Investors cheer forecast-beating results from chipmaker, as attention turns to delayed US employment report

The Chinese ministry of commerce has said the dispute over the supply of chips from Nexperia, the Dutch-based Chinese-owed company, is still not fully resolved.

“There is still a gap to completely solve the problem,” the Chinese ministry of commerce (MOFCOM) said on Thursday.

“Minister Karremans justified his actions by accusing Nexperia’s CEO of various acts of alleged mismanagement. Wingtech strongly rejects these accusations and points out that, to date, no proof has been provided,”

The minimum is no additional cost for business. Every time costs go up, you’re making the case against investing in the UK.

In the UK cost of energy is too high versus almost anywhere in the world.

Roles as EM Forster and a young, gay American dying of Aids in the 2018 play allowed an opportunity for deep personal and social reflection

In 2018 I had recently lost my mother, so I was looking for connections with the spirit. The Inheritance allowed me to talk about matters of the heart.

It was the world premiere at the Young Vic in London, so we were making something brand new, which is always thrilling. They’d already done a week’s rehearsal with another actor who had pulled out of what became my role. I stayed up all night reading Matthew López’s script before my audition. It was so gripping. I was nervous of Stephen Daldry going into the audition, as he has an enormous status and he’s very front-footed in the rehearsal room. I like to be in the background and find my way, so his working methods frightened me a little bit. But I put all of that aside to serve this story.

Organisers look at other UK venues amid concerns over costs and industry’s lack of working-class voices

For almost 50 years, the great and the good of British broadcasting have descended on Edinburgh each summer to discuss the trials and tribulations of the TV world. David Attenborough, Tina Fey, Emily Maitlis and Rupert Murdoch are among those to have previously given speeches at the city’s TV festival.

Yet amid concerns about the industry’s lack of working-class voices and the high cost of a hotel room in the city, the event’s organisers are thinking the unthinkable: the Edinburgh TV festival could be leaving Edinburgh.

We’d like to hear all about your Secret Santa disasters

It’s that time of year again… Whether it’s with family, colleagues or friends, many of us will be asked to take part in a Secret Santa as the festive period approaches. You know the drill: a fixed budget, a random name draw, and a high risk of ending up with something a bit naff. But hey, that’s Christmas, right?

Maybe you’ve been lucky, and have done well out of Secret Santas over the years. But we’re looking for stories of when it’s gone really, really wrong. Have you received a gift that had clearly been bought that morning from the office’s nearest corner shop? Or have you given a gift that was intended as a joke, but which didn’t land with the recipient? We want to hear from you!

Only our current tech hellscape could create a comedy so insidiously inoffensive. Prepare to be pummelled into submission as your time is siphoned off by OK entertainment

This is a cosy, lighthearted whodunnit about a retired professor who gets a second wind as a private eye. It’s also a bingo card for just about everything that makes streamer-era TV so patronising, uninspiring and mind-numbingly dull.

On the surface, A Man on the Inside’s crimes might seem negligible: it’s a little schmaltzy, a little too pleased with itself in that wisecrack-stuffed American comedy way. Yet it’s exactly that inoffensiveness that makes this strain of television so insidious. When the New York Times critic James Poniewozik coined the term “mid TV” to describe the current “profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence” that has come to dominate our screens, it wasn’t so much a vicious takedown as a shrug at the blah-ness of it all. The tech giants have pummelled us into submission by siphoning off our time via OK entertainment.

Some say the Border-Gavaskar Trophy is now pre-eminent, but there is nothing more intense than Australia v England

If it feels like the buildup to this Ashes series has lasted 842 days that is because it pretty much has. Test cricket’s oldest rivalry resumes on Friday inside Perth’s 60,000-seat thunderdome and with it, mercifully, comes fresh fuel for the ever-raging fire.

Because on one level the Ashes never really starts or stops. Since Stuart Broad nicked off Alex Carey at the Oval on 31 July 2023 – the final act of a dramatic 2-2 draw – the sides have been tracking each other, all while their supporters chip away from afar.

FA crackdown has led to the suspension of 149 match officials and more than 1,000 players in push to restore public faith in the game

Everything in Turkish football, it seemed, was going too well. Galatasaray have been flying in the Champions League, powered by Victor Osimhen. Arda Güler is soaring at Real Madrid with goals and assists. Even the men’s national team, under Vincenzo Montella, have looked their most promising in years.

But it would not be Turkish football without drama and drama is what the hardline president of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu, has delivered.

• Team president Elkann had revealed his frustrations

• ‘I think about it when I’m sleeping,’ says British driver

Lewis Hamilton has insisted he does not believe he can work any harder to help improve Ferrari’s performance he said in reaction to a rebuke from the Ferrari president John Elkann, who had stated he should: “Focus on driving and talk less.” Hamilton however maintained pointedly that the issues at Ferrari would not be fixed with “the click of a finger”.

