Saudi Arabia has launched “a major offensive” to support Yemeni government forces trying to drive Houthi rebel militia out of territory seized during the country’s 12-year civil war, said CNN. But the rebels “have so far held their ground”.

How did they gain power?
Formally named Ansar Allah (“helpers of God”), the Houthis emerged in the 1990s as an armed political and religious group championing Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority. Initially fighting for more autonomy in their northern homeland, they took a lead role in mass anti-government protests in 2014 that triggered the civil war. The Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognised government to retreat to Aden in the south.

How have they grown so powerful?
A 2024 report for the UN Security Council concluded that support and training from Iran had helped the Houthis transform from a “localised armed group” to a “powerful military organisation”. Their forces had grown to an estimated 350,000 fighters – up from just 30,000 in 2015.

While Iran is believed to still supply expertise and more advanced technical components, the Houthis can now “manufacture much of their weaponry domestically”, said The Associated Press. They have “little aerial and naval power”, said Middle East Eye, but have been “increasingly turning to drones”. These are very effective against pro-government forces, which lack “effective air defences”, global security consultant Wolf-Christian Paes told the news site.

How much of Yemen is under Houthi control?
The Houthis control between a quarter and a third of northern and western Yemen, home to around three-quarters of the country’s population. The militia “rules over its impoverished territory with an iron fist”, said The New York Times. In September, they seized control of key locations along the Red Sea coast, giving them leverage over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is vital to global shipping.

“Half of the story is Iranian support”, international affairs professor and Yemen specialist Thomas Juneau told AP. The other half is “the weakness of their adversaries”. Yemen’s recognised government remains “fragmented”, while the various Saudi- and UAE-backed forces supporting its campaign against the Houthis are “deeply divided”.

Forget the seven-year itch. Heterosexual couples are now staying together for longer, with the average divorce occurring after 13 years of marriage, according to the latest Office for National Statistics data.

Staying power
Last year’s 13-year average duration is the longest for marriages since records began back in 1963. New highs for how long same-sex civil partnerships lasted before divorce or dissolution were also recorded in 2025.

It’s “not solely a British phenomenon”, said The Guardian. Although divorce statistics are collected differently in different countries, the Pew Research Center in the US found that the median length of marriages ending in divorce there rose from 10 years in 2008 to 12 years in 2023.

As of 2023, the average age of first-time marriage for opposite-sex couples in the UK had reached a record high of 34.8 for men and 33 for women. This could help explain why marriages are lasting longer, Laura Mortimer, a partner at the law firm BP Collins, told The Times. “Those that do marry are much more settled and sure of their relationship.”

‘Nuclear option’
Divorce is now “more accessible than it ever has been”, Lisa Pepper, a divorce lawyer at Osbornes Law, told The Guardian, yet “couples are staying together”. There are “less romantic” explanations for this: rising mortgage, rent and childcare costs mean many can’t afford to separate. Instead, they are trying things like couples therapy or mediation before going for the “nuclear option” of divorce. As a result, some couples are stuck in unhappy or hostile living environments so that they can share their financial assets and split household bills.

Another “fundamental change” that might help to explain why marriages are lasting for longer is the rise in cohabitation, Brienna Perelli-Harris, a professor of demography at Southampton University, told the newspaper. More than 90% of couples live together before tying the knot, giving them a chance to try out a shared life before committing to matrimony. “Those who stay together and eventually marry are, my research shows, the couples who are happiest.” 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex greet crowds during a visit to a youth charity project in Nottingham, their first official public appearance together since moving back to the UK. Nottingham was also the location of their first-ever joint appearance, after announcing their engagement in 2017.

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

Look up when you enter the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and “you won’t be able to stop looking up – because it’s raining musical instruments”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. If Tarek Atoui had “just left it at that, it would still be an impressive, intriguing installation”, but the Lebanese artist takes things a step further. His “sculptural creations” are displayed amid an “ever-changing” soundscape, including an “earth-shaking bass note” that “throbs from a hanging trumpet”.

Following the “debacle” last year that saw Máret Ánne Sara hang 72 reindeer hides in the Turbine Hall, the Tate has pulled things back with Atoui’s “beguiling, poetic installation”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Various musical instruments appear to “float in mid-air” and from a distance “softly illuminated drum skins resemble glowing planets or moons”. Behind an “imposing plinth”, technicians control the “swelling, ‘sonic landscape’” using mixing desks “bristling with multicoloured wires”. In this way, Atoui’s installation is “both high- and low-tech”, bringing together modern technology and “something much older and more analogue, soulful and warm”.

Atoui’s installation lacks an “immediate wow factor”, said Jo Lawson-Tancred on artnet. His assortment of hanging instruments and wires “looks a bit like a cross between a boiler room and a mid-tier design store”. But the artist has managed to “fill the venue and redefine it”, conjuring a sculpture out of sound and asking visitors to “gather, mingle and improvise” their own sounds in response. His installation may prove “surprisingly memorable”.

The worst thing we could do with AI right now? Slow down
David Grainger in City A.M.
Containing AI agents won’t work and “would only squander our edge” over “our enemies”, writes biotech investor David Grainger. Yes, “it’s easy to be scared” and to think that AI is “different from anything and everything” before. But like the first sharpened bone and the first gun, it’s actually “just another tool that stretches the ability of humankind for good and evil”. We must run with it “as quickly as we can”, because “in the infinite monkey cage of evolution, speed wins”.

For the future of green politics, look beyond the Green party
Zoe Williams in The Guardian
A party that can “single-handedly represent” the many people who “want action on climate change doesn’t exist in modern British politics”, writes Zoe Williams. In fact, there seems to be “no heatwave, no flood, no El Niño” that could “divert rightwing populism from its crusade” in the opposite direction. We need “a plan for cheaper, greener energy, food security and extreme weather events”, with “tangible actions” that are “broadcast and celebrated”. Abstract discussion of “global patterns and borderless looming disaster” only fosters impotence.

Idioms are a blessing in disguise
Francesca Peacock in The Telegraph
Oxford University “has told its staff to limit” their use of idioms because, apparently, international students won’t understand them, writes Francesca Peacock. How “incredibly patronising”. Such an assumption “would seem to undermine their achievement” at landing an Oxford place. Besides, “no language is a neutral vessel for meaning”: “seemingly nonsensical” phrases like “learn the ropes” or “it’s raining cats and dogs” have such “interesting” origins in our cultural history. “Excising” them would “risk losing” what makes our language “idiosyncratic, and original”.