Volodymyr Zelenskyy set to press case for using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defences
A forthcoming trip by German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, to China has been cancelled amid growing fears that Beijing’s restriction on semiconductor and rare earth exports could paralyse the country’s car industry.
“We are postponing the journey to a later time,” the spokesperson told a regular press briefing on Friday.
“The Chinese side was ultimately able to confirm only the appointment with the Chinese foreign minister, and could not confirm any other additional appointments,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Baltimore county high schools have gun detection system that alerts police if it sees what it deems suspicious
An artificial intelligence system (AI) apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed.
Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him.
Statement from security adviser, viewed by then prime minister, did not describe China as enemy
Rishi Sunak was the only politician to see a witness statement by the deputy national security adviser at the centre of a controversy about the collapse of a case against two British men accused of spying for China.
According to letters sent to the joint committee on the national security strategy, the statement from Matthew Collins in December 2023, which was seen by the then prime minister and his advisers, did not describe China as an enemy, another key element of the case.
European Commission initial finding says Facebook and Instagram introduced unnecessary steps for users to submit reports
Instagram and Facebook have breached EU law by failing to provide users with simple ways to complain or flag illegal content, including child sexual abuse material and terrorist content, the European Commission has said.
In a preliminary finding on Friday, the EU’s executive body said Meta, the $1.8tn (£1.4tn) California company that runs Instagram and Facebook, had introduced unnecessary steps in processes for users to submit reports.
A rowdy debut departs from Singh’s American bolero work to revel in the chaos of atonal scrapes, cymbal splashes, wonky horns and raucous vocals
From Richmond, Virginia Recommended if you like Cécile McLorin Salvant, Tomeka Reid, Ornette Coleman Up next Debut album, Mean Reds, released 24 October
As the co-founder of American bolero group Miramar, vocalist Laura Ann Singh has spent the past five years minting a warm, nostalgic analogue sound, rich with Spanish-language harmonies. Her upcoming spiky solo debut, Mean Reds, disrupts that entirely. Supplanting the swaying Latin rhythms of bolero for a free jazz quartet, these eight tracks revel in atonal scrapes, cymbal splashes, keening horns and Singh’s lively vocals. Referencing avant garde pioneer Ornette Coleman’s free form improvisations as much as Joni Mitchell’s emotive lyricism, the result is a rowdy debut that launches Singh as one of the more distinctive new voices in jazz.
The healing power of gardens; celebrating an abolitionist; hope in the toughest times; a gladiator romantasy and more
The Butterfly House by Harry Woodgate, Andersen, £12.99 Miss Brown’s wild garden scares most people, but when Holly discovers her reclusive neighbour’s sadness, she decides to help turn the wilderness into a butterfly haven. A beautiful, moving picture book about the healing power of gardens and community.
The History of We by Nikkolas Smith, Rock the Boat, £8.99 Via rich, dynamic paintings and thoughtful pared-back text, Smith answers the question “What does the beginning look like?” with this powerful picture book, the shared story of humanity’s first ancestors in “the fertile cradle of Africa”.
The widow of one of the people killed when a gunman opened fire on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Texas last month has spoken out to question whether the political violence rising under the Trump administration played a role in her husband’s death.
Stephany Gauffeny lost her husband, Miguel García-Hernández, when he became the second of two men to die in the attack outside a detention center in Dallas, after succumbing to his gunshot wounds.
The character created by Helen Fielding and played by Zellweger in four films, is to be immortalised in bronze in Leicester Square where it will become a permanent fixture
Bridget Jones, the character created by Helen Fielding and played by Renée Zellweger in four films, is to be immortalised in bronze in central London.
The new statue will be unveiled on 17 November and joins a number of others portraying key icons of cinema in Leicester Square, home to four cinemas and numerous red carpet premieres.
With Hollywood favouring franchise fare, horror films have become the last bastion of inventive film-making, producing a new generation of auteurs in the process
Every week at my local multiplex, there is a new horror film. If it’s not a reboot (I Know What You Did Last Summer) or sequel (Final Destination Bloodlines), it’s a prequel (The First Omen; A Quiet Place: Day One), the return of a beloved gothic icon (Luc Besson’s Dracula: A Love Tale; Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein), or a slasher movie (Dangerous Animals) in which the psycho killer’s weapon of choice is not blades, but sharks. Or it’s a thrilling, deliriously inventive dispatch from one of a new wave of horror auteurs shaking up the cinematic zeitgeist: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, say, or Zach Cregger’s Weapons.
