Sean Duffy says cuts at 40 locations to reduce stress on air traffic controllers will start Friday if solution not found

The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 locations beginning on Friday if the government shutdown does not end by then.

Duffy’s announcement did not specify which 40 airports would see the reduction in airport traffic.

If Phil Foden performs so do Manchester City. This truism was reiterated by his two-goal show that helped sweep Pep Guardiola’s improving team to 10 points from four games at the stage’s halfway juncture.

Factor in Erling Haaland who decorated his captaincy for the evening with a 27th goal (for club and country) and Waldemar Anton’s 72nd-minute jab home was solely an irritation.

Newcastle needed that. They’ve won six of their last eight games, which might sound like an impressive run of form, but Sunday’s defeat at West Ham was wretched enough to raise all manner of doubts. Three straight Champions League wins, though, all without conceding, means they probably need only one more victory from their final four games to secure a place in the playoff round, while two wins and a draw would almost certainly secure a top-eight place and automatic passage to the last 16.

This Newcastle are a team with an extremely high ceiling and a very low floor. They are capable of hammering Union Saint-Gilloise and pummelling Benfica in the Champions League and outplaying Tottenham in the Carabao Cup. But they are also capable of losing 3-1 to West Ham and being grateful it wasn’t worse. They are both the amiable doctor and the vicious criminal, both ferociously energetic winners and lethargic disappointments, both Jekyll and Hyde. “We navigated today really well after the weekend,” said Eddie Howe. “It was important we responded mentally. Our psychology was really good. We’ve had three wins in a row, some good performances and we’re in a good position.”

Anthony Hemingway, who is both director and executive producer on the legal drama, has defended the show which has been the subject of a critical pile-on

• The Guardian has only ever published 15 zero-star reviews. Here they all are

One of the directors of the critically maligned legal drama All’s Fair has responded to negative reviews, saying that “not everything is for everybody”.

Anthony Hemingway, who has directed four episodes of the show and is an executive producer on it, was asked about his thoughts on the overwhelmingly bad reviews in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

• Fans banned from attending match at Aston Villa

• Police granted section 60 stop-and-search powers

The Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Issouf Sissokho urged his teammates to make their supporters smile against Aston Villa, after away fans were banned from the politically charged Europa League match on Thursday.

The Israeli club’s fans were prohibited from attending on public safety grounds but, despite the ban, West Midlands police have been granted section 60 stop-and-search powers and plan to deploy more than 700 officers around Villa Park to cope with protests and potential unrest.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers apologises for invading privacy of man wrongly arrested for high-profile murder

Rupert Murdoch’s news publisher in the UK agreed to pay “substantial damages” to a man wrongly arrested for a high-profile murder, after apologising for the invasion of his privacy.

Christopher Jefferies, a retired schoolteacher and landlord from Bristol, was wrongfully arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, a landscape architect.

Justices grill administration over imposition of steep duties as Sotomayor says: ‘I just don’t understand this argument’

The US supreme court appeared skeptical of the legal basis of the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariff regime on Wednesday after justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the levies.

Justices heard oral arguments on Wednesday morning on the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs , a crucial legal test of his controversial economic strategy – and power.

Decision is bitter blow to Brazil ahead of fund’s launch at Cop30 – and an embarrassment to Prince William

• ‘We’re leading the way’: Starmer defends plans for green economy before Cop30

The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit.

Keir Starmer flew to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, on Wednesday to join the summit of world leaders hosted by Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva.

Federal judge concerned that justice department sought to ‘indict first and investigate later’ in case of ex-FBI director

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director James Comey to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

Magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick instructed prosecutors to produce by the end of the day on Thursday grand jury materials as well as other evidence that investigators seized during the investigation. The order followed arguments in which Comey’s attorneys said they were at a disadvantage because they had not been able to review materials that were gathered years ago.

