© Pool photo by Alex Kolomoisky
Hundreds remain missing in Indonesia and Sri Lanka as rescue efforts continue after Cyclone Ditwah
This interactive shows how warm seas contribute to cyclone frequency and strength:
The climate crisis has affected storm patterns, including the duration and intensity of the annual monsoon season, leading to heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger wind gusts. The Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, has written this useful explainer on the impacts, human causes and affects of flooding generally, and outlines what effective adaptation/management looks like. Here is an extract from the piece:
The burning of fossil fuels has heated the planet, increasing the risk of extreme rains that lead to floods around the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. A well-established rule of physics is that warm air can hold more moisture – about 7% for every 1C – though whether it does so or not depends on how much water is available. When heavy rain does fall, clouds can unleash far more water.
Perhaps surprisingly, a lack of water can also worsen floods, by drying out the ground. Hard, caked soil does not absorb water so it runs off and pools in lower-lying regions, allowing water levels to rise much faster than otherwise.
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© Photograph: Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Ukrainian president embarks on busy week of diplomacy as US ups pressure to end war
Over the past week, there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
As Kyiv battles to minimise Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands, including the cessation of territories in the east, the Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, explains why despite some advances, the agreement to a peace deal still appears unlikely.
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© Photograph: Oleg Petrasiuk/AP
© Photograph: Oleg Petrasiuk/AP
© Photograph: Oleg Petrasiuk/AP
© Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Signe Gaupset, Rasheedat Ajibade and Lily Yohannes all feature as we start our countdown to the year’s best players
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© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
Existence of phrase – to describe content intended to make you angry – shows people are aware of manipulation tactics used online, says Oxford Dictionary publisher
Good news for those who find their blood pressure rising as they scroll through their online news feeds: the Oxford English Dictionary’s publisher has highlighted the term they might need to describe how they often feel, naming “rage bait” as its word of the year.
According to the Oxford University Press’ analysis, use of the phrase has tripled in the past 12 months.
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© Photograph: Aleksandr Davydov/Alamy
© Photograph: Aleksandr Davydov/Alamy
© Photograph: Aleksandr Davydov/Alamy
Overtake of Mercedes driver in Qatar earned two points
Red Bull hinted at foul play with Verstappen in title fight
A furious Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, has lashed out at Red Bull’s “brainless” claim that Kimi Antonelli deliberately moved over for Lando Norris to aid the British driver’s championship challenge.
Norris, whose attempt to win his maiden world crown at the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday was derailed through a McLaren strategy fumble, finished fourth after Antonelli ran off the road on the last but one lap. Norris gained two points from the late mistake which means he now can finish third, rather than runner-up at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, to be assured of beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to the title.
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© Photograph: Antonin Vincent/DPPI/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Antonin Vincent/DPPI/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Antonin Vincent/DPPI/Shutterstock
© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
© Erin Schaff/The New York Times
© Eric Lee for The New York Times
© Karsten Moran for The New York Times
© Eric Lee for The New York Times
© Illustration by The New York Times
© Nicole Craine for The New York Times
The New York mayor-elect’s devotion to a north London club shows how the global game is winning hearts across the US
Bryan Armen Graham is the deputy sport editor of Guardian US
When Zohran Mamdani made an appearance on The Adam Friedland Show last week, the newly elected mayor of New York was expecting the typical nimble rundown of politics, jokes and conversational detours. What he wasn’t expecting was Ian Wright suddenly filling a phone screen with a congratulatory video. The former England and Arsenal striker saluted him on “what you’ve achieved”, urged him to channel that “winning energy” into the job ahead before signing off with a nod to the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta. Mamdani cheesed guilelessly as it played before finally blurting out: “I love this man.”
For a moment, the incoming mayor of the most powerful city in the United States was simply another geeked-out Arsenal obsessive left weak by one of his childhood heroes. And in that moment lies something revealing about how football fandom in the US has changed. This was not a politician deploying a sports reference for relatability; it was a display of genuine allegiance that’s planted at the intersection of two different stories about how Americans have come to love the global game.
Bryan Armen Graham is the deputy sport editor of Guardian US
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© Photograph: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch/Shutterstock
In Silicon Valley, rival companies are spending trillions of dollars to reach a goal that could change humanity – or potentially destroy it
On the 8.49am train through Silicon Valley, the tables are packed with young people glued to laptops, earbuds in, rattling out code.
As the northern California hills scroll past, instructions flash up on screens from bosses: fix this bug; add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race towards artificial general intelligence – when AI systems become as or more capable than highly qualified humans.
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© Composite: Getty/Guardian Design Team
© Composite: Getty/Guardian Design Team
© Composite: Getty/Guardian Design Team
The latest in our series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort rewatches is a look back at Joe Dante’s raucously rule-defying sequel
“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” Some sage advice from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, talking, glasses-wearing member of the slimy Gremlin horde that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At face value, it’s nothing more than an investment tip from one monster to another. However, in a weird way, it’s also pretty solid life advice. Seriously, hear me out.
When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is take things too seriously. The Brain Gremlin knows this. In fact, most of the toothy monsters that populate Dante’s wild 1990 film (arguably his best) have the same sly, self-aware sense of humour when it comes to the blurry line separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s one element of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and the older I get, it’s the theme that resonates the most.
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© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy
© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy
© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy
© Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Prop Stylist: Megan Hedgpeth.
Consultancy’s move to embrace artificial intelligence follows Disney’s use of the term ‘imagineers’
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.
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© Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
© Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
© Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
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.
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© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy
© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy
© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy
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.
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© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP
© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP
© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP
Ruben Amorim is happy to ‘steal’ from others, Phil Foden is central to City and Thomas Frank is in trouble at Tottenham
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
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© Composite: Getty Images
© Composite: Getty Images
© Composite: Getty Images
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