The former French president zealously promoted a zero-tolerance penal system. Luckily for him, his prison visitors include powerful friends
Twenty years ago, a tragic event changed the direction of my life. Three teenagers from the banlieueof Clichy-sous-Bois, north of Paris, were returning from a football game one afternoon in late October 2005 when they were chased by police. Zyed Benna, Bouna Traoré and Muhittin Altun had done nothing wrong (an inquiry later confirmed this) but were so disoriented by fear of the police, they hid in an electricity substation. In an awful twist of fate, Zyed and Bouna died by electric shock on 27 October 2005, while Muhittin was severely burned – and scarred for life by the ordeal.
Their deaths led to rioting across France – the worst in years. The episode also turned me into a fully committed activist against racism and inequality. Yet for some politicians the response was to criminalise the victims. The interior minister at the time for example, Nicolas Sarkozy. He initially suggested the teenagers had committed burglary and then declared: “When you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from the police.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers stayed alive on Friday night, getting to Toronto Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman for three runs in the third inning to win 3-1 and even the World Series at three games apiece. Baseball fans around the world will be treated to a winner-take-all Game 7 on Saturday, with the Dodgers looking to become the first team to win consecutive titles since 2000. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, will try to play spoiler and complete the upset to win their first World Series since 1993.
After the Dodgers offense struggled in the first four games of the series, slashing just .201/.296/.354 as a team, manager Dave Roberts shuffled his lineup ahead of Game 5. But it failed, as the Dodgers managed just four hits and one run against Blue Jays rookie Trey Yesavage and his bullpen. Roberts made a couple more minor changes before Game 6, however, inserting steely veteran Miguel Rojas into the lineup at second base and batting ninth while pushing Tommy Edman to center field and hitting eighth, hoping to get more out of the bottom of his lineup. “I just felt, again, the net sum of having both those guys in there, that’s how we had to construct it, and I feel great about it,” Roberts said before the game.
Ukrainian foreign ministry says deliberate strikes on civilian energy facilities violate international law as fears of a winter crisis grow. What we know on day 1,347
Ukraine’s foreign ministry has denounced what it described as Russian attacks on substations critical to supplying external power for Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Russia has carried out “targeted strikes on such substations”, a ministry statement issued late on Friday said. “Deliberate strikes on civilian energy facilities that directly affect the safe operation of nuclear installations bear the hallmarks of nuclear terrorism and constitute a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” it added.
The foreign ministry referred to a statement issued on Thursday by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, reporting military activity “that has led to damage to substations critical to nuclear safety and security in Ukraine”. The IAEA statement reported incidents near two nuclear plants – South Ukraine and Khmelnitskyi – that led to each plant losing access to an external power line. A third station at Rivne had been forced to reduce power at two of its four reactors, the IAEA statement adds. It gave no indication of which side might have been behind the incidents.
Civilian life on the frontlines in Ukraine is becoming a battle for survival, with attacks on energy infrastructure threatening to spark a major winter crisis, the UN warned Friday. Matthias Schmale, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, said civilians were increasingly bearing the brunt with the approach of the fourth winter since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
G7 energy ministers issued a joint statement on Friday to condemn Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, and said the group of countries will work to support Ukraine’s energy needs. “Russia’s recent attacks on Ukraine’s natural gas infrastructure have created risks to communities and human lives, weakening civilian infrastructure and the energy security of the Ukrainian people,” the ministers said.
Ukraine landed special forces to fight in embattled parts of the eastern city of Pokrovsk earlier this week, just as Russia said it had surrounded Kyiv’s forces in the area, two Ukrainian military sources said on Friday. The operation shows how Ukraine is battling to stabilise the situation in the strategically important city after scores of Russian troops breached its perimeter this month. Russia’s capture of Pokrovsk, an important road and rail hub, could enable further advances into the eastern Donetsk region, which Russia aims to fully occupy. Moscow’s military has been inching forward towards Pokrovsk for over a year.
Russian air defences downed three Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor said early on Saturday. Sergei Sobyanin, writing on Telegram, said specialists were examining fragments of the drones where they had fallen. Russia’s defence ministry had earlier reported that 38 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted and destroyed in a three-hour period over two regions in southern Russia and over Crimea.
Flights were suspended for almost two hours at Berlin’s Brandenburg airport on Friday due to sightings of unidentified drones, the latest in a series of similar scares across Europe. Take-offs and landings were suspended between 8.08pm and 9.58pm and a “whole series of flights” were diverted to other German cities during the closure, an airport spokesman said. Airports in Denmark, Norway and Poland have also recently suspended flights due to unidentified drones, while Romania and Estonia have pointed the finger at Russia, which has brushed off the allegations. Germany has similarly pointed the finger at Moscow.
