Directive could prevent future administrations from prosecuting more than 70 people named

Donald Trump is in Washington today. At 11am ET, he’ll welcome Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa to the White House. This will be the first visit by a Syrian head of state since the country gained independence in 1946.

Trump has already listed several sanctions on Syria, and the leaders are set to discuss more about this in al-Sharaa’s meeting today. Currently the meeting is closed to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.

Reverse firings of federal workers that the White House carried out after the shutdown began.

Provide back pay for all federal employees including military personnel, border patrol agents and air-traffic controllers.

The dramatic top-of-the table encounter between Arsenal and Chelsea was marred by poor officiating while Manchester City benefit from ‘mentality shift’

There were many interesting talking points from the dramatic stalemate between Arsenal and Chelsea – Alyssa Thompson’s stunning goal for the Blues, the impressive defensive performance of Lotte Wubben-Moy, the 56,537-strong crowd, Chelsea’s choice of a back four over a back five, Arsenal’s decision not to play with a natural No 6 – but, disappointingly, it is the quality of the officiating that has and will dominate. Both Renée Slegers and Sonia Bompastor said afterwards that they think the introduction of video assistant referees would be a positive step in helping eliminate the most obvious of errors, such as Blackstenius’s goal being ruled out for a nonexistent handball, and in assisting with the more marginal calls: whether Alessia Russo was offside for her goal or Frida Maanum was offside when her effort was ruled out.

‘We need justice’: Slegers calls for VAR after officials deny Arsenal

Russo earns draw with Chelsea but Arsenal rue decisions

WSL roundup: City go top, Liverpool and West Ham stay winless

• McLaren driver holds 24-point lead with three races to go

• British driver ‘not confident’ about next race in Las Vegas

Lando Norris has played down title expectations having taken a 24-point world championship lead after the São Paulo Grand Prix, warning he had a long way to go and that he did not expect to be competitive at the next round in Las Vegas.

Norris won with a commanding drive from pole at Interlagos while his title rival and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri could manage only fifth. Max Verstappen delivered a magnificent performance in a Red Bull that was quicker than the McLaren to come back from 19th to third, but his heroics only limited the damage to his title hopes as Norris opened a clear gap on his two competitors.

The Land in Winter has shortest odds of victory, ahead of Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Andrew Miller is the bookmakers’ favourite to win the 2025 Booker prize, which will be announced on Monday evening in London.

The English author tops the William Hill odds at 6/4 for The Land in Winter, a novel set in 1960s England which follows two marriages struggling under the weight of postwar class divisions, professional dislocation and emotional estrangement. Miller was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2001 for his novel Oxygen.

US defense secretary says without providing evidence that dead from strikes in eastern Pacific were ‘narco-terrorists’

US forces struck two more alleged drug trafficking boats off the coast of South America, killing six people, the Trump administration’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said.

The US began carrying out such strikes – which some experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers – in early September, taking aim at vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

You’ll be surprised how easy it is to make your own chilli crisp oil, and then how quickly this noodle dish comes together

I make variations of stir-fried mushrooms and tofu with noodles (or rice) all the time, but this one, topped with a homemade peanut chilli crisp oil, has gone straight to the top of my repertoire. And the chilli oil couldn’t be easier to make, plus there’s enough to stash in the fridge for the week to come – spoon over eggy crumpets, fried rice or cheese on toast.

It’s great the taboo is fading. But as TikTok influencers tout them, it’s a slippery slope to the memeification of disorders

Antidepressants are all the rage now, so much so that influencers are promoting them on TikTok, where mostly millennial and gen Z women have built micro-communities around hashtags like #lexaprotok, #zoloftgang and #livelaughlexapro.

According to data analyzed by the Wall Street Journal, content related to antidepressants has recently exploded. The hashtag #antidepressants has surpassed 1.3bn views, according to the data, and searches for #lexapro have more than tripled since 2022. The data also showed that user shares per video tagged #ssri nearly quadrupled from 2022 to 2025.

Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist

Critics say that fifth Pfas Trump’s EPA has proposed for approval this year would put food and water supply at risk

The Trump administration is poised to again approve a new Pfas “forever chemical” pesticide ingredient, a move that is drawing criticism from public health advocates who say the nation’s food and water supply is being put at more risk from the dangerous compounds.

The substance would be sprayed on corn, soybeans and wheat, and it marks the fifth Pfas pesticide ingredient the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed for approval under Donald Trump’s second term as US president.

