Updates from the day-nighter at the Gabba in Brisbane
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Australia: Jake Weatherald, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (capt), Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Alex Carey (wk), Michael Neser, Mitchell Starc, Scott Boland, Brendan Doggett.

The speculation comes to a close but the debate will continue across the afternoon at least, as Australia turn to a horses for course approach with Nathan Lyon left out of a home Test for the first time in almost 14 years. The off-spinner was also omitted from the XI in Australia’s most recent pink-ball Test in the Caribbean, but it still feels like a huge call to leave out a bowler who has claimed 562 wickets. Michael Neser comes in to add more pace in the day-night Test, as well as reducing the length of the Australia tail.

Artist who once draped Barbican in brightly coloured fabric says he is humbled by recognition in ArtReview rankings

The Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama has become the first African to be named the most influential figure in the art world in ArtReview magazine’s annual power list.

Mahama, whose work often uses found materials including textile remnants, topped the ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations as chosen by a global judging panel.

Inaugural prize expected to be handed to Donald Trump but ‘process’ for choosing future winners to be proposed by controversial tycoon’s committee

It was the timing that set off the first alarm bells. With Donald Trump brooding over missing out on the Nobel peace prize, and shortly before Gianni Infantino, the president of world football’s governing body, Fifa, was due to meet the US president in Miami, an announcement was made.

In a press release and a post on his personal Instagram account last month, Infantino said Fifa would launch its very own peace prize, to be awarded each year to “individuals who help unite people in peace through unwavering commitment and special actions”.

Nootka lupins, introduced in the 1940s to repair damaged soil, are rampaging across the island, threatening its native species

It was only when huge areas of Iceland started turning purple that authorities realised they had made a mistake. By then, it was too late. The Nootka lupin, native to Alaska, had coated the sides of fjords, sent tendrils across mountain tops and covered lava fields, grasslands and protected areas.

Since it arrived in the 1940s, it has become an accidental national symbol. Hordes of tourists and local people pose for photos in the ever-expanding fields in June and July, entranced by the delicate cones of flowers that cover the north Atlantic island.

Terry Ball – renowned shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi – has vowed to spend his remaining years finding ways to cheat authorities he feels have cheated him. His greatest ruse? A tax-dodging snail empire

It is a drizzly October afternoon and I am sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints of Moretti with London’s leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples mafia. We’re discussing the best way to stop a mollusc orgy.

The farmer, a 79-year-old former shoe salesman called Terry Ball who has made and lost multiple fortunes, has been cheerfully telling me in great detail for several hours about how he was inspired by former Conservative minister Michael Gove to use snails to cheat local councils out of tens of millions of pounds in taxes.

It borders Brazil, but French Guiana is now a remote outpost of the EU. It is home to Europe’s only spaceport, some of the most biodiverse forest on the planet and a military mission that is testing the limits of western power

Above me, a ceiling of rough wooden branches and tarp. To my right, an officer in the French Foreign Legion types up the daily situation report. In front of me a French gendarme named David is standing in front of a table full of large assault rifles, pointing out locations on a paper map. A generator hums. All around us, splotches of forest dot the hundreds of islands that make up the archipelago of Petit-Saut, a watery ecosystem three times the size of Paris.

Except Paris is 7,000 kilometres away from where I am, in Guyane, or French Guiana, a department of France in South America, just north of the equator.

Seizures and warrants involve Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, who heads US-sanctioned Prince Group, and Cambodians Kok An and Yim Leak

Thailand has seized assets worth more than $300m, including shares in a major regional energy company, and issued arrest warrants for 42 people in a high-profile push against regional scam networks, officials said on Wednesday.

Parts of south-east Asia, including the border areas between Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, have become hubs for online fraud, with criminal networks earning billions from illegal compounds where trafficking victims are often forced to work.

Overnight camping was banned and motorists were told to plan their journey as New Zealand finally joined the flatpack family

“I’ve been waiting 25 years for this,” says Annie Sattler.

