From pop stars in space to non-primates with fingerprints, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz 1 Whose last words in 1963 were “Nobody’s gonna shoot at me”? 2 What symbol originated as a ligature of the letters e and t? 3 What is the largest artificial prehistoric mound in Europe? 4 Which marsupial is the only non-primate with fingerprints? 5 Which pop star went into space in April? 6 The old Hotel Moskva appears on bottles of what spirit? 7 In what decade was divorce legalised in Ireland? 8 Which landlocked country is the fourth most successful in Olympic swimming? What links: 9 Harry Bailey; Joss Merlyn; Abbey Potterson; Mistress Quickly; the Thénardiers? 10 Spanish, 1701-14; Austrian, 1740-48; Roy family, 2018-23? 11 Main belt; trojans; near-Earth? 12 Dominica; Guatemala; Kiribati; Papua New Guinea; Uganda? 13 45th state; largest city in Nebraska; Au; queen of the Roman gods; Excalibur? 14 SET India; Cocomelon; T-Series; MrBeast? 15 Basket V; hand and net VII; base IX; foot XI? Continue reading...

Multi-year studies announced after Cass review found ‘insufficient evidence’ about effects on children with gender dysphoria Two studies to investigate the impact of puberty blockers in young people with gender incongruence have been announced by researchers in the UK after an expert view said gender medicine was “built on shaky foundations”. Puberty blockers were originally used to treat early onset puberty in children but have also been used off-label in children with gender dysphoria or incongruence. Continue reading...

For the explorer and author, the desert outpost, irrigated by water from the Atlas mountains, is the perfect place to decompress The first thing I notice when I walk into the oasis is the temperature drop. Then, I hear the birdsong and the rustling of the palm trees. The harsh sun dims and there’s water and the smell of damp earth. It’s easy to understand why desert travellers yearned to reach these havens and why they have become synonymous with peace. I’m an explorer who’s walked through many oases with loaded camels, crossing Morocco and the Sahara on foot, but Skoura, a four-hour drive from Marrakech, is a place I visit to decompress. You may be imagining some kind of cartoon mirage oasis – a sole date palm shimmering above the endless sands. In fact, Skoura has a population of around 3,000 people living in a small town on the edge of the palms with 10 sq miles (25 sq km) of agricultural land. Many visitors to Morocco start in Fez or Marrakech and stop off in Aït Benhaddou, then go down to the Sahara towns of Zagora or Merzouga. Skoura, less than an hour from Ouarzazate, is an ideal stop-off point for a couple of days, or you could combine it with a Marrakech city break. The bus from Marrakech (CTM or Supratours) takes six hours, or you can hire a car (or car with driver) from Marrakech or Fez. Continue reading...

A year-long investigation reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors As Esau Lopez was asphyxiated for the first 17 minutes of his life on Earth, the atmosphere in the room remained serene, even ecstatic. Acoustic music crooned from a speaker in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Pennsylvania. “You are a queen,” murmured one of three friends in the room. Only Esau’s mother, Gabrielle Lopez, felt something was wrong. She was pushing hard, but her son would not be born. “Can you help [him] out?” she asked, as Esau crowned. “Baby is coming,” the friend replied. Four minutes later, Lopez asked again, “Can you grab [him]?” Another friend murmured, “Baby is safe.” Six minutes passed. Again, Lopez asked, “Can you grab [him]?” Continue reading...

Collective experiment found switching profile to ‘male’ and ‘bro-coding’ text led to big increase in reach, though site denies favouring posts by men Do your LinkedIn followers consider you a “thought leader”? Do hordes of commenters applaud your tips on how to “scale” your startup? Do recruiters slide into your DMs to “explore potential synergies”? If not, it could be because you’re not a man. Continue reading...

