19 h. ago What’s the nicest thing a stranger has done for you? This year more than 50 people gave me their answer

While every story has been unique in loveliness, I’ve found that many share a similar pulseRead our kindness of strangers series hereEarlier this year, I had a phone call with a woman named Debbie about one of her toughest days as a parent. While she was carting her two sick toddlers to buy medicine, one abruptly vomited across the floor of the local shopping mall. A passing stranger stopped, grabbed a roll of paper towel from the display in front of the chemist, and sopped up the mess – then went inside to pay for what she’d used, insisting on footing the bill. It was a small but lovely act that spoke to the decency of other people.Working as a journalist often involves speaking to people on, or about, the worst day of their life. But for the past year I have had the tremendous pleasure of interviewing Australians (and the occasional Briton) about something very different – the acts of kindness they’ve received from a total stranger. Guardian Australia asked readers to send in thes...

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19 h. ago Oasis reunion and Coldplay kisscam among 2025's top 40 most talked about stories

A new study has revealed the UK’s favourite news moments of 2025, from the Lionesses’ Euro victory and the Oasis reunion to viral celebrity antics and major cultural milestones.

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19 h. ago The biggest food and drink stories of 2025, from Pizza Express to M&S' strawberry sandwich

Did you manage to get your hands on a 33p margherita at Pizza Express?

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44 h. ago Celebrity astronauts, pig lungs and cyborgs: the biggest tech and science stories of 2025

From pop stars in space to the woolly mammoth revival, Will Rogers-Coltman picks 2025’s science milestones

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49 h. ago So you think you know the royals? Take RICHARD EDEN'S Royal Quiz of the Year to find out how well you REALLY remember the biggest stories of 2025

Time to test your knowledge of all the biggest stories that came out of the Palace this year about your favourite members of the family.

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67 h. ago Good news: Behind the scenes of some of the most uplifting stories of 2025

Journalists with The Associated Press have captured some of 2025's most uplifting stories amid global challenges

Politics

5 d. ago Pulse by Cynan Jones review – short stories that show the vitality of the form

The Welsh author vividly captures the solitude, hard labour, dramas and dangers of rural lifeIn these six stories of human frailty and responsibility, Welsh writer Cynan Jones explores the imperatives of love and the labour of making and sustaining lives. Each is told with a compelling immediacy and intensity, and with the quality of returning to a memory.In the story Reindeer a man is seeking a bear, which has been woken by hunger from hibernation and is now raiding livestock from the farms of a small isolated community. “There was no true sunshine. There was no gleam in the snow, but the lateness of the left daylight put a cold faint blue through the slopes.” The story’s world is one in which skill, endurance, even stubbornness might be insufficient to succeed, but are just enough to persist. Continue reading...

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3 w. ago ‘Fearing for our lives’: Australians tell of Chilean mountain horror where five hikers perished

Hikers say authorities should have closed popular trail due to horrendous weather conditions, and camp staff offered minimal assistanceGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAbout 100 metres below the most challenging summit in a remote nature reserve in Chilean Patagonia, Australian woman Emily Dong was among a group of hikers who thought they were going to die.Less than a day later, five hikers would be confirmed dead in the Torres del Paine national park after winds hit 190km/h and temperatures plummeted to –5C. Taking into account wind chill, it felt like –20C. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Horror stories of a ‘feminised workplace’ mask the real crisis in male identity | Finn Mackay

Stereotypes that centre mens’ worth in their work are strangling sensible debate, and letting down women tooFinn Mackay is an academic and the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender WarsFirst it was mechanisation threatening our jobs, then AI and now this: the Great Feminisation is taking over the workplace. Well, that’s according to American journalist Helen Andrews, who popularised this thesis in a speech to the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC.The idea is that too many women in the workplace, and in positions of power, has led to the dominance of stereotypical feminine values, to the detriment of everyone. Girly things like conflict resolution rather than manly plain speaking, fussy HR departments, or a lack of healthy aggressive competition, have all created an imbalance in the workplace and in the world, suppressing stereotypical masculine values. Andrews fears for her sons and their future in the feminised world that she believes threatens us all.Finn M...

Events

last month Jeeves Again review – new Jeeves and Wooster stories by celebrity fans

This collection of new short stories about Bertie and his valet pays homage to the genius of PG Wodehouse – just in time for ChristmasAs with most of the giants of late 19th- and early 20th-century English literature, the vast majority of PG Wodehouse’s readers today are non-white. Perhaps it was brutal colonial indoctrination that ensured the modern descendants of the aspirant imperial middle classes from Barbados to Burma, with their tea caddies, gin-stuffed drinks cabinets and yellowing Penguin paperbacks, still devour Maugham, Shaw and Kipling. Perhaps they just have good taste.Wodehouse’s detractors are many – Stephen Sondheim (“archness tweeness flimsiness”), Winston Churchill (“He can live secluded in some place or go to hell as soon as there is a vacant passage”), the Inland Revenue – but for millions around the world he remains the greatest comic writer Britain has ever produced. And he clearly still sells here, as this collection of a dozen new officially sa...

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