Chaos and ineptitude dog our poor PM. Perhaps the explanation lies (very) close to home

At this rate the only businesses who will want to invest in Britain after the budget are heroin dealers. No 10 used to have a news grid, now it has an apology grid. Even so, why did Keir Starmer apologise for a sensationally self-destructive round of briefing against Wes Streeting if he didn’t do it? This is like me apologising for accidentally releasing sex offenders from prison. I suppose there is the occasional previous example in public life. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor apologised for his association with Jeffrey Epstein and gave a woman he’d never met a reported £12m. Perhaps that provides the prime minister with the warming cover of precedent.

If you’re just joining us, this is a week in which the government finally achieved the chaos spiral of several recent Conservative administrations. We can now officially say: same car, different clowns. We are less than two weeks out from the budget, with Friday morning’s Downfall meme being yet another U-turn, with the chancellor reportedly not going ahead with her all-but-confirmed plans to raise basic- and higher-rate income tax. The gilt markets reacted accordingly, if by accordingly we mean “made emergency calls for Andrex” – but then new Treasury briefings insisted it was all actually good news and based on better forecasts. Tell you what Rachel Reeves won’t raise: fuel duty on circus vehicles.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Footage shows the man jumping the red carpet barricade of the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good, then rushing towards and embracing the star

A court in Singapore has charged a man who grabbed Ariana Grande at a premiere of Wicked: For Good on Thursday night with being a public nuisance.

Video footage shows Johnson Wen jumping over a barricade at Universal Studios Singapore and rushing at Grande on the red carpet. Grande’s co-star Cynthia Erivo immediately jumped in to help protect her and Wen was moved away.

Malak A Tantesh, 20, ‘showed immense talent and bravery’, said judges at Media Freedom awards in London

The UK’s Society of Editors has named Malak A Tantesh, the Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent, as young journalist of the year in the national press category at this year’s Media Freedom awards.

The judges said Tantesh “showed immense talent and bravery in some of the hardest conditions ever faced by a journalist, she continued to report while having to forage for food and facing the constant risk of bombing and the threat of targeted killing”.

The $C56bn plan focused on investing in a resource economy falls short of changing Canadians’ day-to-day lives

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney likes to say that when he was young, “we used to build big things in this country, and we used to build them quickly.”

That idea – of sprawling projects that transform nations, has influenced both his narrative as an economist-turned politician and his government’s multibillion dollar investment spree. “It’s time to get back at it, and get on with it,” he said in September.

What is the effervescent new boss at Pitlochry theatre planning for his first season? Huge names, undersung stars – and a King Lear played by ‘the woman who changed my life’

‘Holy shit!” This was the instant response of one venerable theatre critic when Pitlochry Festival theatre sent round embargoed copies of the plan for Alan Cumming’s inaugural season. The man himself sits back in the cavernous workshop behind the theatre building, dapper in a grey plaid suit. “I loved that,” he says gleefully.

When the Hollywood star was announced as the new artistic director of Scotland’s only major rural theatre last September, there was widespread shock – not least that Cumming answered an open recruitment call – followed by feverish speculation over which A-list pals he might charm away from London or New York to perform in Highland Perthshire.

As the climate conference goes into its fifth day, with huge amounts still unresolved, there were reports that activists had blockaded the entrance to the centre

Norway and the United Arab Emirates - both significant fossil fuel producers - are among the ministerial pairings announced by the Brazilian Cop30 Presidency. The task of the pairings is to consult with countries on specific issues and report their views back to the presidency, to help the negotiations progress.

The ministers from Norway and the UAE will work on the “global stocktake”, the strand of the talks about the big gap between the carbon emissions cuts needed and the real world. At its heart is cutting fossil fuel emissions, which makes it a target for obstruction by petrostates. The UAE hosted Cop28 in 2023, which delivered the first ever mention of fossil fuels in a Cop outcome.

Gambia and Germany, working on adaptation

Egypt and Spain, working on mitigation, i.e. cutting emissions

Mexico and Poland, working on just transition, i.e. making the switch to a clean economy fair

Australia and India, working on clean technology transfer from rich to poor countries

Chile and Sweden, working on gender, i.e. ensuring climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Local people describe devastating impact of millions of toxic beads from Southern Water site near Camber Sands

• What are bio-beads used for and how did they get spilled on to Camber Sands beach?

The massive spill of plastic beads at Camber Sands is devastating for local people, wildlife and tourism and the beads are dispersing along the coast, residents heard at an emotional public meeting on Thursday.

Millions of tiny, toxic plastic beads are thought to have escaped into the sea from Eastbourne sewage works in East Sussex about two weeks ago when a screen keeping them in broke. They began to wash up on Camber Sands beach last Thursday, with the situation worsening over the weekend.

