Ukrainian leader expresses hope for progress amid Trump’s Gaza deal, saying ‘it brings more hope for peace in other regions’
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday it had opened a criminal case against exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, accusing him of creating a “terrorist organisation” and of plotting to violently seize power.
According to Reutes, the FSB said it was investigating more than 20 other people as part of the same case, including prominent dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, ex-prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and leading economists Sergei Aleksashenko and Sergei Guriev.
In the 1870s, a civil engineer devised early handheld cameras able to capture scenes with more detail than ever. He used the technology to document people on New York streets, from musicians to beggars to paperboys. The work of the innovator, often referred to as the ‘father of instantaneous photography’, has been compiled into a book by Erik Hesselberg called Candid New York: The Pioneering Photography of George Bradford Brainerd, out on 21 October
It’s actually a euphorbia, and some careful pruning will solve your problem – and result in a more attractive plant
What’s the problem?
I’ve had this cactus for many years, but it keeps getting taller and soon it will hit the ceiling. How can I stop the plant growing without doing it harm?
Diagnosis
The plant in question isn’t a true cactus at all, but a succulent called Euphorbia trigona, also known as the African milk tree. Like many columnar euphorbias, it can shoot up rapidly indoors if it’s happy, often outgrowing its space. Luckily, the plant responds well to pruning if done carefully.
Drug traffickers gaining influence by stepping in and offering donations after Milei’s sweeping social cuts
In a small colourful room tucked away in the south of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, four women are making bread and pizza bases, the bright spring sun shining strong outside the windows, which are covered in black metal mesh.
As they flew above Yu Suzuki’s innovative, psychedelic 3D landscapes combating space dragons and alien rock monsters, the moving arcade cabinet would fling players around and physically involve them in the action
During our family’s holidays in the 1980s, most of which were spent at classic English seaside resorts, I spent all my time and pocket money trawling the arcades. From Shanklin to Blackpool, I played them all, attracted by those vast bulb-lit frontages, the enticing names (Fantasy Land! Treasure Island!), and of course by the bleeping, flashing video machines within. And while I spent many hours on the staple classics – Pac-Man, Galaxian, Kung Fu Master – there was one particular game I always looked out for. A weird, thrilling design classic. A total experience, operating somewhere between a traditional arcade game, a flight sim and a rollercoaster. At the time, it seemed impossibly futuristic. Now, it is 40 years old.
Released by Sega in 1985, Space Harrier is a 3D space shooter in which you control a jetpack super soldier named Harrier, who flies into the screen blasting surreal alien enemies above a psychedelic landscape. When designer Yu Suzuki was first tasked with overseeing its development, the game had been conceived as an authentic military flight shooter, but the graphical limitations of the day made that impossible – there was too much complex animation. So Suzuki, inspired by the flying sequences in the fantasy movie The NeverEnding Story, envisaged something different and more surreal, with a flying character rather than a fighter plane and aliens resembling stone giants and dragons. It was colourful and crazy, like a Roger Dean painting brought to life by the Memphis Group.
So much about the UK jobs market is influenced by Rachel Reeves. Without overdoing the blame, say many experts, the chancellor’s tough budget last year and the likelihood of a repeat next month hangs over employers and how they recruit and pay staff.
The latest official figures show a rising number of young people out of work in the three months to August. More broadly, unemployment rose to a four-year high and the number of vacancies fell. And then there was the stubborn increase in the public sector wage bill, which outpaced the much more modest increase in private sector wages.
The actor Keanu Reeves has paid tribute to Diane Keaton following her death in California on Saturday aged 79.
Speaking on the red carpet at a screening in New York of his latest film, Good Fortune, Reeves told E! News: “She was very nice to me. [A] generous, generous artist and a very special, unique person.”
Clambering up bell towers, dancing the night away and falling in love – how ‘saint’ Malala forged a new identity
Lying in her Birmingham hospital bed in the weeks after she’d been shot in the head by a Taliban assassin, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai used to imagine the conversation she would have with Taliban leadership. “If they would just sit down with me … I could reason with them and convince them to end their reign of misogyny and violence,” she writes in her new memoir.
