The global economy has shown “unexpected resilience” in the face of Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the full impact is yet to be felt, and outlook for growth remains “dim”, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.
As policymakers gather in Washington for its annual meetings, the IMF has upgraded its forecast for global GDP growth this year to 3.2%, from 3% at its last update in July. Next year’s global forecast is unchanged, at 3.1%.
Evacuations ordered in about 115 Los Angeles area homes as heavy rain and wind raise fears of mudslides and flooding
A rare October storm arrived in California on Tuesday and threatened to pummel wildfire-scarred Los Angeles neighborhoods with heavy rain, high winds and possible mudslides. Some homes were ordered to evacuate.
The evacuations covered about 115 homes mostly in Pacific Palisades and Mandeville Canyon, both struck by a massive inferno in January that killed more than 30 people in all and destroyed more than 17,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles county.
Democracy is under attack – and the watchdog agency has no quorum. It must be restored
Threats to the US electoral process keep accelerating. Donald Trump is issuing increasingly unhinged demands that his political adversaries and those who fund speech that he views as contrary to his political agenda or supports his political opponents be prosecuted. When a prosecutor balked at this political intervention, Trump simply found one who is more compliant.
In what appears to be yet another attempt to concoct support for unproven claims of voter fraud, the Department of Justice has issued exhaustive voting records requests to multiple states. Voting rights lawsuits have been dismissed. A division targeting foreign interference in our elections has been dismembered. Attempts are under way to make voter registration more onerous. Alarmingly, at least one commentator has warned that the extraordinary call-out of the military against US civilians on US soil may be a “dress rehearsal” for taking over the 2026 election from the lawful administrators in the states. Even short of a takeover, one could well imagine this administration developing pretexts for troop deployments in Democratic strongholds during voting. Indeed, Trump has already called for the military to use American cities, at least those run by Democrats, as “training grounds” and ominously talks of a “war from within”.
Breaking both dawn and sanity, Twilight fan Jared Richards heads to the cinema to watch all five films for the 20th anniversary of Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric bestseller
It is about 4am on a Saturday morning and a delirious energy is emerging at Randwick Ritz’s dusk-to-dawn, 12-hour marathon of the Twilight Saga. The cinema has the airs of an airport terminal after significant delays; at this point, people no longer care how they look and are doing anything they can to stay comfortable.
We’ve reached the night’s 30-minute “breakfast break”, which means we are three of five films into the romantic tale of clumsy, quiet teen Bella Swan, who moves to the foggy forest town of Forks, Washington and falls for Edward Cullen, a (permanently) 17-year-old vampire.
The director of Sentimental Value and The Worst Person in the World made his English-language debut with this divisive family drama in 2015. It’s worth watching for Isabelle Huppert alone
Long before Joachim Trier made the Oscar-winning The Worst Person in the World and this year’s festival megahit Sentimental Value, there was 2015’s Louder than Bombs: a far stranger, slipperier film worth watching for Isabelle Huppert’s spectral turn alone. She plays a character also called Isabelle, a renowned war photographer whose secrets haunt her family three years after her sudden death.
Her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) still daydreams in class about the car crash that claimed her life, imagining her final, panicked moments. His brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and father Gene (Gabriel Byrne) know (and conceal) the truth: that her fateful, split-second swerve was an act of suicide.
After the jubilation in Israel of the return of the last Gaza hostages, stories of their time in captivity, hidden away in tents and tunnels, are emerging.
Some described being tortured and tormented. Others, though, recalled moments of co-existence with their captors under the most extreme of circumstances. One played cards with the men holding him and even cooked for them. Another said the captors would speak Hebrew for ease of communication.
The administration’s sweeping visa cancellations extend to Mexico’s political elite, alarming allies and rivals alike
The US government has revoked the visas of at least 50 politicians and government officials in Mexico amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug cartels and their suspected political allies, according to two Mexican officials.
The move has sent quiet shock waves through Mexico’s political elite, who regularly travel to the US. It also marks a significant broadening of US anti-narcotics action, with the Trump administration targeting active politicians usually seen as too diplomatically sensitive.
The influential billionaire investor has been giving secret lectures warning about Armageddon. Here’s why it matters
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. For the past week, my brain has been marinating in billionaire Peter Thiel’s byzantine musings about the antichrist and Armageddon. At this point, I’m pickled.
Why, you might ask, does it matter what a billionaire thinks about the antichrist? Good question!
Over the past month, Thiel has hosted four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a “small-o Orthodox Christian”, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst and that things such as international agencies, environmentalism and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise. It is a remarkable discursion that reveals the preoccupations of one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley and the US.
Thiel was on the forefront of conservative politics long before the rest of Silicon Valley took a rightward turn with Donald Trump’s second term as president. He’s had close ties to Trump for nearly a decade, is credited with catapulting JD Vance into the office of vice-president, and is bankrolling Republicans’ 2026 midterm campaigns. Making his early fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, he has personally contributed to Facebook as its first outside investor, as well as to SpaceX, OpenAI and more through his investment firm, Founders Fund. Palantir, which he co-founded, has won government contracts worth billions to create software for the Pentagon, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the NHS in the UK. Now, with more attention and political pull than ever, the billionaire is looking to spread his message about the antichrist, though he is better known for his savvy politics and investments than his contributions to theology.
