ONS says GDP expanded in news that is unlikely to deter Bank of England from making more interest rate cuts Business live – latest updates The UK economy grew by 0.3% in November despite uncertainty around Rachel Reeves’s budget, official figures show. Figures from the Office for National Statistics on Thursday showed the improvement, up from a 0.1% fall in October. Continue reading...

From amused texts to awkward introductions, the run-up to the release of awards-tipped Shaker biopic The Testament of Ann Lee has been a strange experience The messages started over a year ago. “The title cracked me up,” my film-loving friend Matt texted me, along with a tweet announcing a new musical called Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried and directed by Mona Fastvold, about an 18th-century leader of the Shaker movement. Why would such innocuous film news delight him so much? Well, because my name is Ann Lee too. “Yes! Fame at last!” I replied. I’ve answered in a similar vein to all the messages since then from other friends eager to break the news to me that my name was getting top billing in a prestigious Hollywood film. And I was genuinely amused and excited; for most of my life Ann Lee had seemed the beigest of names. Lee, or Li as it’s also spelled, is one of the most common surnames in the world and shared by more than 100 million people in Asia. I was sure there were many many Ann Lees out there. But when you get a film title dedicated to it? Now that’s when you start to feel your name might be special after all. Continue reading...

A fascinating deep dive into the discovery, use and implications of a revolutionary new treatment Few aspects of being human have generated more judgment, scorn and condemnation than a person’s size, shape and weight – particularly if you happen to be female. As late as 2022, the Times’s columnist Matthew Parris published a column headlined “Fat shaming is the only way to beat the obesity crisis” in which he attributed Britain’s “losing battle with fat” to society’s failure to goad and stigmatise the overweight into finally, shamefacedly, eating less. The tendency to equate excess weight with poor character (and thinness with grit and self-control) treats obesity as a moral as well as physical failing – less a disease than a lifestyle choice. One of the great strengths of Reuters journalist Aimee Donnellan’s first book is its insistence on framing the discovery of the new weight-loss drugs within the fraught social and cultural context of beauty norms, body image and health. For those who need them, weekly injections of Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro can be revolutionary. Yet for every person with diabetes or obesity taking the drugs to improve their health, others – neither obese nor diabetic – are obtaining them to get “beach-body” ready, fit into smaller dresses, or attain the slender aesthetic social media demands of them. Small wonder some commentators have likened the injections to “an eating disorder in a pen”. Continue reading...

Mathilde Aurier’s 65 Rue d’Aubagne looks at the 2018 house collapse in Marseille and how the city healed itself through ‘love and solidarity’ “It was a turning point for Marseille, and it spotlighted the politics of France’s second city. There’s still a lot of things that have been left unsaid, things that aren’t pretty. But it set things into motion too.” Playwright and director Mathilde Aurier is talking about what has been referred to as France’s Grenfell moment: the collapse of two dilapidated houses on 5 November 2018 on the Rue d’Aubagne in the Noailles neighbourhood, just a few hundred metres from the magnificent Old Port. Eight people were killed, causing a national outcry about urban inequality and social deprivation. Continue reading...

Dipping in the freezing waters of Scandinavia, Greenland and Finland was life-changing – and full of warmth thanks to saunas, hot springs and like-minded people Warm lights shine from the houses that dot the wintry slopes of Mount Fløyen and a cold wind blows as I stand in a swimming costume trying to talk myself into joining my friends in Bergen harbour. Stars are already appearing in the inky mid-afternoon sky. Life-changing moments are easy to spot in retrospect, but at the time they can feel so ordinary. I didn’t know then that my wintry swim would lead to a year of adventures. I was a hair’s breadth from wimping out, but then I was in. The water was so cold it burned. I gasped for breath. The bones in my feet ached with cold as I trod water, legs frantic under the dark surface. It lasted under a minute and then we were out. Continue reading...