Hamilton, who has yet to claim a podium for Ferrari in what has been an immensely trying first season with the team, was outspoken after another disappointing race at the last round in Brazil, after which he described his debut year with a Ferrari as “a nightmare”. Elkann, responded equally bluntly with his riposte.

While the outcome is a let down for those who want Australia to do better on climate, Chris Bowen looks set to play a pivotal role in the UN talks

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

Ouch. From one perspective, Australia’s long-running bid to host the Cop31 UN climate conference next year has ended in clear failure.

It campaigned for more than three years for the rights to put on the world’s biggest climate summit and green trade fair, which would have brought tens of thousands of people to the South Australian capital of Adelaide next November.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives an honest performance, but this is too self-conscious to challenge or work through loss with same power as the book

This is a painful movie in both the right and the wrong ways; I found something fundamentally unpersuasive and unhelpful in its contrived, high-concept depiction of grief. Adapted by writer-director Dylan Southern from Max Porter’s novella Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch who gives an honest and well-intentioned performance as a children’s author and graphic novelist. Living a middle-class existence in London, he is suddenly widowed; one of the movie’s off-target qualities is its refusal to specify the cause of death or even show us clearly what his wife looked like, which in real life would be unbearably vivid facts. Sam Spruell has a quietly sympathetic role as Cumberbatch’s brother.

Left to look after their two young boys, he succumbs to a kind of breakdown, and hallucinates a giant nightmarish crow, which after a while the boys can sense too. The crow is derisively voiced by David Thewlis, and resembles the Ted-Hughes-ish illustrations Cumberbatch was working on. It sneeringly, ruthlessly mocks and jeers at his “sad dad” anguish; while everyone else is walking on eggshells around him, perhaps making things worse, the brutal crow jabs its beak into his psychic wound.

Magnum photographer Lúa Ribeira worked intensely with young people – shooting them in dystopian landscapes on city limits to reflect their feelings of disconnection

We’d like to hear from fans about their experience of buying tickets – and also from those who have decided against doing so

The first two rounds of ticket sales for the 2026 World Cup have opened. Yet even with the draw yet to take place and matchups yet to be determined, fans appear to be flocking to buy them. The dynamic pricing model instituted by Fifa has raised prices sky-high, with many fans offering stories of technological issues with Fifa’s sales platform as well.

We want to hear from you: Have you bought World Cup tickets? How much did you spend? Do you think it’ll be worth it? And did you face any obstacles – technical or otherwise – to getting the tickets you want? And if you haven’t bought tickets yet – why not?

This collection of new short stories about Bertie and his valet pays homage to the genius of PG Wodehouse – just in time for Christmas

As with most of the giants of late 19th- and early 20th-century English literature, the vast majority of PG Wodehouse’s readers today are non-white. Perhaps it was brutal colonial indoctrination that ensured the modern descendants of the aspirant imperial middle classes from Barbados to Burma, with their tea caddies, gin-stuffed drinks cabinets and yellowing Penguin paperbacks, still devour Maugham, Shaw and Kipling. Perhaps they just have good taste.

Wodehouse’s detractors are many – Stephen Sondheim (“archness … tweeness … flimsiness”), Winston Churchill (“He can live secluded in some place or go to hell as soon as there is a vacant passage”), the Inland Revenue – but for millions around the world he remains the greatest comic writer Britain has ever produced. And he clearly still sells here, as this collection of a dozen new officially sanctioned stories by writers, comedians and celebrity admirers, out in time to be a stocking filler, attests.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Last week in the comments, someone dared raise the ancient philosophical conundrum: when we say “the first line of a play”, do we mean the first words spoken by a character, or do the stage directions count? The Thursday quiz condemns such quibbling, hair splitting and dramaturgical pedantry – unless of course it’s the quiz making a fuss. Still, the show must go on regardless, so limber up for another 15 questions of topical nonsense and dubious – though entirely correct – general knowledge. Let us know how you get on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 224

• Captain hits out at comments made by Monty Panesar

• Weatherald gets nod to open in series opener in Perth

Australia captain Steve Smith has confirmed his team for Friday’s opening Ashes Test – but the announcement was overshadowed by an extraordinary verbal attack on Monty Panesar after the former England spinner suggested Ben Stokes and his touring team should try to upset him by rehashing the infamous sandpaper ball tampering controversy of 2018.

Smith insisted the comments “didn’t really bother me”, but apparently demonstrated the opposite by raking over Panesar’s notoriously miserable appearance on the TV quiz Mastermind in 2019.

Exclusive: union leaders say proposed changes are immoral and could threaten patient safety if there is staff exodus

Up to 50,000 nurses could quit the UK over the government’s immigration proposals, plunging the NHS into its biggest ever workforce crisis, research suggests.

