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The countdown is on.

One point in Verstappen’s favour: his teammate Yuki Tsunoda is ahead of him by one place. He is unlikely to mess with Red Bull’s main man.

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Manchester City v Leeds United: A lovely dank Mancunian afternoon with a low cloud and the whispers of bygone Manchester City matchdays in the east of town as Pep Guardiola sends out an XI in an hour or so that will not certainly show the same 10 changes as the dire Bayer Leverkusen defeat on Tuesday here at the Etihad Stadium.

Expect many of the manager’s big guns to be reinstated and intent on downing Leeds and arresting the two-game run of losses. Think Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Jeremy Doku etc, and so on …

Updates from the 3.10pm KO in Cardiff
Daniel Gallen: Let’s celebrate a November to remember
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It is tempting at this point to describe the Welsh Rugby Union as a clown show. But that would unfairly overlook the commitment and dedication, training, expertise, and preparation to produce that circus based entertainment. The public also respects clowns, even the ones that oddly fear them.

The WRU are more like a Baboons On LSD show. Wherein a large group of hallucinating monkeys run about screaming, break everything in the building then start viciously eating each other, with little regard for the paying audience.

At a time when distrust of big tech is high, Silicon Valley is embracing an alternative ecosystem where every CEO is a star

A montage of Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, and waving US flags set to a remix of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck blasts out as the intro for the tech billionaire’s interview with Sourcery, a YouTube show presented by the digital finance platform Brex. Over the course of a friendly walk through the company offices, Karp fields no questions about Palantir’s controversial ties to ICE but instead extolls the company’s virtues, brandishes a sword and discusses how he exhumed the remains of his childhood dog Rosita to rebury them near his current home.

“That’s really sweet,” host Molly O’Shea tells Karp.

The rite of passage for many Australian teenagers at Surfers Paradise has changed since the first party on Broadbeach in the 1970s

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It’s 9pm on Friday at Surfers Paradise and a DJ on the main beach is playing a club mix of Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move It as teenage boys wearing sunglasses shuffle enthusiastically on the sand.

This is the last night of schoolies, and it’s going to be large. The evening’s official costume theme is “good, evil, iconic”, which is open to wide interpretation. Someone is dressed as The Lorax, another as a Christmas tree.

Unique properties of fungi have led to groundbreaking innovations in recent years, from nappies to electronics

From the outside, it looks like any ordinary nappy – one of the tens of billions that end up in landfill each year. But the Hiro diaper comes with an unusual companion: a sachet of freeze-dried fungi to sprinkle over a baby’s gloopy excretions.

The idea is to kickstart a catalytic process that could see the entire nappy – plastics and all – broken down into compost within a year.

People implicated in the late sex offender’s crimes might face criminal charges or, at the very least, social ostracism

As the clock ticks toward the congressionally mandated deadline of 19 December by which Donald Trump’s justice department must release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, there is intense speculation about the contents of these documents – but also questions as to what happens when they are released.

The US president on 19 November signed a bipartisan bill requiring that the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, disclose these documents to the US public within 30 days. Given that other tranches of materials related to the disgraced financier included damning correspondence with high-profile individuals, many expect that still more names of the rich, famous and powerful will be named.

Delegates to choose between electing a single leader or a collective of lay members to run the leftwing movement

The two most prominent figures in Your Party are still divided over how it should be run as its inaugural conference kicked off this weekend.

Jeremy Corbyn confirmed to journalists on Saturday that he preferred a single leader and is likely to stand for the role but Zarah Sultana, his co-founder, said she would vote for collective leadership and that she does not believe parties should be run by “sole personalities”.

Sudden departure of Zelenskyy’s most powerful aide could have tremendous consequences for ending the war

Ukraine’s political system is bracing for a “mini-revolution” as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is forced to adapt to life without his closest adviser, chief enforcer and most loyal associate, Andriy Yermak, who resigned on Friday after his apartment was searched as part of a widening anti-corruption probe.

Yermak’s resignation could have tremendous consequences for domestic governance, as well as for Ukraine’s negotiating position in talks over ending the war with Russia, where he had served as the head of Ukraine’s delegation to peace talks with the White House.

Missile and drone attacks come amid Moscow’s campaign to break Ukrainian civil resistance by attacking energy grid

Two people were killed and 37 were injured by a Russian drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital that cut power to the western half of the city, leaving at least 500,000 residents without electricity.

Nearly 600 drones and 36 rockets were fired into the country in an attack that its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said highlighted Ukraine’s need for western help with air defence, as well as other financial and political support.

Committee highlights allegations including dog attacks and sexual violence, raising concern about impunity for war crimes

Israel has “a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture”, according to a new UN report covering the past two years, which also raised concerns about the impunity of Israeli security forces for war crimes.

The UN committee on torture expressed “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence”.

Staff at human rights body said to be ‘desperate for regime change’ over inertia after court’s legal definition of a woman

The ongoing impasse over guidance from the UK’s human rights watchdog on access to single-sex spaces is distracting from other pressing issues, including the rise of the far right, insiders have told the Guardian.

Some members of staff at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are described as “desperate for regime change” ahead of the new chair, Mary-Ann Stephenson, taking up her post in December.

Contrite leader owns up to mistakes in Perth but hopes to address shortcomings against Australia in the day-nighter

The sheer number of Australian voices triumphantly telling England to show some humility this past week has been slightly ironic. The first Test finished as an eight-wicket thumping, done inside 48 hours and worthy of criticism, but it was not without a genuine wobble from the hosts en route.

Either way, Ben Stokes looked to do so when his players resumed training at Allan Border Field on Saturday morning before next week’s day-night second Test at the Gabba. Gone was the “shell-shocked” captain seen during the immediate aftermath of going 1-0 down and in his place, having reflected during the past few days, a far more conciliatory figure.

Photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer capture the families, farmers and fishers who have been forced to leave their homes by extreme weather – and the landscapes they left behind. Introduction by Dina Nayeri

In 2009, Swiss photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer set out to document the people suffering the first shocks of the climate crisis. They had just returned from China, where rapid, unregulated development has ravaged the natural landscapes. Back home, though, the debate still felt strangely theoretical. “In 2009, you still had people who denied climate change,” Braschler recalls. “People said, ‘This is media hype.’” So the couple, working with the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva and supported by Kofi Annan, began The Human Face of Climate Change, a portrait series that showed the people on the frontline of a warming world.

Sixteen years later, climate change is no longer up for debate; the urgent discussions now revolve around solutions. Braschler and Fischer, too, have shifted their focus. “This is going to be one of the central issues for humanity,” says Braschler, “and we want to make sure that people know that the major effect of climate change will be displacement.”

Venues promoting destruction as stress relief are appearing around the UK but experts – and our correspondent – are unsure

If you find it hard to count to 10 when anger bubbles up, a new trend offers a more hands-on approach. Rage rooms are cropping up across the UK, allowing punters to smash seven bells out of old TVs, plates and furniture.

Such pay-to-destroy ventures are thought to have originated in Japan in 2008, but have since gone global. In the UK alone venues can be found in locations from Birmingham to Brighton, with many promoting destruction as a stress-relieving experience.

US descendants of Harris Neck’s Gullah Geechee families seek the return of ancestral land seized for a wartime airfield

A once thriving Black community along the Georgia coast called Harris Neck is now covered with greenery. During its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area boasted a school house, general store, firehouse and seafood processing plants, and supported 75 Black households on 2,687 acres. The inhabitants were Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of formerly enslaved west Africans, who remained on the Sea Islands along the south-east US where they retained their distinct creole language and culture following the civil war.

In 1942, though, the community was leveled to the ground when the federal government kicked the families off of the land using eminent domain to build an army airfield. For nearly 50 years, the descendants of the Harris Neck community have fought to regain their ancestral land through peaceful protests and lobbying local and federal governments to no avail.

• North Melbourne 9.2.56 defeat Brisbane 2.4.16 in grand final

• Roos create history with first perfect VFL/AFL/AFLW season

North Melbourne have completed a perfect season and become the first AFLW team to win back-to-back premierships with a 40-point win over the Brisbane Lions in the grand final.

Ash Riddell starred in the Kangaroos’ 9.2 (56) to 2.4 (16) triumph at a sold-out Ikon Park on Saturday night, the league’s best-and-fairest winner breaking yet another record with 39 disposals.

Tooth was delighted to capture one of Antony Gormley’s statues on Crosby beach – the dog was an unexpected bonus

Twenty years ago, 100 cast-iron, lifesize sculptures were erected across Liverpool’s Crosby beach. Sculptor Antony Gormley – also the man behind Gateshead’s Angel of the North – had created the figures several years previously, and London-based Roger Tooth had for years wanted to visit the Another Place installation and see them for himself. “I was in Liverpool with my wife and friends for a weekend away, and Sunday was an arty day,” Tooth says. “We began at Walker Art Gallery, and ended with a Guinness in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms. In between we headed the two miles outside the city to the statues. Seeing the rusting figures, all facing the sea amid the moving sands, was stunning.”

This was October 2025 and Storm Amy was in full effect. Tooth notes that it was blowing the sand around, and possibly also this dog. “I was taking a closeup of one of the sculptures when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small white dog bounding towards me,” he says. “I was amazed that an iPhone (and I) could freeze the dog in mid-air.”

The conflict is neither a clearcut defeat nor a feelgood victory, but an in-between outcome that contains profound elements of each

No one should be satisfied with the unjust peace that Ukraine may be forced to accept. The aggressor would be rewarded with territory and other concessions from the victim it has brutalized. Yet the horrified reaction in Washington to recent peace proposals is troubling in its own right.

The Trump administration’s recent 28-point plan, roundly denounced in Congress and the commentariat as a “capitulation” to Moscow, actually offered Kyiv a remarkable strategic outcome. Under its terms, Ukraine would face no meaningful limit on its peacetime military, despite Russian attempts to impose draconian restrictions since 2022. (The only requirement, a cap of 600,000 personnel, probably exceeds the number of active-duty forces Ukraine would maintain anyway.) Moreover, Ukraine would receive a substantial security guarantee from the United States and Europe – the strongest in history, even if short of a Nato-style commitment.

Stephen Wertheim is deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia – and his successor came and took it away

For a moment, Jacob Hannah saw an unprecedented opportunity to make Appalachia great again.

In 2022, the Biden administration earmarked billions of dollars to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities. The objective was to lay down building blocks for the region to transition from extractive industries like coal and timber to a hub for solar and other advanced energy technologies, with a view to long-term economic, climate and social resilience.

• Chicago rush for 281 in fifth straight win

• Philly fans boo as offense unravels again

• Hurts’ tush-push fumble turns game

Kyle Monangai rushed for 130 yards and a touchdown, D’Andre Swift ran for 125 yards and a score, and the Chicago Bears finished with 281 yards on the ground to win their fifth straight game, 24-15 over the reeling Philadelphia Eagles on Friday night.

Led by rookie coach Ben Johnson, the surprising Bears (9-3) are alone in first place in the NFC North heading into a 7 December showdown at Green Bay.

• Updates from the Kangaroos v Lions women’s decider

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Q1: 16 mins remaining: North Melbourne 0.0.0 – Brisbane 0.0.0

The Lions begin the game just as the would have wanted by winning the first centre clearance and locking the ball forward. The Kangaroos defence looks impenetrable from about 30m out.