Prepare to have your perspective shattered by the comedian’s visits to our US tech overlords. The upcoming advancements for those with disabilities are life-changing Washing machines liberated women to get soul-crushing jobs that ate up their free time. Social media gave the world one revolution – before it destabilised democracies everywhere else. Now AI is here, and its main job seems to be replacing screenwriters. It’s easy to fall into techno-pessimism, but new documentary Seeing into the Future (Sunday 23 November, 8pm, BBC Two) has a different angle. For disabled people, tech has already brought about life-changing advancements. And we haven’t seen anything yet. It is presented by comedian and Strictly winner Chris McCausland, who is blind. Some of the most casually astonishing scenes occur early on, showing how he uses his phone – essentially, an eye with a mouth. “What T-shirt is this?” he asks, holding up a garment. “A grey T-shirt with a graphic logo of Deftones,” his phone obliges. It can even tell him if the shirt needs ironing. But it’s where all this is going that fascinates McCausland, so he heads to the US, to see what’s in development at the houses of our tech overlords. Continue reading...

Football is truly a family affair for Hednesford Town’s Hazzana Parnell and her fellow forward Remaya Osbourne “As a mother you try to give your child the best you can,” says the Hednesford Town forward Hazzana Parnell before the tier five side’s Women’s FA Cup second-round match against fourth-tier Sporting Khalsa on Sunday. “The ball will be on the line and I’ll lay it back for her, as if saying: ‘Go on, you have it.’” This isn’t like letting your kid beat you at Uno, or half-hearted efforts to save the ball when standing in goal at the local park. This is a mother, Parnell, 38, and her daughter, 16-year-old Remaya Osbourne, playing on the same team in the FA Cup, fulfilling a dream many footballers probably have when they hold their newborn in their arms, and that so few have achieved, in men’s and women’s football. Continue reading...

A number of big-money signings, promising talents and club legends are struggling to make their mark By WhoScored A £50m signing from Manchester City, Raheem Sterling was once a declaration of ambition by Chelsea but he is now lost in the £1.4bn of talent that has arrived since. It is easy to forget that Sterling was the first of 50 signings under the club’s owners. Continue reading...

Fans of The Great and Mary & George will love The Serpent Queen. Plus: it’s the Blackpool bonanza on Strictly! Here’s what to watch this evening 10.05pm, Channel 4 Continue reading...

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days Continue reading...

He was a Conservative party big-hitter who wrote speeches for David Cameron and worked with Boris Johnson before he suddenly jumped ship. He talks family, flags and why Nigel Farage is ‘top dog’ What I struggle to understand, I say to Danny Kruger in his office at Reform UK HQ, is why a serious Conservative, with a glittering future like yours, would defect to a party led by Nigel Farage? Indeed, the defection of Kruger, a heavy-weight on the Conservative right who served on the front bench and been tipped as a possible future leader, was seen as a major coup for Reform, catching commentators off-guard. Unlike previous deserters – Andrea Jenkyns, Jake Berry, Nadine Dorries – he was a sitting MP in a safe Tory seat. Plus, he was untarnished by the boisterous excesses of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. But we’ve been around the houses a few times on this. He’s talked about his philosophy (Burkean), his Christianity (evangelical), thrown out words like “family”, “community”, “nation”. He’s asserted (confusingly) that the Tories are “over” but “not dead”, that politics is mostly “gut feeling … mostly vibes – isn’t it?” Now, after a pause, Kruger sits back and fixes me with a blue-eyed grin: “Humans are pack animals,” he says. “You need to know who top dog is, otherwise the other dogs fight each other. That’s what we get in Tory and Labour. Because there’s a weakness at the top.” Continue reading...

Henry, 28, a student, meets Sarah, 30, an operations manager What were you hoping for? A fun, easy-going evening with some yummy grub. Continue reading...

