Head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was at Yemen’s international airport when it was hitThe Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade on Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.The strikes on shipping by the Houthis, who have also launched missiles at Israel, have prompted retaliatory strikes by the US and Britain. Here is an extract from our explainer on the group:The Houthis are a Yemeni militia group named after their founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, and representing the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam.They emerged in the 1980s in opposition to Saudi Arabia’s religious influence in Yemen. Continue reading...

Events

Former financial ‘hot mess’ Emma Edwards explores how to rest your habits in her new book, Good With Money. By Vicky Shaw.

Economics

There's still time to make plans for the end of the year

Culture

Why did we succeeded when other hominins didn’t, and can lessons from our evolutionary past help rein in our destructive impulses?In an institute in Germany, scientists are growing “Neanderthalised” human brain cells in a dish. These cells form synapses and spark as they would have done in a living Neanderthal as she (they are female cells) foraged or breastfed or gazed out of a cave mouth at dusk. That is the spine-tingling opening gambit of a book co-authored by one of the directors of the institute, Johannes Krause, and the information that sets it apart from a host of popular science books that attempt to predict humanity’s future based on our evolutionary past.A mere 90 genetic differences distinguish modern humans, Homo sapiens, from Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis. That’s paltry, given the roughly 20,000 genes that make up the human blueprint, and not all of them affect the brain. Yet those 90 differences could explain why Neanderthals died out, s...

Politics

Kemi Badenoch predictably took the bait after Nigel Farage bragged his Reform UK party had more members than the Tories - prompting an allegation of 'fakery' in an angry rant

Politics

Nato’s warning reached me as I braced for a missile attack in Kyiv – where we’ve learned how to survive in the era of Russian hybrid warfareDay 1,024 of the invasion. Kyiv, 7am. Friday the 13th. In a former life, someone would have observed that this is a day that portends bad luck. But in a country where shelling is a daily occurrence, it has become irrelevant. I wake up to the sound of an app on my phone warning me of an increased missile threat. While my partner and I are hiding in the corridor, I read the news that the Nato chief, Mark Rutte, has called on members of the US-led transatlantic alliance to “shift to a wartime mindset”.With the first bang of the air defence system, a thought strikes me: for those who have not already been living with it for nearly three years, how would you explain this mindset? What is this wartime thinking? Continue reading...

Events

AJ Odudu has called for TV bosses to hire more stars with regional accents as she says it's important for there to be 'more diverse faces and voices on our screens'

Politics

We cooked ragu and listened to records while lying on chaises longues. Then the M11 link road was built – and everything changedIn our end of year series, writers and public figures remember the place or time when they felt most at homeIn the mid-1980s, I was in my early 20s and was reading for the Bar in London. I was living in a mouldy Balham bedsit and returning regularly to the comfort zone of my native York, when a friend told me a room was going in a shared house in Leytonstone.I wasn’t expecting much of E11. I wasn’t expecting trees, for example, but my walk from the attractive art deco tube station took me along roads better described as avenues. The house itself seemed almost the last one in London, an illusion created by the proximity of Wanstead Flats. It was a rangy, detached 1920s house, white with a red roof, and it had a name, but I’ll just call it the villa.Andrew Martin is an English novelist; his latest book is The Night in Venice Continue reading...

Society

Starring an Oscar-tipped Timothée Chalamet, James Mangold’s biopic retells Dylan’s electric early career, but it resonates with today’s toxic fame and politics. The creative team explain their process – and what Dylan makes of itBob Dylan is notoriously averse to others poking around in his past – he once suggested the legions of self-styled “Dylanologists” who examine his career in forensic detail should “get a life, please you’re wasting your life”. So when he summoned the director James Mangold to meet him and discuss the Dylan biopic Mangold was making, it had the potential to go badly.The film, A Complete Unknown, was already well under way. A script based on the folk musician and writer Elijah Wald’s acclaimed 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! had been written by Jay Cocks, best known as the screenwriter of Gangs of New York. Timothée Chalamet was slated to star as Dylan: perfect for the role, Mangold suggests, because “he’s thin and wiry and mercurial and super smart and restles...

