Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that suggests ‘the war crime of forcible transfer’ of civilians

Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity.

The US-based group added it had collected evidence that suggested “the war crime of forcible transfer [of the civilian population]”, describing it as “a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal court”.

Tech-savvy organised crime groups profiting from billion-dollar enterprise that is spreading beyond Russian borders

At any one moment in towns and cities across Russia, thousands of drug packages lie buried in the ground, attached by magnets to lamp-posts or taped underneath window sills, waiting to be picked up by their intended customers.

From the streets of Moscow to remote towns in Siberia, hand-to-hand buying of illegal drugs – as is the norm in most of the world – is on the wane. Instead, retail-size bags of drugs are secreted using spycraft by an army of young kladmen (stash men) who upload dead-drop locations, which are unlocked when customers make an online purchase.

With Putin’s threats in Ukraine, China’s accelerated weapons programme and the US’s desire for superiority, what will it take for leaders to step back from the brink?

Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, at their 1985 summit in Geneva President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth behind the terrifying spectre of nuclear war, which their countries were spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare for. “A nuclear war cannot be won,” they jointly stated, and “must never be fought.” They omitted the inescapable corollary of those first six words: a nuclear arms race also cannot be won.

Still, the statement, almost unique among government declarations for its blunt truthfulness, strengthened the case for the arms control and nonproliferation undertakings that followed. Decades of agonisingly difficult negotiations built up a dense structure of treaties, agreements and even a few unilateral moves dealing with offensive and defensive nuclear weapons of short, medium and long range, with provisions for testing, inspections and an overflight regime for mutual observation. Often the two sides would only give up systems they no longer wanted. Frequently the language of the agreements was the basis of future friction. On the US side, the political price of securing Senate ratification of treaties could be extremely high.

Travelling many miles across multiple states, I saw Republicans united in their disdain for facts – and a Democratic party far too relaxed about challenging them

In the early hours of Wednesday morning last week, I sped down an empty motorway as rain pounded the asphalt, heading towards a Republican election-night party in the outskirts of Detroit. It was one of those storms that distorts your vision, where the lines of the road blur in slicks of water and the street lights refract through cascading droplets on the windscreen. The lonely roads and perilous weather felt like an apt backdrop. Donald Trump was about to be declared the next president of the United States.

I went through the double doors and into the large, carpeted convention hall just seconds before Fox News called the race. The chatter began to dissipate as the crowd erupted, surging towards a stage at the back and waving large, black flags that read “Fix America Again”. Elation and relief. Mayhem and incoherence. “Lock them up! Send them back! Jesus! Jesus!” shouted one woman.

With infestations of rats, bedbugs and moths on the rise, there are things you can do to reclaim your home – from putting away dog food to building a slinky slide

With reported rises in the number of rats and bedbugs, it is likely that many of us are sharing our living space with some pest or other. How can you go about getting rid of them? And what can you do to avoid them moving in to start with? Here, pest controllers share the secrets to an infestation-free life.

This gripping adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestselling book tells the shocking story of the IRA’s Price sisters, but makes little attempt to hide its sympathies

Say Nothing could so easily be absolute chaos. It comprises at least seven narratives, jumping back and forth over four decades, with different actors playing older and younger versions of the same characters. But it has such a firm grasp of those characters – and of all its stories and the history against which they unfold – that you are never confused, only gripped throughout.

This is not to say that the nine-part drama about the Troubles is without troubling aspects, but we will get to that. Based on the bestselling 2018 book of the same name by the New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, it opens with an abduction so cruel that it will become notorious – that of Jean McConville (played by Judith Roddy), a widowed mother of 10 in west Belfast. Rumoured to be an informant (although no evidence has been found that she was), she is bundled into a van by masked men in December 1972 and never seen alive again.

At a moment when the world feels like a particularly unsettling place, Science Weekly is asking what it is that makes humans happy – and how we can bring more happiness into our lives.

In episode two, Ian Sample asks which happiness strategies are backed up by science. He hears from Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who recently scrutinised a whole lot of happiness research to work out which recommendations are most reliable

Clips: 9NEWS

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

After Donald Trump has announced his new defence secretary to be the former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, John Harris speaks to the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, who is in Ukraine. Plus, at Cop29, Ed Miliband has said the green transition is unstoppable even with Trump as president. Is he right? John speaks to the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas

Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/politicspod

Party has won 218 seats in lower chamber after Democrats unsuccessfully campaigned on need to curtail ‘dysfunction’

Republicans have secured a majority in the US House of Representatives, extending their hold on the lower chamber and delivering a governing trifecta in Washington that could give Donald Trump sweeping power to enact his legislative agenda.

The Associated Press determined on Wednesday evening that Republicans had won at least 218 seats in the 435-member House after a victory in Arizona, a call that came more than a week after polls closed across the US and as Trump made cabinet announcements that sent shockwaves through Washington.

Officials said the man had killed himself with a bomb after trying to enter the Supreme Court, prompting security concerns ahead of the global leaders meeting

A man killed himself with a bomb outside Brazil’s supreme court after trying to enter the building on Wednesday, officials have said, stirring security concerns before the country hosts global leaders from the Group of 20 major economies.

