Millions of Thai take part in ancient annual festivities on 5 November that are held on the full moon of the 12th month in the Thai lunar calendar. Many head to waterways to release ‘krathong’ loaded with candles, flowers and incense, letting their misfortune float away along rivers and canals. Lanterns are also released into the night sky with the belief that bad luck will fly away
Lukoil’s Burgas plant is Bulgaria’s only refinery; Slovakia running out of reasons to buy Russian gas as US import deal takes shape. What we know on day 1,352
Bulgaria is preparing to seize control of Lukoil’s Burgas oil refinery and sell it to a new owner after the Russian oil company came under US sanctions, according to Bulgarian media reports. Burgas is Bulgaria’s only oil refinery and as part of Lukoil is at risk of having to shut down because of the sanctions. The US joined Britain last month in imposing sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, over Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Legislation was being drafted to allow the seizure, Bulgarian outlet Mediapool reported on Wednesday. Lukoil said last week that it was moving to sell foreign assets because of the sanctions.
With international action progressively choking off Russia’s petroleum exports, Poland said on Wednesday that it was working on a deal toimport liquefied natural gas from the US to supply Ukraine and Slovakia. Officials expect to announce a joint declaration to boost imports after a meeting of the parties at a transatlantic energy conference in Athens later this week, Reuters cited a source as saying. The Polish energy ministry told Reuters late on Wednesday: “We are working with our partners – Americans, Slovaks, Ukrainians – on the possibilities of importing American gas to boost the energy security of our region.”
Slovakia’s Putin-friendly prime minister, Robert Fico, has objected to EU restrictions on Russian gas imports. Reuters said that according to its sources, as much as 4bn-5bn cubic metres of US gas per year could be shipped by southern Poland to Slovakia – about the same as Slovakia’s annual consumption. The EU in October put forward new plans to end its purchases of Russian oil and gas with a fresh package of sanctions that bans Russian LNG imports by 2027.
Moscow’s forces appear to be tightening their grip on Pokrovsk, Pjotr Sauer reports, with street fighting raging across the ruined city in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s general staff on Wednesday denied Russian claims that its troops had been encircled, saying efforts were under way to reinforce the flanks around Pokrovsk and the nearby town of Myrnohrad.
Artem Karyakin, a well-known soldier in the Ukrainian armed forces, posted that Russian troops were “present in every district of the city”. “There is no good news from there; the situation remains tense. While Russian forces have not yet fully taken control of the city, fighting is ongoing.” Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which monitors the war, posted: “Ukraine may be repeating a costly mistake in Pokrovsk … seen for example in Vuhledar and Kursk – a reluctance to conduct a controlled, militarily justified withdrawal from a threatened salient when the situation no longer favours the defender.”
Angelina Jolie has made a surprise visit to Kherson, according to media reports. The frontline city lies on the other side of the Dnieper river from the Russian army. It would be the US actor’s second visit to Ukraine since the Russian full-scale invasion of February 2022. According to local reporting, Jolie visited a maternity ward and a children’s hospital in Kherson, which was briefly occupied by Russian forces in 2022 and still comes under daily Russian bombardment. A photo published by local official Vitaly Bogdanov showed Jolie wearing a bulletproof vest with Ukrainian insignia. Photographs circulating online were also said to show Jolie making a visit to Mykolaiv, to the north-west of Kherson. Neither Jolie nor the Ukrainian government confirmed the visit.
Online influencers like Andrew Tate have a smaller impact than thought but there’s still grim news about boys who hold harmful ideas about masculinity
There’s a moment in a boy’s life when it almost hurts to look at them, so beautiful and vulnerable are they. Manhood is right there knocking on their door, and these tow-headed, big-eyed boys open it and for a time there is one foot in, one foot out, trying out this new space, going back into the comfort of the old. Back and forth.
It’s a vexing time. Some boys are more like men, some boys are more like babies. They vary massively in size and adult masculinity. Hormones surge, or may yet be a year away. At about the same time, they are leaving the top of the heap at primary school, where they know everyone and everyone knows them, and they go to the bottom of the heap at high school, a daunting experience for everyone, girls too.
Boys need help. And, yes, men need fixing – I’m mindful of that. Males arrive in our community on the coattails of an almost endless chain of unexamined privilege. I don’t deny that for a second. But patriarchy is bondage for boys, too. It disfigures them. Even if they’re the last to notice. Even if they profit from it.
