Interest in Wet Ink by Abigail Avis is part of a trend for works by female authors among streamers and production companies

A much-hyped novel about a housewife who uses Tupperware parties to secretly smuggle erotic stories to her friends and neighbours is causing a stir in the television world, igniting a fierce bidding contest over the right to adapt it for the small screen.

Wet Ink, a novel by the 33-year-old London-based author Abigail Avis, is not scheduled to be published until the spring 2027, but industry insiders said a fierce auction between six major production companies had already taken place for the TV rights.

Whether it was pop stars, athletes and Hollywood A-listers baring all or real-life heroes and fearless campaigners … Guardian photographers captured the people behind this year’s biggest stories and most revealing profiles

The four-time women’s world champion, ranked the No 2 all-time woman after the retired Judit Polgar, showed that she retains her skills

Hou Yifan, the all-time No 2 woman grandmaster after the retired Judit Polgar and currently ranked women’s world No 1, showed that she retained her brilliant skills when she made a rare appearance in the Global Chess League for Alpine SG Pipers, who defeated the reigning league champions, Triveni Continental Kings, 8.5-3.5 in the 2025 final at Mumbai on Tuesday. The Global Chess League, now in its third season, is planned as the chess equivalent of cricket’s Indian Premier League.

The final qualifying match, in which Alpine barely secured the six game points needed to edge their opponents, proved a triumph for Hou, who studied at Oxford and is semi-retired from chess in favour of a professorship at Peking University. She scored four wins in a row, including a 20-move miniature which took her team into the final.

Exclusive: Analysis of NHS data shows rates of most serious tears are nearly double those for white and black women

Asian women in England are almost twice as likely to suffer the most severe birth injuries during labour, with many healthcare professionals unaware of this greater risk, analysis has found.

Third- and fourth-degree tears, also known as obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI), are the most severe forms of vaginal tearing during childbirth.

Cláudio Valente and one of victims, Nuno FG Loureiro, both studied at notoriously challenging Técnico in Lisbon

As investigators in Massachusetts work to piece together a motive for the murders of two Brown University students and an MIT physics professor, former classmates of the suspected gunman and one of the victims have been asking if the roots of the tragedy lie in their shared experience at a top university in Portugal.

The suspected gunman, Cláudio Valente, and one of those killed, Nuno FG Loureiro, studied at the prestigious and notoriously challenging University of Lisbon engineering and technology school, known locally as Técnico, both graduating in 2000.

From the ‘warrior’ midwife saving lives in Senegal to the outed Kenyan pop star speaking up against prejudice, these are some of the people that gave us hope

• We can be heroes: the inspiring people we met around the world in 2025 – part one

In the thick of the monsoon this June, I found myself squinting at the smallest of orchids and rarest of impatiens (a flowering plant) inside an enclave of lush rainforest in Kerala, southern India. With Laly Joseph, 56, at the helm, dozens of women from the local neighbourhood were in charge of preserving and cultivating more than 2,000 species of native plants either ignored or forgotten by the rest of the world. Together, they are more popularly known as “rainforest gardeners”.

Jannik Sinner dominated for three hours and 43 minutes, but the Spaniard somehow prevailed in an adrenaline-filled fifth set and all-time classic

It was not until what appeared to be the dying moments of the French Open final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz that I realised it could be worth taking a photo of such a monumental occasion. This was, after all, the first grand slam final between the two players who seemed set to lead men’s tennis for many years to come.

For three hours and 43 minutes Sinner had dominated Alcaraz and he earned three championship points while leading 5-3 in set four. Just before the Italian’s second championship point, I thrust up my phone and took a quick photo before my hand returned to my laptop, ready to file immediately an article that hailed his third consecutive major title and first triumph in Paris.

These unhygienic, offensive lumps of plastic do everything the sink does, and less. It’s time to get rid

When I was a kid, our TV was in a television cabinet. For those unfamiliar with this preposterous abomination, it was a box on legs into which the TV was placed to hide it. It was some sort of furniture hangover from the era of covering a piano’s ankles lest they cause lustful sweats to break out under the starched collars of young gentlemen.

The trouble is, a two-doored, TV-shaped-and-sized box in the corner of the room where the TV would usually be, cables trailing from its rear and armchairs angled towards it, was about as good a disguise as when a child lacking object permanence puts its hand up to its eyes and assumes the rest of the world can’t see it.

Jason Hazeley is a comedy writer who is partly responsible for TV untellectual Philomena Cunk

Najib has been in prison since August 2022, when Malaysia’s top court upheld a corruption conviction. He denies wrongdoing

Jailed former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has been found guilty of abuse of power, in the biggest trial yet in the multibillion-dollar fraud scandal related to state fund 1MDB.

Najib had been charged with four counts of corruption and 21 counts of money laundering for receiving illegal transfers of about 2.2bn ringgit ($544.15m) from 1MDB. He has consistently denied wrongdoing.

• Fourth Test, day one: Australia 152 & 4-0; England 110

• Bowlers feast on green-tinged pitch on day one at MCG

A record 94,199 spectators turned up to the MCG on Boxing Day and none will forget what they witnessed. An extraordinary 20 wickets tumbled on a pitch offering lavish movement and Cricket Australia were left fearing what would be a second multi-million dollar loss in this Ashes series.

