Mia McKenna-Bruce, Saoirse Ronan, Anna Sawai and Aimee Lou Wood have been cast in the forthcoming four-part film series
Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-part Beatles film has confirmed the casting of four main female roles.
Sony Pictures officially announced that Mia McKenna-Bruce will play Maureen Cox, with Saoirse Ronan as Linda Eastman, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono and Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd. All four had been strongly rumoured to have been in line for their parts, but only now has their participation been confirmed.
The former prince’s retirement from public life is welcome. Problems around royal secrecy and entitlement remain to be tackled
Prince Andrew is no more. Henceforth the king’s younger brother will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. With the Thursday night announcement, and the news that Mr Mountbatten Windsor will quit his 30-room home in Windsor, the monarch hopes to draw a line under the shame of the former prince’s friendship with the dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and alleged sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre when she was 17, which he has always denied.
These “censures” – as Buckingham Palace termed them – were made necessary by Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s poor judgment and deceit, including the lie that he had broken off contact with Epstein in 2010. But the real damage was done by his grotesquely entitled behaviour and appalling choice of friends. It should not have taken the painful details in Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, an extract of which was published in the Guardian, to make it obvious that the shelter this arrogant man enjoyed had to be removed.
The world said ‘never again’ after Darfur’s genocide. Yet it stood by as catastrophe loomed
No one can claim they did not know what would happen in El Fasher. An 18-month siege had already seen war crimes by the Rapid Support Forces, including the execution of civilians and sexual violence. Warnings of the massacres that would follow when the city in Darfur fell – as it did on Sunday – were widespread.
The reality was an even darker hell, in the words of UN officials. The World Health Organization says that the RSF killed 460 people in one hospital. Satellite images appear to capture bloodstains on the ground. Footage showed fighters executing unarmed men. Other captives were taken for ransom. The UN says hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters were raped or killed while trying to flee the city, with clear evidence of ethnically targeted violence. The horrors continue.
Wretched results have been signposted, with recruitment and team selection tripping up manager who was a local hero last season
It has been a while since Vítor Pereira ventured into The Moon Under Water, the Wolverhampton city-centre Wetherspoons where last season he savoured victories with supporters. Now Wolves are at risk of drowning in the Premier League, bottom after taking two points from their opening nine games and without a win in six months. Supporters have made their anger plain but the Wolves head coach insists he is au fait with the pressure. “I remember in Porto after a draw it was impossible to go into a restaurant to eat with my family,” Pereira says. “This is football.”
For Wolves supporters, this campaign has descended into one big, fat told-you-so. Wolves have been stuck in a negative cycle and after another slow start fans are worried this will be the season they fail to escape and spiral into the Championship. Pereira rescued them after arriving last Christmas but much of his credit has evaporated. With every game comes increased pressure. “I’m a fighter,” he says. “The pressure is what I put on myself. I don’t feel the pressure, believe me. The pressure is important to be alert … if you don’t feel anything, you’re too relaxed. If you don’t accept the criticism or pressure, you must go to another job.”
People of Jamaican coastal town described as storm’s ground zero are traumatised and desperate for help
It is a treacherous journey to Black River, a coastal town in Jamaica’s southwestern parish of St Elizabeth, which this week bore the brunt of Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record.
Uprooted trees and lamp-posts, rubble from landslides, huge potholes and miles of thick, slippery silt from severe flooding have turned the route into a dangerous obstacle course. But most daunting is the water that you encounter as you pass through communities that overnight have become rivers.
Bank says it alerted US of ‘suspicious’ transactions just weeks after paedophile was found dead in New York jail cell
JP Morgan warned the US government about more than $1bn in transactions linked to Jeffrey Epstein that were possibly related to reports of human trafficking, new documents confirm.
The largest bank in the US filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) in 2019, just weeks after Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, about transactions linked to the paedophile financier and prominent business figures. It also flagged wire transfers made by Epstein to Russian banks.
