Reform leader denies racist or antisemitic behaviour ‘with intent’ at school, but says he can’t remember everything from 49 years ago

Nigel Farage has broken his silence nearly a week after he was accused by about 20 people of racism and antisemitism as a teenager, by saying he “never directly, really tried to go and hurt anybody”.

His remarks came after the publication of a detailed investigation by the Guardian in which many of his school contemporaries claimed to be victims of, or witnesses to, repeated incidents of deeply offensive behaviour.

⚽ Premier League updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Weekend talking points | Email Michael

2 min: A loose pass from Coleman, who captains Everton tonight, but Dewsbury-Hall does well to retain possession and earn a free-kick. Wasted by Garner. Moyes scowls on the touchline. He knows how important set pieces are today.

And we’re off at Old Trafford!

Members of rightwing base disorientated by cordial Oval Office meeting – but not all Trump supporters downcast

A flurry of social media posts from Maga influencers have laid bare the disorientation felt by members of Trump’s base at the spectacle of Friday’s cordial Oval Office meeting with Mamdani, who the president previously painted as a “communist lunatic”.

“Wild to allow a jihadist communist to stand behind the president’s desk in the Oval Office. Sad to see,” wrote far-right activist Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s most fervent online backers.

Caroline Daniel tells MPs leaked memo by Michael Prescott that sparked resignations at BBC did not provide full picture

Claims of “serious and systemic problems” in the corporation’s coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans issues, which led to the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, have been disputed by a former adviser to the corporation.

Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, also resigned after the allegations by Michael Prescott, a PR executive and former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee (EGSC).

Magpies’ away record is a worry before Champions League meeting with Roberto De Zerbi, Mason Greenwood and co

Newcastle fans are travelling to Marseille with a soundtrack of uncertainty echoing in their ears. Quite apart from the official warnings about rampant pickpocketing, street crime and potential football‑related violence, their phones seem full of concerned messages from families and friends.

Those oft-repeated exhortations to variously “take care”, “watch yourself” and “stay safe” in a city listed regularly among Europe’s most dangerous could, in a different context, easily apply to Eddie Howe’s team.

Anna Kepner, 18, from Titusville, was found dead of asphyxiation under a bed on a Carnival cruise ship

The grandparents of a high school senior found dead on a cruise ship earlier in November say they fear they have lost two grandchildren after her stepbrother has emerged as a suspect in the case.

“No matter what we find out, no matter what they tell us, it’s not going to bring either one of these children back,” Barbara Kepner, the grandmother of the late 18-year-old cheerleader Anna Kepner told ABC News on Monday.

Eleven people were injured as three teachers fought the bear during attack on walking trail in British Columbia

Conservation officers in British Columbia are still searching for a female grizzly bear and her two cubs, four days after the sow attacked a group of schoolchildren and their teachers in an “exceedingly rare” encounter that has shaken the remote Canadian community.

Eleven people, some as young as nine years old, were injured on Thursday when the bear emerged from the forest near 4 Mile, a Nuxalk community near the town Bella Coola and attacked a school group on a lunch break alongside a walking trail.

Investigation of Mark Kelly after Trump accused Democrats in video of ‘seditious behavior, punishable by death’

The Pentagon says it is investigating the Arizona senator Mark Kelly for possible breaches of military law after the federal lawmaker joined a handful of other Democrats in a video calling for US troops to refuse unlawful orders.

It is extraordinary for the Pentagon to directly threaten a sitting member of Congress with investigation. Until Donald Trump’s second presidency, the institution in charge of the US military had usually strived to appear apolitical.

Three people were pulled into the water and one remained missing, with search efforts hindered by ‘high winds and unsafe water conditions’

Authorities in California are searching for the body of a man who was swept into the ocean at a beach in the Big Sur area, one week after a girl and her father died after being pulled into the water in the same state park.

Three people were pulled into the water from the rocks at the Soberanes Point area of Garrapata state park on Saturday afternoon just after 3pm and began yelling for help, according to a statement from the Monterey county sheriff’s office. Two women who had been dragged into the ocean were able to pull themselves out of the water.

