Trump administration labels Maduro as member of foreign terrorist organization and could impose fresh sanctions on country

Back to some domestic news and the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has apparently been dissolved with eight months still remaining on its contract, ending a drawn-out campaign of invading federal agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.

“That doesn’t exist,” office of personnel management (OPM) director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about Doge’s status, adding that it was no longer a “centralized entity”.

Lord Dannatt and Lord Evans of Watford were filmed breaking rules in undercover footage recorded by Guardian

• UK politics live – latest updates

Two long-serving peers are to be suspended from the House of Lords after a parliamentary watchdog ruled that they had broken lobbying rules.

Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British army, and David Evans (Lord Evans of Watford), were filmed breaking the rules in undercover footage recorded by the Guardian.

The two remaining members of the groundbreaking, politically revolutionary group talk about the state of hip-hop and the US government’s attacks on people of color

For the first time in 35 years, Billboard’s Hot 100 chart does not include a rap song among its top 40 hit records. Anyone who’s been listening to the music for at least that long can list myriad reasons why that’s now the case: all the beats sound the same, all the artists are industry plants, all the lyrics are barely intelligible etc. For hip-hop forefather Abiodun Oyewole, though, it boils down to this: “We embraced ‘party and bullshit’, my brother.”

Fifty-seven years ago, on what would have been Malcolm X’s 43rd birthday, Oyewole cliqued up with two young poets at a writers’ workshop in East Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) to form what would become the Last Poets, a collective of bard revolutionaries. They outfitted themselves in African prints, performed over the beat of a congo drum and advocated for populism in their verses. The group has had many configurations over the years, but Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan abide as the standout members. The trio is all over the band’s self-titled first album – which was released in 1970 and peaked at No 29 on the Billboard 200. Their follow-up album, This Is Madness, made them ripe targets for J Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro campaign against the emerging figures the then-FBI director deemed politically subversive. Notably, Oyewole could not contribute to that album because he had been incarcerated for an attempted robbery of a Ku Klux Klan headquarters, serving 2 1/2 years of a three-year sentence. (He was trying to raise bail for activists who had been arrested for striking back at the klan.)

Political elites in Europe’s ‘mature’ democracies warn of external threats – but at home they normalise racism and undermine the rule of law

Europe’s leaders cannot stop talking about democracy. President Emmanuel Macron says he wants to kickstart a democratic “resurgence”, and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has warned of an “axis” of autocratic states targeting liberal democracy in Europe. Having promised to “fight” for what she calls European “values”, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has just announced a new “democracy shield” and a Centre for Democratic Resilience to prevent foreign interference and deal with external threats. I keep hoping for similar scrutiny of democratic backsliding within the EU – but so far it has not happened.

Foreign interference, disinformation and the creeping illiberalism of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia deserve attention. But lost in this fretting is a more inconvenient truth: within Europe’s “mature” democracies, there is a steady corrosion of the rule of law, a degradation of political discourse and the normalisation of racism, xenophobia and discrimination.

Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company

Experts say councils face limits on cuts as Reform’s savings on IT deals, office moves and EV projects are disputed

Reform UK has ignored requests to share the evidence for its claim to have saved £331m since it took charge of 10 English councils in May, prompting questions over whether the figure is true.

The party has boasted that it had achieved £331m worth of savings at English councils it controls. Warning of a “blob” of vested interests devoted to “ripping off” taxpayers, Richard Tice, the new head of the party’s self-styled ‘Doge’ cost-cutting unit, added: “We’re going to war with these people”.

Temperatures over 35C break November records in Israel while Tropical Cyclone Fina approaches Western Australia

Exceptionally high November temperatures have roasted Israel in recent days, breaking records for late November. During the heatwave, which peaked over Friday and Saturday, temperatures soared to between 10C and 12C above average, as low-lying parts of the country widely reached between 30C and 35C and exceeded 35C more locally. Israel’s previous record for the latter third of November was 34.9C.

On Friday, temperatures reached 36.2C in Beit Dagan, near Tel Aviv, where the average November high is around 24C, while on Saturday they reached a peak of 37.3C in Eilat on the Red Sea coast, where the average is 27C. Though temperatures were less extreme at higher altitudes, they were still well above average; Jerusalem, at an altitude of more than 700m, reached around 27C, in comparison with an average November high of 19C.

Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now

Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81.

A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.

• Only three fringe players will go to Canberra

• Rest of squad to have extra sessions at the Gabba

To hell with the optics was the message from England on Monday after confirmation that none of the players who collapsed to the shattering two-day defeat in the first Ashes Test will change tack and travel to Canberra.

In a move that risks drawing further ire, only Jacob Bethell, Josh Tongue and Matthew Potts – all unused in Perth – will join the Lions at Manuka Oval, where Andrew Flintoff’s shadow touring party will take on a Prime Minister’s XI in a two-day floodlit fixture that starts on Saturday.