Lawson close to hitting marshals running across track
FIA still carrying out investigation into incident
Formula One’s governing body the FIA have issued a statement absolving the Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson of all blame in an exceptionally dangerous incident when he came close to hitting two marshals running across the track in front of him at the Mexico Grand Prix.
The statement is a strong rebuttal to an attempt to hold Lawson responsible made by the Mexican racing federation, the Organización Mexicana De Automovilismo Internacional (Omdai), while the FIA is still carrying out an investigation into the incident.
Elections across the US next week should be easy pickings for the opposition. But they’re finding it hard to beat a player who breaks all the rules
Every year is election year in the US, but the contests of 2025, which reach their climax on Tuesday, will be especially revealing. These “off-year” battles – a smattering of governors’ races, statewide referendums and the election of a new mayor in the country’s biggest city – will tell us much about the national mood 12 months after Americans returned Donald Trump to the White House and one year before midterm contests that could reshape the US political landscape. Above all, though, they will reveal the division, the confusion and sheer discombobulation Trump has induced in the US’s party of opposition.
The verdict on Trump’s first 10 months in office will be delivered most clearly in the two states set to choose a new governor: New Jersey and Virginia. By rights, these should be relatively easy wins for the Democrats. Both states voted for Kamala Harris a year ago, and the current polls are grim for Trump. This week, an Economist/YouGov survey registered Trump’s lowest rating of his second term – 39% of Americans approve of him, while 58% disapprove – the lowest number they’d recorded for him bar one poll in his first term. Trump’s handling of the economy gets especially low marks, and a plurality of voters blame the continuing government shutdown, now in its second month, on Trump and his party. If an off-year election offers an opportunity to kick an unpopular incumbent, then Tuesday should be plain sailing for Democrats.
Decision to stay away from Cop30 meeting in Brazil underscores administration’s hostility to climate action
The Trump administration has confirmed that no high-level representatives will be sent by the US to upcoming UN climate talks in Brazil, underscoring the administration’s hostile stance towards action on the climate crisis.
The US has always sent delegations of various sizes to UN climate summits over the past three decades, even during periods under George W Bush and Donald Trump’s first term where there was scant desire to address the global heating crisis.
League says issues rooted in more European matches
It promises increased Boxing Day games next year
The Premier League has confirmed there will be only one Premier League game on Boxing Day, with Manchester United to host Newcastle United at 8pm. The late kick-off may cause travel issues for Newcastle fans, with public transport limited on the holiday.
The league cited the expansion of European competition in explaining its schedule. The last time Boxing Day was a Friday, in 2014, there was a full top-flight programme.
Heritage Foundation defended former Fox News host, others slammed him for platforming white supremacist
Conservatives are fighting among themselves over the far-right commentator Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview the antisemitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his podcast, where the two men decried conservatives who support Israel.
Kevin Roberts, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, defended Carlson after the episode, saying Carlson “remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation”.
Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments
Erik Satie Three Piece Suiteby Ian Penman is a daring and endlessly inventive portrait of the iconoclastic composer. Penman’s skill lies in his total disregard for tired cliches and tropes of music criticism, while perfectly combining the highbrow and the lowbrow – a digression on Les Dawson shows why he might just be our greatest writer on music.
Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite is published by Atlantic (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
British fighter demands right to three-minute rounds
WBC was set for purse bid for Cameron v Sandy Ryan
Chantelle Cameron relinquished her WBC super-lightweight title on Friday in a protest over women’s boxing rules, with the British fighter demanding the right to fight three-minute rounds like her male counterparts.
Cameron’s decision to vacate her championship belt stems from her opposition to the World Boxing Council’s mandate that women compete in two-minute rounds, which the 34-year-old views as unequal treatment.
Regional authority is investing €1.5m in the project but has stipulations about featuring ‘identifiable locations’ on screen and the film premiering at an international film festival
The Madrid regional government is hoping to harness the power of film tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a new Woody Allen movie that will be shot in and around the Spanish capital and which will be contractually obliged to feature the word “Madrid” in its title.
