Ukrainian president embarks on busy week of diplomacy as US ups pressure to end war

Russian affairs reporter

Vladimir Putin is set to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff on Tuesday afternoon, the Kremlin announced on Monday morning.

Consultancy’s move to embrace artificial intelligence follows Disney’s use of the term ‘imagineers’

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Accenture has reportedly begun calling its 800,000 employees “reinventors”, as the consultancy tries to position itself as a leader in artificial intelligence.

The consultancy’s chief executive, Julie Sweet, has already started referring to staff by the new label and the business is now pushing for the term to be used more widely, the Financial Times reported, citing people at the company.

Hundreds remain missing in Indonesia and Sri Lanka as rescue efforts continue after Cyclone Ditwah

• How cyclones and monsoon rains combined to devastate parts of Asia – visual guide

Emergency workers in Indonesia have found it difficult reaching many residents, especially those in areas cut off by landslides and collapsed bridges.

Authorities have particularly struggled to reach two cities hit hard by the flooding in North Sumatra: Central Tapanuli and Sibolga.

A disaffected Portuguese NGO worker dallies with a drag queen as he wrestles with white man’s privilege in Pedro Pinho’s intelligent drama

‘What disgusts me the most are good men,” says a Bissau-Guinean sex worker to Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), a Portuguese environmental engineer working for an NGO on a road construction project in the country. He’s struggling to perform, as if his private life is letting slip some fundamental doubt about his role in Africa.

There’s a good dose of self-flagellation about western paternalism and hypocrisy in Pedro Pinho’s fifth feature, but it’s smart enough to know that this hand-wringing, extended over three hours, is yet another form of white man’s privilege. First seen driving through a sand blizzard like one of Antonioni’s existential wanderers, Sérgio seems to want to avoid thinking about the power dynamics at play around him. Being “here now”, in the moment, is his superpower – as he tells Gui (Jonathan Guilherme), the lofty Brazilian drag queen he dallies with. Gui’s gender-fluid posse, who hang out at the bar run by market hustler Diara (Cleo Diára), is a racial and sexual utopia ready to accept anyone, including this white expat. But, as Gui intuits, Sérgio’s bisexuality mirrors something noncommittal, even opportunistic, about him. He both lives in the expat enclave and the streets, without belonging to either.

The actor himself has promised to accept all future cameos as the beloved claw-gremlin, but this will only wear out his superpowers

There was once a time when Hugh Jackman Wolverine cameos made a sort of sense. Bursting out of a cell in full Weapon X gear, massacring half a bunker, then vanishing, in 2016’s otherwise pretty forgettable X-Men: Apocalypse. Telling potential recruitment team Magneto and Professor X to, er, go fuck themselves while propping up a bar in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Even popping up via archived footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2018’s Deadpool 2. These were cameos we could accept: quick, self-contained sideshows that understood the sacred rule that such things ought to be fun and brief. They also arrived at a time when Jackman didn’t yet carry the weight of 25 years of audience investment.

Last week, in an appearance on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, Jackman revealed that he has banned himself from saying no to future appearances as the surly mutant. “I am never saying ‘never’ ever again,” he said. “But I did mean it when I said ‘never’, until the day when I changed my mind. But I really did for quite a few years, I meant it.” There are suggestions that he could make a brief appearance in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday, in order to capitalise on the success of Marvel’s recent $1bn megahit Deadpool & Wolverine, even though he wasn’t mentioned in an interminable name-on-chair live stream from earlier this year, in which most of the main cast members were revealed.

