Dutchman considering dropping Konaté for West Ham trip
Arne Slot has said he cannot make dramatic changes to arrest Liverpool’s slump given the squad is suited to his system and he has little time on the training ground to implement a new approach.
Slot is under increasing pressure before Sunday’s Premier League visit to West Ham having presided over the club’s worst run in 71 years. He has faced calls to drop the under-performing Ibrahima Konaté and Mohamed Salah in recent days, or to shake up his style in an attempt to halt the slide.
Mikel Arteta is confident the best is to come from Declan Rice as Arsenal prepare for their top-of-the-table showdown at Chelsea on Sunday.
The England midfielder was outstanding in Arsenal’s victories against Tottenham and Bayern Munich over the past week and will face the club where he spent seven years before being released aged 14. Arsenal lead second-placed Chelsea by
Mixed messages over captain Pat Cummins’s potential return to bowling in the Ashes are a curiously dismissive attitude towards the paying public
You could speculate about whether Cricket Australia deliberately prefers to be opaque regarding player availability and team plans, or whether it just has a deficiency in communications, but once again the fitness of players and the makeup of the XI is left to be inferred from the selection in the larger squad of 14 players for the second Ashes Test in Brisbane.
Normally, a board naming an unchanged squad would not be much news. This time it is, thanks to the possible movement in either direction of Pat Cummins and Usman Khawaja, neither of which has now eventuated.
Leftwing party asks members to pick between Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many
The leftwing party formed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has revealed a shortlist of names for its members to pick from: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many.
Ahead of its first conference in Liverpool this weekend, the party is asking its 50,000 members to choose what it should be called, with the result to be announced by Corbyn on Sunday.
Donald Trump has declared he intends to cancel most of the executive orders signed by Joe Biden, his predecessor as president of the United States.
In a post on social media, Trump claimed baselessly that Biden had not signed off on the orders himself, saying that “the radical left lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him” by signing his name using an autopen – a signature machine that has commonly been used by US presidents since the device’s invention.
Immediate software change on ‘significant number’ of jets to result in disruption to half the global fleet
Airbus said on Friday it had ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its A320 family of jets in a recall affecting more than half of the global fleet in a move that was expected to bring disruption during a busy weekend of travel.
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters.
Norris third in Lusail, with Russell second on grid
Verstappen furious with car after qualifying sixth
Oscar Piastri took pole position for the sprint race at the Qatar Grand Prix. The McLaren driver beat the Mercedes of George Russell into second and, with Lando Norris in third, it was the result the Australian required for his world championship ambitions and allows a chance to narrow the gap to the leader Norris. The other title contender, Max Verstappen, was furious with his Red Bull’s erratic performance and will start in sixth.
On the first hot runs in Q3 Piastri set the pace with a 1min 20.241sec lap, four-hundredths quicker than Norris. However Verstappen was complaining his car was suffering with bouncing through the corners, lacking the stability in the fast turns that had been a strength of the car and an issue he had also experienced in the only practice session. Going off wide on his first run he did not set a competitive time on his first run.
The entertainment giant is building almost 2,000 homes in California’s Palm Springs area so beloved by its founder
The Coachella valley typically brings a few things to mind: hot desert sun, the most Instagrammable music festival in the country, and even more sun. What it doesn’t bring to mind, however, is the family-friendly, Mickey Mouse-eared nostalgia associated with all things Disney. But that may be changing.
In 2022, Disney announced plans to build a first-of-its-kind branded residential community, which they have named “Storyliving by Disney”. The first of the Storyliving communities, Cotino, is officially welcoming residents into model homes in Rancho Mirage, a city nestled in Coachella valley. When all plans are finished, the 618-acre community will feature almost 2,000 residential units, including single-family homes and condos.
Internationally renowned cinema temporarily closes after audience members complained about being bitten
The prestigious Cinémathèque Française in Paris has announced a temporary closure due to a bedbug infestation after sightings of the blood-sucking creatures, including during a masterclass with Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver.
The Cinémathèque, an internationally renowned film archive and cinema, said in a statement it would close its four screening halls for a month from Friday.