Regional authorities are confident the 89-year-old film-maker’s next project could do for Madrid what Roman Holiday did for Rome tourism in the early 1950s, and what Sex and the City and Emily in Paris have more recently done to increase visitor numbers to New York and the French capital.
I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based company. Its chocolate, not yet commercially available, is made with techniques that have previously been used to synthesize other bioactive products like certain plant-derived pharmaceuticals for commercial sale.
“BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE GONE STONE COLD ‘CRAZY,’ THE CHOICE IS CLEAR – INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
Victory over hosts at Twickenham 12 months ago proved a launchpad for Australia to begin climb back from nadir
If only Henry Slade had managed to stop Ben Donaldson getting that offload away, if only Ollie Sleightholme had been able to make that wrap-up tackle on Len Ikitau, if only Marcus Smith was able to catch Max Jorgensen. But Slade didn’t, Sleightholme couldn’t, Smith wasn’t, and Jorgensen scored in the corner. This time last year the Wallabies beat England 42-37, their first victory against them at Twickenham in nine years, and it was, the players will tell you themselves, the moment when everything changed. “This game last year was a big turning point for us as a group,” says the Australia captain, Harry Wilson. “It really made us believe that on our day we can beat anybody in the world.”
Twelve months ago England weren’t worried about the Wallabies so much as they were worried for the Wallabies. The one thing an Australian team doesn’t want is pity, but that’s what they got. They had won two Tests out of nine in 2023, when they embarrassed themselves at the World Cup, and, after a few months during which he seemed to spend most of his time bowling around in a cork hat and shouting at everyone about how rubbish Australian rugby was, their head coach Eddie Jones had defected to Japan. A couple of their better players had hopped codes to play in the NRL and they had dropped to ninth in the world rankings. It was all getting a bit existential.
On the main road heading south out of Manchester city centre, the excitement and enthusiasm are tangible. Oxford Road has changed a lot since October 1945. While its grand buildings remain, the wartime bombsites and smog are long gone. Much of Chorlton-on-Medlock, the residential area it bisected has been lost to postwar clearances and replaced by university complexes.
But to the young people gathered in the foyer of the Contact Theatre, the events of 80 years ago were full of relevance. The dance show they came to see – See My World: Homage, staged by the choreographers Joe Price and Kieron Simms a fortnight ago – was just one of an unprecedented number of events to celebrate the anniversary of the fifth Pan-African Congress, which took place less than a mile away at the former town hall.
There have been a series of unprecedented protests in the global south led by gen Z, the demographic cohort born between 1997 and 2012. These uprisings have led to deadly crackdowns, scores of arrests and new leaders coming into power. From Nepal to Morocco, young people have taken direct inspiration from one another, in spite of the borders between them. The Guardian’s Neelam Tailor explains how these uprisings formed and how the gaming app Discord became such a powerful tool for these anti-government movements worldwide
Party will take lead in first round of talks to form coalition government after securing most votes
The Dutch liberal-progressive party D66 won the most votes in Wednesday’s general election, the news agency ANP has reported, putting its 38-year-old leader, Rob Jetten, on course to become the youngest prime minister in the Netherlands.
While the last few thousand votes are still being counted, Dutch media reported on Friday that Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) could no longer win.
Pragmatism meets dogmatism when Spurs host Chelsea, with both head coaches still trying to win their fans over
A few managers were in the running when Chelsea were looking for a replacement for Mauricio Pochettino in May 2024. It was an extensive process and involved the club talking to Thomas Frank before they settled on Enzo Maresca.
The feeling was that Maresca’s positional game and focus on possession made him most suited to Chelsea’s squad of technicians. Frank, who had performed brilliantly at Brentford, had to wait for his next opportunity. Overlooked by Manchester United after they fired Erik ten Hag, it arrived when Tottenham hired the Dane after sacking Ange Postecoglou last summer.
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