The blasts come five days before the G20 heads of state meet in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a state visit to the capital Brasília by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

After the publication of a damning report into a decades-long child abuse scandal, Justin Welby has bowed to pressure to resign as archbishop of Canterbury. Harriet Sherwood reports

A former oil executive turned archbishop, it was hoped Justin Welby’s management experience would hold the Church of England together as it navigated the modern world. As the archbishop of Canterbury, he steered a careful path through divisions in the global Anglican church over ordaining women and same-sex marriage. But it was another persistent issue in the church – the mishandling and cover-up of historical sexual abuse scandals – that proved to be his downfall. He was due to retire in January 2026, but a damning report published last week made his position untenable.

John Smyth, a leader of Christian camps attended by people including Welby, used his position to gain power over hundreds of boys. He sadistically beat and tortured at least 130 boys and young men in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa over almost 40 years. Some of his victims took their own lives.

Congressman decried as ‘person of moral turpitude’ amid questions over whether Senate will confirm nomination

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Trump’s victory in the US shone a light on the growing political polarisation between between young male and female voters happening all over the world

As the Democratic party licks its wounds and prepares for Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a growing chorus of commentators is urging the party to confront a historic shift in voting patterns, which has seen Latinos, the working class and Black men all shift rightwards in 2024.

But perhaps the cohort that offers the gravest warnings for the party’s future prospects is young men. In 2024, men aged between 18 and 29 turned out in force for Trump, with the Republican winning the demographic by 14 points, overturning a generational trend that has for decades seen young people favour left-leaning candidates.

Request from Paris prosecutor threatens to undermine the National Rally leader’s efforts to polish image ahead of 2027 elections

The Paris prosecutor on has requested a five-year prison sentence and a five-year ban from public office for far-right leader Marine Le Pen, at a trial in which she and 24 others are accused of embezzling European Union funds.

The trial, which comes almost a decade after initial investigations started, threatens to undermine her National Rally (RN) party’s efforts to polish its image ahead of the 2027 presidential election which many believe she could win.

Tiny isopod is dubbed Pentaceration forkandbrewer in push to engage community with climate-threatened life in local waters

New Zealand scientists have named a tiny snowflake-like crustacean after a Wellington brewery, in an attempt to boost the public’s interest in local marine life.

The roughly 1.5mm marine isopod was found in the silty depths off New Zealand’s southern east coast. It helps decompose organic material that drifts to the seabed.

Antony Blinken briefs Ukraine’s foreign minister in Brussels; US secretary of state calls for Nato allies to step up as Trump era looms. What we know on day 995

Surangel Whipps Jr retains power in Palau, which is important to the US military amid tensions with China and is among a dozen diplomatic allies of Taiwan

Palau’s incumbent president Surangel Whipps Jr has been returned for a second term after a national election held last week, according to a final tally by the Palau Election Commission.

The results showed Whipps Jr won 5,626 votes, defeating his brother-in-law Tommy Remengesau who received 4,103 votes.

The headline of this story was amended on 14 November, 2024

An interactive documentary from Digital Eclipse goes deep on the 40-year history of Tetris

Believe me when I say: I truly thought I knew the story of Tetris. The puzzle game’s journey from behind the iron curtain in 1980s Moscow to multi-million-selling video game has been the subject of countless articles, a greatly entertaining book and a recent film. I have played Tetris in various forms for more than 30 years, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo Switch, even in VR. So when I loaded up Tetris Forever, an interactive documentary on Tetris’s 40-year history from the developers-slash-archivists at Digital Eclipse, I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new. I was proven very wrong.

Did you know about Hatris, the 1990 Tetris follow-up that involved stacking colourful hats on top of heads? I did, vaguely, but I did not know about the semi-authorised twist on that game put out by Spectrum Holobyte the same year, a mildly horrifying swap-and-drop puzzler that had players stacking up mouths, noses and eyes to try to make human faces. They called it Faces…tris III, which suggests that whoever named it gave up halfway through. No wonder it wasn’t a hit. I didn’t know that Henk Rogers, the charismatic Dutch-American who played a huge part in turning Tetris into a global phenomenon, spent his student years surfing and diving in Hawaii before (his words) chasing a girl to Japan and coding the country’s first bestselling RPG in 1984.

International festival’s director says Scottish Ballet production is part of lineup that will challenge perspectives

A new gender- and age-fluid ballet tracing the life of Mary, Queen of Scots is to take centre stage at next year’s Edinburgh international festival.

The world premiere production by Scottish Ballet, which focuses on Mary through the eyes of her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I, will include male and female dancers taking on multiple “fluid and intergenerational” roles.

Which? claims firm engaged in anti-competitive practices that led to 40 million people ‘being overcharged’

Apple is facing a near-£3bn lawsuit over claims it breached competition law by effectively locking millions of UK consumers into its cloud storage service at “rip-off” prices.

The legal claim is being brought by Which?. The consumer group claimed that about 40 million Apple customers in the UK could be entitled to a payout averaging £70 each if the action is successful.

In docuseries preview, audio shows cult leader, behind 1960s killings, saying he ‘left some dead people’ in Mexico

In newly released audio, Charles Manson, the cult leader behind a string of killings during the late 1960s in California, admitted his involvement in additional killings that occurred prior to his assembly of the notorious Manson Family.

An audio recording in a teaser clip from Peacock’s latest docuseries Making Manson features Manson saying: “There’s a whole part of my life that nobody knows about.”

Not if the US is drawing it