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Nottingham Forest: Following an eight-game winless run under Ange Postecoglou, Nottingham Forest kept their first clean sheet for 21 games in beating Porto 2-0 at the City Ground last night, in the process consigning the Portuguese side to defeat for the first time in 12 matches this season. It’s small wonder Sean Dyche, Postecoglou’s replacement, looked pleased with himself and his players afterwards.

“When you are on the side you don’t hear every word, you hear a noise and you know if it’s a positive noise or a negative noise,” he said. “I’m not here to judge or question anything, just deliver what I can to the job. It’s nice when they support you from the off, winning helps.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Newsflash: Conditions appear to be improving in the UK economy this month.

The latest poll of purchasing managers at British firms has found that growth is picking up after the lull in September, partly helped by the resumption of manufacturing at Jaguar Land Rover after its recent cyber attack.

“October’s flash UK PMI survey brings hope that September was a low point for the economy from which business conditions are starting to improve.

Output has picked up, with a particularly welcome return to growth for manufacturing for the first time in over a year accompanied by an upturn in demand for services, notably among consumers. Business confidence has also brightened slightly, job losses have moderated, and inflationary pressures are coming back to levels consistent with the Bank of England’s 2% target.

WHO’s director general says there has been little improvement in the amount of aid going into Gaza since the ceasefire took hold

While mediators try to bolster a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, intensified Israeli settler violence targeting the Palestinian olive harvest in the occupied West Bank has continued unabated, according to Palestinian and UN officials.

Since the harvest began in the first week of October, there have been at least 158 attacks across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to figures made public by the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC).

The olive tree is a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness.

Settler violence has skyrocketed in scale and frequency, with the acquiescence, support, and in many cases participation, of Israeli security forces – and always with impunity.

(Naya Beat)
Punjabi folk vocals backed by hammering electronic percussion, disco basslines and fizzing synth melody: a key predecessor to the Asian dance music explosion

In 1982, London-based Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra recorded a true oddity. Accompanied by her son Kuljit on an early Roland synthesiser and drum machine, the pair laid down nine tracks of Punjabi folk vocals backed by hammering electronic percussion, disco basslines and fizzing synth melody. Only 500 copies of the resulting album, Punjabi Disco, were pressed; it was released to confusion from a diaspora audience used to the bombast of bhangra. In the decades since, rare LPs have appeared on resale sites, but Kuljit’s recent rediscovery of the master tapes has now made the record widely available for the first time.

The blipping electronic toms and rattling shaker of opening number Disco Wich Aa set the tone, gradually building a swaying groove over siren-like synth melody before Mohinder’s falsetto vocal takes over, entreating the listener to come and dance. Employing the melismatic, note-gliding technique of Indian classical singing, her vocals are delightfully versatile, skipping over the fast-paced disco bass of Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya, yearning with drawn-out notes alongside the bossa rhythms of Soniya Mukh Tera and making full-throated declarations on the driving groove of Ve Tu Jaldi Jaldi Aa.

(Local Action)
Fiction, folk and a devastating diagnosis feature in the producer and DJ’s literary penmanship, her gentle, gothic vocals thick with morbid, magical thinking

Miss America, the centrepiece of Jennifer Walton’s stylish, painful debut record, sits us down in a hotel room near JFK airport, watching on as Walton learns that her father has been diagnosed with cancer. The Sunderland-born musician had been touring the US for the first time, drumming with indie band Kero Kero Bonito, and now grief greys everything out. Faltering piano and hushed strings accompany gothic dispatches from the tour van: “Cattle farm and broke down shack / Strip-mall, drug deal, panic attacks.”

Walton’s gentle vocals are deadpan, with the record’s tension brought by her penmanship (encompassing fiction, folksy sayings and blunt diary entries) and her sharp, surprising maximalism. Few songs this year have stronger novelistic flair than Shelly, which witnesses the killing of a deer and spirals into a petrol-laden reckoning – like Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow lit with flickers of warped cello. Tense, quiet verses with echoing, plucked guitar segue into grand choruses, Walton’s voice digitally manipulated into something omniscient and sinister.

Bharatiya Janata party launches first test flight as brown haze blankets city after Diwali – but experts decry ‘gimmick’

The Delhi regional government is trialling a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean the air in the world’s most polluted city.

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has been proposing the use of cloud seeding as a way to bring Delhi’s air pollution under control since it was elected to lead the regional government this year.

In an extract from his new book, our Formula One correspondent tells how a race featuring Graham Hill, John Surtees and Jim Clark chimes with this year’s title fight

Formula One entered the 1964 season finale at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City with a first for the championship: three drivers representing three teams were still in the fight for the title and what a lineup they presented. Graham Hill for BRM, John Surtees for Ferrari and Jim Clark at Lotus were all in contention in one of the great deciders that, by its close, established a motor racing milestone that decades later remains unmatched.

