trust, hope and change at grassroots level Donate to the charity appeal here Generous Guardian readers have so far raised more than £500,000 for the Hope appeal supporting inspirational grassroots charities that bring together divided communities, promote tolerance, and tackle racism and hatred. The 2025 Guardian appeal is raising funds for five charities: Citizens UK, the Linking Network, Locality, Hope Unlimited Charitable Trust, and Who Is Your Neighbour? Continue reading...

Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with mournful minimalism, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra’s 1982 album of Punjabi disco makes a comeback and Guatemalan duo Titanic serve up ecstatic tracks • The 50 best albums of 2025 • More on the best culture of 2025 A 40-minute suite of continuous, repetitive drumming might not sound like the most accessible music but south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar’s latest album, There Is Beauty, There Already, turns this concept of insistent rhythm into strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive language throughout the record’s 10 movements, channelling Steve Reich’s phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing and anchoring each in the repetition of a continual, thrumming refrain. As the album continues, the refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial rhythm, drawing us further into Korwar’s percussive world the longer we listen. Continue reading...

Scheme has not replied to complaints and Pensions Ombudsman says it needs evidence of that I retired from the civil service five months ago and I’ve still not received my pension. I’ve complained to the Civil Service Pension Scheme (MyCSP) repeatedly, but it doesn’t reply. The Pensions Ombudsman says they need evidence that MyCSP has not responded to my complaint. How can I provide evidence of a failure to reply? Continue reading...

Exclusive: Campaigners say slashing overseas aid would leave UK unable to meet existing commitments Plans by Reform UK to slash the aid budget by 90% would not cover existing contributions to global bodies such as the UN and World Bank, shredding Britain’s international influence and risking its standing within those organisations, charities and other parties have warned. Under cuts announced by Nigel Farage in November, overseas aid would be capped at £1bn a year, or about 0.03% of GDP. Keir Starmer’s government is already set to reduce aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% by 2027, but even that lower proportion would still amount to £9bn a year. Continue reading...