Malala kept a notebook by her bed, filled with rhetorical strategies and talking points – the names of journalists who might be able to broker a meeting with the Taliban, the Qur’an verses she could cite to show that girls do have a right to education in Islam, the things she could say to establish her own credentials as a God-fearing Muslim. Of course, that conversation never happened. Much later, after the fall of Afghanistan in 2021, it made her wince to recall her naive belief that the Taliban would ever listen to her.
Activists call for fresh demonstrations this weekend with three people killed and more than 500 reportedly arrested since unrest started in late September
Ayoub Oubalat shares a picture of what he says is his younger brother covered with a white blanket. The man’s eyes are closed and his left eye is bruised blue. At the crown of his head a hole is visible within his dark curly hair, the entry point where the bullet pierced, now shaved and stitched with blue and black thread.
A recently graduated film-maker, Abdessamade, 24, and two others were allegedly killed on 1 October when security forces opened fire on protesters in the town of Lqliâa, near the Atlantic coastal town of Agadir.
There are plenty of laughs and a fair bit of trauma to process when a depressed man takes a monkey woman across country
It is perhaps an unexpected development that one of the most erotic moments in cinema this year is a frottage scene involving a woman half-dressed as a monkey. By this point in comedian Nina Conti’s directorial debut, there is already a heady backlog of sexual tension inside a camper van between suicidal radio host Roy (Shenoah Allen) and the monkey (Nina Conti) who saved him from stringing himself up in a New Mexico motel room. He’s understandably curious to find out who’s underneath the get-up and the persona that comes with it – a profane blowhard who holds forth on everything around them in the stuffy middle-England tones of Anne Robinson.
The simian lets some stuff slip about her inner human: she used to be Jane, who worked as nightclub mascot for her abusive stepfather Wade (Bill Wise) and began to associate too much with her costume. After her mother’s death from cancer, she then self-destructively shacked up with Wade; having decided to flee his clutches, she insists Roy take her to a Colorado lake where she plans to set up a banana pontoon business. He has his own reckoning planned: going to the graveyard and digging up his hated father to recover a luxury watch with which he will finance her lake-leisure dreams.
A flurry of takeover talk speculation has pushed up shares in budget airline EasyJet this morning.
EasyJet’s shares are up over 7%, leading the risers on the FTSE100 share index.
“[The group] does not believe the redress methodology proposed by the FCA appropriately reflects actual customer loss or achieves a proportionate outcome.
“...the FCA’s proposed approach to assessing unfairness does not align with the legal clarity provided by the supreme court judgement in respect of the “Johnson” case, which confirmed that the test for unfairness is highly fact specific and must take into account a broad range of factors. The group will continue to engage with the FCA in respect of these points.
“Many motor finance lenders did not comply with the law or the rules. It’s time their customers get fair compensation. Recent court judgments show that liabilities exist no matter what.
“We believe our scheme is the best way to settle the issue for both consumers and firms, and alternatives would be more costly and take longer. We recognise not everyone will get everything they would like. But it’s vital we draw a line under the issue so a trusted motor finance market can continue to serve millions of families every year.”
Defence minister says delay in returning more bodies would be a violation of ceasefire as forces open fire on people approaching troops in northern Gaza
Despite the ceasefire agreement, a medical source told Palestinian news agency Wafa today that four people were killed when Israeli drones fired at residents inspecting their homes in Gaza’s eastern Shejaiya neighbourhood. We have not yet been able to independently verify this information.
Israel’s military said it opened fire on Tuesday to remove a threat posed by several suspects who approached Israeli forces operating in the northern Gaza Strip.