The season had opened by defining what was expected to become the championship battle. Clark, the defending champion, and Lotus looking defiant if not quite as dominant as in 1963, fighting off the BRM of Hill and the Brabham of Dan Gurney. Clark had won three of the opening five races, while Hill and Gurney had won in Monaco and France. Surtees, however, had struggled as Ferrari had focused on its battle with Ford at Le Mans.

Have you been following the big stories in football, rugby, gymnastics, boxing, cricket and motor sport?

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

The chaos surrounding the inquiry stands as a warning: this is what happens when collapsing trust in public institutions, combined with point scoring, leads to paralysis

In the early hours of the morning, the cars would pull up outside the Bradford children’s home where Fiona Goddard lived as a teenager.

Staff were worried about the men coming to collect her – records show she was felt to be “at high level of risk from unknown males” – but the policy was not to go to the police unless a child’s behaviour became concerning or she was seen being actively “dragged into a car”.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The Fide president, Arkady Dvorkovich, said that Kramnik, who is accused of unfounded allegations against Naroditsky, will be referred to its ethics disciplinary committee

Fide has responded to the death of Daniel Naroditsky by promising to take faster action over allegations by former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, which were made without significant evidence.

The Fide president, Arkady Dvorkovich, announced on Wednesday that the case will be referred to its ethics and disciplinary committee, which has the power to ban players for life. The omens for that are not promising. A similar referral of the Magnus Carlsen v Hans Niemann episode at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup took more than a year, and produced just a €10,000 fine for Carlsen and no other penalties.

The Italian director’s career was briefly derailed when his ‘scandalous’ affair with the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman hit the headlines in the 1950s. Their daughter Isabella remembers a devoted parent and a brilliant film-maker

In June 1977, Roberto Rossellini died suddenly of a heart attack, home in Rome, less than a week after serving as jury president of the Cannes film festival. The director’s daughter Isabella – the fourth of his seven children – was then in her mid 20s. She remembers her mother, Ingrid Bergman, saying: “Dad left us quickly, just as quickly as he drove his Ferrari.”

The story of Roberto’s last two decades is told in Living Without a Script, a new archive-based documentary, which premieres this week in Rome. While the film serves as a reminder of its subject’s status as one of the greats of world cinema – the key figure in postwar Italian neorealism – it also shows his life beyond movies.

Exclusive: In the year they announced record profits, Britain’s arms maker has revoked licence to fly for planes taking supplies of food to starving people in South Sudan, Somalia and DRC

Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, has quietly scrapped support for a fleet of aircraft providing “life-saving” humanitarian aid to some of the world’s poorest countries.

The decision further reduces the distribution of vital aid to countries facing serious humanitarian crises, including South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

(BMG)
Allen’s first album in seven years traces the fallout from an open relationship, but as well as being cathartic and candid, these stylistically varied songs have melodies that sparkle

It is seven years since Lily Allen last released an album. No Shame was Mercury-nominated and far better reviewed than 2014’s Sheezus – not least by Allen herself – but it was also her lowest-selling album to date. You could have taken that as evidence pop had moved on. In Britain, 2018 was a year that the well-mannered boy/girl-next-door pop of George Ezra, Jess Glynne and Ed Sheeran held sway; Allen seemed symbolic of a messier, mouthier era. Afterwards, Allen stepped away from music, concentrating instead on what you’d have to call a diverse portfolio of interests, including acting, podcasting, launching her own sex toy and selling photographs of her feet to fetishists on OnlyFans.

But pop has a habit of developing in a cyclical way. When Olivia Rodrigo brought Allen on stage at Glastonbury in 2022, it highlighted how deep her impact on the younger artist’s songwriting ran: you could trace a direct line between Allen’s splenetic, sweary Smile and Rodrigo’s similarly forthright brand of breakup anthems. And Rodrigo is merely one among a succession of younger female artists claiming Allen’s influence: Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, PinkPantheress. If Lola Young had a fiver for every time she was compared to Allen, she would never need to work again.

Leftwing independent widely expected to succeed Michael D Higgins, but fears grow over low turnout and spoilt ballots

Irish voters go to the polls on Friday to elect a new president, with final opinion polls predicting a landslide for Catherine Connolly, an outspoken leftwing independent who has captured the imagination of many younger people.

An opinion poll on Thursday gave Connolly 40% versus 25% for her opponent, Heather Humphreys, a former cabinet minister. When the figures were adjusted for those who are undecided or plan to spoil their vote, Connolly had 55% and Humphreys 35%.

President says he ‘may go to the Congress and tell them … but I can’t imagine they’d have any problem with it’

Donald Trump said on Thursday that his administration could soon expand its military attacks on alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela and also begin pursuing them on land.

Trump, who has faced questions over whether he has the legal authority to use lethal force against the people in boats from Venezuela, said during a press conference he was not sure whether the administration would seek approval from Congress to attack people from the South American country over land.

