Trump baselessly claims his predecessor didn’t sign off on directives himself due to use of autopen machine Donald Trump has declared he intends to cancel most of the executive orders signed by Joe Biden, his predecessor as president of the United States. In a post on social media, Trump claimed baselessly that Biden had not signed off on the orders himself, saying that “the radical left lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him” by signing his name using an autopen – a signature machine, which has commonly been used by nearly all US presidents since the device’s invention. Continue reading...

Immediate software change on ‘significant number’ of jets to result in disruption to half the global fleet Airbus said on Friday it was ordering an immediate software change on a “significant number” of its bestselling A320 family of aircraft in a move that industry sources said would bring disruption to half the global fleet, or thousands of jets. The move must be carried out before the next routine flight, according to a separate bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters, with the UK’s civil aviation authority warning of “some disruption and cancellations” to flights over the coming days. Continue reading...

David Coburn, who was leader of Ukip in Scotland, denies involvement after Nathan Gill jailed for taking bribes A former leading member of the group of MEPs headed by Nigel Farage has denied taking money as part of a campaign to promote Russian interests. David Coburn, who was leader of Ukip in Scotland for four years, was responding after the jailing of his former colleague, Nathan Gill, on charges of being bribed by an alleged pro-Russian asset. Continue reading...

Tracey Smith sent the government minister and MP Ellie Reeves 22 emails and 10 voicemails A woman who tried to summon her MP, the solicitor general Ellie Reeves, to court has been jailed for harassment in London. Tracey Smith sent Reeves 22 emails and 10 voicemails calling her “transphobic” and accusing her older sister – the chancellor, Rachel Reeves – of physically assaulting her at a buffet bar. Continue reading...

Norris third in Lusail, with Russell second on grid Verstappen furious with car after qualifying sixth Oscar Piastri took pole position for the sprint race at the Qatar Grand Prix. The McLaren driver beat the Mercedes of George Russell into second and, with Lando Norris in third, it was the result the Australian required for his world championship ambitions and means a chance to narrow the gap to the leader Norris. The other title contender, Max Verstappen, was furious with his Red Bull’s erratic performance and will start in sixth. On the first hot runs in Q3 Piastri set the pace with a 1min 20.241sec lap, four-hundredths quicker than ­Norris. However Verstappen was complaining his car was suffering with bouncing through the corners, lacking the stability in the fast turns that had been a strength of the car and an issue he had also experienced in the only practice session. Going off wide on his first run he did not set a competitive time on his first run. Continue reading...

Internationally renowned cinema temporarily closes after audience members complained about being bitten The prestigious Cinémathèque Française in Parishas announced a temporary closure due to a bedbug infestation after sightings of the blood-sucking creatures, including during a master class with Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver. The Cinémathèque, an internationally renowned film archive and cinema, said in a statement it would close its four screening halls for a month from Friday. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Chancellor says she made ‘fair and necessary choices’ in budget, and was unwilling to make cuts Britain’s wealthy must shoulder the burden of paying to rebuild the country’s “creaky” public services, Rachel Reeves has said, as she warned Labour MPs that leadership speculation was bad for the country. The chancellor said she had opted to increase taxes by £26bn in this week’s budget to improve schools, hospitals and infrastructure, rejecting calls to “cut our cloth accordingly” after a downgrade in productivity forecasts. Continue reading...

Not since 2014 have Liverpool struggled so much, with questions aimed at club directors and the likes of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz “Would you say this is Roy bad or Brendan bad?” was one of the more repeatable questions asked in the Anfield press box in between PSV Eindhoven’s third and fourth goals on Wednesday. The correct answer would have been “Don Welsh bad”, given he was the last Liverpool manager to preside over nine defeats in 12 games, back in 1953-54. But the on-the-spot consensus was “Brendan bad” for reasons that may increase anxiety at Fenway Sports Group as the club’s owners desperately await a recovery under Arne Slot. The Roy Hodgson era, airbrushed from history by some at Liverpool, is too low a base for comparisons with a Premier League champion. There are, however, some parallels between the current Liverpool crisis and the final 16 months of Brendan Rodgers’ reign at Anfield. The 2014-15 season was the last time confidence in a Liverpool manager or head coach began to drain. It was also the last time the impressive development of a Liverpool team – one that went agonisingly close to an unexpected title triumph in Rodgers’ case – not only came to an abrupt halt but veered into a steep decline with several new signings on board. FSG must hope the comparisons go no further, because that decline was precipitated by self-sabotage in the summer transfer window of 2014 and there is no conclusive evidence so far that it has avoided an expensive repeat in 2025. Continue reading...