The 28-point plan outlined last week by the US would have delivered peace on Putin’s terms. EU leaders must help Kyiv resist the bullying

There was a grim familiarity to the unveiling of Donald Trump’s latest peace proposals for Ukraine last week. As in August, when the US president invited Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies were excluded from discussions that ended up echoing Kremlin talking points. Yet again, Mr Trump publicly scolded Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not being more grateful for his ongoing mediation efforts. And as in the summer, Mr Zelenskyy and blindsided European leaders strove to stay polite while scrambling to limit the damage.

The salvage operation appears to have been relatively successful, following Sunday’s meeting in Geneva between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and a Ukrainian delegation. The 28-point plan reportedly drafted by Mr Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser, Kirill Dmitriev, was in effect a repackaging of Mr Putin’s maximalist demands. A deal premised on the handing over of new territory in the Donbas region to Russia, restrictions on Ukraine’s sovereignty, and drastic limits on the size of its future army, could never be acceptable to Kyiv. Mr Rubio, suggesting a more “refined” framework was now being developed, seemed to at least acknowledge this fundamental difficulty.

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A fragile Cop30 consensus is a win. But only a real bargain between rich and poor nations can weather the climate shocks that are coming

This year’s UN climate talks in Brazil’s Belém ended without a major breakthrough. The text of the final agreement lacked a deal to shift away from fossil fuels, delayed crucial finance and the “mutirão” decision contained no roadmap to halt and reverse deforestation. But the multilateral system at Cop30 held together at a point when its collapse felt close. This ought to be a warning: next year’s conference of the parties must strike a better bargain between the rich and poor world.

Developing countries are far from united on some issues. Over rare earth minerals China sees any move as targeting its dominance, while Africa sees it as essential for governance. Elsewhere petrostates did not support Colombia’s call for a fossil fuel phase-out. Yet the global south broadly coheres around a simple principle: its nations must be equipped to survive a climate emergency they did not create. That means cash to build flood defences, make agricultural systems resilient, protect coastlines and rebuild after disasters strike. They also demand front-loaded finance to transition to clean, green economic growth.

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As Mumbai sees increased energy demand from new datacenters, particularly from Amazon, the filthiest neighbourhood in one of India’s largest cities must keep its major coal plants

Each day, Kiran Kasbe drives a rickshaw taxi through his home neighbourhood of Mahul on Mumbai’s eastern seafront, down streets lined with stalls selling tomatoes, bottle gourds and aubergines–and, frequently, through thick smog.

Earlier this year, doctors found three tumours in his 54-year-old mother’s brain. It’s not clear exactly what caused her cancer. But people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop the illness, studies show, and the residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres down the road from one.

Four main food distribution sites operated by the opaque company had been flashpoints of deadly violence

A controversial and secretive private company backed by the US and Israel that distributed food in Gaza has announced the end of its operations in the devastated territory.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which had four food distribution sites that became flashpoints of chaos and deadly violence between May and October, said in a statement that it would shut down permanently, having “successfully completed its emergency mission”.

• NBA champion accused of playing in rigged games

• Could face decades in prison if found guilty

Portland Trail Blazers coach and basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges he profited from rigged poker games involving several mafia figures and at least one other former NBA player.

Billups, who won a championship with the Detroit Pistons as a player, was arraigned in a federal court in New York City on money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy charges, both of which carry a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison. Some of Billups’ co-defendants are also charged with running an illegal gambling business and engaging in an extortion conspiracy.

Tens of thousands of documents were released as part of Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against the network

• Fox Corp chief told Sean Hannity that Trump could not go on air in 2020 if he attacked network

Tens of thousands of pages of exhibits were released on Sunday as part of voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.

Fox News has strenuously denied Smartmatic’s claims and said the company has vastly overstated its value. In a statement, Smartmatic said Fox’s “attempts to delay accountability won’t work, and its day of reckoning is coming”.

Decision to remove children comes after they and their parents ate poisonous mushrooms and ended up in hospital

The decision by an Italian court to remove three children being brought up in the woods from their British-Australian parents has sparked a fierce debate in the country over alternative lifestyles.