With Balenciaga’s new range embracing a term that the fashion industry once shied away from, the era of quiet luxury may finally be over

Is luxury an £8m Birkin bag? Logging out of social media? A Japanese toilet with a pre-defecation misting function? A three-figure lipstick? A morning bath? Or even a £9,000 stainless steel coffin that looks a bit like Elon Musk’s “luxury” Cybertruck?

Chipping into the conversation this month is a £1,590 cotton hoodie with a faux fur-trimmed hood by Balenciaga, emblazoned with the word itself with the brand’s name scrawled into the Y’s cursive tail. Worn by Gwyneth Paltrow in the latest issue of British Vogue as she chops a pineapple in the very luxurious marble kitchen of her Hamptons home, the hoodie is the gag in the scene – but is it funny, or just obscene? Are you in on the joke?

Exclusive: Ben Munday claims he is co-creator of 2004 images but Levine has called him only a collaborator

An artist who claims he is a co-creator of two of the most famous images ever taken of the late queen is suing Chris Levine, the photographer who claims sole authorship of the portraits, in a high court dispute.

Ben Munday claims he is a co-author of two 2004 portraits of the queen that were created using holography technology, which involves the use of light projection and multiple cameras to render a 3D image.

The actor on being called ugly, telling Johnny Rotten to F-off, and striking gold at Cannes

Kathy Burke’s mother, Bridget, died of stomach cancer when she was 18 months old; she writes that it made her “feel dead famous” in her community. She was raised by her older brothers, John and Barry, who were 10 and eight when it happened, and sometimes by their father, Pat, an alcoholic for many years, violent with it, who struggled to care for his family. Pat and Bridget had moved to London from Ireland, and the Burkes lived on an estate in Islington, where the other families played a vital role in raising and feeding the children. On his deathbed, in 1994, Pat asked Kathy to do two things: to give up smoking, and to write more. It has only taken her 30 years, she says, but she’s finally done the latter.

The entertainment industry is top-heavy with people from middle-and upper-class backgrounds who have a limited understanding of lives that don’t resemble their own. In my experience, one of the misconceptions they have about working-class life is that it is all grey skies and kitchen‑sink misery. Burke’s memoir has its painful moments, but the joy radiating from it is palpable and invigorating.

In this week’s newsletter: Whether it’s a holiday or work trip, railway travellers find themselves burdened by astronomical prices – and the environment is left footing the bill

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If I want to get from Barcelona to London, I face what should be a simple choice: either I take the plane, and pump out about 280kg of pollution that heats the planet, or the train, and spew just 8kg.

That is not the calculation travellers are presented with, nor is it the one they care about most. Because while the plane ticket would cost €15, an analysis from Greenpeace found this summer, the train ticket would cost a galling €389.

Climate disasters in first half of 2025 costliest ever on record, research shows

Global use of coal hit record high in 2024

Overconsumption and ruin: before and after images visualise how tech could harm our planet

Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson team up in the cracking new thriller from Slow Horses creator Mick Herron, and Jimmy Carr’s new comedy will draw gasps by the minute. Plus: there’s a new Witcher!

When a gas main explodes in a quiet Oxford street it initially comes as a merciful respite from the awkward dinner party being hosted by Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson). But soon, the fallout from the explosion becomes more disconcerting. Sarah (by day, a bored art historian) turns detective when an attempt to deliver a card to a child injured in the blast drags her into a conspiracy; soon she’s in cahoots with Emma Thompson’s spiky PI Zoe Boehm and getting entirely out of her depth. As befits a thriller adapted from a novel by Slow Horses creator Mick Herron, it’s an enjoyably astringent, increasingly nervy mixture of edgewalking intrigue and unsentimental, pitch-black humour.
Apple TV, from Wednesday 29 October

AWS explains in a lengthy post how a bug in automation software brought down thousands of sites and applications

Amazon has revealed the cause of this week’s hours-long AWS outage, which took everything from Signal to smart beds offline, was a bug in automation software that had widespread consequences.

In a lengthy outline of the cause of the outage published on Thursday, AWS revealed a cascading set of events brought down thousands of sites and applications that host their services with the company.

Knitwear isn’t just for cosy weekends. Try your favourite jumper with contrasting textures and tailored outerwear

With private-sector villainy and public-sector complicity, what makes this HMO scandal so characteristic of modern Britain is how far the guilt spreads

Fan of true crime? Then this column is for you. Rather than some cold case told through yellowing newspapers and sepia photos, this one is still happening. And just wait for the plot twist! But first let me outline the key facts; your challenge is to decide who’s guilty.

Our crime scene is a redbrick townhouse built in the last years of Victoria – tall, battered but undeniably handsome. It’s in Bowes Park, on London’s northern outskirts – the kind of neighbourhood that on a Friday afternoon offers nice cafes, a community-owned pub and some WFH dads wandering the streets scavenging for ciabatta sandwiches.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.