Politics

I read 52 books that year and I’ve kept the habit up in the years that followed, the routine now firmly establishedMore summer essentialsI’ve always been a reader. In primary school, I’d tear through 60-odd books in a month when the annual Read-A-Thon rolled around (they were mostly Babysitters Club books, but still). Then as a teen, I discovered the quiet beauty that could be found in great novels, taking solace in those pages as hormones and high school made the real world awful.In my 20s, though, my pace started to wobble. I was still getting through 15 or 20 books a year, but less consistently. Partly this was because I had to make time for an exciting new hobby called binge drinking. But I was also increasingly distracted by the bottomless pit that was my iPhone. It always went the same way: I’d be on a roll with reading until I hit a book that just wasn’t that interesting. I’d gradually stop reaching for it at night as doomscrolling on Reddit became a more appealing prospect, ...

Politics

Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch became embroiled in an extraordinary public row last night over whose party had the most support.

Politics

Bargain Hunt host Natasha Raskin Sharp reflected on the BBC show in the foreword of a book about it a few years ago, including having discussed filming for several days at a time

Events

Yes, I know we said I'd be back on New Year's Eve, and I will. But some things won't wait. Keir Starmer must have calculated that Christmas and me taking a week off was a good time to bury bad news.

Politics

It was impossible to ignore the shift in mood, the supporters singing the name of their charismatic Portuguese head coach, parachuted in to solve a myriad issues but chiefly the miserable results and the leaky defence. Determined to immerse himself in the local culture, he and his staff spent Christmas Day enjoying a traditional lunch at a local pub a few miles out of town. Then there is the friction between those who pay their money in the stands and those who spend it in the boardroom. It has been an unhappy picture for a while, the players presumably thinking of an appropriate escape route. The problem for Ruben Amorim is that Vítor Pereira was the manager who triumphed here.For Manchester United, it is now four defeats in their past five matches. United, who drop a place to 14th, are eight points above the relegation zone, 11 from the top four, which is badly fading from view, having taken seven points from a possible 21 since Amorim replaced Erik ten Hag. Matheus Cunha – just w...

Politics

Conservative leader casts doubt on Reform UK’s claim to have surpassed Tories in membership

Politics

Yes, I know we said I'd be back on New Year's Eve, and I will. But some things won't wait. Keir Starmer must have calculated that Christmas and me taking a week off was a good time to bury bad news.

Politics

Lukasz Fabianski initially looked in a bad way after a challenge by Mark Wood as he was given oxygen before being stretchered off - and fellow keeper Aaron Ramsdale was given plaudits for rushing over to check on him

Events

What separates a good resolution from a bad one? Guardian readers agree: it has to be something you care aboutFor some, new year resolutions are an opportunity to grow. For others, they’re a pointless exercise in self-flagellation.That might be because they’re hard to keep up. In the US, 44% of new year resolutions last two to three months; only 6% last a year. In the UK, 17% of people give up on their resolution within a month. Continue reading...

Economics

Competing against Beyoncé, Future and others in the melodic rap category, the open-minded young vocalist explains how he ‘manifested’ his successFrom BelfastRecommended if you like Drake, Bryson Tiller, Cash CobainUp next New music anticipated in early 2025Standing among legends such as Beyoncé, Future, the Weeknd and Erykah Badu in the nominees for this year’s best melodic rap performance Grammy is Jordan Adetunji (pictured above), a 25-year-old from Belfast. While the Academy defers to Beyoncé at almost every opportunity, Adetunji could nab it with something he made in his bedroom. Continue reading...

Events

A woman has shared how she got 'petty revenge' on her colleague who kept stealing her lunch – but while some says she's a genius, others believe it could backfire on her

Events