Demands of absolute loyalty and attacks on institutions have raised memories of Mao-style chaos from US watchers in China

When Vickie Wang, a budding standup comedian, gets on stage in New York, she’s not just thinking about what jokes to crack. She’s also thinking about which ones to avoid. “I don’t criticise the administration directly,” she said. Or if she does, she makes sure it’s not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly publish something where I directly criticise the government … I think it’s a learned behaviour from China”.

Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025 she relocated to the US. When she arrived, she went on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy”, going to talks, protests and diving into New York’s public library.

Thrilling American jazz drummer, pianist and composer who played with some of the genre’s greatest stars

In improvisational music, ungoverned by conductors or sacrosanct scores, and given to abrupt shifts of direction on the whims of performers, drummers are often the intuitive navigators. One of the most creative and viscerally thrilling exponents of that pivotal jazz art was Jack DeJohnette, the percussionist, pianist, composer and bandleader, who has died aged 83.

DeJohnette’s CV glitters with the names of the biggest jazz stars of the second half of the 20th century, and with good reason. In his youth, he played genres from R&B to free-jazz in his hometown, Chicago (alongside some of the innovative founders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians – AACM – and occasionally playing in Sun Ra’s Arkestra), before joining the most widely celebrated of early jazz-rock fusion groups, led by the saxophonist Charles Lloyd and including a then-unknown young pianist called Keith Jarrett.

Chelsea’s precision is nowhere to be seen when Enzo Maresca rings the changes. Chaos tends to set in whenever the Italian tries to freshen things up by making use of a deep but raw squad and he is unlikely to be in a rush to rotate again in the Champions League after seeing a weakened team fail to douse Qarabag’s skill and spirit on a raucous night in Baku.

There was no doubt Qarabag were the happier team at the conclusion of this absorbing 2-2 draw. Chelsea, by contrast, were merely grateful that their 5,000-mile round trip to Azerbaijan had not ended in major embarrassment. Not once were they were in control against defiant opposition, even after going ahead through the outstanding Estêvão Willian, and it was hardly ideal that Maresca had to make three changes when his players went down the tunnel with their egos bruised and damage to repair after a shambolic first half.

PM defies critics calling for a slowdown as he flies to Brazil, where he may have frosty reception after opting out of tropical forest fund

• UK opts out of flagship fund to protect Amazon and other threatened tropical forests

The UK will lead on tackling the climate crisis, the prime minister vowed on Wednesday, despite critics calling for a slowdown, because shifting to a low-carbon economy will cut bills, boost economic growth and bring national renewal.

But his words risked being overshadowed by a bitter row over funding for tropical forest preservation at the UN Cop30 climate conference.

The author has won the experimental literary fiction prize for his ‘dizzying, encyclopaedic’ fifth book, We Live Here Now

CD Rose has won the 2025 Goldsmiths prize for his novel We Live Here Now, praised by judges as “hilarious and deeply haunting”.

The £10,000 award, now in its 13th year, honours “mould-breaking” fiction. The winner was announced at a ceremony in central London on Wednesday evening.

To order We Live Here Now and browse the shortlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

⚽️ Champions League updates from the 8pm GMT games
⚽️ Live scores | Qarabag 2-2 Chelsea report | And email Scott

Teams are emerging from tunnels all across Europe. Zadok the Priest (Version) blaring out hither and yon. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes!

Going into the 8pm kick-offs, here’s how the league phase currently looks. When it’s all completed after eight games, the top eight will go through to the round of 16, positions nine to 16 will be seeded in the knockout stage and be drawn against positions 17 to 24, and everyone below will go home. So that’s a pretty big defeat for Villarreal in Cyprus tonight … and Chelsea now have a job on if they want to grab one of those top-eight spots, because they host Barcelona next, and still have to travel to Atalanta and Napoli.

Memoir chronicles Juan Carlos’s anointment as heir to dictator and death of younger brother when playing with pistols

A memoir by Spain’s disgraced former king chronicles his anointment as heir to the dictator Francisco Franco, his role in saving democracy from a coup attempt in 1981, and his grief at the death of his younger brother when the two were “playing” with a pistol as teenagers.