Keir Starmer has vowed to curb net migration, with plans to force migrants to wait as long as 10 years to apply to settle in the UK instead of automatically gaining settled status after five years.

Imposing a 1% levy on the super-rich isn’t a policy, it’s pantomime. Tackling inequality in Britain will require much more far-reaching changes

By this time next week you will be digesting the budget, you lucky thing. Yet even before Rachel Reeves has commended a single damn thing to the house, her efforts have been written off as a “shambles”, from a “chaotic” government that is Labour in name alone. Which begs the question: what is the leftwing alternative?

Because there is one, on which agreement stretches from Labour backbenchers to many of their opponent MPs and far beyond. Whether you listen to Zack Polanski or Zarah Sultana, the TUC or the YouTubers, they all call for a wealth tax – stinging the rich to pay for schools and hospitals. Who could be against such a thing?

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Study finds new party divide as backing for Labour and Conservatives plunges from 84% in 2020 to 58% in 2025

A new party divide is emerging among British Jews, research has found, with support rising fast for the Greens – buoyed up by younger and “anti-Zionist” Jews – while older Orthodox men turn to Reform UK as trust in the two main parties “collapses”.

Support for Labour and the Conservatives among British Jews had fallen to 58% by July 2025 from nearly 84% in 2020, according to a report from the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (JPR), which said it was “the lowest level we’ve ever recorded by some distance”.

Exclusive: Trade agreement means UK is subject to some food labelling rules, with vote on vegetarian food terms this week

Calling plant-based food veggie “burgers” or “sausages” may be banned in the UK under the new trade agreement with the EU, the Guardian understands.

The Labour government secured a new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the EU earlier this year, which allows British businesses to sell products including some burgers and sausages in the EU for the first time since Brexit.

Slivers of garlicky red pepper on a creamy Balkan white bean dip known as papula

This week, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on an interview I recorded with legendary Australian cheesemaker Richard Thomas, the inventor of an ingredient you may not even realise is Australian: marinated feta, AKA “Persian fetta”. An unexpected stop on a trip to Iran in the 1970s gifted Thomas a chance meeting with a Persian doctor and his breakfast: fresh labneh with soft, still-warm lavash. It was a revelation. On his return, Thomas got to work creating a fresh cheese from goat’s milk (similar to chèvre) and from cow’s milk, marinated and preserved in oil, with an extra “t” to avert confusion with the Greek-style feta, that’s still being utilised by cooks and chefs right across the world.

Persian fetta is a shapeshifter, capable of remaining both firm and steadfast when crumbled across the top of a platter or salad, and of yielding to a soft, velvety cream, enhancing all manner of dishes from pasta to pesto to whipped dips and schmears – and, of course, as a topping for that Aussie cafe staple, avocado toast.

Alice Zaslavsky is a Guardian Australia food columnist

Guo, who pretended to be Filipina to become mayor, found guilty of human trafficking after raid on compound where more than 700 people were forced to run scams

Alice Guo, a Chinese national who became a mayor in the Philippines while masquerading as a Filipina, has been sentenced to life in prison along with seven others on human trafficking charges, state prosecutors have said.

Guo, who served as mayor of a town north of Manila, was found guilty of overseeing a Chinese-operated online gambling centre where hundreds of people were forced to run scams or risk torture.

President has previously criticised the New York City mayor-elect, labelling him a ‘communist’ and threatening to deport him

Donald Trump has confirmed a long-awaited meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will happen in Washington this week, setting up an in-person clash between the political opposites who for months have antagonised each other.

The sit-down, which Trump said on social media would take place on Friday in the Oval Office, could possibly represent a detente of sorts between the Republican president and Democratic rising star.

French government withdraws funding after claims of toxic management and dismissal of staff member who lodged rape complaint

One of the world’s most prestigious comic book festivals is under threat of cancellation after leading graphic novelists and publishers announced they would boycott the event and the French government withdrew a tranche of its funding.

In the biggest crisis in its illustrious history, the Angoulême festival of la bande dessinée (comic strip) may not take place in 2026 after claims of toxic management and the dismissal of a member of staff who had lodged a rape complaint.

People in tent cities on shore of southern Gaza fear disease, cold and hunger as shortages continue

Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the shore of southern Gaza could do as the storm approached. Sabah al-Breem, 62, was sitting with one of her daughters and several grandchildren in their current home – a makeshift construction of tarpaulins and salvaged wood – when the wind and the driving rain broke across Gaza last week.

“Everything collapsed … We repaired our shelter but in the night it fell down again under the heavy rain. All our belongings were soaked. The day the winds blew was a black day for us,” said Breem, originally from Khan Younis but displaced multiple times since the start of the war in October 2023.