The military takeover in Guinea-Bissau last week is the latest in a series of coups across West Africa in recent years. Almost all have taken place in the Sahel, the semi-arid belt below the Sahara that bisects the continent. Each coup had “unique triggers”, said researcher Salah Ben Hammou on The Conversation, but they are not isolated events: this is a “coup cascade”.

How did it begin?
When Libya’s Gaddafi regime collapsed in 2011, an “abundance of weaponry” was looted and spread across the Sahel, said the Proximities newsletter. Members of Mali’s Tuareg group who had fought in Libya returned home seeking an autonomous state in the north of their country. The rebels aligned themselves with multiple Islamist jihadist groups and began capturing territory. The conflict quickly spread into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, centring on the tri-border region in the western Sahel, known as the Liptako-Gourma, which “allows the biggest of the rebel groups to engage in a war with three governments at once”.

When Malian soldiers ousted Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in 2020, it “marked the beginning of a broader wave of military takeovers”, said Hammou on The Conversation. Soldiers “toppled governments” in Chad and Guinea in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 (twice) and Gabon and Niger in 2023. At the eastern end of the Sahel, Sudan “descended into a devastating civil war” after a coup there in 2021.

What connects the coups?
Analysts point to weak governance and corruption, growing Islamist terrorist insurgencies and the destabilising effects of the climate crisis, as well as rising anti-Western (particularly French) sentiment, fanned by Russia. Some blame the Economic Community of West African States for lacking a coherent response.

“Sahelian countries are in danger of swapping one kind of imperialism for another,” said the Financial Times. In Mali, Russian mercenaries promised protection for the military junta and “defeat of a dogged Islamist insurgency”. Today, with al-Qaida-affiliated fighters encircling the capital with a “crushing fuel blockade”, and talk of another coup, “it is clear the Russians have brought neither peace nor stability”.

What happens next?
“Almost without the world noticing, the Sahel has become the epicentre of global terrorism,” said the FT. More than half of all terrorism-related deaths last year occurred there, according to the Global Terrorism Index. “The fear among more prosperous coastal states is that militant Islam will spread south.”

The annual debate over the correct date to put up a Christmas tree is proving as spiky as the festive firs. In Norway – home of the spruce – it’s traditional to wait until 23 December to decorate your tree, but in Britain, the day for trimming and tinselling appears to be getting earlier and earlier.

‘Big Treekend’
“Pine politics” have become “increasingly spicy”, said Helen Coffey in The Independent. The first weekend of December is known as “The Big Treekend”, because that’s when 33% of Brits put up their Christmas tree. But this year, that’s not until 6 and 7 December, so many households instead opted for 30 November – which was, to be fair, the first Sunday of Advent. For others, “the second the Halloween decorations came down”, it was time for “wreaths, tinsel and gaudy front-garden displays of light-up Santas and gurning elves” to take their place.

When I see houses “bedecked with twinkling lights” too early in the year, I feel “faintly appalled”, said Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. Is this craze for ever-earlier decorating “a sign of national moral decline or an inability to defer pleasure”? It’s much more “magical” to decorate your house when there are “only a few days to go, the anticipation pricking the sweetness” like a splash of sherry in a trifle.

Traditional grumbling
Of all the many rows about Christmas, “one of the most divisive is The Great Question of Timing”, said Sarah Rodrigues in The Telegraph. Not just about when to put your tree up but also about when to take it down. “Everybody knows that it’s bad luck to keep decorations up” after 6 January.

All this “grumbling” is “traditional”, said the BBC’s Annabel Rackham and Emily Holt. If you’re “following Christian traditions”, you might put up your tree and decorations early in Advent, but otherwise the choice is “down to you and your preferences”.

This year, though, it might be worth noting the British Christmas Tree Growers Association’s warning that the hottest summer on record has caused a “sparseness” problem, with many trees looking “gappy” and shorter than usual. If you’re after the “best” real fir tree, a specialist grower told The Telegraph, “the later” you can leave it, the better.

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender join King Charles and Queen Camilla in Windsor Castle’s Green Drawing Room to view items with German links from the Royal Collection. The state visit is the first by a German leader to the UK in 27 years.

Hannah McKay / Pool / AFP/ Getty Images

“We’re finally here,” said Vicky Jessop in London’s The Standard. Nearly a decade on from the first episode of “Stranger Things”, the Duffer Brothers are “bringing the curtain down on their blockbuster hit show”, and “what a ride it’s been”.

The fresh-faced kids “aren’t so little anymore”, which is “appropriate because this feels like the most adult the show has ever been”. Series five veers into “much darker territory”: the town of Hawkins is now under full military quarantine and Demogorgons are “slashing people around like pinatas”, with blood and guts flying everywhere.

Robin (Maya Hawke) and Steve (Joe Keery) now work for a local radio station, while Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is on the run from the armed forces, who view her as a “massive threat”. Meanwhile, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and his friends are helping Hopper (David Harbour) conduct “elaborate ‘sweeps’ of the Upside Down” to find and defeat the evil Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).

There are “plot snags” that “cumulatively eat away at our suspension of disbelief”, said Angie Han in The Hollywood Reporter, and the main characters “look very much like the 20-somethings they are, rather than the roughly 16-year-olds they’re meant to be playing”.

But the show’s “trademark” ingredients remain intact, said Leila Latif in Empire: “the dark humour, the whimsy, the poetry of trauma and hard-earned resilience”. And “most reassuring of all is how quickly the show proves it has not lost its sense of fun”. The performances are “largely excellent” and it is “grander and gorier” than ever before.

If Even Sally Rooney Can’t Speak Freely About Palestine, What Hope Do Ordinary Culture Workers Have?
Juliet Jacques on Novara Media
The culture sector “has long been subjected to censorship” on UK foreign policy issues, writes Juliet Jacques. Irish author Sally Rooney might have to withdraw her novels from sale in Britain “due to her public support for Palestine Action”. And “ordinary culture workers” say they are also being “policed” by their institutions because of “their views on the genocide” in Gaza. We need “a more honest conversation about censorship in the arts” and “how we can fight it”.

Taylor Swift is SO damn annoying… and now that I have your attention, let’s deal with the scourge of rage-baiting
Jane Moore in The Sun
“Rage bait” – Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year – is online content “designed to get the anger juices flowing so people will click on it”, writes Jane Moore. “Making us froth at the mouth” is “corrosive” to our mental health and hastens “the death of reasoned debate”, and “we should all give a damn” or the “dangerous descent into total brain rot” will continue. We’re in a “theatre of hate”, but “we can all choose not to be puppets”.

Why being part of a ‘drouple’ means you’ll stay together
Carol Midgley in The Times
A new study has found that “couples who drink together, stay together”, writes Carol Midgley. “Wayhay, trebles all round.” I’d let my other half know “but he’s still sleeping off last night’s lager with a traffic cone on his head”. The “‘drouple’ benefits” are clear: if you’re drinking with each other, “there are no Andy Cappish recriminations about being out late” and less “opportunity” for “an affair”, and “you both look equally hideous the next morning”.