Ruben Amorim is happy to ‘steal’ from others, Phil Foden is central to City and Thomas Frank is in trouble at Tottenham

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As Barney Ronay has noted, Arsenal are facing a weekly renewal of the Game You Just Have to Win If You Want to Be Champions. Did this represent a Game You Just Have to Win Because Chelsea’s Moisés Caicedo Was Sent Off? Yes and no. The hosts will naturally be more pleased with a point in the context of the first-half red card, while Arsenal perhaps looked a little jaded and below their best overall. But Enzo Maresca’s side were excellent throughout, despite having to play so much of the match with 10 men, and they deserved something from it. Compared with some Chelsea v Arsenal encounters from the olden days (when more overtly physical iterations of the Blues traditionally used to crush the fragile Gunners) there were no signs of weakness, mental or otherwise, from Arteta’s Premier League leaders in a fierce and physical derby. They will experience few harder tests than this, and a point was fair. Luke McLaughlin

San Francisco are a flawed team with serious injuries. But with no great teams in the league this year, the playoffs are wide open

The 49ers’ season felt over after Week 6’s loss to Tampa Bay. Yes, they were 4-2. Yes, they were tied with the Seahawks and Rams and had already won head-to-head games against both. But that’s when they hit rock bottom. All Pro linebacker Fred Warner was the latest casualty, following in the footsteps of All Pro edge rusher Nick Bosa with a season-ending injury. Brock Purdy had also struggled with injuries. George Kittle was hurt in Week 1. Both were not expected to return for several games. Brandon Aiyuk had no plans to play any time soon, at least not for San Francisco. By Week 7, the only big names in action were Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams.

Dire as the 49ers appeared on paper, they hung in. It helped that the Cardinals, Falcons, Giants, and Panthers featured in their upcoming schedule. They beat all four of them, losing only to the Texans and Rams in the next few weeks. None of the wins inspired much confidence, though. The Cardinals outgained the 49ers by 200 yards. Purdy threw three interceptions against the Panthers.

As Ethiopia teeters on the brink of renewed conflict the Fano, a local nationalist militia, are already fighting the government across the remote highlands, cut off from the outside world by federal forces. This photographic report offers a rare glimpse into the tensions tearing the country apart

Three years after the end of the Tigray war, Ethiopia is grappling with a violent armed insurgency devastating the north-west of the country. The Fano, an ethno-nationalist militia composed mainly of former soldiers from the Ethiopian regional special forces, now control large areas of the Amhara region.

Abuses committed by federal forces in an attempt to quell the insurgency are widespread: kidnappings, massacres, sexual violence, and attacks on humanitarian personnel. The situation is out of control, and more than 2 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in a region that is also hosting refugees from the war in Sudan.

Landscapes in the Lasta mountains, in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. This area spans a vast mountainous and hilly zone, bordering Tigray and Sudan. Its geography, typical of the Ethiopian highlands, offered a strategic position to the early kingdoms, making it the country’s main political, economic, and religious centre for centuries.

Moderate wine consumption may benefit your cardiac health, but foods such as grapes and berries offer similar advantages without the negative effects

“People shouldn’t think that drinking wine is good for you,” says Dr Oliver Guttmann, a consultant cardiologist at the Wellington hospital in London.

Alcohol consumption is linked to high blood pressure, liver disease, digestive, mental health and immune system problems, as well as cancer.

The case of a planned Cumbrian coalmine shows how governments around the world are being threatened by litigation in shadowy offshore courts

How do you reckon our political system works? Perhaps something like this. We elect MPs. They vote on bills. If a majority is achieved, the bills becomes law. The law is upheld by the courts. End of story. Well, that’s how it used to work. No longer.

Today, foreign corporations, or the oligarchs who own them, can sue governments for the laws they pass, at offshore tribunals composed of corporate lawyers. The cases are held in secret. Unlike our courts, these tribunals allow no right of appeal or judicial review. You or I cannot take a case to them, nor can our government, or even businesses based in this country. They are open only to corporations based overseas.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

We would like to hear from centenarians, their family and friends

The number of centenarians (aged 100 years and over) in the UK has doubled from 8,300 in 2004 to 16,600 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.

MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London denies allegations and condemns ‘flawed and farcical’ trial

• What led to Bangladesh trial of Tulip Siddiq in her absence?

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced the British MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

In a ruling on Monday, a judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister.

