It’s a scandal laid bare. A stark new report highlights the price paid in Britain’s former industrial heartlands for this silent piece of ministerial vandalism

The Welsh valleys have some of the highest numbers of people claiming incapacity benefits in the whole of Britain. In Abertillery, Maesteg and Merthyr Tydfil, getting on for a quarter of the working-age population is not employed – in large part due to long-term ill-health. If the government was serious about reducing the growing welfare bill , it would be starting here and in the other parts of the country blighted by deindustrialisation and poverty. It would identify the parts of the country most in need – Wales, Scotland and large swaths of northern England – and love-bomb them.

Yet instead of devoting more money to regional economic development, ministers are doing the opposite. In one of its less-publicised policy moves, Labour has quietly gutted the fund designed to create jobs, a scheme inherited from the Conservatives. The silent demolition job on regional policy is laid bare in a new report by Steve Fothergill, national director of the Industrial Communities Alliance, an umbrella group for the local authorities worst affected by the hollowing out of Britain’s industrial base and the closure of the coalfields.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

As Foyles names her memoir its book of the year, here’s a guide to the Booker prize winner’s wide-ranging oeuvre of fiction and nonfiction

‘The point of the writer is to be unpopular,” said Arundhati Roy in 2018. Over the last three decades – beginning with her 1997 Booker winner, The God of Small Things, which catapulted her into celebrity – the writer’s works of fiction, nonfiction and essays have indeed been polarising; she has become one of the most prominent critics of the Indian government and Hindu nationalism.

Last year, she was awarded the PEN Pinter prize , given to writers who cast an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world. Earlier this year, she published Mother Mary Comes To Me , an account of her relationship with her mother. The memoir has now been named Foyles book of the year , and was also shortlisted for Waterstones book of the year. Here, Priya Bharadia takes readers through Roy’s essential reads.

The tan, the fringe, the warmth and wit – there’s no other TV host quite like her

When King Charles gave Claudia Winkleman her MBE on Tuesday, he looked more delighted than she did. And rightly so. It’s basically blasphemy at this point not to want to be her best friend.

The National Treasure of National Treasures’ rise to royal appointment, and superstardom, is all the more pleasing because, on paper, it’s so unlikely. She is an anomaly among TV presenters, and not only because reading the Autocue must be a challenge when you have a fringe that long.

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• UK tourists would be among those affected by US policy

• ‘Unacceptable’ and ‘chilling’, says European fan group

A plan to require supporters travelling to the United States for the World Cup to disclose information about their social media accounts has been described as “profoundly unacceptable”.

Tourists from 42 countries, including the UK, which use the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) as part of the visa waiver programme would be obliged to provide information about accounts they have held in the last five years in their applications. Previously it had been optional to provide the information.

Soldier’s account corroborates reports Viktoriia Roshchyna was taken to prison deep inside Russia, where it is believed she died

Details of the last days in captivity of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died last year, have emerged with the witness account of a soldier who was with her when she was transported to a prison deep inside Russia.

Roshchyna was seized while reporting from behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine in the summer of 2022, one of an estimated 16,000 civilians detained by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

The mashup Satisfaction Skank was unofficial for years but band allow Norman Cook to remake it using original stems of their 1965 hit

A classic bootleg recording by Fatboy Slim which samples the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction has finally been released, as the band give it their blessing after 25 years.

Satisfaction Skank was a familiar track on turn-of-the-century dancefloors, as Fatboy Slim mashed up his own 1999 hit The Rockafeller Skank with the Stones’ 1965 classic, hurling Keith Richards’ iconic guitar riff into the “big beat” sound of the late 90s.

Say no to throwaway this Christmas! From tools and jewels to tartan rugs and teapots, here are the pressies you’ve given or received that have stood the test of time

• 14 easy ways to cut Christmas waste

In our throwaway consumer culture, giving gifts can feel like a whole lot of pressure: get it wrong and that present could fall apart, end up in the back of a cupboard (or worse, landfill), or be re-gifted.

The trick is finding something timeless but not boring; thoughtful and personal; well made and useful. We asked you for the gifts you’ve given or received that are still treasured (and going strong) years – often decades – later.

Far-right rhetoric fuelled rioting here in 2024, but Back on the Map is helping to unite the community, through good accommodation, new shops, and an aim to genuinely uplift and improve people’s lives
• Donate to the Guardian Charity Appeal 2025 here
• Communities are our defence against hatred. Now, more than ever, we must invest in hope

When 47-year-old shop assistant Claire Carter was younger, her mother told her to “never live on the long streets” – terrace-lined roads about half a mile long that lead from the centre of Hendon, Sunderland, to the sea. These six streets have a reputation for being “full of wrong ’uns, full of stolen cars, places getting smashed up”, she says. Close by is Fletcher’s News & Booze, the shop where Tommy Robinson hosted a book signing in 2017 that ended in physical fights and 21 arrests.

Sunderland more widely has been a key site for far-right politics: in 2024 violent anti-Muslim riots broke out after misinformation spread on social media, suggesting that the man behind fatal stabbings at a children’s dance class in Southport was an illegal migrant. About 500 people came to Sunderland’s city centre to a protest that quickly descended into what a judge has since described as “an orgy of mindless destruction, violence and disorder”, with rioters setting a car on fire, shouting Islamophobic chants and throwing stones at the police.

Avery Trufelman is the New York-based radio producer behind Articles of Interest, a fashion podcast that has non-fashion people gripped in their millions

Did you know that the zipper only came about because a Swedish-born engineer named Gideon Sundback fell in love with a factory owner’s daughter? Or that it took longer for it to be developed than it took for the Wright brothers to invent the aeroplane? You probably know that pockets have become a symbol of gender privilege – but were you aware that in the 18th century, women’s pockets were big enough to hold tools for writing, a small diary and a snack for later? Perhaps most surprising is that layering, which has made Uniqlo one of the biggest brands in the world, was in effect invented in the 1940s by a man named Georges Doriot, who was also famous for inventing venture capital.

All these nuggets and more are included in Articles of Interest, a podcast by 34-year-old Avery Trufelman. Listeners tune in for the smarts but also her disarming sense of fun. Not to mention her low, husky voice, which seems made for podcasting. “I don’t take care of it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says over video call from her apartment in New York.