A social media content moderator becomes obsessed with a violent video in this restrained, unsettling workplace thriller starring Lili Reinhart Here is a workplace drama, of sorts. Like many people, Daisy (Lili Reinhart) works a desk job using a computer. Unlike most people, fainting at work is a rite of passage; she moderates videos on social media that have been reported for violating the terms of service. That means watching everything from horrible porn to horrible politics to horrible accidents and everything in between, a non-stop diet of videos with titles such as “fetus in blender” or “strangulation but she doesn’t die”. Her boss takes her to task for deleting a graphic video showing a suicide, which supposedly has news value and should have been left up. But the tipping point for Daisy is a really nasty video titled “nailed it”, which shows violence and cruelty that she believes is real and non-consensual. So begins a low-key quest to track down the perpetrator, though she is far from sure what she will do when she finds them. Nor is she altogether sure why it is this particular video, of all the trash and hatred washing over her, day in, day out, that has inspired her obsession. Her colleagues and boss shrug off her concerns: this video is nothing special. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news While we wait for the UK GDP data to land at 7am, there are signs of improvement in the housing market. A poll of UK surveyors has found that confidence is returning to the market, with expectations for sales and prices turning higher in December. “The UK residential market remains in a prolonged soft patch, with December’s survey recording a sixth consecutive month of negative momentum in buyer enquiries. That said, there are tentative signs of a shift in sentiment beneath the surface. “Near-term sales expectations have strengthened, and the twelve-month outlook has edged into more positive territory. The key test for 2026 will be whether borrowing costs ease on a sustained basis. If so, this could provide the catalyst needed to drive a recovery in buyer demand.” This morning, we receive the latest GDP figures from here in the UK, with the economy set to have grown just 0.1% MoM in November, largely resulting from the continued resumption of JLR production as the recovery from last year’s cyber attack continues. Such an anaemic pace of growth, though, is hardly a ringing endorsement of the UK’s economic prospects, not least considering that risks to the outlook remain tilted firmly to the downside, and that the fiscal ‘doom loop’ seems set to continue, with the government’s latest U-turns eroding as much as two-thirds of the headroom that Chancellor Reeves left herself at the November Budget. Continue reading...

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare? It feels as if this really is the start of a new era for the Thursday news quiz. Not only was there last week’s announcement that Willow had retired from her role as the official dog of the Guardian Thursday news quiz, but this week we have a new visual tone, courtesy of a set of lovely, whimsical illustrations by Anaïs Mims. Rest assured, not much else has changed. It is still 15 questions on topical news, pop culture and general knowledge, and it is still packed every week with the same hackneyed old in-jokes. There are no prizes, but tell us how you got on in the comments. Allons-y! The Thursday news quiz, No 230 Continue reading...

The chirpy travel guide explores fjords and harvests mussels in a new series. Plus, daft sitcom Piglets returns. Here’s what to watch this evening 8pm, Channel 4 Lorraine Kelly has packed her bikinis and balaclavas to embark on a dreamy three-part voyage across Norway. She’s a chirpy travel guide as she steers the ship herself in Ålesund, the gateway to the fjords, before cracking on with a busy itinerary of floating saunas, kayaking down the River Nid and mussel harvesting. She also explores the concept of friluftsliv: living in and embracing nature. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

Sting and his former bandmates go to the high court over a royalties dispute this week – the latest chapter in the song’s remarkably fractious story This week’s high court hearings between Sting and his former bandmates in the Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are the latest chapter in the life of a song whose negative energy seems to have seeped out into real life. Every Breath You Take is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Copeland and Summers against Sting, alleging that he owes them royalties linked to their contributions to the hugely popular song, particularly from streaming earnings, estimated at $2m (£1.5m) in total. Sting’s legal team have countered that previous agreements between him and his bandmates regarding their royalties from the song do not include streaming revenue – and argued in pre-trial documents that the pair may have been “substantially overpaid”. In the hearing’s opening day, it was revealed that since the lawsuit was filed, Sting has paid them $870,000 (£647,000) to redress what his lawyer called “certain admitted historic underpayments”. But there are still plenty of future potential earnings up for debate. Continue reading...