Not since 2014 have Liverpool struggled so much, with questions aimed at club directors and the likes of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz
“Would you say this is Roy bad or Brendan bad?” was one of the more repeatable questions asked in the Anfield press box in between PSV Eindhoven’s third and fourth goals on Wednesday. The correct answer would have been “Don Welsh bad”, given he was the last Liverpool manager to preside over nine defeats in 12 games, back in 1953-54. But the on-the-spot consensus was “Brendan bad” for reasons that may increase anxiety at Fenway Sports Group as the club’s owners desperately await a recovery under Arne Slot.
The Roy Hodgson era, airbrushed from history by some at Liverpool, is too low a base for comparisons with a Premier League champion. There are, however, some parallels between the current Liverpool crisis and the final 16 months of Brendan Rodgers’ reign at Anfield. The 2014-15 season was the last time confidence in a Liverpool manager or head coach began to drain. It was also the last time the impressive development of a Liverpool team – one that went agonisingly close to an unexpected title triumph in Rodgers’ case – not only came to an abrupt halt but veered into a steep decline with several new signings on board. FSG must hope the comparisons go no further, because that decline was precipitated by self-sabotage in the summer transfer window of 2014 and there is no conclusive evidence so far that it has avoided an expensive repeat in 2025.
The Hong Kong tower block fire, Russian drone strikes in Kharkiv, floods in Thailand and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Russia’s president is only interested in a deal on Moscow’s terms. Equipping Kyiv with the resources to fight on is the quickest route to a just settlement
As Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day deadline for a Ukraine peace agreement came and went this week, the Russia expert Mark Galeotti pointed to a telling indicator of how the Kremlin is treating the latest flurry of White House diplomacy. In the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a foreign policy scholar close to Vladimir Putin’s regime bluntly observed: “As long as hostilities continue, leverage remains. As soon as they cease, Russia finds itself alone (we harbour no illusions) in the face of coordinated political and diplomatic pressure.”
Mr Putin has no interest in a ceasefire followed by talks where Ukraine’s rights as a sovereign nation would be defended and reasserted. He seeks the capitulation and reabsorption of Russia’s neighbour into Moscow’s orbit. Whether that is achieved through battlefield attrition, or through a Trump-backed deal imposed on Ukraine, is a matter of relative indifference. On Thursday, the Russian president reiterated his demand that Ukraine surrender further territory in its east, adding that the alternative would be to lose it through “force of arms”. Once again, he described Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as “illegitimate”, and questioned the legally binding nature of any future agreement.
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Capturing the changing landscapes of the 18th century, the rivals transformed British art. The climate emergency gives new urgency to their work
JMW Turner appears on £20 notes and gives his name to Britain’s most avant garde contemporary art prize. John Constable’s work adorns countless mugs and jigsaws. Both are emblematic English artists, but in the popular imagination, Turner is perceived as daring and dazzling, Constable as nice but a little bit dull. In a Radio 4 poll to find the nation’s favourite painting, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire – which even features in the James Bond film Skyfall – won. Constable’s The Hay Wain came second. Born only a year later, Constable was always playing catch-up: Turner became a member of the Royal Academy at 27, while Constable had to wait until he was 52.
To mark the 250th anniversary of their births, Tate Britain is putting on the first major exhibition to display the two titans head to head. Shakespeare and Marlowe, Mozart and Salieri, Van Gogh and Gauguin – creative rivalries are the stuff of biopics. Mike Leigh’s 2014 film shows Turner (Timothy Spall) adding a touch of red to his seascape Helvoetsluys to upstage Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1832. Critics delighted in dubbing them “Fire and Water”. The enthralling new Tate show is billed as a battle of rivals, but it also tells another story. Constable’s paintings might not have the exciting steam trains, boats and burning Houses of Parliament of Turner’s, but they were radical too.
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If ‘naked dressing’ is a stretch too far, sheer fabrics can provide a real-life friendly compromise
Fashion loves nothing more than an extreme trend, one difficult to imagine transferring to most people’s everyday lives. See naked dressing, where stars on the red carpet wear transparent and sometimes barely there gowns.
