Snap food benefits are set to run out this weekend as shutdown comes close to matching the record of 2018-2019

The FBI has made multiple arrests to avert a potential terrorist attack in Michigan, FBI director Kash Patel announced on X this morning, promising additional details.

Those arrested “were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend,” he wrote. No other details have yet been presented.

Proposition 50 would undermine the best example of reform in redistricting – and any benefit to Democrats might be negligible

Let’s imagine it’s early 2031. Democrats hold a three-seat edge in the US House. California has just lost four seats to congressional reapportionment. Texas has gained four.

Reapportionment has not gone well for Democrats. In addition to the four from the Golden state, New York has lost two seats. Minnesota, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois each lost one. Blue states surrendered those seats – and electoral college votes – to red states where the Republican party draws the lines: Florida, Utah, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

David Daley is the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count

Research by marine scientists in Thailand is revealing how shipwrecks can benefit the undersea environment

Sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand about 20 metres below the ocean surface is the HTMS Hanhak Sattru. Snappers, yellowtail fusiliers and bannerfish swim through the ship’s corridors,while barnacles, algae and young coral cling to the iron ladders and machine-gun on deck. Nearby is another wreck, the HTMS SuphairinBoth were intentionally submerged by the Royal Thai Navy in 2023 to create artificial reefs and dive sites. Their planned scuttling have enabled marine scientists to produce some of the first research on how much shipwrecks change the marine environment.

There is already plenty of existing research that shows that shipwrecks create a new ecosystem. But whether they pull fish from natural reefs or promote production of new fish (known as the attraction-pollution hypothesis) has historically been hard to say.

The sector is a key driver of the Uruguayan economy, but widespread and ill-controlled use of agrochemicals is affecting employees’ health – despite official assurances

Julio de los Santos, now 50, noticed something was wrong when he began losing his strength and experiencing pain in his legs and kidneys. He couldn’t hold tools and could barely stand. His visits to the doctor became more frequent until he ended up in intensive care, where his wife was told to prepare for the worst.

He survived, but today depends on more than 30 medications and a ventilator.

The last person who transcends the sport could make more headlines at the Breeders’ Cup

It has been a giddy, glorious and occasionally bumpy ride, but this time, it seems, Frankie Dettori’s mind is made up. The most storied jockey of the last 40 years will effectively head into retirement after the main card at the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar on Saturday, when he will have three chances to add a farewell Grade One winner to nearly 300 on his record already. Racing may not see a career quite like it again.

Alongside Lester Piggott and perhaps John McCririck over the past half-century, “Frankie” registers with pretty much everyone, no surname required. People know who he is, even if they have no interest at all in what he does. In a world that has been fragmented by social media and the internet, Dettori may well be the last racing figure who will ever enjoy such instant name-recognition across a broad swathe of the British population.

Majed al-Ansari calls for international force to be set up urgently to pave way for Israeli withdrawal

Gaza risks sliding towards a deadly limbo where a ceasefire is nominally in place but killing continues, a top Qatari diplomat has warned, calling for rapid progress in setting up the international security force and administration to pave the way for full Israeli withdrawal.

“We don’t want to reach a situation of no war, no peace,” said Majed al-Ansari, adviser to Qatar’s prime minister and spokesperson for the foreign ministry.

At least two people died on Thursday in flooded basements after record rainfall in parts of New York City that also deluged some streets and subway stations. Preliminary reports showed 45.7mm (1.8in) of rain fell in Central Park, which exceeded its record of 41.7mm set in 1917, the National Weather Service said. LaGuardia airport recorded 50mm of rain, which broke the hub's 1955 record of 30mm

• Two found dead in flooded basements as New York hit by rainstorm

Deeming universities too leftwing, outside donors and state governments are sponsoring curricula that center the classics, Christianity and the ‘great books’ of western civilization

A small conservative revolution has swept the humanities at some US colleges and universities. Its vanguard are new programs, called centers or institutes, that have begun cropping up at schools in recent years. Often funded by outside donors or earmarks from state governments, the programs tend to bear names featuring words such as “civic”, “freedom” or “classical”.

These centers do credible teaching and research, and are usually not explicitly political. But their goal, to counter what conservatives see as hegemonically leftwing teaching, arguably is.

As soaring costs threaten his industry, the chef looks at how his favourite restaurateurs are innovating – plus two recipes inspired by London’s culinary scene

What does it feel like to eat out in London these days? And what do people want? I’ve been asking myself these questions since closing our restaurant Rovi for renovations this summer, taking the opportunity to rethink some of the things we do.