In these meandering talks, Thiel is clearly aiming for the kind of syncretic thinking he so relished in the books and lectures of the philosopher and professor René Girard, whom he knew at Stanford University and whose work he has long admired. Unfortunately, more often than not, Thiel ends up with something that reads like Dan Brown.
Overall, the picture of Thiel that emerges in these lectures is someone desperately trying to disidentify from their own power. “You realize,” he tells his audience when interpreting a particular Japanese manga, “in my interpretation … who runs the world is something like the antichrist.” Here’s a man who, together with a couple of fellow Silicon Valley freaks, helped return a sundowning caudillo to a presidency he is obviously unsuited for, and who uses the awesome might of the US government to remake society and the world. A man who funds the companies that harness your data and determine who gets doxxed, deported, drone struck. Who funds far-right movements that seek to remake the very face of liberal democracy.
Emma Raducanu again struggled physically in a first-round exit at the Ningbo Open to China’s Zhu Lin, raising questions over the rest of her season.
The British No1 was back on court a week after retiring from her opening match in Wuhan with dizziness in hot and humid conditions. She posted a picture on social media from a doctor’s office and said she felt better but she faded after winning the opening set against Zhu and slumped to a 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 defeat.
Speculating on basketball players’ menstrual cycles is creepy and intrusive. In other words, it’s just what you’d expect when women must be punished for standing out
Forget the bald eagle or the Statue of Liberty – the best symbol of modern America may well be a neon green dildo. Women’s basketball fans will know exactly what I’m talking about. On 29 July, a brightly coloured sex toy was thrown on to the court during the final minutes of play in a WNBA game between the Golden State Valkyries and the Atlanta Dream. In the weeks that followed, more neon dildos were flung at female basketball players, with at least sixWNBA games disrupted.
The culprits were reportedly members of a cryptocurrency group trying to boost a memecoin called Green Dildo Coin. It was all very 2025: brainrot stunts, get-rich-quick schemes and memeified misogyny. And, of course, the Trump family joined in. Donald Trump Jr, who fancies himself an edgelord, posted a crude picture of his dad throwing a green dildo on to a court of young, female basketball players.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
As he conducts the symphony of applause for his peace deal, the key to understanding him is this: he’s not a politician, not even close – he’s a star
That old line that “politics is showbiz for ugly people” is so good it should be true, but it isn’t really. Politics has always been politics, and showbiz is something different. Not, however, in the unique case of Donald Trump. The current US president is best understood as a pomp-era megastar. Extraordinary, really, that Trump never even needed to get into cocaine. I think when he dies scientists will discover that his body naturally produced coke as a byproduct of digesting overcooked hamburgers.
Everything he says or does is redolent not of a politician, but an ego-driven entertainment industry behemoth. Monday afternoon in Egypt, with all the awkward world leaders box-stepping behind him, was very much The Official ReleaseParty of a Peace Process. Ego can, of course, be very creative, so it should be widely acknowledged that this hold-your-breath settlement simply couldn’t have happened without our leading man.
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
Trump administration says 700 notices were sent in error, while top CDC officer says ‘they didn’t think through what they were doing’
More than a thousand employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received notice that they were losing their jobs on Friday in a move that erased entire offices and was partially reversed over the weekend.
It caused “instability and whiplash”, said Debra Houry, former chief medical officer at the CDC.
Our panel proves there’s no magic trick, but one thing’s for sure: they don’t actually go soggy
What’s the best way to prep and cook mushrooms? Should I wipe, wash or simply peel them? Olivia, by email
“I could witter on about mushrooms all day,” says fungi fan Will Murray, which is good news, because Olivia’s question is somewhat contentious. The chef and co-founder of Fallow, Fowl and Roe, all in London, even grows his own shrooms, and advises his chefs to clean them “at least three times in bowls of cold water”, which brings us straight to the great mushroom washing debate, which has been rumbling on for years.
Writing in the Guardian in 2003, Heston Blumenthal called advice against washing mushrooms in water in case they become waterlogged “nonsense”. He cites Harold McGee, who tested this theory in his book The Curious Cook: “McGee weighed 252g fresh mushrooms, submerged them in water for five minutes, then removed them, blotted the surface moisture and reweighed them.” The result was 258g, which, as McGee noted, is a 16th of a teaspoon of extra water per mushroom. “This was after five minutes of soaking, so five to 10 seconds of rinsing under running water is going to make no difference whatsoever.”