By playing with metaphor, imagery and narrative, horror has always addressed hard truths about death, decay and the human condition that mainstream productions tend to shy away from as too disgusting, embarrassing or distressing. In an era when thrillers, romcoms and action films are unwilling to rock the boat lest they upset risk-averse studios and streaming services, horror films are uniquely equipped to tackle the hot-button issues of our times: migration (His House); mental health (Smile 2); toxic masculinity (The Invisible Man); artificial intelligence (M3gan); cults (Midsommar); zealotry (Heretic); gender dysphoria (I Saw the TV Glow); conspiracy theories (Broadcast Signal Intrusion); Zoom meetings (Host); pandemics (The Sadness); ecology (In the Earth); politics (The Purge); dementia (Relic); pregnancy and motherhood (Huesera: The Bone Woman; Mother’s Baby) and – an ever-popular theme in the horrorsphere – bereavement (The Babadook; Hereditary; Talk to Me; Bring Her Back and so on).
A couple’s dream home on Scotland’s rocky west coast is an audacious, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired feat of architecture
Building a bold new contemporary home directly on the British coastline is a tall order. Aside from the logistics of designing a house that functions successfully in such an unforgiving setting, planning permission is likely to make it a nonstarter. But on the shore of Loch Long on the Rosneath peninsula, 40 miles north-west of Glasgow, John MacKinnon and his wife Laura found a way to make it work for their house, Rock Cove. While the area is wild and ruggedly beautiful, its history has long been intertwined with the military and was once a brownfield site, home to disused Ministry of Defence huts and garages, overgrown and strewn with rubble.
Back in 2008, MacKinnon had bought a property on the same site, a 1940s cottage that had been repurposed as a navy signalling station. MacKinnon has a deep-seated passion for design, and worked closely with architect Stuart Cameron of Cameron Webster to completely reimagine this humble property as a modernist beach house, Cape Cove. He then began contemplating what could be done with the scruffy space alongside his new home.
Muslim New Yorkers have steadily become a political force amid post-9/11 Islamophobic sentiment. Mamdani is their most accomplished expression
Life was never the same for New Yorkers after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, with every resident coping with the trauma and devastation of that day.
But for Muslim New Yorkers there was an added burden: the suspicion and sometimes physical harm now lurking around every corner.
Podcasters, professors, journalists and ordinary citizens will gather in Washington as the Trump regime wages war on history
On 26 October, podcasters, professors, journalists and ordinary citizens will gather on the steps of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for a teach-in in defense of history and museums.
Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 associate professor and chair of the Africana studies department at Wellesley College. Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University
The Argentine has been as excellent as ever in his later years, but his presence and performance has yet to push MLS into the US mainstream
OK, show of hands. How many of you knew that Lionel Messi – a global superstar who has committed to spend his next three years in the United States – just completed the best individual season in Major League Soccer history?
New York attorney general to appear in court in Virginia in case brought after Trump called for her prosecution
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is expected to plead not guilty on Friday to charges of bank fraud and false statements brought after Donald Trump publicly called for her to be prosecuted in a move widely seen as political retribution.
James is scheduled to made her first appearance in the case and be arraigned in federal district court in Virginia before US magistrate judge Jamar Walker at 11am ET, according to court documents.
Once known as the ‘martyrs’ capital’ of Palestine, Jenin is now patrolled by Israeli soldiers as weary residents seek quiet life
Shadi Dabaya’s body bears the scars of the Israeli occupation. The 54-year-old proudly stuck out his jaw to show the chunk of his cheek torn away by Israeli fire and traced the zigzag scar on his arm, the pink, raised flesh marking the bullet’s path through his body.
“I got these in the second intifada,” said Dabaya, beaming. He pulled up a video of himself a year earlier confronting an Israeli personnel carrier in Jenin camp wielding only a flip-flop.
Wave of unrest as polling suggests victory in presidential race for 92-year-old incumbent Paul Biya
At least two people have been killed and dozens of protesters arrested in Cameroon as the government cracks down on dissent before the announcement of final results in this month’s presidential elections.
Local media reports, citing preliminary data from the electoral commission (Elecam), suggest that victory for the 92-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, is all but certain. That prospect has provoked anger and disbelief among his opponents, leading to unrest across several regions.
