From El Salvador to Russia, Iceland and Syria, women are pushing back against the rise of regressive forces. Let’s support their fight

• Rahila Gupta is an anti-racist feminist activist and the co-author, with Beatrix Campbell, of Planet Patriarchy

In 2025, the world that had been opened up by women has often seemed to be closing in. The forces behind the rollback of abortion rights in Donald Trump’s US are attempting to do the same in the UK. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has doubled down on its attacks on women and girls. Sexual violence is commonplace in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Mexico, even the president is not safe from sexual assault. A perverse rewilding appears to be taking place.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that around the world, women’s rights are being concreted over. But in researching our book, Planet Patriarchy, Beatrix Campbell and I found women’s resistance erupting like green shoots through the cracks. In El Salvador, women can receive sentences of 30-50 years for miscarriages construed to be abortions. Yet feminists have managed to free all 72 women who had been imprisoned for this, using innovative penal and legal strategies. In Russia, feminists have taken to wearing blue and yellow ribbons, the colours of the Ukrainian flag, to signal their anti-war solidarity.

Rahila Gupta is an anti-racist feminist activist and the co-author, with Beatrix Campbell, of Planet Patriarchy

The US president and his allies spent 2025 attacking the Federal Reserve amid a rollercoaster year for the US economy

In the bowels of the US Federal Reserve this summer, two of the world’s most powerful men, sporting glistening white hard hats, stood before reporters looking like students forced to work together on a group project.

Allies of Donald Trump had spent weeks trying to manufacture a scandal around ongoing renovations of the central bank’s Washington headquarters and its costs. Now here was the US president, on a rare visit, examining the project for himself.

From the construction worker who won a place at medical school to an art exhibition in a country with no galleries, we asked journalists for their most optimistic tales of the year

Founder of the Migration Story, India

Intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports bring blasts, evacuations and fear of escalation to border communities

At the edge of Romania’s Danube delta on the border with Ukraine, in the village of Plauru, cows graze in flat, marshy fields. Houses with blue-painted roofs and window frames line a dirt track, many shuttered or abandoned.

Residents can see the cranes and silos of Izmail, a Ukrainian port city separated from Plauru by the 300 metre-width of the Danube River. By day the scene is deceptively calm. But sometimes, after dark, that calm dissolves.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Reunification ‘is unstoppable’, says Chinese president, a day after the conclusion of intense military drills

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to reunify China and Taiwan in his annual New Year’s Eve speech in Beijing.

Speaking the day after the conclusion of intense Chinese military drills around Taiwan, Xi said: “The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable.”

Draft bill to be submitted for legal checks as France aims to follow Australia’s world-first ban on platforms including Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube

France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year.

A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year.

• Liverpool head coach’s new full-backs have struggled

• Slot expects improvement as squad and signings settle

Arne Slot has said Liverpool remain “a work in progress” in both full-back positions but backed Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez to make their mark as his team stabilise.

Slot admits Liverpool are still adjusting to the end of the Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson era with injuries and disruption limiting the impact of their designated successors, including Conor Bradley. Frimpong has improved since returning from his second hamstring injury of the season, however, and provided assists for Hugo Ekitiké and Ryan Gravenberch in the recent victories over Tottenham and Wolves. Slot believes the summer signings Frimpong and Kerkez, from Bayer Leverkusen and Bournemouth respectively, will prove valuable assets for Liverpool, with their pace essential for the modern game.

While GLP-1 drugs promise an easy fix, our bodies still need what they have always needed: healthy food and regular exercise

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

If there has been a hot topic in health in 2025, it’s definitely been GLP-1s, colloquially referred to as “anti-obesity” jabs. These medications, taken weekly as an injection into the abdomen, result in significant weight loss and, despite being developed to manage type 2 diabetes in those with metabolic disorders, have become mainstream in many countries as a treatment for obesity. Clinicians rave about the health outcomes in patients taking the medication, with study after study emerging on the health benefits of the associated weight loss in those who are obese. Celebrity endorsements, online sales and off-label use have seen them widely used by people of all ages and sizes who want to drop weight.