President Trump received a trio of legal setbacks – key US politics stories from 31 October at a glance
President Trump received a trio of legal setbacks Friday related to the government shutdown and his attempts to tweak voting access in US elections.
First, two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings in separate cases ordering the administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps under the Snap program.
1st over: England 3-0 (Smith 1, Duckett 2) England off the mark with a streaky outside edge as Smith throws bat at ball. A decent first over from Duffy. I reach into the leftover Halloween chocolate and pull out some Love Hearts. DREAM BIG is the instruction.
A moment’s silence for young Ben Austin, who died after being hit in the nets while practising in Melbourne.
The bucket hats were out in force at Marvel Stadium as Liam and Noel Gallagher made a polished – and even affectionate – return to Melbourne
The first time Oasis played in Australia, in 1998, the controversies piled up to the point that some journalists speculated it was a media strategy. Liam was slapped with a lifetime ban from Cathay Pacific due to the band’s alleged bad behaviour on the flight over. (The ban was sealed when Liam told an Australian reporter, “I don’t give a flying fuck … I’d rather walk.”) Noel got in hot water for comments he made about Princess Diana, then Liam was hauled in front of Brisbane magistrates court, charged with assault after allegedly head-butting a fan who wanted a photo. The fan dropped the charges, though Liam later called the alleged head-butt “justice”, adding: “The geezer put a camera in my face and I told him not to.”
But other than the handwringers, Australian fans seemed delighted with it all. The Gallaghers’ particular tetchy, laddish swagger has always played very well here, as has the drama of their on-off relationship. And the music too, of course: both What’s the Story (Morning Glory)? and Wonderwall went to No 1 in 1995, while in 2013 Triple J listeners voted Wonderwall the best song of the past 20 years. The affection remained even after Noel went on Triple J and said: “You fucking need us more than we need you. Your lives and the people that listen to your radio station and listen to Radiohead and fucking Blur and Robbie Williams – your lives would be lessened without me and my brother and it’s as simple as that.”
Police on Friday were investigating a burglary at a home reported to belong to the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that happened while the NBA’s reigning MVP was playing a game the night before.
The Thunder referred questions to police in Nichols Hills, an enclave north of downtown Oklahoma City. Police would not confirm who lived in the house or say what might have been taken from it.
Original 16 December date could change to 23 December
Palace set to play three games in five days if tie not moved
Arsenal have voiced strong opposition to Crystal Palace’s request that their Carabao Cup quarter-final be played on 23 December, with Mikel Arteta insisting it would not be fair to make both teams play two matches in little more than 48 hours.
The tie is scheduled for Tuesday 16 December in a gruelling run of three matches in five days for Palace, who have a Premier League game at home to Manchester City two days earlier and a Conference League fixture against KuPS on 18 December.
Liverpool host Villa after six defeats in seven games
Arne Slot has said the Liverpool hierarchy share his views on the reasons for the team’s slump and he will not abandon an attacking style in search of a way out. The head coach admitted that six defeats in seven games was unacceptable before Aston Villa’s visit on Saturday and denied making excuses for Liverpool’s worst domestic run in 72 years.
Slot accepted the pressure was on before his makeshift team exited the Carabao Cup against Crystal Palace on Wednesday. That pressure to arrest the slide, however, is not, he insisted, coming from Liverpool’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, FSG’s chief executive of football, Michael Edwards, or the sporting director, Richard Hughes, after a summer transfer outlay of almost £450m.
Ruben Amorim has indicated that the Europa League final defeat by Tottenham was among the moments that made him fear he would not last a year at Manchester United.
The head coach admitted he has wondered more than once whether it was “meant to be” for him in the job he was appointed to a year ago on Saturday. He has lost 19 of his 52 games since signing a two-and-a-half-year contract and last season took United to 15th, their lowest Premier League finish. The Portuguese was asked whether he had worried about completing 12 months in charge.
Kieffer Moore downed Coventry with a perfect second-half hat-trick as Wrexham won 3-2 to inflict a first league defeat on the Championship leaders.
Coventry, the only unbeaten side in the EFL, were closing in on a club-record seventh straight league win when Ephron Mason-Clark superbly slotted the Sky Blues ahead midway through the first half. The omens were not good for Wrexham given Frank Lampard’s side had scored 34 goals in 12 games before arriving in north Wales and the home side had won only one of their previous seven.
Move is strongest endorsement yet for retained rule over disputed territory, despite fierce opposition from Algeria
The UN security council has approved a US-backed resolution supporting Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara, despite fierce opposition from Algeria.
Although Friday’s vote was divided, the resolution offers the strongest endorsement yet for Morocco’s plan to keep sovereignty over the territory, which also has backing from most European Union members and a growing number of African allies.
