Libertadores Cup final sees the latest chapter in a rivalry that is dominating the continent thanks to European levels of funding and player recruitment
To the surprise of few and the despair of many, it will be either Palmeiras or Flamengo lifting the Copa Libertadores trophy on Saturday at Lima’s Estadio Monumental. With this year’s final, one of these two Brazilian giants will have won five of the last seven editions, a run that underlines how both clubs have transformed themselves into South American super clubs, reshaping the competitive landscape in the process.
Yet this final is more than another chapter in Brazil’s dominance, broken only by River Plate’s 2018 triumph in the past nine years. It marks the latest peak in a decade-long evolution that has seen Palmeiras and Flamengo grow into institutions with European-scale reach, resources and expectations. Their rise has altered the logic of the Libertadores itself, its transfer market, its competitive balance, even its sense of what is attainable for South American clubs.
(Ghostly International) Sharon Van Etten, Stephen O’Malley, Perila and more transform the duo’s gloomy, sensual songs on an album of covers and remixes
HTRK have been making their gloomy, sensual brand of music, at the intersection of electronic pop and noise rock, for 22 years. To mark the milestone comes String of Hearts, a collection of covers and remixes featuring an all-star cast of friends and collaborators, from next-gen underground favourites like Coby Sey to fellow old-school experimentalists Liars. This brilliant, genre-agnostic record allows you to trace the breadth of the Melbourne band’s shapeshifting sound, echoes of which can now be found all over underground and commercial music, without leaning too hard on nostalgia.
The record spans HTRK’s early hits right up to their most recent album Rhinestones, a period in which they’ve shifted from a darker, industrial palette to warmer territory. Not that you’d be able to tell here: instrumentals are reshaped by Loraine James’s IDM-style glitches and Zebrablood’s atmospheric breaks, while Jonnine Standish’s disaffected vocals are transformed into desperate alien wails by Liars.
The death toll from the Hong Kong apartment complex fire that began on Wednesday has risen to 128 with as many as 200 missing, officials have said, as rescue operations were declared over.
Firefighters were combing through the high-rises on Friday morning, attempting to find anyone alive after the massive fire that spread to seven of eight towers in one of the city’s deadliest ever blazes.
In this week’s newsletter: Ultimately, climate progress will come from real-world action, and this year’s summit made some promising strides on that front
Some commentators have called Cop30 a failure. An attempt to insert plans for a route to the phaseout of fossil fuels into the legal text was stymied, consideration of how to improve countries’ emissions-cutting plans was put off till next year, and although developing countries got the tripling of finance for adaptation that they were seeking, it will not be delivered in full until 2035 – and will come out of already promised funds.
Look beyond the headlines, however, and the Cop achieved a great deal more. Take the outcome on fossil fuels – it seems absurd, but until 2023 three decades of annual climate summits had failed to address fossil fuels directly.
This collection of macabre stories set across England explores class, hierarchy and the enduring nature of inequality
Folk horror may have had a dramatic resurgence in recent years, but it has always been the backbone of much of our national storytelling. A new anthology of 10 stories set across England, Bog People, brings together some of the most accomplished names in the genre.
In her introduction, editor Hollie Starling describes an ancient ritual in a Devon village: the rich throw heated pennies from their windows, watching those in need burn their fingers. Folk horror by its nature is inherently connected to class and hierarchy. Reverence for tradition is a double-edged sword – or a burning-hot coin.
The rain stops, the sun shows, another night comes dark and flowing with energy. I don’t sleep; I feel my way through the landscape, the trees that reach and catch my shirt sleeves, holding on to me, saving me from slipping on mossy roots, the unfriendly gorse keeping me at a distance, saying don’t step here, stopping me from tearing my feet on its throne of thorns. Stars alive, alight, I wish you could see them…
First light fattened like a dying star and formed the signature of an industrial town already at toil predawn, its factory stacks belching the new day black, the mills dyeing the forked-tongue river sterile inside that Hellmouth north of Halifax where paternal cotton kings had housed their workers in spoked rows of blind back-to-backs quick to tilt and rot.
Incident north of Tokyo comes after a record 13 deaths from bear attacks in Japan since the start of April
A man has been attacked by a bear in a public toilet in Japan, local media reported on Friday – the latest in a record-breaking wave of attacks this autumn, including those in populated areas.
The victim, a 69-year-old security guard, told police he had noticed the bear, which was 1-1.5 metres long, peering inside as he was about to leave the building in Gunma prefecture, north of Tokyo, in the early hours of Friday, Kyodo news agency and broadcaster NHK reported.
As navies seek to counter submarines and protect cables, startups and big defence companies fight to lead market
Flying drones used during the Ukraine war have changed land battle tactics for ever. Now the same thing appears to be happening under the sea.
Navies around the world are racing to add autonomous submarines. The UK’s Royal Navy is planning a fleet of underwater uncrewed vehicles (UUVs) which will, for the first time, take a leading role in tracking submarines and protecting undersea cables and pipelines. Australia has committed to spending $1.7bn (£1.3bn) on “Ghost Shark” submarines to counter Chinese submarines. The huge US Navy is spending billions on several UUV projects, including one already in use that can be launched from nuclear submarines.
The number of women globally who commit violent crimes is very small – in 2021 they were responsible for just 10% of homicides. Indeed, women are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. But when women do kill, in many cases the victim is a male partner or family member and there is a history of domestic abuse.
Data and research suggests the majority of women on death row around the world have been sentenced to death for the crime of murder, and that most of these were committed in the context of gender-based violence. Women kill to save themselves – only to face abuse and death again.
Lati-Yana Brown’s parents had asked for application to be expedited so she could join them in UK after house ruined
An eight-year-old girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa has been barred from coming to the UK to join her parents.
The Guardian reported on the case of Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown after the hurricane. Her mother, Kerrian Bigby, a carer, moved from Jamaica to be with Lati-Yana’s British father, Jerome Hardy, a telecommunications worker, in April 2023, leaving their daughter to be cared for by her grandmother.
Make all the individual elements ahead of time, then, on the day, as if by magic, you can conjure up this amazing tower of choux buns and smother it in boozy chocolate sauce
Christmas is the perfect time for something a bit more extravagant and theatrical. And a very good way to achieve this is to bring a tower of puffy choux buns to the table and pour over a jugful of boozy chocolate sauce and coffee caramel while everyone looks on in awe. To help avoid any stress on the day, most of the elements can be made ahead: the chocolate sauce and caramel can be gently reheated before pouring, while the choux shells can be baked the day before and crisped up in the oven for 10 minutes before filling.
Leonard Nicita was terminated from his role as a senior partner in the firm’s Transaction Tax team in November 2023, according to a decision from Justice David Mossop in the ACT Supreme Court last month
President Trump said late Thursday that he intends to "permanently pause" migration from all "Third World Countries," to allow the US to "fully recover" in a rambling Thanksgiving Truth Social post.
In a social media post sent late on Thanksgiving, US president said he would ‘end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens’ following Washington DC shooting
Donald Trump has said he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” a day after two national guard members were shot in Washington DC in an attack that has become a political flashpoint in the president’s ongoing crackdown on immigration.
In a social media post beginning with “a very happy Thanksgiving,” sent after 11pm on Thursday, the US president said his administration would “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens” and remove “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States”.
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