A quarter of a century after she emigrated from Germany, and seven years since the store was first announced, Sattler was prepared to wait just a few hours extra to be among the earliest through the doors of Ikea’s first outlet in New Zealand.

New South Wales south coast faces highest heatwave category, with extreme temperatures forecast elsewhere, including in Western Australia and the NT

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Communities across large parts of Australia have been urged to take precautions as temperatures begin to soar ahead of severe and extreme heatwave conditions, with parts of western Sydney expected to reach the low 40s by Saturday.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued heatwave warnings in New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with an extreme warning in place on the NSW south coast – indicating the highest level of risk.

Nine-country poll finds half of people believe risk of war with Russia is high and three-quarters want to stay in EU

Nearly half of Europeans see Donald Trump as “an enemy of Europe”, rather more rate the risk of war with Russia as high and more than two-thirds believe their country would not be able to defend itself in the event of such a war, a survey has found.

The nine-country poll for the Paris-based European affairs debate platform Le Grand Continent also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents wanted their country to stay in the EU, with almost as many saying leaving the union had harmed the UK.

Trump’s comments come after an hours-long meeting at the Kremlin between US envoys and Vladimir Putin failed to achieve a breakthrough

• Analysis: the Ukraine peace deal has stumbled yet again over an inevitable obstacle: Putin

The path ahead for Ukraine peace talks is unclear, Donald Trump has said, after what he called “reasonably good” talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US envoys which nonetheless failed to achieve a breakthrough

After their hours-long meeting at the Kremlin on Tuesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, were set to meet top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov in Florida on Thursday.

Crackdown on applications from countries also under travel restrictions comes after shooting of two national guards

Immigration groups and lawmakers are sharply criticizing Donald Trump’s latest move to halt immigration applications from 19 countries already under US travel restrictions, a decision that comes amid reports that naturalization ceremonies for people on the travel ban list are also being canceled.

On Tuesday US Citizenship and Immigration Services posted a policy memo that announced an immediate “adjudicative hold” on all asylum applications “regardless of the alien’s country of nationality”, as well as a review of individuals from “high-risk countries” who entered the US following Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

Vladimir Putin has stalled progress on a peace plan for Ukraine being brokered by Donald Trump’s US and has said he is ‘ready for war’ with Europe ‘if it starts one’. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian's foreign correspondent Luke Harding who has just returned from Kyiv

After a decade, millennials’ favourite comfort watch is dropping off the streamer, prompting threats of cancelled subscriptions. But will it really vanish?

If you have noticed a heightened sense of millennial angst in the air recently, it is likely to be because Friends is leaving Netflix this month. And, reader, the fans have not taken it well.

“Absolutely raging,” one viewer tweeted upon hearing the news. “I’m cancelling my Netflix subscription,” raged another. A third, simultaneously managing to capture the mood of the nation while retaining a healthy sense of perspective, wrote: “FUCK OFF FRIENDS IS LEAVING NETFLIX IN THE UK WHAT THE FUCK WILL I DO TO RELAX WTF THIS HAS BEEN THE SHOW TO GET ME TO SLEEP SINCE I WAS A BABY WHAT DO U MEAN ITS COMING OFF NEFLIX IM SORRY BUT NO.”

Lack of local content is notable this year in the music platform’s analysis of users’ personal music, podcast and audiobook choices

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It may be Fred Again, Donna Summer or Barkaa. Your musical “listening age” could be 21, 57 or three. You have listened to 14 minutes or 40,000.

But it’s not likely to feature much Australian content.

Police say number of dead may still be revised as ‘suspected human bones’ found during search require forensic testing

The death toll in Hong Kong’s apartment complex fire has risen to 159 as officials ordered all scaffolding mesh in the city to be removed by Saturday.

The blaze that last week engulfed Wang Fuk Court in the city’s northern Tai Po district has become the world’s deadliest residential building fire since 1980.