It has become clear to me that the restaurant world I’ve known for decades is radically changing through a combination of factors: people’s working patterns, health obsessions, the falling out of love with alcohol and the falling in love with pastries and bread, but, predominantly, the affordability of it all.

Robbery in Lyon left five employees slightly injured after explosion in latest high-profile incident to hit country

Six people armed with military-grade weapons have used explosives to break into a gold refining laboratory in Lyon, slightly injuring five employees in the latest high-profile daytime heist to hit France.

The audacious raid took place on Thursday afternoon, with police quickly arresting the suspected perpetrators and recovering the loot estimated to be worth €12m (£10.5m), officials said.

What is and is not constitutional is determined, in effect, by loyalists on the supreme court and their bad-faith enablers

The news cycle has continued in a predictable arc. Last week, Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and one-time Donald Trump adviser, said in an interview with the Economist that the president would seek an unconstitutional third term. “Trump is going to be president in 28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Bannon said. (He seemed to be referring to Trump winning the presidential election in 2028 – Trump’s current term will last through 20 January 2029.) “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is.”

Like clockwork, Trump commented on the idea soon after, telling reporters following him on Air Force One as he flew from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo: “I would love to do it.”

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Indiana Jones star calls US president one history’s greatest criminals for attacks on science and boosting of fossil fuels

Harrison Ford has said that Donald Trump’s assault upon measures to address the climate crisis “scares the shit out of me” and makes the US president among the worst criminals in history.

In a blistering attack upon the president, Ford told the Guardian that Trump “doesn’t have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo and he’s making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”

We’re interested to hear how the looming pause of Snap benefits, as well as rising insurance costs due to a loss of subsidies, could affect Americans

More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.

The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.

Mitch Marsh fires at top of the order and Josh Hazlewood stars with the ball as Australia defeat India in the T20 at the MCG

Hazlewood has had Shubman Gill in all sorts from the very first ball and sends the opener on his way soon after. Gill tries to lift a wide ball straight over mid-off but picks out Mitch Marsh tracking back.

2nd over: India 18-0 (Gill 4, Abhishek 14) SIX! Abhishek Sharma lights up the MCG as he takes 14 runs from the four balls he faces in the Xavier Bartlett over. A swipe across the line picks up a couple, then Abhishek charges down the pitch to crack the first boundary of the innings through cover. A rattled Bartlett overpitches and allows the India opener two more past mid-on but he saves his best for last with a powerful drive over cover for six.

⚽ All the latest news heading into the weekend’s action
⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail Barry

Cheers Yara. There are loads more Premier League press conferences for us to get stuck into this morning …

My short stint has come to an end but Dominic Booth is here to bring you the latest.

Although final results are yet to be determined, analysis by the Netherlands news agency ANP suggests Rob Jetten’s party has unassailable lead over Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV

Centrist party D66, led by charismatic 38-year-old Rob Jetten, has won the most votes in this week’s Dutch parliamentary election, the country’s news agency ANP said.

The agency collects the results from all municipalities in the Netherlands, and its provisional figures show that D66 now has an unassailable lead over Geert Wilders’s far-right PVV party, AD and De Telegraaf reported.

It’s not just what we hear and see that scares us, according to those behind many of video gaming’s modern horror classics

The sound came first. In a San Francisco Bart train tunnel, Don Veca took his recorder and captured a train’s metallic roar – “like demons in agony, beautifully ugly,” he remembers. That recording became one of the most chilling sounds in 2008’s Dead Space.

“We dropped that screeching, industrial noise at full volume right after the vacuum silence – creating one of the game’s most jarring sonic contrasts,” Veca, who made horror history as the audio director for the Dead Space games, recalls. “Our game designer hated it – but the boss loved it. Over time, it’s become iconic.”

Mark Carney warns Asia-Pacific leaders global economy undergoing profound change, as China’s president mounts defence of free trade

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has warned that the era of free trade and investment that formed the foundations of the postwar global economy has ended.

