Rare footage captures gripping vision of remora fish clutching on to a humpback whale, where they enjoy a ride and a sumptuous feast of whale skin

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The clutch of remora fish are holding on tight, but collectively release their grip just as the humpback whale they are riding breaches the surface of the ocean.

Moments later, everyone is back on board, as the whale re-enters the water, all hurtling together off the coast of south-east Queensland.

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• Dodgers’ win draws 51m viewers worldwide

• Most-watched game since 1991 World Series

• Game 7 peaks with 27m across Fox platforms

The Los Angeles Dodgers 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in 11 innings in Game 7 of the World Series averaged 51m viewers combined across the United States, Canada and Japan. Major League Baseball said it is the most-watched game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.

Last Saturday’s game averaged 27.33m on Fox Sports, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of last week.

First 50 vehicles, costing nearly £10m each, finally ready to deploy to Nato’s eastern flank, where drones now dominate

Britain’s military has announced the first delivery of Ajax armoured vehicles, eight years behind schedule and amid questions about their relevance as cheap drones dominate the battlefields of Ukraine.

The junior defence minister Luke Pollard said the first 50 vehicles, costing nearly £10m each, were ready to deploy on Nato’s eastern flank, though he acknowledged the problems of the past when delivery deadlines of 2017, 2020 and 2021 were all missed.

Astronomers cast doubt on Nobel prize-winning theory and suggest universe could end in ‘big crunch’

Astronomers have cast doubt on a Nobel prize-winning theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, suggesting that instead it may be slowing down.

If confirmed, this would have profound implications for the fate of the universe, raising the possibility that rather than expanding for ever, the universe could ultimately enter a reverse big bang scenario known as the big crunch. The astronomers behind the work say their observations also imply that dark energy – the mysterious force thought to be propelling the expansion of the universe – is weakening over time.

Australian consumer watchdog’s safety warning says counterfeit dolls – called Lafufus – can have wrong number of teeth and ears that are too wide

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Does your Labubu have exactly nine teeth? Are its ears narrow? Or do its body parts – eyes, feet and hands – detach from its grimacing face?

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued a warning to fans of the it-dolls, stating that a burgeoning market of counterfeit Labubus could pose safety risks to young children.

Counterfeit items could have small detachable parts like eyes, feet or hands.

Lafufu’s could have poor stitching or use cheap fabrics.

Authentic Labubus have exactly nine teeth. Fake items could have ears that are too wide.

Counterfeits are often sold at much lower prices.

Will they listen to his message?

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• Inter maintain perfect start with win over Kairat Almaty

• Pafos beat Villarreal to earn first Champions League win

Barcelona had to settle for a share of the spoils at Club Brugge after a thrilling 3-3 draw but were fortunate the English referee Anthony Taylor ruled out Romeo Vermant’s stoppage-time effort for a foul on the Barça goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny.

In a thriller at Brugge’s Jan Breydel Stadium, the home side opened the scoring through Nicolò Tresoldi in the sixth minute. But Barcelona hit back with Ferran Torres scoring from close range two minutes later only for Brugge to regainthe lead in the 17th minute through Carlos Forbs after another quick counter.

Report calls for scaling-up of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors to limit peak of global heating

There is still a chance for the world to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown and return to the goal of 1.5C if governments take concerted action on greenhouse gas emissions, a new assessment argues.

The Climate Analytics report says governments’ goals are inadequate and need to be rapidly revised, and calls for the rapid scaling-up of the use of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors including transport, heating and industry.

Sean Duffy says cuts at 40 locations to reduce stress on air traffic controllers will start Friday if solution not found

The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high volume markets” beginning on Friday if the government shutdown does not end by then.

The announcement did not specify which 40 airports would see the reduction and said that a complete list would be announced on Thursday. The reduction will affect cargo, private and passenger traffic. Reuters reported that the cuts would begin at 4% on Friday, escalate to 5% Saturday and 6% at Sunday, before reaching 10% next week, and that international flights were to be exempted from the initial cuts.