Officials urge vaccination against mutated strain of virus that may be more transmissible than usual

Hospitals are bracing for a once-in-a-decade flu season, with a mutated version of the virus that is spreading widely in younger people expected to drive a wave of admissions when it reaches the elderly.

The threat has prompted NHS managers to redouble efforts to vaccinate staff and communities, expand same-day emergency care and treat more patients in the community to reduce the need for hospital stays.

The celebrated American mezzo-soprano has graced the world’s top opera houses, but is equally passionate about performing to first-timers – and inmates

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American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato apologises for the bed hair as we chat via zoom from Tasmania, where she’s preparing a series of concerts to mark her first time performing in Australia. “I’m windswept”, she laughs as she pats down her signature spiky blond hair. “I’m having a week of vacation, which is rare for me.”

Downtime for DiDonato is made rarer by a punishing touring schedule that sees her perform around the globe in recitals showcasing her extraordinary vocal technique, while juggling major roles in classical and contemporary opera. She’s a regular at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and has sung in the world’s top opera houses, including Milan’s La Scala and Covent Garden in London.

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How will AI destroy the world as we know it? Not through evil. My guess is it will do it through love

Recently, at a pub with a bunch of my friends who were gen X parents, the talk turned to young love. Most of their kids were in their late teens and early 20s, and embarking on their first relationships.

These gen X parents were a cohort that supported marriage equality and trans rights, not just for society more broadly but for their own children. And we all prided ourselves on being more progressive than the previous generation. Love is love.

In Brooklyn, workers walked off the job in search of fair pay and conditions – and said many customers were in support

At a popular Starbucks in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, hundreds of people – including workers, union allies, and community supporters – filled the sidewalks. In 40F (4.4C) weather, picketers held signs, marched, and chanted “What’s disgusting? Union-busting!” and “No contract, no coffee!”

More than a thousand Starbucks workers across the US walked off the job on Thursday in over 40 cities, marking one of the largest coordinated actions yet by the rapidly-growing union movement inside the world’s largest coffee chain.

Stephen Bryant, 44, convicted over 2004 killing, to be shot dead despite growing backlash to ‘barbaric’ method

South Carolina is due to execute a man by firing squad on Friday, marking the third time the state will use gunfire to kill a person on death row despite growing backlash to the method.

Stephen Bryant, 44, was sentenced to death for the October 2004 killing of Willard “TJ” Tietjen and pleaded guilty to two other murders. Bryant’s lawyers argued that the sentencing judge was unable to consider his brain damage from his mother’s alcohol and drug use during pregnancy, but South Carolina’s supreme court declined to halt the execution on Monday.

Suspension of intelligence cooperation in Caribbean is unusual move and there is potential for political fallout

• Explainer: is US preparing to attack Venezuela?

It is an intelligence relationship that predates even the Five Eyes: the UKUSA alliance that began, naturally enough, in secret in 1946. But this week the strain of trying to be the closest security ally to a freewheeling White House has begun to show.

Britain, it emerged, had quietly suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in the Caribbean because London does not consider the deadly US military campaign against ships accused of drug trafficking to be in line with international law.

We want to hear from Brits living overseas on their views on UK politics today

The last decade in British politics has been marked by instability and fragmentation, with six prime ministers in ten years, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party now leading in the polls.

A study this month from King’s College London and Ipsos found that 84 percent of people now say the UK feels divided, up from 74 percent in 2020.

Quizmasters are banning smart devices, using dedicated apps and finding plain old honesty can combat trivial offences

Who is older, Gary Numan or Gary Oldman? If you know the answer to this question (see below), you are probably one of hundreds of thousands of Brits who attend a pub quiz every week.

As a nation of committed trivia buffs, it was unsurprising that news of a quizmaster in Manchester outing a team for cheating was leapt on. Just where, we asked, is the special place in hell reserved for those quizzers who take a sneaky look at their phones under the table?

The director has revealed suitably grand scale of his forthcoming Homeric adventure, which was shot with Imax cameras and stars Matt Damon as Odysseus

Christopher Nolan says he has used over more than 2 million ft of film for his adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, which is in post-production, after the director finished shooting in August.

In an interview with Empire magazine, Nolan said: “I’ve been out on [the sea] for the last four months. We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus’s ship out there on the real waves, in the real places … We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world.” He added: “We shot over 2 million ft of film.”