The Netflix film graphically highlights the importance mobiles bring to both work and home life, as well as their potential to wreak havoc on a global scale

Since its release, A House of Dynamite has triggered its own fallout over how accurately the film depicts the government’s immediate response to a nuclear attack of unknown origin. Could a missile fired from the Pacific really reach Chicago in just 18 minutes? Is the decision to retaliate solely in the president’s hands?

In particular, the Pentagon has challenged the film’s suggestion that US-launched interceptor missiles have only a 61% success rate at shooting down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, insisting that the real figure is 100% in testing. (The nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation puts it even lower than the film, at 55%.)

Werder Bremen inflicted a seventh defeat in eight games on a club that has struggled to build an identity since 2009 title

‘All I want in life’s a little bit of love to take the pain away,” sang Jason Pierce in the opening line of Spiritualized’s 1997 opus Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. And just a little bit has always been all Wolfsburg have been likely to get. One of a couple of special cases in the Bundesliga, a factory team derided by fans of other clubs for their lack of ‘realness’, with their matchups with Bayer Leverkusen only spared the previous epithet of ‘El Plastico’ in recent years due to Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig joining the elite on a quasi-permanent basis.

And here they are now floating in space, neither the most hated team by opposing teams’ ultras who consider them inauthentic (that would be either of the two above) nor the best funded by a corporate (that would be Leipzig). Rampantly successful over the last few years, Leverkusen are more comfortable in their own skin and have the wit to lean into how they have commonly been perceived; their club shop sells T-shirts with the legend ‘keine tradition seit 1904’.

Estate of former Russian senator Vladimir Sloutsker, who died in September, ordered to pay £25m to his ex-wife

A political ally of Vladimir Putin who declared poverty to a London divorce court had £217m-worth of property and land in London and Moscow as well as £21m in investments and a £4m art collection, a judge has found.

Vladimir Sloutsker, 69, who died in September from cancer, fought until the end to hide his assets despite previously enjoying “a lifestyle consistent with extreme wealth” with his ex-wife and children, including a nine-bedroom £45m family home in South Kensington in central London.

The NFL is built on parity. But this season the NFC only has a few contenders while even the best teams in the AFC have worrying flaws

No league sells parity like the NFL: it’s the entire brand. But through 10 weeks of this season, this isn’t a league that is equally balanced between the good, the bad and the mediocre. It’s one where most of the league is simply fine.

In the NFC, at least, there is some clarity. The Rams and Seahawks (both 7-2) look like the most complete teams in football, and secured blowout wins on Sunday. The 6-2 Eagles, despite their struggles, still have one of the most talented rosters in the league, likewise with the Packers (5-2-1). Even the Lions (6-3), who have been inconsistent along both lines of scrimmage and have been dealing with tension on their coaching staff, have proven they can hammer good teams. For all five, you can still easily put together a Super Bowl path.

England’s Test team have now all arrived in Australia, but with 11 days to go until battle commences their preparation seems a little underwhelming

Just beyond the boundary’s edge, a cockatoo flew into the hole in a eucalyptus tree where it is nesting. Beyond that, the Swan River flowed. Galahs, chests as pink as those any number of Englishmen will be sporting in a couple of weeks’ time, snuffled on the grass. Other birds flitted around the park, even those with less eye-catching plumage sporting eye-catching names: black-faced cuckooshrikes; willie-wagtails. Um, ducks.

Given that they visited Wellington’s Basin Reserve, Christchurch’s Hagley Oval and the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui at various stages during their white-ball tour of New Zealand, it is tempting to conclude that England have arranged their various stopping points of the winter on aesthetic rather than sporting grounds. Even in this company, though, Lilac Hill stands tall.

Protest at Mowaa comes amid dispute over ownership of Benin bronzes looted by British colonial forces

Protesters have disrupted a preview event at a new museum in Nigeria that has become embroiled in a row over the restitution of artefacts looted by British colonial forces.

In a video circulating on social media, demonstrators were seen loudly chanting: “Oba ghato kpere ise” (“Long live the king” in Bini language) while foreign and local visitors were ushered out of the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) by security personnel in Benin City. Reporters at the scene said there was minor damage to the museum, which is due to open to the public on Tuesday.

Ari loved his community and set up a volunteer group to fight wildfires. One day his brother Bilal received the phone call he had long dreaded. This is Bilal’s story

Location Halabja, Iraq

Disaster Wildfires, 2025

Bilal Mukhtar is a teacher living in Halabja, in the Hawraman region of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. Wildfires are breaking out here with increasing frequency, caused by natural events and compounded by hotter and drier weather. Iraq is experiencing its worst drought in nearly a century. Climate change makes drought and wildfire in Iraq more likely.