Members of the public have pleaded for a reprieve for the remaining lions, while former staff members hope the sanctuary will reconsider putting them down
A troubled New Zealand wildlife park says it has been forced to euthanise two of its elderly lions, with the fate of its remaining five lions unclear, after it ran into financial difficulties.
The privately owned Kamo Wildlife Sanctuary in the northern city of Whangārei closed its doors on the weekend.
The clutch of remora fish are holding on tight, but collectively release their grip just as the humpback whale they are riding breaches the surface of the ocean.
Moments later, everyone is back on board, as the whale re-enters the water, all hurtling together off the coast of south-east Queensland.
The Los Angeles Dodgers 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in 11 innings in Game 7 of the World Series averaged 51m viewers combined across the United States, Canada and Japan. Major League Baseball said it is the most-watched game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Last Saturday’s game averaged 27.33m on Fox Sports, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of last week.
First 50 vehicles, costing nearly £10m each, finally ready to deploy to Nato’s eastern flank, where drones now dominate
Britain’s military has announced the first delivery of Ajax armoured vehicles, eight years behind schedule and amid questions about their relevance as cheap drones dominate the battlefields of Ukraine.
The junior defence minister Luke Pollard said the first 50 vehicles, costing nearly £10m each, were ready to deploy on Nato’s eastern flank, though he acknowledged the problems of the past when delivery deadlines of 2017, 2020 and 2021 were all missed.
Astronomers cast doubt on Nobel prize-winning theory and suggest universe could end in ‘big crunch’
Astronomers have cast doubt on a Nobel prize-winning theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, suggesting that instead it may be slowing down.
If confirmed, this would have profound implications for the fate of the universe, raising the possibility that rather than expanding for ever, the universe could ultimately enter a reverse big bang scenario known as the big crunch. The astronomers behind the work say their observations also imply that dark energy – the mysterious force thought to be propelling the expansion of the universe – is weakening over time.
Does your Labubu have exactly nine teeth? Are its ears narrow? Or do its body parts – eyes, feet and hands – detach from its grimacing face?
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued a warning to fans of the it-dolls, stating that a burgeoning market of counterfeit Labubus could pose safety risks to young children.
Counterfeit items could have small detachable parts like eyes, feet or hands.
Lafufu’s could have poor stitching or use cheap fabrics.
Authentic Labubus have exactly nine teeth. Fake items could have ears that are too wide.
Inter maintain perfect start with win over Kairat Almaty
Pafos beat Villarreal to earn first Champions League win
Barcelona had to settle for a share of the spoils at Club Brugge after a thrilling 3-3 draw but were fortunate the English referee Anthony Taylor ruled out Romeo Vermant’s stoppage-time effort for a foul on the Barça goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny.
In a thriller at Brugge’s Jan Breydel Stadium, the home side opened the scoring through Nicolò Tresoldi in the sixth minute. But Barcelona hit back with Ferran Torres scoring from close range two minutes later only for Brugge to regainthe lead in the 17th minute through Carlos Forbs after another quick counter.
Report calls for scaling-up of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors to limit peak of global heating
There is still a chance for the world to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown and return to the goal of 1.5C if governments take concerted action on greenhouse gas emissions, a new assessment argues.
The Climate Analytics report says governments’ goals are inadequate and need to be rapidly revised, and calls for the rapid scaling-up of the use of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors including transport, heating and industry.
Sean Duffy says cuts at 40 locations to reduce stress on air traffic controllers will start Friday if solution not found
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford,said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high volume markets” beginning on Friday if the government shutdown does not end by then.
The announcement did not specify which 40 airports would see the reduction and said that a complete list would be announced on Thursday with cuts likely at the nation’s 30 busiest airports, including those serving New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Dallas. The reduction will affect cargo, private and passenger traffic.
If Phil Foden performs so, too, do Manchester City. This was reiterated by his two-goal show that helped to sweep Pep Guardiola’s improving team to 10 points from four games at the league stage’s halfway juncture.
Factor in Erling Haaland, who decorated his captaincy for the night with a 27th goal (for club and country), and Waldemar Anton’s 72nd-minute jab home was solely an irritation.