Sustainable fresh scallops are best treated simply, and this herby, garlicky breadcrumb topping ticks all the right boxes As a kid growing up in West Bay, Dorset, I used to sit on the harbour wall and watch the small trawlers coming in with their catch. My friend Mark’s dad’s boat, along with all the others, would be stacked high with sacks of queenies that they’d dredged up only hours before, and Mark’s mum would pack us off to school with a tub each of queen scallop meat doused in Sarson’s vinegar and white pepper, to eat later as a playground snack. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but, looking back now, I realise quite what a luxurious schoolday treat this was. These days, however, our local scallop fishermen don’t fish for queenies much any more, because the time it takes to shuck and clean them is more or less the same as that for larger king scallops, so they’re no longer financially viable; also, instead of all those trawlers that Lyme Bay had in the past, it’s now mostly divers who fish more sustainably for king scallops, without demolishing the sea bed in the process. There are two main dive boats that fish out of Lyme Regis nowadays, operated by Jon Shuker and Ali Day, and they’ve pretty much cornered the local market. They recently started experimenting with so-called “disco scallops”, which are caught in pots fitted with flashing lights that lure them in, which is much more efficient, crew-wise, than diving, because a boat with one diver is legally required to have a crew of four, comprising the working diver, a standby diver, a supervisor and a driver. Crazy, eh? Continue reading...

Prime minister wants cabinet ministers to move on from policies that have tanked with voters Before the 2015 UK election, the Australian political expert Lynton Crosby devised a strategy for the Tories that became known as “scraping the barnacles off the boat” – shedding unpopular policies that hindered the party’s electoral appeal. Instead, the party focused on core issues it believed would help win over floating voters: the economy, welfare, the strength of David Cameron (and weakness of Ed Miliband) and immigration. Everything else was deprioritised and the Conservatives stuck to their messages rigidly. It worked. Continue reading...

As I write my last regular column for the Guardian, my thoughts turn to the lessons and hope we can take from history From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand, as the old hymn has it, we seem to inhabit a world that is more seriously troubled in more places than many can ever remember. In the UK, national morale feels all but shot. Politics commands little faith. Ditto the media. The idea that, as a country, we still have enough in common to carry us through – the idea embedded in Britain’s once potent Churchillian myth – feels increasingly threadbare. Welcome, in short, to the Britain of the mid-1980s. That Britain often felt like a broken nation in a broken world, very much as Britain often does in the mid-2020s. The breakages were of course very different. And on one important level, misery is the river of the world. But, for those who can still recall them, the 1980s moods of crisis and uncertainty have things in common with those of today. Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The AI chatbot’s torrent of nonconsensual deepfakes isn’t its first scandal and won’t be its last. Responsible governments should simply ban it Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Billionaire and career Bond-villain cosplayer Elon Musk has been forced by public backlash into a humiliating backdown over use of his AI chatbot, Grok. Watching the world’s richest man eat a shit sandwich on a global stage represents a rare win for sovereign democracy. Because – unlike his company history of labour and safety abuses … his exploding rockets … his government interventions that deny aid to the starving … disabling Starlink internet systems in war zones … sharing “white solidarity” statements … or growing concern about overvaluations of his company’s share price – the nature of Grok’s latest scandal may finally be inspiring governments towards imposing some Musk-limiting red lines. Continue reading...

In countries such as South Sudan, the great herds have all but disappeared. But further south, conservation success mean increasing human-wildlife conflict It is late on a January afternoon in the middle of South Sudan’s dry season, and the landscape, pricked with stubby acacias, is hazy with smoke from people burning the grasslands to encourage new growth. Even from the perspective of a single-engine ultralight aircraft, we are warned it will be hard to spot the last elephant in Badingilo national park, a protected area covering nearly 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq miles). Technology helps – the 20-year-old bull elephant wears a GPS collar that pings coordinates every hour. The animal’s behaviour patterns also help; Badingilo’s last elephant is so lonely that it moves with a herd of giraffes. Continue reading...

Inua Ellams’ play takes you to different destinations for intimate conversations about sex, queerness, capitalism, football and much more I first saw Barber Shop Chronicles on National Theatre at Home. It was during the first lockdown in 2020 and I was trying to find some entertainment while I was furloughed. I was 26 and hadn’t seen a lot of theatre, but had heard good things about it on social media. For the first five minutes or so the audience are milling around the barber shop set. You’re not really sure who’s an actor and who’s an audience member. But there’s a real sense of camaraderie, jokes and vibes – you really feel part of it. The setting is not exactly domestic, not exactly business. There wasn’t a raised stage so you felt invited, and then kind of zoomed, into the action. Continue reading...