A comforting and filling mix of Korean and Italian flavours and textures that’s ideal for weeknight dinner Share your questions for Meera Sodha, Tim Dowling and Stuart Heritage for a special Guardian Live event on Wednesday 26 November. I am a ragu-fancier and akheema fanatic. Unlike with most foods, however, it doesn’t do to rationalise this love for ragu, because it is a mash of things chopped up so small that they all lose their texture. This might sound a bit woo-woo, but the joy of ragu comes from feeling your way through it, from the chopping and standing with your thoughts, to stirring a bubbling pot and the smell creeping under the door. A ragu isn’t just a ragu, it’s a coming-together of good things: thoughts, feelings, ingredients, time and effort. Join Meera Sodha at a special event celebrating the best of Guardian culture on Wednesday 26 November, hosted by Nish Kumar and alongside writers Stuart Heritage and Tim Dowling, with Georgina Lawton hosting You Be The Judge live. Live in London or via livestream, book tickets here. Continue reading...

Need for new road taxes is clear – but there are concerns that pricing plan could stall transition away from petrol Three pence: a small charge per mile for an electric vehicle, but a giant conceptual leap for Britain. Chancellors of the exchequer have long resisted any form of road pricing as politically toxic. That may be about to change next week: Rachel Reeves, perhaps inured to being pilloried for any money-raising proposal, is expected to introduce a charge explicitly linked to how far EVs drive. Continue reading...

From the outside, the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s announcement has looked chaotic, and many see the future of the chancellor and PM in the balance Every budget could be described, to a greater or lesser extent, as a high-stakes moment. Things can easily go badly wrong, as Gordon Brown discovered when he abolished the 10p tax rate in 2007, or George Osborne when his 2012 ‘omnishambles’ budget fell apart over pasties, and especially Kwasi Kwarteng, whose disastrous mini-budget of 2022 sent the Conservatives spiralling towards electoral defeat. Rachel Reeves appears to have come perilously close to the turmoil of previous budgets, and that’s before she has even delivered it. Continue reading...

Ariana Grande sparkles in the concluding part of the Wicked Witch tale, and the first batch of final episodes of the retro sci-fi juggernaut are unleashed Wicked: For Good Out now Was the decision to split this Broadway musical big-screen adaptation into two parts motivated by art or money? Part two is here, so you can judge for yourself. The Wizard of Oz-inspired story picks up with defiant “Wicked Witch” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) living in exile, while Glinda (Ariana Grande) relishes her own popularity. The Thing With Feathers Out now Max Porter’s novel Grief Is the Thing With Feathers gets the big-screen treatment, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role as the dad who must raise his two young children alone after his wife dies unexpectedly. With David Thewlis as the voice of the crow who appears to him. The Ice Tower Out now Marion Cotillard stars as a star: an actor called Cristina, who is playing the beautiful Snow Queen in a 1960s adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic that also inspired Frozen. But though the other lead here is a 15-year-old girl, this is no Disney fable, but a tale of idols and obsession. Sisu: Road to Revenge Out now An unexpected hit in 2022, the first Sisu film was a violent action thriller in which a grizzled prospector murdered scores of Nazis to defend his bags of gold. Now the man who refuses to die is back, and this time he’s taking on the Red Army. Catherine Bray Continue reading...

Anti-AI and pro-beauty, Leo XIV has proved an unlikely custodian of culture – and a patron of meaningful work in a world of algorithmic slop So, who figured that Pope Leo XIV would end up being kind of cool? Not me. Although as a lapsed Catholic I had little stake in the conclave race, I felt that there was something unglamorous, dare I say godless, about a first-ever supreme pontiff born in the US, let alone one hailing from Chicago, the same city as Hugh Hefner, Hillary Clinton and Kanye West. There were greater apprehensions beyond taste, too. Would this finally be the ordination of the reinvigorated Maga movement after the death of the compassionate Pope Francis? When Leo appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica wearing the traditional red mozzetta cape eschewed by his predecessor, it was too easy to jump to conclusions. By the grace of God, the red mozzetta was a red herring. Very quickly, American conservatives went into meltdown over the pope’s patent anti-Maga leanings and his empathy for migrants and marginalised groups – “anti-Trump, anti-Maga, pro-open borders and a total Marxist,” fumed far-right activist Laura Loomer. That alone has been a relief. But perhaps even more significantly, Leo has demonstrated the benefits an American bishop of Rome can have for the rest of us, Christian, Catholic or otherwise: that is through his exemplary cultural leadership, and close engagement with the arts. Jason Okundaye is an assistant newsletter editor and writer at the Guardian. He edits The Long Wave newsletter and is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain Continue reading...