A zingy, mango mule-alike mocktail that brings the spicy kick of Indian street food to a highball glass

This was one of the first cocktails on the menu when we opened Fatt Pundit back in 2019. It pays homage to the many street-side carts that sell fresh mango in a spice mix of salt, pepper and red chillies – it’s sweet, spicy and savoury, as well as unique and delicious.

Huzefa Sajawal, co-founder and executive chef, Fatt Pundit, London W1

With his murder conviction overturned, the Jamaican star is back performing. He talks about his illness, regrets, and how he felt about dancehall going global while he was behind bars

There’s a moment when I’m interviewing Vybz Kartel in the courtyard of the Four Seasons hotel in Tower Bridge, London, and the UK government emergency alert test rings on my phone. He is panicked by it and jumps up. “Me ready fi run you know!” he says, which has us both laughing.

It is a funny moment, but also a jolting one considering that it arrives in the middle of him discussing the lasting psychological effects of prison. Kartel, 49, real name Adidja Palmer, had been incarcerated across different institutions in Jamaica following his conviction for the 2011 murder of his associate Clive “Lizard” Williams. Following a lengthy appeal process, he was released in July last year after the ruling was overturned by the UK privy council (which is the final court of appeal for Jamaica due to the nation being a former British colony).

Diane Wilson recognized Exxon’s playbook – and showed how local people can take on even the most entrenched industries

When ExxonMobil announced it would “slow the pace of development” on a $10bn plastics plant along the Texas Gulf coast, the company blamed market conditions. But it wasn’t just the market applying pressure; it was a 77-year-old shrimper named Diane Wilson who refused to stay silent. Her fight exposes big oil’s latest survival plan: ramping up oil and gas production to create plastic.

I first met Wilson back in 2019 while tracking her historic lawsuit against Formosa Plastics, the Taiwanese petrochemical giant accused of dumping toxic plastic waste throughout coastal Texas. Billions of tiny plastic pellets were contaminating waterways, shorelines, and even the soil itself.

Shilpi Chhotray is the co-founder and president of Counterstream Media and Host of A People’s Climate for the Nation

After a decade, the Netflix hit is bowing out. Ahead of its last episodes, the show’s creators and cast talk about big 80s hair, recruiting a Terminator killer – and the birds Kate Bush sent them

How do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside Down and whether the plucky teens of Hawkins, Indiana can fight off Vecna for good, but it is early November 2025, and its creators Matt and Ross Duffer are finding it difficult to talk about. It’s not just because they’re feeling the pressure, or because the risk of spoilers and leaks is so dangerously high. It’s because the identical twin brothers from North Carolina are just not ready. “It makes me sad,” says Ross. “Because it’s easier to not think about the show actually ending.”

A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. Few had heard of Vecna, Mind Flayers or Demogorgons. In 2015, the brothers – self-professed nerds and movie obsessives – were about to begin shooting their first ever TV series. Stranger Things was to be a supernatural adventure steeped in 80s nostalgia, paying tribute to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. Part of their pitch to Netflix was that it would be “John Carpenter mashed up with ET”. Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine were in it, so it wasn’t exactly low-key, but it was by no means a dead-cert for success, not least because it was led by a cast of young unknowns. The first season came out in the summer of 2016, smashed Netflix viewing records, and almost immediately established itself as a bona fide TV phenomenon.

• New Zealander lost high-profile bout in London

• Fight could prove his last one for a lengthy period

Joseph Parker failed a drugs test on the day of his 11th-round stoppage to British heavyweight Fabio Wardley.

Ipswich-born Wardley and New Zealander Parker produced a pulsating encounter in London on 25 October to determine who would become WBO mandatory challenger to undisputed world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.

Fallout continues over budget income tax U-turn, with Treasury saying expected fiscal gap has dropped to £20bn

This is from Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, on the market reaction to the chancellor’s reported budget U-turn.

Investors will have 2 broad concerns about news that Chancellor won’t increase income tax rates

1. Does it signal less willingness to do politically difficult things

Britain’s long-term borrowing costs were sent soaring as reports suggested the latest U-turn would leave Rachel Reeves scrambling to fill a gaping black hole in the nation’s finances just two weeks before the 26 November budget.

Yields on 30-year UK government bonds, also known as gilts, jumped as much as 14 basis points in early trading, and the yield on 10-year gilts also shot up 12 basis points – rising the most since July.

Authoritarian leader calls for US to make peace amid military buildup and strikes against alleged drug smugglers

• Explainer: is US preparing to attack Venezuela?

Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has urged Donald Trump not to lead the US into an Afghanistan-style “forever war”, as the American military buildup in the region intensified and Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, vowed to purge the Americas of “narco-terrorists”.

Speaking to CNN outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, Maduro called on Trump to make peace, not war, after the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, arrived in the region.