The book, published 11 years after Juan Carlos’s abdication and exile, is titled Reconciliation but appears to do anything but, instead detailing how he feels abandoned and misunderstood by his son and heir, King Felipe VI, and by other close family members.

King Charles has agreed to his brother retaining South Atlantic medal for navy service during 1982 conflict

He has lost his princehood, dukedom, Order of the Garter knighthood and military titles, but the former Duke of York, now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, can at least keep his campaign medal awarded for active service during the 1982 Falklands conflict.

The defence secretary, John Healey, had already confirmed Mountbatten Windsor would be stripped of his last remaining title, the honorary rank of vice-admiral, which he was given on his 55th birthday in 2015 and retained even after he lost other military positions in 2022.

Sadiq Khan, the city’s first Muslim mayor, says: ‘We are united by something far more fundamental, our belief in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better’

While the soon-to-be first Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, was in the final throes of his mayoral campaign on a brisk day in New York, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim of mayor of London, was wrapping up a two-day climate summit in a steamy if overcast Rio de Janeiro.

“Hope is not gone,” Khan told the 300 city mayors gathered in the Brazilian city’s museum of modern art.

Singer-songwriter says curriculum changes reflect points raised in open letter to PM organised by his foundation

Ed Sheeran has taken partial credit for the government’s move to overhaul the teaching of music in England’s state schools shortly after being mentioned by the education secretary in parliament.

The Department for Education (DfE) said it wanted to broaden the appeal of music education “to give every child a strong start in the subject” and boost the creative subjects taken at GCSE as part of its wider changes to England’s national curriculum.

In an age of increasingly capable machines, it makes sense for schools to value creativity and life skills as part of a well-rounded education

Societies evolve and schools are under pressure to adapt, but some features of education policy are perennial. For example, modernisation will always be denounced as a dilution of standards. Inevitably, Conservatives have leapt on recommendations by an independent review, commissioned by the government, as proof that Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is “dumbing down” the curriculum.

The basis of these charges is that the review, led by Becky Francis, professor of education at University College London, proposes reducing the burden of GCSE exams and scrapping the English baccalaureate – a cluster of subjects that, when taken together, constitute a metric of success recognised in school league tables. Conservatives are also unhappy about the notion that primary schoolchildren should learn about the climate crisis and be encouraged to value diversity.

Starbucks Workers United voted to authorize open-ended strike if deal with company is not reached by 13 November

Unionized Starbucks baristas voted to authorize an open-ended strike ahead of Starbucks’s high-traffic holiday season, announced Starbucks Workers United on Wednesday.

The union said workers are prepared to strike if a contract is not finalized by 13 November, which is the company’s Red Cup Day, and strike actions could hit more than 25 cities and escalate if there is a lack of progress.

Team includes Lina Khan, the FTC commissioner under Biden, and other Democratic former city officials

• US politics live – latest updates

Zohran Mamdani’s incoming administration began taking shape on Wednesday as the New York City mayor-elect announced a transition team to help enact what he called the city’s most ambitious policy platform in a generation, vowing to get right to work when he takes office on 1 January.

Speaking at a morning press conference in Queens, the 34-year-old democratic socialist revealed an all-female transition team led by Elana Leopold as executive director. It also includes co-chairs Maria Torres-Springer, the former first deputy mayor; Lina Khan, the former federal trade commission chair; the United Way’s president and CEO, Grace Bonilla; and the former deputy mayor for health and human services Melanie Hartzog.

Samantha Browne says ban will help stop young people thinking violent practice is normal or safe

An anti-trafficking campaigner has welcomed the ban on pornography featuring strangulation, known as “choking”, saying it will help stop young people thinking it is a normal and safe practice.

Samantha Browne, who suffered exploitation as a teenager in the adult industry, said the ban would help prevent children mimicking violent sex they have seen onscreen, and she hoped it would open the door to ending other forms of abusive pornography.