We have difffering views on my contribution to our book club: I see myself as its beating heart; my wife says I’m an interloper For the first time in the history of book club, I can’t make it to book club. The scheduling conflict arises late in the day, which is galling because I’ve already read the book, and I can’t very well unread it. “You won’t be missed,” my wife says. Continue reading...

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Matt Smith is the ultimate bad dad in a Nick Cave novel adaptation, and the Oz prequel musical reaches the end of the road. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews Continue reading...

McLaren’s title race leader first in qualifying ahead of Verstappen Lewis Hamilton’s troubles continue with last-place finish for Ferrari Lando Norris claimed pole position for McLaren at the Las Vegas Grand Prix with a superb lap in treacherous wet conditions on the street circuit in Nevada, and with it moved one step closer to winning his first Formula One world championship. The title race leader beat the Red Bull of Max Verstappen into second, but with his closest championship rival – teammate Oscar Piastri – only in fifth, Norris has the opportunity to further extend his advantage at the top of the standings. Continue reading...

This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake Cas Mudde is the author of The Far Right Today After more than 100 years, Copenhagen no longer has a Social Democrat mayor. Sisse Marie Welling, the new lord mayor, represents neither the mainstream right nor the far right but the Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF). This should be a major wake-up call for centre-left parties across Europe. After more than a decade taking the wrong lessons from Denmark, it is finally time to learn the right lesson: copying the far right not only fails to turn on far-right voters, it also turns off progressive voters. The 21st century has so far seen two simultaneous electoral developments in western Europe: the decline of social-democratic parties and the rise of far-right parties. This has created the powerful narrative that social democrats are losing votes to the far right, in particular because of their (alleged) “pro-immigration” positions. And although research shows that their voters mainly moved to centre-right and green parties, social-democratic parties have been chasing this mythical “left behind” voter ever since. Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today Continue reading...

National Trust begins planting the 49 ‘trees of hope’ so the illegally felled tree can live on in a positive way Saplings from the felled Sycamore Gap tree are to be planted across the UK, including at a pit disaster site, a town still healing from the Troubles and a place which became an international symbol of peace, protest and feminism. The National Trust said planting of 49 saplings, known as “trees of hope”, would begin on Saturday. It is hoped that the sycamore will live on in a positive, inspirational way. Continue reading...

Chernihiv residents say they are without power for 14 hours a day as they gather in ‘invincibility points’ to charge up and warm up Valentyna Ivanivna showed off her new head torch. It was a present from her grandson, she said. Most evenings she wears it while doing household chores: cooking dinner, washing up and stacking plates. “It’s impossible to plan anything without power. You can’t even invite people round for a cup of tea because the kettle won’t work. It’s stressful and exhausting for everyone,” she explained. Ivanivna lives in Chernihiv, an ancient Ukrainian city known for its early medieval cathedrals. The border with Belarus and Russia is a short drive away, across a landscape of pine forests, villages with geese and the occasional wandering moose. In 2022, Russian troops invaded and occupied most of the oblast. They bombed and laid siege to Chernihiv, pulling out after six weeks and rolling north. Continue reading...

Leading past donors including France, Japan and European Commission fail to contribute at pledging summit Control of the deadly infectious diseases HIV, tuberculosis and malaria “hangs in the balance” after a shortfall in donations to a leading global health fund, advocates have warned. Only $11.3bn of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria’s $18bn (£14bn) targeted budget for 2026 to 2028 has been confirmed so far. Continue reading...