Newcastle needed that. They have won six of their past eight games, which might sound like an impressive run of form, but their defeat at West Ham on Sunday was wretched enough to raise all manner of doubts. Three successive Champions League wins, though, all without conceding, means they probably need only one more victory from their final four games to secure a place in the playoff round, while two wins and a draw would almost certainly secure a top‑eight place and automatic passage to the last 16.
This Newcastle are a team with an extremely high ceiling and a very low floor. They are capable of hammering Union Saint-Gilloise and pummelling Benfica in the Champions League and outplaying Tottenham in the Carabao Cup. But they are also capable of losing 3-1 against West Ham and being grateful it wasn’t worse. They are both the amiable doctor and the vicious criminal, both ferociously energetic winners and lethargic disappointments, both Jekyll and Hyde.
Anthony Hemingway, who is both director and executive producer on the legal drama, has defended the show which has been the subject of a critical pile-on
One of the directors of the critically maligned legal drama All’s Fair has responded to negative reviews, saying that “not everything is for everybody”.
Anthony Hemingway, who has directed four episodes of the show and is an executive producer on it, was asked about his thoughts on the overwhelmingly bad reviews in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
The Israeli club’s fans were prohibited from attending on public safety grounds but, despite the ban, West Midlands police have been granted section 60 stop-and-search powers and plan to deploy more than 700 officers around Villa Park to cope with protests and potential unrest.
Thrilling American jazz drummer, pianist and composer who played with some of the genre’s greatest stars
In improvisational music, ungoverned by conductors or sacrosanct scores, and given to abrupt shifts of direction on the whims of performers, drummers are often the intuitive navigators. One of the most creative and viscerally thrilling exponents of that pivotal jazz art was Jack DeJohnette, the percussionist, pianist, composer and bandleader, who has died aged 83.
DeJohnette’s CV glitters with the names of the biggest jazz stars of the second half of the 20th century, and with good reason. In his youth, he played genres from R&B to free-jazz in his hometown, Chicago (alongside some of the innovative founders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians – AACM – and occasionally playing in Sun Ra’s Arkestra), before joining the most widely celebrated of early jazz-rock fusion groups, led by the saxophonist Charles Lloyd and including a then-unknown young pianist called Keith Jarrett.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers apologises for invading privacy of man wrongly arrested for high-profile murder
Rupert Murdoch’s news publisher in the UK agreed to pay “substantial damages” to a man wrongly arrested for a high-profile murder, after apologising for the invasion of his privacy.
Christopher Jefferies, a retired schoolteacher and landlord from Bristol, was wrongfully arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, a landscape architect.
Chelsea’s precision is nowhere to be seen when Enzo Maresca rings the changes. Chaos tends to set in whenever the Italian tries to freshen things up by making use of a deep but raw squad and he is unlikely to be in a rush to rotate again in the Champions League after seeing a weakened team fail to douse Qarabag’s skill and spirit on a raucous night in Baku.
There was no doubt Qarabag were the happier team at the conclusion of this absorbing 2-2 draw. Chelsea, by contrast, were merely grateful that their 5,000-mile round trip to Azerbaijan had not ended in major embarrassment. Not once were they were in control against defiant opposition, even after going ahead through the outstanding Estêvão Willian, and it was hardly ideal that Maresca had to make three changes when his players went down the tunnel with their egos bruised and damage to repair after a shambolic first half.
The UK will lead on tackling the climate crisis, the prime minister vowed on Wednesday, despite critics calling for a slowdown, because shifting to a low-carbon economy will cut bills, boost economic growth and bring national renewal.
The author has won the experimental literary fiction prize for his ‘dizzying, encyclopaedic’ fifth book, We Live Here Now
CD Rose has won the 2025 Goldsmiths prize for his novel We Live Here Now, praised by judges as “hilarious and deeply haunting”.
The £10,000 award, now in its 13th year, honours “mould-breaking” fiction. The winner was announced at a ceremony in central London on Wednesday evening.
To order We Live Here Now and browse the shortlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Justices grill administration over imposition of steep duties as Sotomayor says: ‘I just don’t understand this argument’
The US supreme court appeared skeptical of the legal basis of the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariff regime on Wednesday after justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the levies.
Justices heard oral arguments on Wednesday morning on the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs , a crucial legal test of his controversial economic strategy – and power.
Connexion