For the public health community, it’s an odd moment. For years, we’ve advocated for government action on obesity – not through new drugs, but by taking nutrition and food systems seriously. We’ve highlighted the need for government action on making nutritious food affordable, regulating ultra-processed foods, bringing in sugar taxes and banning advertising of unhealthy products to young people, alongside encouraging an increase in physical activity. The solutions are simple: get people to eat more nutritious food and move. The challenge has been implementation, especially in deprived areas.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Fit Forever: Wellness for midlife and beyond
On Wednesday 28 January 2026, join Annie Kelly, Devi Sridhar, Joel Snape and Mariella Frostrup, as they discuss how to enjoy longer and healthier lives, with expert advice and practical tips. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

We’d like to hear from people who are training AI to replace their current roles

Analysis by the International Monetary Fund says Artificial intelligence will affect about 40% of jobs around the world.

We’d like to find out more about the impact of AI on jobs now. With this in mind, we want to hear from people who have been training AI to replace their current roles. What has the experience been like? How do you feel about your future at your company? Do you have concerns?

How the tech CEO and ‘Dogefather’ made a mess of the year – from an apparent Nazi salute during his White House tenure to Tesla sales slumps and Starship explosions

The year of 2025 was dizzying for Elon Musk. The tech titan began the year holding court with Donald Trump in Washington DC. As the months ticked by, one public appearance after another baffled the US and the world. Musk appeared to give a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, staunchly championed a 19-year-old staffer nicknamed “Big Balls,” denied reports of being a drug addict while advising the president, and showed up at a White House press conference with a black eye – all in the first half of the year alone.

“Elon’s attitude is you have to get it done fast. If you’re an incrementalist, you just won’t get your rocket to the moon,” Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, told Vanity Fair in an expansive interview earlier this month. “And so with that attitude, you’re going to break some china.”

It was New Year’s Eve and there had been fireworks, drinking and dancing. Amid it all, I felt ashen and cold. As I walked out, I felt my first surge of quiet liberation

We drove out along the coast one afternoon, to a fireworks shop a couple of towns along. It was late in the year, and the light was low and dismal, rain scudding the windscreen. In a couple of days’ time it would be New Year’s Eve, and then our small town would scatter itself to parties held in bars and houses and nightclubs, and out along the harbour. At midnight, there would be an amateur firework display on the roof of the old lido.

In the shop that afternoon, some of the fireworks sat behind a glass-fronted cabinet. They had names like Stinging Bees, Vendetta and Sky Breaker, and beneath each item was a small laminated caption: “One hundred shot roman candle firing high whistling bees,” read one. “Twenty-five secs of time rain salutes. Noisy,” read another.

True crime, AI, romantasy and strange stories from a small Welsh town are among your picks of the best podcasts of the year

I stumbled across this podcast a few weeks ago and romped through the first season in short order. My Dad died recently, and I often feel sad. Ill-advised has helped me feel lighter. I have laughed out loud at both the questions and Bill’s dryly-delivered answers. I love the banned word portion (such as “pivot” and “like“, when used as fillers in sentences), while the book suggestions at the end are a perfect closer. Julie Hannaford, 59, librarian, Toronto, Canada

Border guards find boat with its anchor down after telecoms link between Helsinki and Tallinn targeted

A ship suspected of damaging an underwater cable running between Helsinki and Tallinn has been seized by police.

Finnish officials say the vessel is suspected of being “responsible for the damage to the cable” owned by the telecoms group Elisa and located in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone.

A very Long Wave-coded book, a landmark Nigerian film and more Black art, culture and sport on its way in the next 12 months

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The week between Christmas and New Year is a unique time. You’re free to not worry about what day of the week it is, or think too heavily on anything beyond your current state. But as we reach the new year, it is equally fun to think about the things we hope will bring some much-needed collective joy in the year ahead.

This week, our colleagues from across the diaspora have shared the Black cultural events that they are looking forward to in 2026, from books and TV shows to Ghana beating England at the World Cup.

Environmental advocates notched key wins at local and state levels this year despite Trump rollbacks

As 2025 draws to a close, environmental advocates across the US find themselves weighing a year marked by both setbacks and successes.

Despite major environmental reversals taken by the Donald Trump administration including loosening fossil fuel rules and weakening endangered-species safeguards, conservationists, lawmakers and researchers still notched key wins at local and state levels.

As a judge puts a security hold on Rob and Michele Reiner’s cases and Joe Rogan criticises Donald Trump’s comments about Reiner’s death, collaborators continue to pay tribute

More than two weeks after the deaths of the film director Rob Reiner and his photographer wife, Michele, friends and colleagues continue to pay tribute to the couple.