The return of Nobel laureate Han Kang; film-making under the Nazis; stuck in a time loop; Scandinavian thrills; and essential stories from postwar Iraq

We Do Not Part
Han Kang, translated by e yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hamish Hamilton)
The Korean 2024 Nobel laureate combines the strangeness of The Vegetarian and the political history in Human Acts to extraordinary effect in her latest novel. Kyungha, a writer experiencing a health crisis (“I can sense a migraine coming on like ice cracking in the distance”), agrees to look after a hospitalised friend’s pet bird. The friend, Inseon, makes films that expose historical massacres in Korea. At the centre of the book is a mesmerising sequence “between dream and reality” where Kyungha stumbles toward Inseon’s rural home, blinded by snow, then finds herself in ghostly company. As the pace slows, and physical and psychic pain meet, the story only becomes more involving. This might be Han’s best novel yet.

On the Calculation of Volume I and II
Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland (Faber)
“It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought.” Book dealer Tara Selter is stuck in time, each day a repeat of yesterday. Groundhog Day it ain’t; this is more philosophical than comic – why, she doesn’t even bet on the horses – but it’s equally arresting. Tara slowly begins to understand how she occupies space in the world, and the ways in which we allow our lives to drift. At first she tries to live normally, recreating the sense of seasons passing by travelling to warm and cold cities. By the end of volume two, with five more books to come, we get hints of cracks appearing in the hermetic world – is Balle breaking her own rules? – but it just makes us want to read on further.

Through static compositions and observational detail, the documentary explores how Laos’s visitors and residents inhabit the same spaces in very different ways

Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s idiosyncratic documentary gazes upon sights and vistas that would not be out of place on travel postcards. Minimal in its camera movements, the film looks at glimmering golden temples, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and processions of monks moving through lush landscapes. It also shows what is absent from glossy brochures, namely the intrusion of tourists. The disruption to the local rhythm of life is at once visual and aural: we see throngs of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of shorts and T-shirts a stark contrast to the ancient architecture. Their occasionally rowdy leisure activities are intercut with more mundane moments from the locals’ everyday lives, like schoolchildren heading to class or laywomen offering alms to monks by the roadside.

There’s a sense of tension between the static camera and the movements that occur within the frame. Scenes of tourists being loaded on to buses bring to mind Jacques Tati’s 1967 classic Playtime, which gently pokes fun at the idea of an authentic cultural experience attained via consumerist means. The point of view in Takesue’s film, however, is on shakier grounds. Some of the visual juxtapositions veer towards reiterating well-worn binaries between the east and west, the regional and the global. For instance, most of the tourists seen in Onlookers are white; in truth, visitors to Laos largely come from neighbouring Asian countries. Likewise, the Laotian population is also far from homogeneous: one sequence shows middle-aged men playing a game of catch, with the caption telling us they are “arguing in Lao” – yet some of them are speaking Vietnamese.

Auctioneer found the Flemish artist’s masterpiece – depicting a crucified Christ – in a Paris mansion as he was preparing for the property to be sold

A long-lost painting by baroque master Peter Paul Rubens has sold at auction in France for €2.3m ($2.7m) – well beyond its asking price.

The work, of Jesus Christ on the cross and painted in 1613, was unearthed by auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat in a Paris mansion last year after being hidden for more than four centuries.

Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region

It is clear now that the ceasefire in Gaza is only a “reducefire”. The onslaught continues. There are near-daily attacks on the territory. On a single day at the end of October, almost 100 Palestinians were killed. On 19 November, 32 were killed. On 23 November, 21. And on it goes. Since the ceasefire, more than 300 have been killed and almost 1,000 injured. Those numbers will rise. The real shift is that the ceasefire has reduced global attention and scrutiny. Meanwhile, Israel’s emerging blueprint becomes clearer: bloody domination not only in Gaza, but across Palestine and the wider region.