The first came in Perth, when that two-day series opener triggered the refunds and left visiting supporters scrambling for sightseeing trips. This fourth Test had the ingredients for a repeat, not just a surface with 10mm of grass but also a touring side in England who, having lost the Ashes and with criticism flying, looked broken before the coin even went up.

René Groebli took portraits of Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney and pioneered new modes of photography. But it was his tender, erotic pictures taken in a Paris hotel room in the 50s that really caused a stir

In 1952, two young honeymooners checked into a small hotel in Montparnasse. An everyday story in the City of Light, perhaps. But the Swiss photographer René Groebli and his wife, Rita Dürmüller, spent their time in Paris cocooned in their room producing a series of photographs – sensual, intimate, enigmatic – that would first shock then beguile viewers, works that can now be seen in a new exhibition in Zurich.

In the honeymoon pictures, Groebli’s camera traces Dürmüller’s movements – as a shirt drops from her shoulders, the turn of her neck – which, he explains, was a deliberate “artistic approach not only to intensify the depiction of reality but to make visible the emotional involvement of my wife and of me.” Dürmüller is often nude, but not solely, and never explicitly posed. It is clear that she is playing with her husband, that this is fun. And we explore their shared space: the bed curved like a cello, the windows with their opaque lace curtains. There is one graceful snap of Dürmüller hanging up her laundry like a ballerina at a barre.

A Pulitzer finalist is among the first-time novelists, in tales of love, a surreal prison, teen murder and a tradwife

Belgrave Road
Manish Chauhan (Faber, January)
An affecting tale of loneliness and love in Chauhan’s home town of Leicester, Belgrave Road tells the story of Mira, newly arrived in the UK from India following an arranged marriage, and Tahliil, a Somali cleaner who becomes her lunch partner, and her escape. By day, Chauhan is a finance lawyer; his debut novel follows his shortlisting in last year’s BBC short story competition.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives
Daniyal Mueenuddin (Bloomsbury, January)
The Pakistani-American writer’s 2009 story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a Pulitzer finalist. Like his debut, hHis first novel is set in Pakistan, moving between bustling cities and agricultural estates, interrogating the country’s class dynamics through an epic portrait spanning six decades.

Jakob Bro’s Bill Frisell collaboration finally saw the light, Cécile McLorin Salvant drew on her teenage pop memories and Anthony Braxton looked back to 1985
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

UK saxophonist, composer and bandleader Tom Smith was dropping clues to his distinctively contemporary take on jazz traditions as a BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year finalist in 2014 and 2016, and later as a leader of groups including the sax trio Gecko and the LGBTQI+ ensemble Queertet. But his powerful big band’s 2025 release, A Year in the Life, unveiled how exultantly Smith’s writing mingles orchestral influences from Maria Schneider and Carla Bley with slamming groovers from the big-band swing era, and a deep grasp of bebop chordal acrobatics, with raw and metallic guitar interventions thrown in.

Thai reports claim Cambodia carried out overnight attacks ahead of officials from both countries meeting for a third day of negotiations on Friday

Cambodia has accused Thailand of intensifying its bombardment of disputed border areas, even as officials from the two countries attend a multi-day meeting aimed at negotiating an end to deadly clashes.

The neighbours’ longstanding border conflict reignited this month, shattering an earlier truce and killing more than 40 people, according to official counts. About a million people have also been displaced.

Japanese strike-back capabilities and coastal defences to be boosted while Beijing accuses Tokyo of fuelling a ‘space arms race’

Japan’s cabinet has approved a record high defence budget as tensions with China continue to spiral, with Beijing this week accusing Tokyo of “fuelling a space arms race”.

The draft defence budget for the next fiscal year – approved on Friday – is more than ¥9tn ($58bn) and 9.4% bigger than the previous budget, which will end in April. The increase comes in the fourth year of Japan’s five-year program to double its annual arms spending to 2% of GDP.

The star has hit the big time as a total grump in her new Apple TV drama – no mean feat, given how delightful she is. She talks Lego therapy, freaking out her Better Call Saul co-star and her frustration with the Guardian crossword

Rhea Seehorn has had a hell of a year. For years she had garnered a reputation as a great underappreciated talent, but that has all changed now thanks to Pluribus. A series about one of the only people on Earth not to have their minds taken over by an alien virus, Pluribus is not only critically adored, but recently became Apple TV’s most-watched show. And Seehorn is front and centre through it all. However, today she has bigger things on her mind.

“You gotta tell me how to crack the code,” she pleads before we’ve even said hello. “I’m an avid crossword puzzler, but I cannot beat the Guardian crossword. I cannot crack it, and I need to figure out what the problem is.”

A selection of meringues, boozy cherries, coffee mascarpone and whisky caramel to mix and match until Big Ben strikes and beyond

Your favourite cocktail is now a DIY pavlova party! Pile crisp coffee meringues high with espresso cream, boozy cherries, a drizzle of whisky caramel and a flicker of edible gold leaf, then shake, spoon and sparkle your way into the New Year. A few tips: arrange the toppings in glass bowls or on tiered trays for a beautiful display, add labels for fun and, if it’s sitting out for a while, keep the whipped cream chilled on ice.