The bandhgala jacket will no longer be part of the formal uniform for Indian Railways staff, following claims it symbolises a ‘colonial mindset’ It is one India’s most ubiquitous garments, with origins in the grand Mughal courts and Rajasthani kingdoms of times past, and still widely favoured by sharply dressed grooms at wedding receptions. But this week, the distinctive high-collared bandhgala jacket – known to many as the “princely jacket” in a nod to its royal origins – found itself at the centre of a lively debate after it was denounced by the Indian railways minister as a symbol of a “colonial mindset”. Continue reading...

Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve entered In late January 2025, 10 days after Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president of the United States, an economic conference in Brussels brought together several officials from the recently deposed Biden administration for a discussion about the global economy. In Washington, Trump and his wrecking crew were already busy razing every last brick of Joe Biden’s legacy, but in Brussels, the Democratic exiles put on a brave face. They summoned the comforting ghosts of white papers past, intoning old spells like “worker-centered trade policy” and “middle-out bottom-up economics”. They touted their late-term achievements. They even quoted poetry: “We did not go gently into that good night,” Katherine Tai, who served as Biden’s US trade representative, said from the stage. Tai proudly told the audience that before leaving office she and her team had worked hard to complete “a set of supply-chain-resiliency papers, a set of model negotiating texts, and a shipbuilding investigation”. It was not until 70 minutes into the conversation that a discordant note was sounded, when Adam Tooze joined the panel remotely. Born in London, raised in West Germany, and living now in New York, where he teaches at Columbia, Tooze was for many years a successful but largely unknown academic. A decade ago he was recognised, when he was recognised at all, as an economic historian of Europe. Since 2018, however, when he published Crashed, his “contemporary history” of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, Tooze has become, in the words of Jonathan Derbyshire, his editor at the Financial Times, “a sort of platonic ideal of the universal intellectual”. Continue reading...

This hormone-fuelled tale of the training college for space voyagers is like Grange Hill, with phasers – and it has a female lead unlike any captain before The original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966, so trying to get your head round all the sequels, prequels and timeline-splitting spin-offs can often feel like homework. It was only a matter of time before the venerable sci-fi franchise used a school as a setting. But Starfleet Academy, the latest streaming series, is not some random cosmic polytechnic for aliens to study humanities or vice versa. This is the oft-referenced San Francisco space campus sited right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. With James T Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard on the alumni list, it is basically Hogwarts for wannabe starship captains. Or at least it used to be. As this newest Trek opens we are in the 32nd century: as far into the future as the franchise has ever gone, boldly or otherwise. (The original 1966 five-year mission for Kirk and co took place in the 23rd century.) The universe is still recovering from the Burn, an all-encompassing cataclysm from 2020’s season three of Star Trek: Discovery that put the kibosh on faster-than-light warp travel. After an extended period of intergalactic isolationism, Starfleet Academy is about to receive its first new intake for over a century. Mega-fan Stephen Colbert is already on board as the school’s PA announcer. All it needs is a new chancellor. Continue reading...

The world’s largest Wetherspoon’s has seal-spotting views, a green leather banquette and a grand central staircase. I would do anything for that pub, so imagine my surprise when I was given my marching orders In the most prime imaginable bit of Ramsgate beach real estate, right on the sand, stands a handsome, turn-of-the-last-century building that had claimed for the longest amount of time, some years in neon, to be a casino. I’d never been allowed in as a kid. Then in the 90s it was leaning towards defunct, by the 00s it looked a bit haunted, then there was a fire, and wham, 2017, it turned into a Spoons. It had been trailed for a few months ahead, and I’d sworn off it; the living nightmare that was Brexit was only a few months old and Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin was one of its most gracelessly triumphant fuglemen. He could keep his (incredibly cheap) pints and his (superhumanly fast) nuggets. Continue reading...