In a stark message to Asia-Pacific leaders at the Apec summit in South Korea on Friday, Carney said rules-based open trade no longer worked in a global economy that was undergoing one of its most profound periods of change since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For Halloween, Guardian writers pick their most terrifying films ever – from The Shining and The Descent to The Strangers

“Sometimes one can’t help … imagining things.” Truman Capote helped to adapt Henry James’s ghost story The Turn of the Screw into 1961’s The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton, which remains one of the most disturbing of all scary movies. To recall the rush of stomach-twisting fear provoked by this film, I just need one glimpse of the sweating face or shaking hands of Deborah Kerr. She plays a governess to two traumatised children in a remote house where life is so fragile that the petals fall from the roses, mysterious figures appear in the grounds and ominous screeching sounds crack the night. Freddie Francis’s shadowy, black-and-white cinematography, with all those flickering candles, sets a spooky tone, but it’s the soundtrack, using uncanny electronic noises by Daphne Oram, that really needles into your brain. Kerr’s Miss Giddens disintegrates rapidly, unable to trust her own horrifying visions, rapidly suspecting her youthful charges are possessed by evil spirits. “Oh, look, a lovely spider!” exclaims sweet little Flora. “And it’s eating a butterfly.” Pamela Hutchinson

Modern life is waging a war against ecosystems around us and inside us. Keeping our own microbes healthy is another reason to demand action to preserve the natural world

Read more: The luxury effect: why you’ll find more wildlife in wealthy areas – and what it means for your health

Human bodies are like cities, teeming with microcitizens – vast communities of viruses, fungi and bacteria that live all over our skin and inside us. Unsung public servants help us digest food, regulate our immune system, defend against pathogens, and keep hormones in check. Together, they make up what we call the human microbiome.

Most people have probably heard of the gut microbiome, but different microbes thrive all over our bodies – in our nostrils, on our feet, in our eyes. They are slightly different, like boroughs are composed of different communities of people. Ninety per cent of cells in our body are microbes, and “clouds” of bacteria come off someone’s body as they enter a room. We are all walking ecosystems, picking up and shedding material as we move through life.

Uncertainty surrounds the signing of this week’s trade deals amid the failure to secure reciprocity from the US to cut tariffs

On Donald Trump’s whirlwind tour of Asia – which involved stops in Malaysia, Japan and Korea – the US president triumphantly collected new trade deals from countries hoping for a reduction in the tariffs he slapped on them earlier this year.

However – China aside – analysts were left asking just how much Asian nations got out of it.

(Anti)
Waxahatchee and her twin sister are joined by Lenderman and Brad Cook for an album of headstrong, tender Americana about chasing integrity and conviction

Snocaps sound exactly like the sum of their parts. A new band for fans of headstrong, tender Americana, Alabama twins Katie and Allison Crutchfield (of Waxahatchee and Swearin’ respectively) are in a new band together for the first time since scrappy, beloved PS Eliot retired in 2011. Backed by indie guitar star MJ Lenderman and storied alt-rock producer Brad Cook, Snocaps is a family record in more ways than one: the four have a tangled history of making music together, giving this one-off collection the lived-in feel of a band five albums deep.

With no need for introductions, Snocaps starts with an exercise in trust. We’re in the car, Allison’s at the wheel, and she is daring the rest of the band to close their eyes: “I got a pedal on the floor or I’m slammin’ on the brakes,” she quips, setting the pace for an album about chasing integrity and conviction, told through airborne melodies and unpretentious, freewheeling guitar.

Centre pairing of Northampton duo Tommy Freeman and Fraser Dingwall is unconventional but exciting, as is the depth of England’s squad

Optimism is often manufactured at the start of a campaign. Everyone goes in believing they can win every game, but there is a mood of true optimism around England before the autumn series. Considering they have won their past seven matches, had their best finish to a Six Nations for five years and then won a summer series in Argentina, I think it’s fair to have confidence. Argentina beat the British & Irish Lions and England won there despite having 13 players away in Australia, plus one of the coaches.

The amount of Prem players excelling and the level in that competition also makes me excited for what England can achieve in November, starting with Australia on Saturday. Steve Borthwick is growing into the job and is more confident in what he’s doing: turbulence may not be the right word for the early days of his tenure but I think people expected more. As fans we want immediate results, but coaches tend to have a “helicopter” view and understand the direction of travel.

The singer’s lyrics about an open marriage gone sour resonate with many women her age. They’re sick of pretending to be fine with relationships that are not

Lily Allen was always an enviably cool girl.

When she first burst on to the music scene nearly two decades ago at 21, it was with a breezy, don’t-care London swagger. Her songs concealed big, painful feelings under flippant, deadpan lyrics and deceptively sweet melodies, which made them easier to swallow. Even this summer, when she talked on her thrillingly unfiltered podcast Miss Me? about having lost count of exactly how many abortions she’d had, she sang the words to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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