About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that

Cruising around on private jets, the ultra-rich are the world’s financial elite – but how many people actually occupy this exclusive wealth club? Could they all fit into a floating mega-yacht, or is the group much bigger, possibly the size of a dazzling mega-rich city?

Thanks to an inequality report out on Wednesday, we now have a snapshot of the size of the topmost layer floating above everyone else – the 0.001%.

Howlingly funny comedy, jaw-dropping documentaries and astonishing drama … it’s been another fantastic year of TV. Our countdown of the very best kicks off here
• More on the best culture of 2025

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As James Corden and Ruth Jones announce new series, people share how choirs have brought friendship, belonging and valuable memories

For many, singing is one of life’s great pleasures.

The actor and writer James Corden has said he was so inspired by the joy he saw when his mum sang in her choir that he teamed up once again with writing partner Ruth Jones to write a new comedy drama called, appropriately, The Choir.

As Wuthering Heights gets a raunchy Hollywood remake, our writer takes a pilgrimage through Haworth, the village where its author lived – and finds her spirit still electrifying the cobbled streets and windswept moors

It’s a crisp afternoon in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and I’m drinking a pint of Emily Brontë beer in The Kings Arms. Other Brontës are on tap – Anne is a traditional ale, Charlotte an IPA, Branwell a porter – but the barman says Emily, an amber ale with a “malty biscuit flavour”, is the most popular. It’s the obvious choice today, anyway: in a few hours, Oscar-winning film-maker Emerald Fennell will be at the Brontë women’s writing festival in a church just up the road, discussing her adaptation of Emily’s 19th-century gothic masterpiece Wuthering Heights.

The film, to be released just before Valentine’s Day next year, is already scandal-ridden. It all started with Fennell’s casting of Hollywood stars Jacob Elordi and Margot (“Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Barbie”) Robbie causing uproar. An erotic teaser trailer full of tight bodices, cracking whips and sweaty bodies had the same effect. But heads were really sent spinning by reports of a scene with a public hanging and a nun who “fondles the corpse’s visible erection”.

This Netflix show starts off feeling like a documentary, and winds up as another attempt to recreate The X-Factor. It really cannot be overstated how much of a rehash this boyband contest is

Ladies and gentlemen, the most cynical bait and switch of the year has finally arrived. To the casual viewer, Netflix’s new series Simon Cowell: The Next Act may appear to be yet another quasi-unvarnished authorised documentary series.

And that would make sense, because those things are everywhere at the moment. Everyone from David Beckham to Robbie Williams to Charlie Sheen has made one, allowing a film crew into their lives to offer just enough grit to fool people into thinking they are watching anything other than a heavily sanitised publicity project. And, really, who deserves one of these more than Simon Cowell?

Glitzy draws, OJ-era chaos, grass laid over AstroTurf and a host nation that barely cared – the 1994 World Cup arrived amid suspicion and slapstick. Yet it became a watershed that would alter US sport and global football politics alike

“The United States was chosen,” the columnist George Vecsey wrote in the New York Times in 1994, “because of all the money to be made here, not because of any soccer prowess. Our country has been rented as a giant stadium and hotel and television studio.” Nobody could seriously doubt that. The USA had played in only two World Cups since the second world war and hadn’t had a national professional league for a decade. And that meant there was a great deal of skepticism from outsiders, even after Fifa made it clear there would be no wacky law changes to try to appeal to the domestic audience: Would anybody actually turn up to watch?

But there was also hostility in the United States. A piece in USA Today on the day of the draw told Americans they were right not to care about the World Cup, what it sneeringly described as the biggest sport in “Cameroon, Uruguay and Madagascar”. “Hating soccer,” wrote the columnist Tom Weir, “is more American than mom’s apple pie, driving a pickup or spending Saturday afternoon channel surfing with the remote control.”

Excerpted from The Power And The Glory by Jonathan Wilson, copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Wilson. Used with permission of Bold Type Books, an imprint of Basic Books Group, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

PM facing questions from Tory leader and other MPs in the Commons

Reeves is now being asked about the leak to the Financial Times on 13 November saying that Reeves had dropped plans to raise income tax in the budget.

Reeves claims some aspects of the story were misleading.

Zelenskyy says he would hold wartime elections within months given help from allies and Ukraine’s parliament

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is ready to hold a wartime election within the next three months, if Ukraine’s parliament and foreign allies will allow it, after Donald Trump accused him of clinging on to power.

Zelenskyy, clearly irritated by Trump’s intervention, said that “this is a question for the people of Ukraine, not people from other states, with all due respect to our partners”.

Peace prize winner Machado has been seen only once in public since going into hiding in August last year

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is now delivering his opening speech.

It’s a damning verdict on Maduro’s authoritarian rule in Venezuela, as he talks about a number of figures facing repression and torture from the regime.

“As we sit here in Oslo City Hall, innocent people are locked away in dark cells in Venezuela. They cannot hear the speeches given today – only the screams of prisoners being tortured.”

Venezuela has evolved into a brutal, authoritarian state facing a deep humanitarian and economic crisis. Meanwhile, a small elite at the top – shielded by political power, weapons and legal impunity – enriches itself.

“A quarter of the population has already fled the country – one of the world’s largest refugee crises.

Those who remain live under a regime that systematically silences, harasses and attacks the opposition.”

“Venezuela is not alone in this darkness. The world is on the wrong track. The authoritarians are gaining.

We must ask the inconvenient question:

“Authoritarian regimes learn from each other. They share technology and propaganda systems. Behind Maduro stand Cuba, Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah – providing weapons, surveillance and economic lifelines. They make the regime more robust, and more brutal.”

Exclusive: System more likely to suggest incorrect matches for images of women and Black people

Police forces successfully lobbied to use a facial recognition system known to be biased against women, young people, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that another version produced fewer potential suspects.

UK forces use the police national database (PND) to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches, whereby a “probe image” of a suspect is compared to a database of more than 19 million custody photos for potential matches.