Amy Redford thanks fans for ‘love and support’ but takes issue with ‘AI versions of funerals, tributes and quotes from members of my family that are fabrications’

Robert Redford’s daughter Amy Redford has criticised the proliferation of artificial intelligence tributes to her father, who died in September, calling them “fabrications”.

Redford posted a statement on social media in which she thanked fans for their “overwhelming love and support”, adding: “It’s clear that he meant so much to so many, and I know that my family is humbled by the outpouring of stories and tributes from all corners of the globe.”

After decades of terrorizing civilians in the name of fighting terror, the White House is trying to do it with even less oversight

For the last two months, US forces have amassed outside Venezuela and carried out a series of lethal strikes on civilian boats. The Trump White House has ordered these actions in the name of fighting “narco-terrorists” – a label apparently applicable to anyone suspected of participating in drug trafficking near Latin American coastlines. More than 80 people have already been killed in these pre-emptive strikes, and war hawks are calling for expanded military action to depose the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.

Watching this play out, I am reminded of a passage from the geographer Stuart Elden’s award-winning 2009 book, Terror and Territory. In discussing how to study the “war on terror”, Elden observed that it did not make sense to study terrorism as something unique to non-state actors.

Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College

Medellín’s Comuna 13 neighbourhood saw extraordinary violence in the 2000s, with hundreds of people detained, tortured or killed

When Operation Orión began in October 2002, Hermey Mejía thought the violence that had ravaged his corner of Medellín for decades would finally come to an end.

The 22-year-old told his mother, Teresa Gómez, that he hoped Colombia’s armed forces would get rid of the urban guerrillas who ruled the streets of Comuna 13, then one of the most dangerous districts in the world. The area, of strategic importance for drugs and weapons trafficking, had long been trapped in a cycle of bloodshed: first under Pablo Escobar’s narcos, then, after their fall, leftwing militias.

A vibrant community tradition to theatrically restage a decisive moment in their independence struggle is vital to Panama’s Guna people

Beyond the written word and photographic evidence, how does one keep history alive? For the Guna people of northern Panama, community theatre emerges as a potent form of cultural documentation and preservation. This vibrant documentary directed by Duiren Wagua, who hails from the same Indigenous community, traces a vital tradition that breathes life into monumental events from the past.

The year 1903 marked the separation of Panama from Colombia. But with this independence came fresh conflicts, as the new Panamanian government refused to recognise Tulenega Shire, an autonomous Indigenous territory formed in 1870. The Guna people were subjugated under racist laws designed to erase their culture and pillage their land of resources. In February 1925, the local population, women included, took up arms in what is known as the San Blas rebellion against Panama’s soldiers, a courageous fight that brought about independence for the region.

Stereotypes that centre mens’ worth in their work are strangling sensible debate, and letting down women too

• Finn Mackay is an academic and the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars

First it was mechanisation threatening our jobs, then AI and now this: the Great Feminisation is taking over the workplace. Well, that’s according to American journalist Helen Andrews, who popularised this thesis in a speech to the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC.

The idea is that too many women in the workplace, and in positions of power, has led to the dominance of stereotypical feminine values, to the detriment of everyone. Girly things like conflict resolution rather than manly plain speaking, fussy HR departments, or a lack of healthy aggressive competition, have all created an imbalance in the workplace and in the world, suppressing stereotypical masculine values. Andrews fears for her sons and their future in the feminised world that she believes threatens us all.

Finn Mackay is the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars, and a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol

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I can’t dance. Not even a little bit. But the terrible moves my friends mock are an antidote to the racing heart and quivering breath that arrive in my more anxious moments

The first time I started dancing at home was a happy accident. I’d just had a terse conversation with an ex, and my body was reacting in its usual way: racing heart, quivering breath and trembling fingers. I needed to calm down. Looking around for quick fixes in my flat – my bed, some stale chocolate digestives and a packet of cigarettes – I settled on the kitchen radio, which had been humming faintly in the background all morning.

Tuned to BBC Radio 6 Music, it was playing a disco track I didn’t recognise. But the beat was steady and intermingled with the sounds of tambourines, synths and drums. I turned up the volume, and then my body was moving: limbs swinging, feet tapping, hips wiggling. I continued into the next song, leaning into the feeling and becoming more animated to the sounds of another upbeat 70s track, imagining myself on a crowded, sweaty dancefloor. It was all very silly. But by the third song, my anxiety had melted away. I was smiling. And I felt more like myself again.

After getting dropped by a major label, the Leonard Cohen-influenced south Londoner kept going, and has now won fans in Rosalía, Sabrina Carpenter and more. But writing for the Bard is the best of all, he says

Three years back, Matt Maltese was in a casual co-writing session with some friends. Out of it came a song called Magnolias, a stripped back piano ballad about imagining his own funeral. “I didn’t think anything of it,” he says. “And then two years later, we heard some quite bizarre whispers that Rosalía had somehow heard it.” It was true: six months ago, Maltese was sent the Spanish pop star’s demo of the song. He tried not to get too excited, even when, a few weeks back, a blurred-out photo of a Rosalía album tracklisting appeared online. “On the WhatsApp group we were like: I think that says Magnolias!”