Four men given prison terms for desecration that was possibly ‘orchestrated by Russian intelligence services’
A French court on Friday jailed four Bulgarians for desecrating a Jewish memorial with red handprints last year, in what prosecutors think may have been foreign interference linked to Russia.
The Paris criminal court gave two-year sentences to Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, described as the perpetrators, and four years and three years respectively to Nikolay Ivanov and Mircho Angelov, considered the operation’s “masterminds”. Angelov is still at large.
Lee White sent a series of abusive emails to Dr Rosena Allin-Khan before later threatening to kill the prime minister
A man who threatened to kill the prime minister and sent a flurry of “menacing” messages to a Labour MP has been jailed for 23 months.
Cambridgeshire police said Lee White sent 109 messages to Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, the MP for Tooting in south London, over a four-day period between 29 August and 1 September 2024.
Hurricane Melissa, Russian strikes on Kyiv, displacement in Sudan and Trump’s meeting with Xi in Busan: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
England captain stresses team must display their full power in Saturday’s first of four home internationals in November
Just occasionally even the world’s best rugby players are genuinely taken aback. In mid-September, Maro Itoje, recuperating from his British & Irish Lions exertions, stood and watched an England training session and could not believe the pace, intensity and all-round zip on view. “I was thinking: ‘Wow, I need to get back in the gym, I need to make sure I come back quickly,’” he admitted this week.
Itoje says his former teammate Mako Vunipola was just as impressed – “He didn’t remember it being that fast” – on a visit to England’s base in Bagshot the other day. Another recent retiree, the England scrum-half Danny Care, felt similarly. All of which has been fuelling Itoje’s growing belief, with the 2027 Rugby World Cup on the horizon, that “there’s no mountain we can’t climb”.
Radical English director who clashed with the BBC over his ‘horrifying’ film about nuclear war, was forced to look abroad to continue working
Peter Watkins, the radical British film-maker who won an Oscar for his controversial drama-documentary The War Game, about a nuclear attack on Britain, has died aged 90. In a statement, his family said he had died in hospital on Thursday in Bourganeuf, close to the small town of Felletin in central France, where he had lived for 25 years. They added: “The world of cinema loses one of its most incisive, inventive, and unclassifiable voices. We would like to thank all those who supported him throughout this long and sometimes solitary struggle.”
Watkins was an uncompromising figure who clashed with the BBC after the latter failed to show The War Game on broadcast TV, and subsequently led a peripatetic film-making existence, looking overseas for backing. He was wary of the press. In a rare interview he spoke to the Guardian in 2000, saying he was “someone who has been working for 30 years to help shift the power balance between public and TV”. He added: “Had TV taken an alternative direction during the 1960s and 1970s and worked in a more open way, global society today would be vastly more humane and just.”
The former prince remains under scrutiny as Buckingham Palace finalises plans for his future as a commoner
The former Duke of York is in line to receive a large one-off payment and an annual stipend designed to prevent him overspending in his new life as a commoner, the Guardian understands.
One option for a relocation settlement, as the king strives for a “once and for all” solution to the problem of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, includes an initial six-figure sum to cover his move from Royal Lodge in Windsor to private accommodation in Sandringham, Norfolk.
Two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings on Friday in separate cases ordering the Trump administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown.
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday afternoon blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union.
In an exclusive extract from her autobiography, goalkeeper reveals the painful road to her shock England exit
England felt like such a safe space for me. It was usual to have a team review after a big tournament and after the Euros in 2022 we came together in the Club England meeting room at St George’s Park, the team’s headquarters.
The emotional security that I felt within England was bolstered by the culture and values that had underpinned and contributed to our success. Non-collegiate behaviour was not tolerated. We came back together to the news that Hannah Hampton had been dropped from the squad: her behaviour behind the scenes at the Euros had frequently risked derailing training sessions and team resources.
Five hours after the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island without the 80-year-old, it turned back. Her body was found the next day, and her family want answers
The appeal of Lizard Island is its remoteness. The Great Barrier Reef island, 250km from Cairns in Queensland’s tropical north, is known for its impressive snorkelling, with giant clams nestled among the coral. It also has a scientific research station.
Tourists are mostly kept at bay by its inaccessibility and eye-wateringly high accommodation prices.
Mia McKenna-Bruce, Saoirse Ronan, Anna Sawai and Aimee Lou Wood have been cast in the forthcoming four-part film series
Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-part Beatles film has confirmed the casting of four main female roles.
Sony Pictures officially announced that Mia McKenna-Bruce will play Maureen Cox, with Saoirse Ronan as Linda Eastman, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono and Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd. All four had been strongly rumoured to have been in line for their parts, but only now has their participation been confirmed.
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