The US I grew up in was built on the rule of law. Now my Indian-born dad is scared ICE will take him from his American care home As an American of mixed Danish and Indian heritage, who is also a citizen of France and, therefore, of the EU, Donald Trump’s contempt for the rule of law fills me with dread. “I don’t need international law,” he boasted on 7 January in an interview with the New York Times. For Louis XIV, it was “L’état, c’est moi”. For Trump, it’s the “Donroe doctrine”, or “the western hemisphere is mine for whatever profit I and my elite group of loyal courtiers can wring from it”. At the same time, Trump’s honesty about his intention to use the astonishing military power he wields for unfettered plunder is at least refreshing. No more American pieties to democracy and human rights. The world hasn’t seen this kind of unabashed dedication to amassing wealth since the British East India Company. All hail the new king emperor! Or else. Mira Kamdar is a Paris-based writer and author of India in the 21st Century. She writes Mixed Borders on Substack Continue reading...

Campaign beset by violence with supporters of rival candidate Bobi Wine teargassed and detained Ugandans are preparing to vote in an election that is expected to result in Yoweri Museveni extending his nearly four-decade grip on power in the east African country, after a campaign beset by violence. Security forces have frequently clamped down on supporters of Museveni’s main opponent, Bobi Wine, by teargassing and shooting bullets at events and detaining people. Authorities have also arrested civil society members and suspended rights groups. On Tuesday, they shut down internet access and limited mobile phone services countrywide. Continue reading...

US president adopts more measured tone and suggests a pause in decision on threatened US military action in Iran Iran protests – live updates Iran crisis explained: what we know so far Analysis: why western diplomats are wary of predicting regime’s end days Donald Trump has said he has been assured the killing of protesters in Iran has been halted, adding that he would “watch it and see” about threatened US military action, as tensions appeared to ease on Wednesday night. Trump had repeatedly talked in recent days about coming to the aid of the Iranian people over the crackdown on protests that Iran Human Rights, a group based in Norway, said had now killed at least 3,428 people and led to the arrest of more than 10,000. Continue reading...

US president says ‘important sources’ also told him executions not going ahead as Iran extends order closing its airspace to commercial flights Full report: US and UK military to withdraw some personnel from Middle East amid Iranian threats Iran crisis explained: what we know so far Analysis: why western diplomats are wary of predicting regime’s end days Podcast: Massacres and executions: what are we hearing from inside Iran? Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the crisis in Iran. Donald Trump says he has been assured that the killing of Iranian protesters has been halted, adding when asked about whether the threatened US military action was now off the table that he will “watch it and see”. Trump said Iranian opposition figure Reza Pahlavi “seems very nice” but expressed uncertainty about whether Pahlavi would be able to muster support within Iran to eventually take over. “He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country,” Trump said in an Oval Office interview with Reuters. “And we really aren’t up to that point yet. “I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.” Iran has reopened its airspace after a near-five-hour closure that forced airlines to cancel, reroute or delay some flights. Tracking service Flightradar24 showed five flights from Iranian carriers Mahan Air, Yazd Airways and AVA Airlines were among the first to resume over the country. The security council is scheduled to meet on Thursday afternoon for “a briefing on the situation in Iran”, according to a spokesperson for the Somali presidency. The scheduling note said the briefing was requested by the US. Some US and UK personnel have been evacuated as a precaution from sites in the Middle East. The British embassy in Tehran has also been temporarily closed. Spain, Italy and Poland advised their citizens to leave Iran. It follows a call by the US urging its citizens to leave Iran, suggesting land routes to Turkey or Armenia. Iranian foreign minister Araghchi insisted the situation was “under control,” and urged the US to engage in diplomacy. “Now there’s calm. We have everything under control, and let’s hope that wisdom prevails and we don’t end up in a situation of high tension that would be catastrophic for everyone,” Araghchi said. The death toll in Iran from the regime’s crackdown stands at 2,571 people, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists news agency (HRANA). More than 18,100 have been arrested, it said. Foreign ministers from the G7 group said they were “prepared to impose additional restrictive measures” on Iran over its handling of the protests, and the “deliberate use of violence, the killing of protesters, arbitrary detention and intimidation tactics”. Continue reading...

Amateur player celebrates winning One Point Slam at Australian Open Sydney coach to use million-dollar payday to travel and buy property Pending tax advice, tennis coach Jordan Smith is Australia’s newest millionaire, thrust into the global spotlight after beating top professionals in the One Point Slam on Wednesday night. Smith’s improbable run to the $1m prize made him a magnet on Thursday morning at Melbourne Park, amid more than a dozen local and international interviews, selfies, promotions and autographs. Continue reading...