Angela Gulner’s tragi-horror debut trades jump scares for depth, as a family home turns into a mirror of loss and madness
New mum Harper (Katie Parker) and her baby daughter move in with her mother Sadie (Patricia Heaton) to help finish sorting out an old fixer-upper of a home, bought with intent to flip. Also along for the ride is Bette (Emma Fitzpatrick), a live-in carer who turns out to be pregnant. But the path of property renovation never did run smooth, and soon, the weird noises and shadows and visions of a strange figure with a beak-like face start to take their toll on Harper. But how real is the threat? Is it all simply the projections of a frayed psyche or is something supernatural going on?
Initially, it seems that writer and director Angela Gulner’s debut (previously titled The Beldham) is akin to a low-budget version of The Babadook, the breakout hit from 2014 that saw Essie Davis’s young widow living perpetually on the verge of a breakdown. There is indeed a similar interplay here as to whether what is tormenting Harper is an external menace or has to do with her own mental state – but the situation is revealed to be a much sadder one than is initially apparent.
Company says rules similar to US ‘parental guidance’ film rating will be applied to teenagers’ accounts
Instagram is to adopt a version of the PG-13 cinema rating system to give parents stronger controls over their teenagers’ use of the social media platform.
Instagram, which is run by Meta, will start applying rules similar to the US “parental guidance” movie rating – first introduced 41 years ago – to all material on Instagram’s teen accounts. It means users aged under 18 will automatically be placed into the 13+ setting. They will be able to opt out only with their parents’ permission.
Shares in easyJet jumped after reports that the Swiss-headquartered shipping company MSC was considering a takeover of Europe’s second-largest budget airline.
The shares shot up 12% after a report from Corriere Della Sera, an Italian publication, which cited three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, their biggest bump in three years.
Mike Johnson speaks on federal government shutdown as it enters 14th day with little end in sight
China has hit back at accusations from the US that it is trying to hurt the world economy, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies appeared to re-escalate, amped up by aggressive rhetoric on both sides.
China’s commerce ministry said on Tuesday that the US was “threatening to intimidate” with the prospect of new tariffs on Chinese exports, “which is not the right way to get along with China”. Its spokesperson said that China would “fight to the end” in trade talks.
China has hit back at accusations from the US that it is trying to hurt the world economy, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies appeared to re-escalate, amped up by aggressive rhetoric on both sides.
China’s commerce ministry said on Tuesday that the US was “threatening to intimidate” with the prospect of new tariffs on Chinese exports, “which is not the right way to get along with China”. Its spokesperson said that China would “fight to the end” in trade talks.
History shows the crimes of empire were later mirrored on European soil. Dehumanisation and militarised terror both seem normalised now
It’s clear what Israel’s western-facilitated genocide has done to Gaza. But what has it done to us? Palestinians are the “canaries in a coalmine”, the Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada tells me. “We’re screaming of a major warning of what’s about to come your way. When you have a media-political class that’s relishing, delighting in the murder of our children, do you think they’re going to care about yours?”
There is a warning from our recent, terrifying past that we should heed. Colonialism, warned Martinican author Aimé Césaire, “works to decivilise the coloniser, to brutalise him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism”. The horrors of western imperialism – with its dehumanisation and violence – were, he argued, ultimately redirected into Europe in the form of fascism. This was the imperial “boomerang”, as the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
By blending diaspora players with homegrown talent the island nation of fewer than 600,000 people has qualified for 2026 tournament
On 5 July 1975, the Cape Verdean flag was raised for the first time at Estádio da Várzea in the capital city of Praia, marking the nation’s declaration of independence from Portugal. At that moment, there was no national football team – and no sign of what was to come.
Exactly 100 days after the 50th anniversary of independence, the country’s flag was waved at the very same ground, where crowds gathered to celebrate Cape Verde’s historic first World Cup qualification with the players who had earlier secured the decisive 3-0 win over Eswatini five miles away at the National Stadium. This island nation off the coast of Senegal, with a population of fewer than 600,000, has become the second-smallest country to qualify for the tournament, after Iceland in 2018.
An exiled Venezuelan human rights activist and a political consultant have been shot and wounded in an apparently targeted attack in Colombia’s capital.
Yendri Omar Velásquez Rodríguez and Luis Alejandro Peche Arteaga were shot on Monday as they left a building in north Bogotá, Colombian police said.
I had high hopes of making a difference when I joined Halifax Women but ended up feeling let down. Clubs have a responsibility to look after their players – at all levels
Football has given me some wonderful experiences. As a young Arab and Egyptian woman playing for Stoke City from 2017 to 2021 I broke barriers and that paved the way for some exciting opportunities. Fifa selected me as a 2022 World Cup ambassador and put me in a film with David Beckham; I also became an Adidas ambassador and worked as an Afcon pundit for the BBC.
But there have been less easy times as well. As an Egyptian international, representing a country that stands 95th in the Fifa rankings, there are obstacles to playing in the biggest leagues. Because of the points system for international players I left Stoke for the chance of playing second-tier football in Spain with Albacete. And since coming back to England, I’ve seen a world very distant from the new riches of the WSL.
Connexion