The Hong Kong tower block fire, Russian drone strikes in Kharkiv, floods in Thailand and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

Russia’s president is only interested in a deal on Moscow’s terms. Equipping Kyiv with the resources to fight on is the quickest route to a just settlement As Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day deadline for a Ukraine peace agreement came and went this week, the Russia expert Mark Galeotti pointed to a telling indicator of how the Kremlin is treating the latest flurry of White House diplomacy. In the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a foreign policy scholar close to Vladimir Putin’s regime bluntly observed: “As long as hostilities continue, leverage remains. As soon as they cease, Russia finds itself alone (we harbour no illusions) in the face of coordinated political and diplomatic pressure.” Mr Putin has no interest in a ceasefire followed by talks where Ukraine’s rights as a sovereign nation would be defended and reasserted. He seeks the capitulation and reabsorption of Russia’s neighbour into Moscow’s orbit. Whether that is achieved through battlefield attrition, or through a Trump-backed deal imposed on Ukraine, is a matter of relative indifference. On Thursday, the Russian president reiterated his demand that Ukraine surrender further territory in its east, adding that the alternative would be to lose it through “force of arms”. Once again, he described Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as “illegitimate”, and questioned the legally binding nature of any future agreement. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Capturing the changing landscapes of the 18th century, the rivals transformed British art. The climate emergency gives new urgency to their work JMW Turner appears on £20 notes and gives his name to Britain’s most avant garde contemporary art prize. John Constable’s work adorns countless mugs and jigsaws. Both are emblematic English artists, but in the popular imagination, Turner is perceived as daring and dazzling, Constable as nice but a little bit dull. In a Radio 4 poll to find the nation’s favourite painting, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire – which even features in the James Bond film Skyfall – won. Constable’s The Hay Wain came second. Born only a year later, Constable was always playing catch-up: Turner became a member of the Royal Academy at 27, while Constable had to wait until he was 52. To mark the 250th anniversary of their births, Tate Britain is putting on the first major exhibition to display the two titans head to head. Shakespeare and Marlowe, Mozart and Salieri, Van Gogh and Gauguin – creative rivalries are the stuff of biopics. Mike Leigh’s 2014 film shows Turner (Timothy Spall) adding a touch of red to his seascape Helvoetsluys to upstage Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1832. Critics delighted in dubbing them “Fire and Water”. The enthralling new Tate show is billed as a battle of rivals, but it also tells another story. Constable’s paintings might not have the exciting steam trains, boats and burning Houses of Parliament of Turner’s, but they were radical too. Continue reading...

JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to expand UK presence after sector was spared from higher taxes in budget Over canapés of beef and stilton pie, bone marrow gravy and mushy peas, the financiers at JP Morgan’s New York headquarters held their champagne flutes aloft for a toast: “His majesty the king”. Just days before Rachel Reeves’s budget – amid the chancellor’s efforts to soothe business fears and bond market jitters – Jamie Dimon, the Wall Street banking company’s boss was hosting a birthday celebration for King Charles at it’s new $3bn (£2.3bn) Manhattan headquarters. Continue reading...

Unhappy MPs will push for stronger protections in other areas, such as bogus self-employment arrangements Labour MPs are preparing to demand further concessions on workers’ rights as the price of accepting ministers’ decision to ditch plans for day-one protection against unfair dismissal. MPs who are unhappy about the move will push for stronger protections in other areas, such as bogus self-employment arrangements, as part of Labour’s “make work pay” agenda. Continue reading...

If ‘naked dressing’ is a stretch too far, sheer fabrics can provide a real-life friendly compromise Fashion loves nothing more than an extreme trend; one that is difficult to imagine transferring to most people’s everyday lives. See naked dressing, where stars on the red carpet wear transparent and sometimes barely there gowns. This party season, however, there appears to be a real-life friendly compromise. Enter the sheer skirt. Continue reading...

Word from the top-tier press conferences, including: Wissa trains at Newcastle, Nuno wary of Liverpool and Gibbs-White in Forest frame Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend Continue reading...

Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier. The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under review by the justice ministry, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said 'terrorists must die'. Julian Borger, the Guardian's senior international correspondent based in Jerusalem, analyses footage of the event Continue reading...

From Michelangelo and Leonardo to Picasso and Matisse, bitter feuds have defined art. But are contemporary artists more collaborative than their renaissance predecessors? “He has been here and fired a gun,” John Constable said of JMW Turner. A shootout between these two titans would make a good scene for in a film of their lives, but in reality all Turner did at the 1832 Royal Academy exhibition was add a splash of red to a seascape, to distract from the Constable canvas beside it. That was by far the most heated moment in what seems to us a struggle on land and sea for supremacy in British art. It’s impossible not to see Tate Britain’s new double header of their work this way. For it is a truth universally acknowledged, to paraphrase their contemporary Jane Austen, that when two great artists live at the same time, they must be bitter and remorseless rivals. But is that really so, and does it help or hinder creativity? Continue reading...