Counter-terror laws being ‘weaponised’ against pro-Palestine groups in UK, US, France and Germany, says FIDH
The right to protest has come under sustained attack in the west, according to a report highlighting the growing criminalisation of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) pays particular attention to the UK, the US, France and Germany, where it says governments have “weaponised” counter-terrorism legislation as well as the fight against antisemitism to suppress dissent and support for Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Mosengo-Omba said to run CAF as a ‘proprietorship’
Employee: ‘Anyone who dares speak up is terminated’
The Confederation of African Football’s general secretary, Véron Mosengo-Omba, has been accused of running the organisation as his “proprietorship” and creating a toxic culture of fear where employees are fired for speaking out against him.
Several former and current members of staff have told the Guardian there is an atmosphere of intimidation and paranoia at the Caf headquarters in Cairo, where Mosengo-Omba is accused of sidelining colleagues and silencing whistleblowers.
I long for physical intimacy and feel ashamed and unattractive when she rebuffs me – but she gets angry when I try to discuss it
My wife and I have been together for more than 10 years and married for four. We have small children. I love her deeply, but our marriage is essentially empty of sex and physical intimacy, and she refuses to talk about it beyond acknowledging there is a problem. I am a woman who values physical intimacy and I am deeply attracted to her. I want to feel more desired and alive. But lovemaking is extremely rare, always initiated by me and follows the same pattern. She does not focus on giving me pleasure. The rest of the time I am rebuffed, leaving me feeling ashamed and unattractive. Even the mildest of playful or suggestive messages I send are met with silence. So I bother less and less.
Naturally, I want to know what is going on for her. We are already having couples therapy, but this is not a subject we have tackled successfully. Outside these sessions, my attempts to discuss it are either avoided or met with anger. Do I simply give up, after so many years of trying and failing to make things better? I cannot forget my needs and desires just because they are not reciprocated.
In the latest novel from the acclaimed avant garde author, the narrator considers the impact of the relationships she’s left behind
“English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way,” Claire-Louise Bennett wrote in her first book, 2015’s Pond, a series of essayistic stories by an autofictional narrator. What was her first language, then? She doesn’t know, and she’s still in search of it. “I haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things.”
Bennett was concerned then – and remains concerned now – with finding words to make inner experience legible, and to make familiar objects, places and actions unfamiliar. Pond was a kind of phenomenology of 21st-century everyday female experience, concentrating on the narrator’s momentary physical and mental feelings and sensation, isolated from the larger social world. Bennett became an acclaimed avant garde writer, and if acclaimed and avant garde may seem at odds, then that tension has powered her books ever since, as she’s been drawn to working on larger scales. In Checkout 19 she showed this phenomenological vision unfurling across a life. It was a kind of Künstlerroman, a messy, sparkling book that threw together the narrator’s early reading history with her early story writing (she retold the picaresque antics of her first literary protagonist, Tarquin Superbus) and her experiences of menstruation and sex.
Grace Hughes-Hallett’s film focuses on the story of Jim Ambrose, who was raised female after he was born with atypical genitals
Although this documentary spreads its net wide to encompass the recent history of intersex identity in the US, mostly it centres around the story of Jim Ambrose, who until he was 20 years old was called Kristi and raised female. Raised in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, Jim was born in 1976 with XY chromosomes and had atypical genitals. So his parents, under the advice of a local doctor, decided to have surgery performed on the infant to create more female-looking organs, and then raised him as a girl without ever telling him the truth. It wasn’t until he read about intersex people in a university feminism course that he realised who he really was. Although Jim would go through further painful surgeries and much mental anguish, eventually he would find his voice as an activist, a place within the increasingly visible intersex community, and a loving partner.
The emotional climax of the film follows Jim as he prepares to meet the surgeon who operated on him as a baby. The encounter doesn’t go at all as you might expect, given footage earlier in the film where one intersex person talks about getting revenge using a rusty knife. Let’s just say. The phrases “at the time” and “in retrospect” get invoked a lot.