A “dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal”, is how Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, described this post-ceasefire period. Israeli authorities have reduced attacks and allowed some aid into Gaza, she said, but “the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.” Not a single hospital in Gaza has returned to being fully operational. The onset of rain and cooling weather has left thousands exposed in dilapidated tents. Since the ceasefire on 10 October, almost 6,500 tonnes of UN-coordinated relief materials have been denied entry into Gaza by Israeli authorities. According to Oxfam, in the two weeks after the ceasefire alone, shipments of water, food, tents and medical supplies from 17 international NGOs were denied.

Residents in Batn al-Hawa have all but given up hope and blame the Gaza war which, they say, has created ‘an atmosphere of hate’ towards them

The dome of the al-Aqsa mosque gleamed in the late afternoon autumnal sun as Zohair Rajabi looked out from his balcony towards the skyline of Jerusalem’s Old City. Christian pilgrims spilled out of buses, while observant Jewish worshippers gathered outside the gate to the Western Wall.

New flags now fly a few metres from Rajabi’s home. Blue and white and bearing the Star of David, they mark where residents were evicted recently from their homes by Israeli police. After more than 20 years of activism, Rajabi knows his days in Batn al-Hawa, a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood less than a mile south of the Old City, are almost certainly numbered.

Reports highlight devastating impact of slashed funding, especially in parts of Africa, that could lead to 3.3m new HIV infections by 2030

In Mozambique, a teenage rape victim sought care at a health clinic only to find it closed. In Zimbabwe, Aids-related deaths have risen for the first time in five years. In Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), patients with suspected HIV went undiagnosed due to test-kit stocks running out.

Stories of the devastating impact of US, British and wider European aid cuts on the fight against HIV – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – continue to mount as 2025 comes to an end, and are set out in a series of reports released in the past week.

A fishy festive centrepiece that’s ready in next to no time but still has pizzazz

While I tend to stick pretty close to tradition when it comes to my Christmas Day side offerings, I can’t remember the last time I cooked a turkey or goose as the showstopper. You see, my family is mostly made up of pescatarians, so anything larger than a chicken or cockerel (my personal favourite) for the meat eaters is just excessive. So, alongside a lovingly cooked smaller bird, I also make something fishy – hopefully something with a bit of star-quality, but not too shouty. A dish that will be delicious, fancy, but stress-free all at the same time. These pan-fried monkfish fillets are this year’s solution. It’s the sort of dish that can be made in next to no time while everything else finishes off in the oven, but that still has all the glitz and glamour of Christmas.

We must not let things be this way! Yet while we should do everything to change these things we do not

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Blue Wiggle Anthony Field and ‘Tree of Wisdom’ appeared in now-deleted video from singer Keli Holiday

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The Wiggles want to make one thing very clear: they do not condone the use of MDMA.

After two of its members appeared in a controversial TikTok video, the group – which has entertained children around the world for decades – issued a statement on the weekend denying any suggestion it supports the use of drugs.

Exclusive: Pollution targets set out alongside nature recovery projects to allay concerns over housebuilding

Wood-burning stoves are likely to face tighter restrictions in England under new pollution targets set as part of an updated environmental plan released by ministers on Monday.

Speaking to the Guardian before the publication of the updated environmental improvement plan (EIP), the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, said it would boost nature recovery in a number of areas, replacing an EIP under the last government she said was “not credible”.

• Paquetá critical of lack of support during spot-fixing case

• ‘It’s ridiculous to have your life affected for two years’

West Ham’s Lucas Paquetá hit out at a lack of “psychological support” from football authorities, in an astonishing online outburst in the wake of his bizarre sending-off late on during his side’s 2-0 defeat by Liverpool.

The 28-year-old midfielder, who was left in limbo for two years during a Football Association investigation into spot-fixing allegations, was shown two yellow cards, both for dissent, within seconds of one another by the referee Darren England.

Separate weather systems brought torrential rainfall to Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia

• How cyclones and monsoon rains combined to devastate parts of Asia – visual guide

Sri Lanka and Indonesia have deployed military personnel to help victims of devastating flooding that has killed nearly 1,000 people across four countries in Asia in recent days.

Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the entire island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week.