Pedro Sánchez says his country must defend the democratic freedom ‘wrenched from us for so many years’

Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but with a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”.

Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975.

Brazilian president underlines need to reduce emissions as Turkey set to host next year’s summit

Two key pieces of climate jargon – adaptation and mitigation – are sometimes seen as alternative ways to survive a hotter planet. In reality, people’s worlds are already being torn apart by weather that has been made more violent by fossil fuel pollution and more deadly by human mismanagement.

A few weeks ago I spoke with Toñi García, who saw this first-hand. Here is her story.

Musician says seeing national flags on recent visits to Luton and Dublin ‘doesn’t make me feel safe’

The UK and Ireland are entering “dark times”, according to the singer Joy Crookes, who said the influence of far-right ideology on mainstream politics is comparable to the 1970s when the National Front was at its peak.

Crookes, who has just played two sold out shows at the O2 Academy in Brixton, said that the recent wave of nationalism and the far-right march through central London in September made her feel unsafe in the UK.

Labour accused of delaying new rules to avoid backlash, after leak of EHRC guidance saying trans people could be questioned based on looks

The UK government has insisted it will take as much time as necessary to “get right” new rules on access to single-sex spaces after a leak of guidance submitted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) raised concerns that its publication was being deliberately delayed.

The equalities watchdog submitted its formal guidance on how public bodies, businesses and other service providers should respond to April’s landmark supreme court ruling on biological sex to the UK government in September. Since then, its outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, has urged the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, to approve it “as soon as possible”.

• Wales and Northern Ireland could meet for finals place

• Ireland to face Denmark or North Macedonia if they win

Wales and Northern Ireland will do battle for a place at the 2026 World Cup if they navigate playoff semi-finals of differing toughness in March.

The pair would fight it out in Cardiff for a ticket to next year’s showpiece if Wales win a home tie against Bosnia & Herzegovina and Northern Ireland prevail in a fiendish trip to Italy, who are out of form but will be strongly favoured. It is a particularly appetising draw for Craig Bellamy’s Wales, who are flying after defeating North Macedonia 7-1 on Tuesday and are two home victories from a return to the most exalted stage.

Medical officials say 17 people killed in Khan Younis area and 16 in strikes on Gaza City

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month.

Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women.

US says Johannesburg meeting cannot issue final statement without its presence and that summit’s priorities ‘run counter to US policy views’

South Africa has accused the US of attempting “coercion by absentia” after Donald Trump’s administration confirmed it would boycott the G20 meeting in Johannesburg and said no final statement by G20 leaders could be issued without its presence.

The US sent a note last weekend confirming none of its officials would be attending the G20 leaders’ summit on 22 to 23 November, the first to be held in Africa, and that it would not accept any declaration issued at the end of it.

Former defender on his challenge as sporting director at Ligue 1 club and using Arsène Wenger as an inspiration

Returning to Brittany was the obvious choice for Laurent Koscielny. Having left Lorient for Arsenal in 2010, the former defender is back at the Ligue 1 side as the sporting director.

“My wife and I were keen to come back, it’s a beautiful region, and the people are welcoming and kind,” the Frenchman says of the seaside town, known for its annual Celtic music festival and military naval base.

The Spaniard’s style of possession football is not easily defined by stats and data. We tried to do so anyway

• Tell us: have you bought tickets for the 2026 World Cup yet?

Sergio Busquets didn’t expect to last this long. More than a decade ago, he predicted he’d retire by his early 30s. But when he finally announced in September that he’ll hang up his boots at the end of Inter Miami’s season, he did so as a 37-year-old defensive midfielder who still somehow never leaves the pitch for one of the best teams in MLS.

He could be playing his final game this weekend, if Miami losetheir conference semi-final against FC Cincinnati on Sunday.

Measures covering sustainability, squad-cost ratio and controversial spend restrictions are due to be discussed on Friday

Executives of the 20 Premier League clubs are meeting in London to discuss, and potentially decide on, new financial regulations that will determine the future direction of the competition. These measures have been under consideration in some form or another since October 2021, just as the game was emerging from the crisis of Covid.

The perennial question of what to serve those who like the taste of cocktails and spirits, but who don’t drink alcohol, is actually getting easier to answer year on year

It’s time to start thinking about the C word. You might well already have plans to stock up for house guests who are drinking, but what about those who aren’t? It’s a good opportunity to think about how we might jazz up our non-alcoholic offering for friends and family who are trying to drink less, or not drinking booze at all. Sometimes, your friend will just want a Fanta, but I don’t like being the one to offer it to them. We can do better than that.