Writing on Instagram, Cary Elwes, who starred in Reiner’s 1987 classic The Princess Bride, said he only now felt able to post publicly about his loss.

• Dazn must resume €6.6m-a-month payments

• It said agreement was not viable without carriage deal

Dazn has been ordered to honour the remainder of an €84.2m (£73.5m) TV deal with Belgium’s Pro League this season after the streaming service announced last month it was terminating the contract.

In a judgment from Belgium’s centre for arbitration and mediation (Cepani), sent to the clubs on Wednesday morning, Dazn has been told it must continue broadcasting and paying for the Pro League until 30 June, unless Cepani declares otherwise. That would cost it about €53m.

Exclusive: Met figures thought to reflect national picture with Covid, poverty and more people seeking help possible factors

The number of violent offences involving an adolescent attacking their parents or step-parents has increased by more than 60% in the past decade, according to figures recorded by the UK’s biggest police force.

Data released by Scotland Yard reveals that there were 1,886 such offences recorded in 2015 but this increased to 3,091 in the first 10 months of 2025 alone.

Join our live coverage as we cross the globe to enter the new year

Sydney is the self-appointed “world capital of new year’s eve” and arguably rightly so. As always, eyes will be on the Opera House at 13:00 GMT when fireworks will light up the sky in spectacular fashion. But there are also huge crowds out in Melbourne to see off the year in style.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on Melbourne this evening to celebrate NYE. There will be two 7 minute firework displays and light shows tonight, first a family one at 9.30pm for young children, and the main one at the stroke of midnight.

Next head of Cern backs massive replacement for world’s largest machine to investigate mysteries of the universe

Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, has landed one of the most coveted jobs in global science. But it is hard not to wonder, when looked at from a certain angle, whether he has taken one for the team.

On 1 January, Thomson takes over as the director general of Cern, the multi-Nobel prizewinning nuclear physics laboratory on the outskirts of Geneva. It is here, deep beneath the ground, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest scientific instrument ever built, recreates conditions that existed microseconds after the big bang.

The challenges and strains have been almost too much to take. But in 2025, words of depth and courage have been an antidote to numbness

I once saw a young glassblower in Istanbul, still new to his craft, shatter a beautiful vase while taking it out of the furnace. The artisan master standing by his side calmly nodded and said something that I still think about. He told him: “You put too much pressure on it, you kept it unbalanced and you forgot that it, too, has a heart.”

The year we are leaving behind has been plagued from the start by a series of social, economic, environmental, technological and institutional challenges, all happening with such speed and intensity that we are yet to fully comprehend their impact on our lives, let alone on future generations. As the overwhelming strain of domestic and geopolitical changes continues to build up, I cannot help but remember the man’s words. Too much pressure. Unstable, uncertain and replete with deep inequalities. This could well be the year we forgot that the Earth, too, has a heart. It definitely feels like the year when the world was broken.

Rejuvenated by his goal on Saturday and free from injuries that have disrupted his season, Arsenal’s captain led their destruction of Villa

When Arsenal really needed Martin Ødegaard, the captain finally rediscovered his magic touch. Gabriel Magalhães had just opened the scoring against Aston Villa after a first half in which Mikel Arteta’s nervous side were struggling without the influential Declan Rice. Then it happened.

Jadon Sancho was waiting to receive a pass from Youri Tielemens inside Villa’s half but, before the forward knew it, Ødegaard had pinched the ball and was haring towards Emiliano Martínez’s goal. A jink back on to his left foot fooled Tielemens and allowed Ødegaard to play through the perfect through ball for Martín Zubimendi to score the crucial second. It was the fifth goal or assist that Zubimendi has contributed to since he joined in the summer – the joint-best return of his club career – and the Spaniard’s impact was rightly hailed by a delighted Arteta. “Credit to his teammates as well, how easy they make it for him,” said the Arsenal manager in a nod to Ødegaard.

Forty-seven men killed by states operating death penalty – almost double last year’s number

US executions have surged in 2025 to the highest level in 16 years, as Donald Trump’s campaign to reinvigorate judicial killings, combined with the US supreme court’s increasing refusal to engage in last-minute pleas for reprieve, have taken a heavy toll.

A total of 47 men – they were all male – have been killed by states operating the death penalty in the course of the year. That was almost double the number in 2024, amounting to the greatest frenzy of capital punishment bloodletting in America since 2009.