International sport has taken on new meaning in Canada after Trump’s threat to transform country into ‘51st state’
War, argued the 19th-centuryPrussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, is “the continuation of politics by other means”. And as Canada’s largest city braces for a pivotal baseball showdown against a powerful, superstar-laden and well-funded American counterpart, there is a growing sense across the country that the same can be said for sports.
Over the last year, Canada has been locked in a diplomatic and economic standoff with its longtime ally, biggest trading partner and, increasingly, its largest foe. On Friday, the country’s lone major league baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays, will face off against the Los Angeles Dodgers in a confrontation Canadians see as both an assertion of its growing dominance in baseball and a statement of national pride.
When our family board game night got cancelled, I sampled digital spins on the classics instead. I’m not sure I should have bothered – with one exception…
I don’t play video game versions of board games. Why would you? The whole point of video games is to be faster, more visually arresting, and less reliant on other humans than old games played with dice and cards. But a recent family board game night was derailed by clashing schedules and family civil war, so I spent a Saturday night trying them out on the iPhone instead.
I started with Uno because that is the old family staple. We still use the Simpsons Uno set we got decades ago. It is simple and comforting, the chicken soup of card games. The iOS version is a different consommé altogether. A three-minute time limit for each round means it is as much about avoiding mistakes as it is about tactics. I like this development, but I miss the family banter (and ruthless switching allegiances) of our real-life family version. It’s not the same spamming a silly face at MoshOnion933. Trust me. I tried.
It’s the Toronto Blue Jays and the LA Dodgers in the 121st Fall Classic. Our writers assess how it will be decided, who will shine brightest and the eventual champion
He is and it’s hard to imagine that another player will even approach his accomplishments in this lifetime. In Game 4 of this season’s NLCS, he struck out 10 hitters over six shutout innings and hit over a quarter-mile’s worth of home runs. Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux may have summarized it best when said: “He kind of reminds you of Nolan Ryan, and then he reminds you of freaking Barry Bonds.” Gabriel Baumgaertner
The arrests of a prominent coach and player on Thursday were depressing but it is hard to have sympathy with a league that has embraced gambling
The NBA scoreboard has turned into a stock ticker. Crowd chants, but half of them are watching their parlays instead of the play. Somewhere a coach calls timeout; somewhere else a bookmaker grins. This was always coming. The NBA invited gambling to the game when it signed lucrative sponsorship deals and paved the way for odds and offers to be splashed over our TV screens during games. So when the FBI finally showed up on Thursday, they were simply collecting the rent.
Portland head coach Chauncey Billups, whose playing career ended with his induction in the hall of fame, and Miami guard Terry Rozier were arrested Thursday in connection with an FBI investigation into allegations of illegal gambling and rigged poker games. Former player and assistant coach Damon Jones,who allegedly provided “inside information” about NBA games to bettors, was also taken into custody.
Gout breaks his own 400m meet record to win in a personal-best 46.14s
The 17-year-old thanks his coach as he signs off as a schoolboy athlete
Athletics prodigy Gout Gout farewelled his junior career and one of the most dazzling years on the track for an Australian sprinter with sadness and gratitude.
The 17-year-old thanked his coach, Di Sheppard, and Ipswich Grammar school for the wild ride as he signed off as a schoolboy athlete by breaking his own meet record at the GPS Track and Field championships in Brisbane on Friday.
Kerr to return after nearly years out and hopes to continue as captain
A problem with the surgical graft that repaired the knee of Matildas striker Sam Kerr went undiscovered for 10 months, leaving her in pain and suffering “dark” days in her rehabilitation.
The 32-year-old is set to return for the Matildas this weekend in a friendly against Wales, almost two years after her last national team appearance. She has used her first media availability to declare she wants to continue as captain, but also spoke at length about what came to be her medical “mystery”.
Nottingham Forest: Following an eight-game winless run under Ange Postecoglou, Nottingham Forest kept their first clean sheet for 21 games in beating Porto 2-0 at the City Ground last night, in the process consigning the Portuguese side to defeat for the first time in 12 matches this season. It’s small wonder Sean Dyche, Postecoglou’s replacement, looked pleased with himself and his players afterwards.
“When you are on the side you don’t hear every word, you hear a noise and you know if it’s a positive noise or a negative noise,” he said. “I’m not here to judge or question anything, just deliver what I can to the job. It’s nice when they support you from the off, winning helps.
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