This party season, however, there appears to be a real-life friendly compromise. Enter the sheer skirt.
Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.
The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under review by the justice ministry, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said 'terrorists must die'. Julian Borger, the Guardian's senior international correspondent based in Jerusalem, analyses footage of the event
From Michelangelo and Leonardo to Picasso and Matisse, bitter feuds have defined art. But are contemporary artists more collaborative than their renaissance predecessors?
“He has been here and fired a gun,” John Constable said of JMW Turner. A shootout between these two titans would make a good scene for in a film of their lives, but in reality all Turner did at the 1832 Royal Academy exhibition was add a splash of red to a seascape, to distract from the Constable canvas beside it.
That was by far the most heated moment in what seems to us a struggle on land and sea for supremacy in British art. It’s impossible not to see Tate Britain’s new double header of their work this way. For it is a truth universally acknowledged, to paraphrase their contemporary Jane Austen, that when two great artists live at the same time, they must be bitter and remorseless rivals. But is that really so, and does it help or hinder creativity?
Farage has cosied up to US figures who espoused conspiracy theories about Jews. That kind of talk is becoming alarmingly mainstream on the Maga right
Nigel Farage could have strangled this story at birth. Confronted with the testimony of more than 20 former schoolmates, who shared with the Guardian their memories of a young Farage taunting Jews and other minorities in the most appalling terms – telling a Jewish pupil that “Hitler was right”, singing “Gas ’em all” and making a hissing sound to simulate lethal gas – he could have said: “I have no memory of what’s been described, but such behaviour would of course have been atrocious and if I was involved in any way, I am genuinely sorry.”
Sure, it would have been more of an “ifpology” than an apology, its admission of guilt wholly conditional, but it would surely have closed the story down. Reassured that the Reform UK leader had declared racist and antisemitic abuse unacceptable, most observers would have allowed that these events took place half a century ago and moved on.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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Whistleblower tells Afghan leak inquiry those affected were told to move and change phone numbers to protect themselves
The UK left behind sensitive technology allowing the Taliban to track down Afghans who worked with western forces, a whistleblower has told the Afghan leak inquiry.
The woman, known as Person A, said Afghans affected by the data leak were told to move homes and change their phone numbers to protect themselves from the Taliban because it had the resources to track them down.
British driver with world championship within his grasp is showing no sign of nerves despite Verstappen mind games and pressure from Piastri
Standing outside the McLaren motorhome in the paddock for the Qatar Grand Prix as a warm desert breeze stirs the air, Lando Norris cuts a figure entirely at ease even in the centre of the maelstrom of an increasingly tense fight to claim his first Formula One world championship.
While dozens of photographers jostle for space, the mic boom of the Netflix Drive to Survive series swaying over them, Norris has an air of assuredness as he speaks to the clacking of shutters that have increasingly become the backing track to the 26-year-old’s march towards the title.
Heavy rain from Cyclone Ditwah has left people stranded, with more than 18,000 evacuated to temporary shelters
Troops in Sri Lanka were racing to rescue hundreds of people marooned by rising flood waters on Friday as weather-related deaths rose to 69, with another 34 people declared missing.
Helicopters and navy boats carried out rescue operations, plucking people from treetops, roofs and villages cut off by flood waters.
Bill 9 would outlaw prayer and face coverings in public institutions, sparking fears it targets Muslims in Canada
Quebec says it will intensify its crackdown on public displays of religion in a sweeping new law that critics say pushes Canadian provinces into private spaces and disproportionately affects Muslims.
Bill 9, introduced by the governing Coalition Avenir Québec on Thursday, bans prayer in public institutions, including in colleges and universities. It also bans communal prayer on public roads and in parks, with the threat of fines of C$1,125 for groups in contravention of the prohibition. Short public events with prior approval are exempt.
Sadiq Khan has spoken of his dismay at Nigel Farage’s “desperate” denials of allegations of teenage racism as he described how his experience as a child shaped his life.
The mayor of London said testimony from more than 20 individuals who made allegations about the Reform leader had summoned memories of his own past.
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