If Phil Foden performs so, too, do Manchester City. This was reiterated by his two-goal show that helped to sweep Pep Guardiola’s improving team to 10 points from four games at the league stage’s halfway juncture.

Factor in Erling Haaland, who decorated his captaincy for the night with a 27th goal (for club and country), and Waldemar Anton’s 72nd-minute jab home was solely an irritation.

Newcastle needed that. They have won six of their past eight games, which might sound like an impressive run of form, but their defeat at West Ham on Sunday was wretched enough to raise all manner of doubts. Three successive Champions League wins, though, all without conceding, means they probably need only one more victory from their final four games to secure a place in the playoff round, while two wins and a draw would almost certainly secure a top‑eight place and automatic passage to the last 16.

This Newcastle are a team with an extremely high ceiling and a very low floor. They are capable of hammering Union Saint-Gilloise and pummelling Benfica in the Champions League and outplaying Tottenham in the Carabao Cup. But they are also capable of losing 3-1 against West Ham and being grateful it wasn’t worse. They are both the amiable doctor and the vicious criminal, both ferociously energetic winners and lethargic disappointments, both Jekyll and Hyde.

Anthony Hemingway, who is both director and executive producer on the legal drama, has defended the show which has been the subject of a critical pile-on

• The Guardian has only ever published 15 zero-star reviews. Here they all are

One of the directors of the critically maligned legal drama All’s Fair has responded to negative reviews, saying that “not everything is for everybody”.

Anthony Hemingway, who has directed four episodes of the show and is an executive producer on it, was asked about his thoughts on the overwhelmingly bad reviews in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

• Fans banned from attending match at Aston Villa

• Police granted section 60 stop-and-search powers

The Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Issouf Sissokho urged his teammates to make their supporters smile against Aston Villa, after away fans were banned from the politically charged Europa League match on Thursday.

The Israeli club’s fans were prohibited from attending on public safety grounds but, despite the ban, West Midlands police have been granted section 60 stop-and-search powers and plan to deploy more than 700 officers around Villa Park to cope with protests and potential unrest.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers apologises for invading privacy of man wrongly arrested for high-profile murder

Rupert Murdoch’s news publisher in the UK agreed to pay “substantial damages” to a man wrongly arrested for a high-profile murder, after apologising for the invasion of his privacy.

Christopher Jefferies, a retired schoolteacher and landlord from Bristol, was wrongfully arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, a landscape architect.

Justices grill administration over imposition of steep duties as Sotomayor says: ‘I just don’t understand this argument’

The US supreme court appeared skeptical of the legal basis of the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariff regime on Wednesday after justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the levies.

Justices heard oral arguments on Wednesday morning on the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs , a crucial legal test of his controversial economic strategy – and power.

Decision is bitter blow to Brazil ahead of fund’s launch at Cop30 – and an embarrassment to Prince William

• ‘We’re leading the way’: Starmer defends plans for green economy before Cop30

The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit.

Keir Starmer flew to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, on Wednesday to join the summit of world leaders hosted by Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva.

Federal judge concerned that justice department sought to ‘indict first and investigate later’ in case of ex-FBI director

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director James Comey to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

Magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick instructed prosecutors to produce by the end of the day on Thursday grand jury materials as well as other evidence that investigators seized during the investigation. The order followed arguments in which Comey’s attorneys said they were at a disadvantage because they had not been able to review materials that were gathered years ago.

Demands of absolute loyalty and attacks on institutions have raised memories of Mao-style chaos from US watchers in China

When Vickie Wang, a budding standup comedian, gets on stage in New York, she’s not just thinking about what jokes to crack. She’s also thinking about which ones to avoid. “I don’t criticise the administration directly,” she said. Or if she does, she makes sure it’s not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly publish something where I directly criticise the government … I think it’s a learned behaviour from China”.

Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025 she relocated to the US. When she arrived, she went on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy”, going to talks, protests and diving into New York’s public library.

Thrilling American jazz drummer, pianist and composer who played with some of the genre’s greatest stars

In improvisational music, ungoverned by conductors or sacrosanct scores, and given to abrupt shifts of direction on the whims of performers, drummers are often the intuitive navigators. One of the most creative and viscerally thrilling exponents of that pivotal jazz art was Jack DeJohnette, the percussionist, pianist, composer and bandleader, who has died aged 83.

DeJohnette’s CV glitters with the names of the biggest jazz stars of the second half of the 20th century, and with good reason. In his youth, he played genres from R&B to free-jazz in his hometown, Chicago (alongside some of the innovative founders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians – AACM – and occasionally playing in Sun Ra’s Arkestra), before joining the most widely celebrated of early jazz-rock fusion groups, led by the saxophonist Charles Lloyd and including a then-unknown young pianist called Keith Jarrett.

Chelsea’s precision is nowhere to be seen when Enzo Maresca rings the changes. Chaos tends to set in whenever the Italian tries to freshen things up by making use of a deep but raw squad and he is unlikely to be in a rush to rotate again in the Champions League after seeing a weakened team fail to douse Qarabag’s skill and spirit on a raucous night in Baku.

There was no doubt Qarabag were the happier team at the conclusion of this absorbing 2-2 draw. Chelsea, by contrast, were merely grateful that their 5,000-mile round trip to Azerbaijan had not ended in major embarrassment. Not once were they were in control against defiant opposition, even after going ahead through the outstanding Estêvão Willian, and it was hardly ideal that Maresca had to make three changes when his players went down the tunnel with their egos bruised and damage to repair after a shambolic first half.

PM defies critics calling for a slowdown as he flies to Brazil, where he may have frosty reception after opting out of tropical forest fund

• UK opts out of flagship fund to protect Amazon and other threatened tropical forests

The UK will lead on tackling the climate crisis, the prime minister vowed on Wednesday, despite critics calling for a slowdown, because shifting to a low-carbon economy will cut bills, boost economic growth and bring national renewal.

But his words risked being overshadowed by a bitter row over funding for tropical forest preservation at the UN Cop30 climate conference.

The author has won the experimental literary fiction prize for his ‘dizzying, encyclopaedic’ fifth book, We Live Here Now

CD Rose has won the 2025 Goldsmiths prize for his novel We Live Here Now, praised by judges as “hilarious and deeply haunting”.

The £10,000 award, now in its 13th year, honours “mould-breaking” fiction. The winner was announced at a ceremony in central London on Wednesday evening.

To order We Live Here Now and browse the shortlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

⚽️ Champions League updates from the 8pm GMT games
⚽️ Live scores | Qarabag 2-2 Chelsea report | And email Scott

Teams are emerging from tunnels all across Europe. Zadok the Priest (Version) blaring out hither and yon. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes!

Going into the 8pm kick-offs, here’s how the league phase currently looks. When it’s all completed after eight games, the top eight will go through to the round of 16, positions nine to 16 will be seeded in the knockout stage and be drawn against positions 17 to 24, and everyone below will go home. So that’s a pretty big defeat for Villarreal in Cyprus tonight … and Chelsea now have a job on if they want to grab one of those top-eight spots, because they host Barcelona next, and still have to travel to Atalanta and Napoli.

Memoir chronicles Juan Carlos’s anointment as heir to dictator and death of younger brother when playing with pistols

A memoir by Spain’s disgraced former king chronicles his anointment as heir to the dictator Francisco Franco, his role in saving democracy from a coup attempt in 1981, and his grief at the death of his younger brother when the two were “playing” with a pistol as teenagers.

The book, published 11 years after Juan Carlos’s abdication and exile, is titled Reconciliation but appears to do anything but, instead detailing how he feels abandoned and misunderstood by his son and heir, King Felipe VI, and by other close family members.