There are really excellent non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beers out there, as well as an ever-expanding offering of zero-alcohol wines (or, even, sessionable wines at around 6% ABV). But what of those who like, or used to like, a cocktail? Those who enjoy the heady, medicinal kick of a spirit, but don’t want any of the booze?

Tucker Carlson’s interview with the activist revealed the mainstream right is being flooded by extremism – and it’s now impossible to contain

Five days a week, thousands of fans gather online to watch Nick Fuentes hold court about the dangers of non-white immigration, feminism and “organized Jewry”. Usually dressed in a dark suit and tie, he lectures to his far-right followers, known as “Groypers”, about what he argues is the insufficient radicalism of Donald Trump’s Republican party and what he describes as the perfidies of the state of Israel and its American supporters.

Fuentes’s fixation with Israel is not rooted in concern about the war in Gaza but a belief, in his telling, that Jews are responsible for most of society’s problems. Fuentes, who is 27 and lives in Illinois, has called Adolf Hitler “really fucking cool” and compared the Holocaust to the baking of cookies.

A baby is born in withdrawal every 18 minutes in the US, and most end up in foster care. At centers like Maddie’s Place, mothers stay with their infants – and leave together, in recovery

Eight months pregnant and in pain, Stephanie Rosell went to the Holy family hospital emergency room after an infection began spreading up her legs. Unemployed and homeless, estranged from her family, she lived in a shed she had built in a friend’s yard. She was also addicted to fentanyl.

As doctors treated her infection, she began to panic. Withdrawal was setting in. She leaned over the bed and vomited.

X chatbot suggested gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ‘designed for disinfection’ not mass executions

• Europe live – latest updates

French public prosecutors are investigating allegations by government ministers and human rights groups that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, made statements denying the Holocaust.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday night it was expanding an existing inquiry into Musk’s social media platform, X, to include the “Holocaust-denying comments”, which remained online for three days.

In today’s newsletter: Despite valid criticisms, the summits are filled with smart, passionate people dedicating their lives to fighting the climate crisis

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It is easy to criticise the UN climate conferences. But unless you’ve been, there’s one wonderful, almost miraculous, thing that you may not be aware of: it is a beautiful gathering of humanity, people from virtually every country on Earth, all thrown together in common cause.

What’s more, many are incredibly smart, passionate and dedicating their lives to fighting the climate crisis. The more of them you meet, the more your hope grows that global heating can be defeated.

Trump’s anti-climate agenda could result in 1.3m more deaths globally, analysis finds

Tropical cyclone Fina intensifies to category two and could hit NT coast on Friday

England’s Beth Mead: ‘If we don’t adapt to climate change, football becomes a privilege, not a right‘

Actor praises co-star in abominably reviewed Ryan Murphy legal drama, and claims show deserved more appreciation

Glenn Close has hit back at the critical mauling for her recent series All’s Fair. The actor stars in Ryan Murphy’s legal drama, which has received a string of zero-star reviews. In her appraisal, the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan described it as: “Fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible.” The series currently holds a 3% rating on reviews site Rotten Tomatoes.

According to Close, the main issue was the choice to air the worst three episodes first. “I personally think that the first three episodes were the weakest,” she told Variety. “That was a tough way to start. I’ve seen all nine episodes, and I think it actually adds up to something.”

As she launches her first children’s book, the actor answers your questions on Alan Partridge, her iconic green dress and thrilling 10-year-olds with a bullseye

Have you read or listened to the delightful chapter in Alan Partridge’s Big Beacon where he demands: “We came for Knightley, we want to see Knightley, where’s Knightley?” dcieron
No! Do I want to see it? Or is it something that will make me cringe and want to hide under the sofa? I do like Alan Partridge. He’s kind of terrifying but amazing, so now that I know I’ve been a part of Alan Partridge, I should check it out.

When you first wore the green dress in Atonement, did you realise how iconic it would be? Murdomania
I thought it was a bloody good dress. It never actually lasted. It was so fragile that, any time you touched the front, it would completely break, so they had to make a load of different fronts. By the end, I was thoroughly sick with having the dress remade on me. But it’s a beautiful dress and I had no idea that it would have the life that it did.

My aunt was chastising me for not carrying on my mother’s legacy of pineapple tarts and butter cakes. Why had I been so resistant?