Farage has cosied up to US figures who espoused conspiracy theories about Jews. That kind of talk is becoming alarmingly mainstream on the Maga right Nigel Farage could have strangled this story at birth. Confronted with the testimony of more than 20 former schoolmates, who shared with the Guardian their memories of a young Farage taunting Jews and other minorities in the most appalling terms – telling a Jewish pupil that “Hitler was right”, singing “Gas ’em all” and making a hissing sound to simulate lethal gas – he could have said: “I have no memory of what’s been described, but such behaviour would of course have been atrocious and if I was involved in any way, I am genuinely sorry.” Sure, it would have been more of an “ifpology” than an apology, its admission of guilt wholly conditional, but it would surely have closed the story down. Reassured that the Reform UK leader had declared racist and antisemitic abuse unacceptable, most observers would have allowed that these events took place half a century ago and moved on. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here or at guardian.live Jonathan Freedland will be the writer of this week’s Matters of Opinion newsletter. To find out his take on the budget, Donald Trump v the BBC and Paddington: the Musical – and to receive our free newsletter in your email every Saturday – sign up at theguardian.com/newsletters Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Democratic safeguards won’t work unless they’re backed by the will of the people, argues Peter Loschi, while Roger Heppleston calls for wholesale reform of the British political system. Plus letters from Rob Hunter, Peter Buckman and Dr Piers Brendon Timothy Garton Ash has produced an excellent list of safeguards against extremism (My guide to populist-proofing your democracy – before it’s too late, 25 November). Unfortunately, they don’t work in the long term. The finest minds of the Enlightenment devised the checks and balances of the US constitution, and an authoritarian like Donald Trump brushed them aside in two minutes. Laws and regulations to guarantee good government only work if the people want them to. If they’re not bothered, then no amount of safeguarding is of much use. We could replace the House of Lords with a citizens’ assembly, comprising a randomly chosen cross-section of the public, with membership changing every six months. Continue reading...

A concerned NHS midwife responds to an article about the Free Birth Society I’m an NHS midwife, despairing over your article (Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world, 22 November). My key frustration, though, is how, as with any successful charlatanism, there is truth and real fear being exploited: medical overreach blights lives, women can and should trust their bodies, and a healthy body rarely grows a baby it can’t birth. However, physiology is not a perfected endpoint. Evolution continues with genetic variation spreading through a population by “survival of the fittest”. In the brutal “wild”, the least “well-adapted” (whether by health or circumstance) do not survive. Human beings, however, don’t like those odds. Medical intervention, yes, but a body of life-saving social knowledge has been passed down since language began, towards facilitating successful birth. Continue reading...

It seems likely the artist’s family wanted to get rid of a woman who was just difficult to get along with, writes Helen James JMW Turner mother’s died when she was 29, when he was busy preparing for and opening his first public exhibition, and her “mental illness”, referred to in your review of the BBC Two documentary Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks (19 November), should be described as “purported”. We only have the testimony provided by the actions of her husband and son, who sent her to a lunatic asylum designed for paupers, when they were in fact not poor and could have accommodated her in a better environment with better care, and thereby lengthened her life. Continue reading...

Prof David Feldman, Dr Ben Gidley and Dr Brendan McGeever from the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism say it is wrong to characterise Jewish support for the Greens as ‘paradoxical’ We were fascinated to read your article on the important report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) on Jewish voting patterns in the UK (British Jews turn to Greens and Reform UK as support for main parties drops, 20 November). This demonstrates that growing numbers of Jews are deserting the Labour and Conservative parties in favour of the Green party and Reform UK. As JPR points out, there is no symmetry here. The turn to Reform among Jewish voters is half the size of the growth in support for the party within the population as a whole. On the other hand, support for Greens among Jews is 900% the size of the turn to the Green party overall. Continue reading...

Life’s five ‘eras’ | Levelling up Huddersfield | Favourite headlines | Posh breakfasts | Grieving nominative determinism letters As one of your older readers, I was looking forward to reading the interesting article on the five epochs of brain development (Brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say – with adult mode not starting until early 30s, 25 November). But why was I not surprised to find the final two epochs given just one sentence between them? Dave Headey Faringdon, Oxfordshire • I was delighted to find out that the Royal Opera House is replacing its 26-year-old stage curtains. Perhaps the old ones could be reused to make new riser cushions for the stage of Huddersfield town hall. We’re still waiting to be levelled up. (See my Guardian letter, 14 February 2022.) Lynn Brooks Kirkburton, West Yorkshire Continue reading...

Whistleblower tells Afghan leak inquiry those affected were told to move and change phone numbers to protect themselves The UK left behind sensitive technology allowing the Taliban to track down Afghans who worked with western forces, a whistleblower has told the Afghan leak inquiry. The woman, known as Person A, said that Afghans affected by the data leak were told to move homes and change their phone numbers to protect themselves from the Taliban because it had the resources to track them down. Continue reading...

Here’s how to spot a genuinely good laptop deal, plus the best discounts we’ve seen so far on everything from MacBooks to gaming laptops • Do you really need to buy a new laptop? • How to shop smart this Black Friday Black Friday deals have started, and if you’ve been on the lookout for a good price on a new laptop, then this could be your lucky day. But with so many websites being shouty about their Black Friday offers, the best buys aren’t always easy to spot. So before you splash the cash, it might pay to do some research – and look closely at the specification. I know this may not be welcome advice. After all, the thought of drawing up a spreadsheet of memory configurations and pricing history might put a slight dampener on the excitement that builds as Black Friday approaches. But buy the right laptop today and you can look forward to many years of joyful productivity. Pick a duff one, and every time you open the lid you’ll be cursing your past self’s impulsive nature. So don’t get caught out; be prepared with our useful tips – and a roundup of the Filter’s favourite laptop deals. Continue reading...