Nathan Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol, and his wife, Catherine Birmingham, a former horse-riding teacher from Melbourne, bought a dilapidated property in a wooded area in Palmoli, in the central Italian region of Abruzzo, in 2021.

Judge says interim US attorney for eastern district of Virginia had ‘no lawful authority’ to indict former FBI director and New York attorney general

• US politics live – latest updates

A federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the cases was unlawfully appointed.

Lindsey Halligan, who Trump named the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September, had “no lawful authority to present the indictment” against the former FBI director and New York attorney general, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, wrote in her opinion.

After bitter arguments, threatened walkouts and heated all-night negotiations, delegates eventually reached a deal this weekend at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil. To unpick what was achieved and what was left out, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s environment editor, Fiona Harvey, who has been following every twist and turn

End of fossil fuel era inches closer as Cop30 deal agreed after bitter standoff

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Venues designed for people to smash things up safely are seeing an enormous rise in bookings. But why? And what explains the pronounced gender gap?

Name: Rage rooms.

Appearance: Full of old appliances and angry women.

I worried about nuclear war throughout my childhood, partly because it was the 80s, and partly because we were always demonstrating against it. On this important day, I knew where I needed to be ...

It would have been my late mother’s birthday last Monday, and because I am either astronomically stupid or fathomlessly wise, I elected to spend it at a public meeting about nuclear disarmament. I’d call it a blast from the past, except I feel superstitious about introducing explode-y words too near the nuclear topic.

I spent my entire childhood worrying about nuclear war, partly because it was the 80s, and everyone did, and partly because we spent our lives demonstrating against it. We had “Protest and Survive” stickers everywhere, in droll parody of the public information booklet “Protect and Survive”, along with “Nuclear Power? No Thanks”. We were also early adopters of climate change anxiety, while fiercely against the closure of coalmines. If you’re wondering where we expected to get our power from, well, obviously we didn’t need central heating: the combination of political fervour and long johns was very warming. When I say we, of course I mean “my mother”; my sister and I had very little agency in this quest for peace.

The “solution” to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set a puzzle which is extremely hard to answer if you are not a soap bubble.

The four towns

Experts unpack the common myth of menstruating people’s cycles synchronizing when they’re in close proximity for long enough

• Tell us: what are the best and worst gifts you’ve ever received?

To be someone who menstruates means continuously trying to untangle fact from fiction. Is it true that you can’t swim on your period? No. Does the scent of a person menstruating attract bears? Also no.

There is one period rumor I’ve always kind of enjoyed, though: when women are in close proximity for long enough, their menstrual cycles will eventually sync up, also known as “menstrual synchrony”. I’ve had several friends over the years claim that my period had yanked them on to my cycle.

Body composition: a high BMI is associated with irregular cycles, says Kling.

Age: “Menses can be irregular in adolescents and as people approach menopause,” says Jensen.

Psychological stress: depression can disrupt a person’s cycle.

Medication, such as birth control.

Medical conditions, such as thyroid disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome or menopause.

Lifestyle factors, such as smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, diet and physical activity.

The US president has reportedly asked Paramount for a fourth instalment of the cop comedy starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Whether he wants an acting credit or has suddenly come over all inclusive remains to be seen

It is said that by 328BC, having made empires kneel to him, Alexander the Great wept … for there were no more worlds to conquer.

Similarly, having solved the Middle East and Ukraine issues with only a couple of technicalities to iron out and put an end to so many other wars as well, Donald Trump may also be tempted to sob at having run out of important tasks. And yet, just as he is about to kneel in anguish on the Oval Office carpet, he is apparently perking up at the thought of one more mighty challenge.

US state department designated Venezuelan group known as the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization despite doubts over its existence

• Deadly airstrikes and a military buildup: how the US pressure campaign against Venezuela has unfolded in the Caribbean

Venezuela’s government has accused the US of peddling “ridiculous hogwash” about its supposed role in sponsoring “narco-terrorism” as Washington continued to turn up the heat on Nicolás Maduro’s regime and leftwing European politicians warned South America faced being plunged into “a torrent of bloodshed”.

On Monday, the Trump administration officially designated a Venezuelan group known as the “Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns) a terrorist organization – despite widespread doubts over its actual existence.