Wealth of datasets compiled as private passions are now a goldmine for those hunting for their ancestors

The autumn sunlight is filtering through quietly falling leaves as Louise Cocker stands in front of the gravestone of James Henry Payne and takes a quick photograph. Payne died at the age of 73 in October 1917 and was buried in the Norfolk town of North Walsham, along with his wife Eleanor and son James Edward, who was killed in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. “Not lost”, reads the simple slab, “but gone before”.

This is far from the first Norfolk gravestone Cocker, 53, has photographed – in fact, over 24 years, she has captured almost half a million of them, driving around the county on her weekends and days off from her job in the local Lidl supermarket. As a result, she has produced a remarkable dataset of 615,000 names – many graves contain more than one person – which experts consider one of the most comprehensive photographic records of gravestones and memorials in England.

(Decca, six CDs)
This six-disc collection to mark the late pianist’s 80th birthday is full of treats and includes rare ventures into Chopin and Copland, along with Lupu’s legendary rendition of Bartók at Leeds in 1969

First, a personal declaration. Of the many hundreds of pianists I must have heard in more than 50 years of recital going, a multitude that has included many of the greatest names of the 20th century, none gave me more consistent pleasure or a greater sense of wonder than Radu Lupu. If ever a pianist’s appearance, especially in his later years, belied the character of his playing it was Lupu: that the intensely serious, heavily bearded figure who hunched over the keyboard in a way more appropriate to a seance than a recital could produce playing of such velvety tonal beauty was extraordinary enough; that such a beguiling sound world was allied to a mind of such penetrating musical intelligence sometimes seemed miraculous.

Lupu died in 2022, at the age of 76. He had retired from the concert platform three years before, and had ceased to make studio recordings some years before that. Decca, for whom he recorded exclusively for over two decades, released his complete recordings in 2015, and with that comprehensive box, one thought, the legacy would be complete. But now, to mark what would have been the pianist’s 80th birthday, the company has produced this wonderful surprise: six discs made up of unreleased studio sessions and BBC, Dutch and SWR radio tapes, dating between 1970 and 2002, of works that Lupu otherwise did not record.

A record-breaking MCG crowd sets the scene for cricket’s great Ashes celebration with compelling contest on Melbourne green-top

The first stop for the self-anointed “Yobbo Crew” when they had arrived at cricket’s mecca was the statue of Shane Warne. The group – just one of hundreds who had dressed up for the big day at the MCG – wore thongs, mustard yellow bucket hats brandishing their name, and denim shorts with less leg coverage than a 7-2 field.

As the clock ticked past 9am, they appeared happy to be at Australian cricket’s great festival, but looked less than comfortable with the temperature. After the coldest Christmas in Melbourne in two decades, Boxing Day had brought wind, spits of rain, and a top temperature in the mid-teens. And so, before taking their photo under the bronzed leg-spinner, the Yobbo Crew took off their hoodies to reveal matching yellow singlets, and offered a zinced grimace.

Since the Enlightenment, we’ve been making our own decisions. But now AI may be about to change that

This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze’s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more – other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?

Joseph de Weck is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Retirees with ‘fantastic hunger for education’ taking part in university organised events in record numbers

Record numbers of Swedish retirees are enrolling in a university run “by pensioners for pensioners” amid increased loneliness and a growing appetite for learning and in-person interactions.

Senioruniversitet, a national university that collaborates with Sweden’s adult education institution Folkuniversitetet, has about 30 independent branches around the country which run study circles, lecture series and university courses in subjects including languages, politics, medicine and architecture.

At first I thought my spinning head and nausea were symptoms of a hangover. But could they be connected to a documentary I had made on Havana syndrome?

Waking foggy-headed and with the room spinning on 26 December is surely not an uncommon condition. Who among us hasn’t felt the effects of overindulgence on Christmas Day?

These were my immediate thoughts when I rose in such a state in my parents’ house in Dublin two years ago. An hour later, the room continued its relentless swirl, nausea was building and it was becoming hard to stand. So far, so Christmas hangover. I remained in bed and waited for things to blow over. They didn’t. Gradually, family members stuck their heads into my childhood bedroom and wondered if everything was OK. I could only say that I felt quite strange.

With no plans, I set off from John O’Groats to travel down south to Dover. Friends and family didn’t think I’d last a mile

Since coming to England from Ethiopia eight years ago, I’ve lost parts of my cultural identity. I was stuck in a monotonous, isolated routine studying for a biochemistry degree at Imperial College London, without the family-centred lifestyle I was used to. Back in Ethiopia, I’d be surrounded by my aunt, grandparents, friends.

So this year, I took 12 months out and moved to my uncle’s house in Leeds. The change helped me try new things, like cycling: as a child, I had never ridden a bike. I bought one in a charity shop. My friends told me that it was made for a 10-year-old and donated an adult-sized bike to me.