From Rocky Horror to the Muppets, Curry’s extraordinary career made him world-famous. Then, a stroke left him paralysed. The actor talks about his cocaine years, his friendship with David Bowie – and the moment his mother came at him with a knife
‘It’s difficult not to see it as a kind of finale,” says Tim Curry of his memoir, Vagabond. That he’s written it at all is a surprise. Curry has always liked the comfort of privacy – my efforts to persuade him to do an interview with the Guardian began more than five years ago. At 79, he still prefers looking forward, too, which is how he has covered so much ground in his career.
Boundless energy has been the actor’s hallmark. He once exerted so much while filming the murder mystery comedy Clue – in which he plays the frantic, sharp-tongued butler Wadsworth – that a nurse who took his blood pressure on set told him he was at risk of having a heart attack.
I’ve always tried to make my villains amusing. It gives them a bit more edge
With general elections in two weeks, housing crisis is a big issue, with the far-right Party for Freedom blaming migrants
Carlos Fernandes is proud of the metalwork he does on Dutch superyachts that sail the world. But the Portuguese migrant worker was surprised to hear he might be paying hundreds of euros too much in monthly rent for his family’s apartment.
“We found it and we moved in,” he said. “It should be between €800 and €1,115 but we are paying €1,380.”
Running tourism is booming and nowhere more so than in France where a 24km race around Nîmes doubles as a surreal, whistlestop sightseeing tour
We could hear the band before we saw it: a group of retirement home residents with trumpets and drums waiting to greet us as we approached. Others using wheelchairs waved homemade flags. As we swarmed into the building and up the staircase, a bottleneck formed. I slowed down as a nurse put a stamp on my sweaty arm, then I jogged off down the corridor.
Running through a retirement home is just one of the many surreal moments that participants signing up for the Nîmes Urban Trail (NUT) get to experience on this 24km race around the city, which takes place each February. Not only does the route give you a whistlestop sightseeing tour, taking you past the town’s impressive Roman monuments and landmarks, it also grants you access to places that would normally be off limits to outsiders.
Pinball, boomboxes and vintage cars! Victor Wedderburn’s photographs capture the joys – and struggles – of the era for the city’s immigrant communities
Premium commuter cans upgraded with longer battery life, USB-C audio and improved sound, but still cost a lot
Bose has updated its top-of-the-line noise-cancelling headphones with longer battery, USB-C audio and premium materials, making the commuter favourites even better.
The second-generation QuietComfort Ultra headphones still have an expensive price tag, from £450 (€450/$450/A$700), which is more than most competitors, including Sony’s WH-1000XM6.
Controversial law change that forced councils to put the fate of Māori wards to a public vote saw 25 vote to disestablish the guaranteed seats
The number of guaranteed seats for Māori representatives on New Zealand councils will be slashed by more than half, following a controversial law change that forced local governments to put the fate of hard-won Māori seats to a public vote.
Māori wards, which may have one or more councillors depending on local population numbers, were established in 2001 to give Indigenous voters the option to vote for a guaranteed Māori representative in local and regional authorities. Initially, councils could only establish a Māori ward by first putting it to a public vote in their area. Communities often spent years generating local support and pushing their councils to create Māori wards.
Kosovo win 1-0 in Stockholm to keep playoff hopes alive
France held 2-2 by Iceland in Reykjavik
Sweden’s faint hopes of qualifying for the World Cup were all-but extinguished as the 2018 quarter-finalists lost 1-0 against Kosovo in Stockholm. Fisnik Asllani fired a first-half effort that allowed the Kosovans to complete a remarkable double over their opponents and boost their own hopes of booking at least a playoff place.
Sweden – who featured £125m man Alexander Isak up front alongside Viktor Gyökeres– remain rooted to the bottom of Group B on one point. Isak, who played another 90 minutes after doing the same in the 2-0 defeat to Switzerland on Friday, failed to find the target as he continues to work his way back to fitness following his summer move from Newcastle to Liverpool. Leaders Switzerland dropped their first points of the campaign as they were held to a goalless draw by Slovenia in Ljubljana.
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