In 1995, as one of the Ogoni Nine, he was hanged after protesting against Shell’s oil pollution. With education and a move towards renewable energy, we can honour his legacy

Earlier this year, my father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his eight colleagues, known collectively as the Ogoni Nine, were pardoned for a crime they never committed. After peacefully campaigning against environmental degradation of Ogoniland in Nigeria at the hands of the oil industry, they were imprisoned by the military dictatorship on false charges of treason and incitement to murder, following a trial condemned by the international community as a sham.

On 10 November 1995, the men were executed by hanging.

Women, in St Peter’s Square for audience with Pope Leo in which he condemned antisemitism, say guard ‘noticeably hissed at us’

A member of the Vatican’s Swiss Guards, the world’s smallest army whose primary role is to protect the pope, is under investigation for allegedly making a spitting gesture towards two Jewish women.

The alleged incident occurred at one of the side entrances to St Peter’s Square as people gathered for a general audience on 29 October, during which Pope Leo condemned antisemitism.

Sassuolo forward is rarest of beasts – a one-club man – and virtuoso display against Atalanta reinforced his hero status

The man with the moustache held his teammate in a headlock and stared down the TV camera lens. “Berardi!” he yelled, jabbing a finger at the back of his colleague’s bonce. “BE-RAR-DI!”

It felt like that moment in a kids’ movie when the big brother drags his meek sibling back into frame after beating up the school bully. Mess with him again and see what happens. Only, Tarik Muharemovic is nine years younger than Domenico Berardi. And it was the older player, again, who had spent this afternoon tormenting his peers.

It’s the ultimate ick: trying to form a deep, lasting connection with a person who outsources original thought

It was a setting fit for a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, in a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if to tell me a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man described using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

As Democrats bask in electoral success the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary offer a cautionary tale

In the afterglow of electoral triumph, hope springs renewed for Democrats confined to the frustrating impotence of political opposition.

Boosted by last week’s electoral wins in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere, as well as California’s affirmation of Proposition 50 allowing for congressional redistricting, party members suddenly feel able to dream that future elections may herald an escape route from the Donald Trump era.

Samir Shah denies suggestion corporation tried to bury stories and says aim was always to be transparent

We have heard from Culture, Media and Sport committee chair Caroline Dinenage, who has suggested that the outgoing BBC director Tim Davie ignored an internal dossier into bias at the BBC (see post at 09.06 for more detail on the dossier).

She said Davie “ignored” concerns raised in Michael Prescott’s report over the way the speech by Donald Trump was edited for Panorama.

I’m very sad about Tim Davie stepping down. I think he was an effective leader at the BBC.

I think he was a great champion for public service media, but there is no escaping the fact that he was very slow to act on this particular issue. But this isn’t the first time and on this particular issue, Michael Prescott’s report, he just didn’t take it seriously until it was too late.

I would like to say it has been the privilege of my career to serve as the CEO of BBC News and to work with our brilliant team of journalists.

I stepped down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I’d like to make one thing very clear, BBC News is not institutionally biased. That’s why it’s the world’s most trusted news provider.

Thirty-four-year-old was taken to hospital after city centre stabbing on Friday evening

A woman who was stabbed in the neck in Birmingham city centre on Friday night has died from her injuries, police have confirmed.

The 34-year-old woman was taken to hospital with a serious neck wound after the attack outside the entrance to Birmingham New Street station shortly before 9pm.

Resulting pollution on Camber Sands beach poses threat to wildlife including dolphins and seals

Southern Water has taken responsibility for the catastrophic spill of plastic biobeads that polluted the Sussex coastline.

Local charities reported a huge spill of millions of biobeads over the weekend, washing up on beaches including Camber Sands. Andy Dinsdale, the founder of the plastic pollution campaign group Strandliners, said it was the worst pollution event he had seen.

This week we will be publishing a run-down of our 51 judges’ greatest Ashes cricketers in the buildup to this year’s series opener on 21 November. Here’s how we did it

Mark Waugh or Steve? Greg or Ian Chappell? Will it be England’s sepia-tinted Sydney F Barnes, the grumpy and moustachioed Jimmy Anderson of his day, or Australia’s Sidney G Barnes, an eccentric batter in the 1948 touring Invincibles?

Does Ivo Bligh’s place in Ashes folklore merit inclusion even if his 10.33 batting average wouldn’t get him in a village XI? Where do you place the legend of WG Grace in an all-time reckoning? And how do you weigh up Don Bradman’s astonishing statistics against the era in which he batted?