‘Aiyah, why don’t you bake?” my Aunt Julie scolded, her voice shrill with disbelief. “You should learn how to bake for the sake of your child! Your mother was such a good baker!” Her comment stung. I had always adored my mother’s youngest sister. As the only member of my family who also lived in Germany, we had a special bond.

But here she was, chastising me for failing to be a good mother before I had even given birth. I contemplated the question from her immaculate kitchen, where I stood round, hormonal, in my second trimester of pregnancy and on the precipice of new motherhood. But I didn’t have an answer.

Ying Reinhardt is Malaysian writer living in Germany

We’re supposed to be used to this by now, but getting used to it is dangerous. Her colleagues should have spoken up

Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do: asking germane questions.

Her query to Donald Trump a few days ago during a “gaggle” aboard Air Force 1 was reasonable as it had to do with the release of the Epstein files, certainly a subject of great public interest. Why had the Trump been stonewalling, she asked, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Australia and England could win or lose in a number of critical areas including Joe Root’s ability to fend off Pat Cummins and which No 5 will shine brightest

Before Bazball, there was Travis Head. He was the one playing on fast-forward during the 2021-22 Ashes, sprinting to 152 at the Gabba in a career-shifting innings. The southpaw has since slashed tons in two finals against India, excelled in challenging Australian conditions, and can break out of a lean patch with a chainsaw-wielding knock. Never mind his three consecutive single-figure scores during Australia’s 3-1 win over India a year ago. He’d already hit consecutive hundreds to turn the direction of the series.

She was sure that there would be warnings if there was any danger. But then the floods came. This is Toñi García’s story

Location Valencia, Spain

Disaster Floods, 2024

Toñi García lives in Valencia. On 29 October 2024, devastating storms hit the Iberian peninsula, bringing the heaviest rain so far this century. The national alert system sounded at around 8.30pm local time; by then, however, flood waters had already broken through the city. Scientists say the explosive downpours were linked to climate change.

A lack of clean water and medicines in the aftermath of the storm has led to a sharp rise in viruses such as chikungunya and dengue

Maidel Jorge, a 36-year-old farmer, sweats as he chops down a tree to collect wood for cooking: the early November weather in eastern Cuba is still as hot as summer. The tree was young, so the wood is green, which means it will take longer to burn and their meal will take longer to prepare.

Jorge, his pregnant wife and their six-year-old son are among 300 people staying in a school turned into an evacuation centre in Grito de Yara, Granma province, some of the 3 million Cubans exposed to Hurricane Melissa, which barrelled into the country last month.

(Warp)
Made using a cache of Y2K sample CDs that Daniel Lopatin salvaged from the internet’s fringes, the kaleidoscopic result speaks to contemporary information overload

It should come as no surprise that the new album by Oneohtrix Point Never comes with a concept attached. They usually do. When not composing film soundtracks, or producing an eclectic range of other artists – the Weeknd, Anohni, Charli xcx, Soccer Mommy – Daniel Lopatin has released a string of acclaimed works, each with their own overarching idea.

The “hyperreal world music” of 2010’s Returnal was inspired by the fact that people now see more of the world than ever without actually leaving their homes. In 2015, Garden of Delete had an accompanying origin story about an adolescent humanoid alien called Ezra; 2018’s Age Of imagined artificial intelligence attempting to recreate human culture after humans themselves had been rendered extinct. Lopatin also has an all-consuming obsession with nostalgia and forgotten pop cultural artefacts: he’s made albums based around warped loops of 80s pop hits, preset sounds on obsolete synthesisers and recordings of US radio stations changing formats, discarding the musical genres in which they previously specialised in favour of the current vogue.

Former Wimbledon champion on how taking accountability for his crimes allowed for rehabilitation, watching Novak Djokovic from his cell and the new era of brotherhood in the sport

“I heard the screaming and I didn’t know what it was,” Boris Becker says as he remembers staring into the dark in Wandsworth prison, just over two miles from Wimbledon’s Centre Court where he won the first of his three men’s singles titles at the age of 17 in 1985. “Were people trying to kill themselves or harm themselves? Or couldn’t they deal with their loneliness? Or are they just making crazy noises because they have lost their minds already?”

Becker had been sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year jail term. Amid his insolvency, he was found guilty of not declaring all his assets so that additional funds could be distributed to his creditors. The judge confirmed that his money was used, instead, to meet his “commitments to his children and other dependents, medical and professional fees, and other expenses”.