Magnolias ended up as the final track on Rosalía’s new operatic masterpiece, Lux: one of the most talked-about albums of the year, currently sitting in the UK Top 5. Maltese first heard the finished song the day the album came out, when he’d got back to London from a US tour. “I took a long jet-lagged walk and listened to the whole album to contextualise it. It’s extraordinary.” On Magnolias, Rosalía changed some words, he says, “and dramatised it incredibly. It’s exquisite. It’s a gift from someone, somewhere, that it fell into her lap.” It’s all anyone has wanted to talk to him about since. “I’ve had a lot of follow backs on Instagram,” he smiles.

Embassy’s employment of Gila Ben-Yakov Phillips is potentially violation of UK sanctions law, say experts

The British embassy in Tel Aviv may have broken both UK sanctions law and UK government security policies by employing an Israeli citizen who owns a home in an illegal settlement in occupied Palestine, legal experts have said.

The embassy’s deputy head of corporate services and HR, Gila Ben-Yakov Phillips, moved to Kerem Reim in 2022. She listed a house she bought there as her home address on financial documents at the time.

We would like to hear your favourite characters whose gamechanging arrivals lifted the shows they were in

From Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones to the Hot Priest in Fleabag, we have picked our favourite 18 TV characters whose gamechanging arrival in later seasons have lifted their whole show. Now we would like to hear yours. Who is your favourite late-arriving TV character and why?

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

We would like to hear from centenarians, their family and friends

The number of centenarians (aged 100 years and over) in the UK has doubled from 8,300 in 2004 to 16,600 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.

Government panel’s final report calls for ‘radical reset’ of planning and environmental rules to get reactors built faster and cheaper

• Business live – latest updates

The UK has become the “most expensive place in the world” to build a nuclear power station because of overly complex bureaucracy and regulation, according to a government review.

The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by Keir Starmer in February after the government promised to rip up “archaic rules” and slash regulations to “get Britain building”.

Blazes that smoulder in the permafrost, only to reignite, are extending fire season though winter, leaving vegetation struggling to recover

In May 2023, a lightning strike hit the forest in Donnie Creek, British Columbia, and the trees started to burn. It was early in the year for a wildfire, but a dry autumn and warm spring had turned the forest into a tinderbox, and the flames spread rapidly. By mid-June, the fire had become one of largest in the province’s history, burning through an area of boreal forest nearly twice the size of central London. That year, more of Canada burned than ever before.

The return of cold and snow at the close of the year typically signal the end of the wildfire season. But this time, the fire did not stop. Instead, it smouldered in the soil underground, insulated from the freezing conditions by the snowpack. The next spring, it reemerged as a “zombie fire” that continued to burn until August 2024. By then, more than 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) had been destroyed.

The moon becomes the witty image of an isolated and contemptuously neglected elderly relation

Missing You

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their all-time favorite comfort films is a 2012 indie romcom that begins and ends on the November holiday

I’ve watched this movie almost every November for about the last 10 years. It’s something of a rarity, a film about Thanksgiving, celebrating the awkward in-between holiday in a sea of clearcut Halloween and Christmas classics. Stuck in Love is an indie romcom from 2012, the directorial debut of writer-director Josh Boone, who would later go on to make The Fault in Our Stars. It boasts a stacked cast featuring Greg Kinnear, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff, Jennifer Connelly and Logan Lerman (and smaller roles for Kristen Bell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Glen Powell, as well as a cameo from author Stephen King).

The movie follows Bill Borgens (Kinnear), an unhappily divorced novelist who fosters his two teenage children’s literary ambitions by encouraging them to write – though he hasn’t written in years since becoming a divorcee – while he obsesses over his ex-wife, Erica (Connelly), who has since remarried.

EU leaders hail progress but emphasise remaining issues to be solved as Merz says peace ‘won’t happen overnight’

• US and Ukraine promise ‘updated’ peace framework after criticism of pro-Russian points in original plan

Russian air defences downed a Ukrainian drone en route to Moscow on Monday, the city’s mayor said as reported by Reuters, forcing three airports that serve the capital to temporarily restrict all incoming and outgoing flights.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement that emergency services were working at the scene of the downed drone.

Blow to leftist coalition government of PM Pedro Sánchez, who appointed Álvaro García Ortiz in 2022

Spain’s chief prosecutor has announced his resignation after the supreme court found him guilty last week of leaking confidential information in a case involving a leading opposition figure’s partner.

The unprecedented case is a blow to the leftist coalition government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who appointed Álvaro García Ortiz in 2022 and has defended his innocence repeatedly.