Ban due to take effect next week, but Meta has started deactivating accounts already

• Australia social media ban explained: everything you need to know

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Facebook and Instagram began shutting down half a million accounts of users under 16 years old on Thursday as the deadline for Australia’s social media ban looms.

The under-16s social media ban is due to take effect from 10 December, but Meta alerted users last month that it would begin shutting down accounts from 4 December.

Do you know more? Email josh.taylor@theguardian.com

Many now concerned about ability to make living in fast-changing climate after one of worst grain harvests recorded

Record heat and drought cost Britain’s arable farmers more than £800m in lost production in 2025 in one of the worst harvests recorded, analysis has estimated.

Three of the five worst harvests on record have now occurred since 2020, leaving some farmers asking whether the growing impacts of the climate crisis are making it too financially risky to sow their crops. Farmers are already facing heavy financial pressure as the costs of fertilisers and other inputs have risen faster than prices.

Data from Australia shows women told about density had more anxiety and confusion, as measure considered in UK

Telling women whether they have dense breasts as part of their breast cancer screening results may leave them feeling unnecessarily anxious and confused, according to a study.

Breast density refers to the level of glandular and fibrous tissue relative to fat in breasts. Dense breast tissue is a risk factor for breast cancer, and can also make mammograms more difficult to read.

Brownstone firm buys building with plan for 400 pods in city where median apartment rent tops $3,000 a month

Can’t afford to rent an apartment in San Francisco? No problem. Now you can rent a bed.

Brownstone Shared Housing, a Bay-Area based “sleeping pod” startup, recently bought a six-level building in downtown San Francisco with the intention of housing up to 400 pods. The deal, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, represents a huge expansion for the company, which is currently operating about two dozen sleeping pods at a much smaller location in the city.

Kenyan parliament says UK army training unit ‘dismissed most complaints as false, without publishing its findings’

A report by the Kenyan parliament into the conduct of troops stationed at a British military base close to the town of Nanyuki in Kenya has alleged human rights violations, environmental destruction and sexual abuse by British soldiers.

The inquiry into the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) was carried out by Kenya’s departmental committee on defencе, intelligence and foreign relations.

The establishment of a survivor liaison unit to offer legal aid to victims of crimes linked to Batuk personnel.

For the British and Kenyan governments to negotiate “mechanisms to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support”.

The creation of a military-linked crimes taskforce to oversee investigation and prosecution of offences committed by foreign military personnel.

A Guardian investigation reveals Dollar General and Family Dollar stores often fail to honor their shelf prices – charging more at checkout for everything from frying pans to Frosted Flakes

On a cloudy winter day, a state government inspector named Ryan Coffield walked into a Family Dollar store in Windsor, North Carolina, carrying a scanner gun and a laptop.

Inside the store, which sits along a three-lane road in a county of peanut growers and poultry workers, Coffield scanned 300 items and recorded their shelf prices. He carried the scanned bar codes to the cashier and watched as item after item rang up at a higher price.

Massive cloud over Tanami desert in Northern Territory reminiscent of Uluru, onlookers say

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Lachlan Marchant and his colleagues were driving their golf buggies back to their shed when they saw the earth sweeping towards them.

“It reminded us of Uluru, the sheer size and width of this thing,” Marchant said. “It was just rolling at us.”

It is still unclear who ordered the strikes and whether US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth was involved, source tells Associated Press

• Trump news at a glance: Hegseth remains in hot seat over Signal chat leak, boat strikes

• Trump officials say second strike aimed to destroy suspected drug boat instead of crew

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it had started its immigration enforcement operation in New Orleans today.

In a statement, the department said Operation Catahoula Crunch would target “criminal illegal aliens roaming free thanks to sanctuary policies”. New Orleans is the latest Democratic-run city (albeit in a Republican-led state) to see federal immigration agents on its streets. Most recently, the Trump administration targeted Charlotte, North Carolina, and touted the arrest of more than 300 undocumented immigrants.