First set: Pegula 2-2* Rybakina (*denotes next server) Rybakina had started the stronger but lost her way in that last service game. Can Pegula back up the break? An early double fault doesn’t help matters, and Rybakina outlasts her in a rally to earn break point. From the middle of the court, Rybakina lands an inside-out forehand on the line, and we’re back on serve.
Cam Norrie is playing in the Metz semi-finals; he’s trailing Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 0-1. In Athens, Novak Djokovic is facing Yannick Hanfmann; it’s on serve in their semi-final.
The Maga machine is clicking into gear to ensure that defeat is all but impossible in next year’s midterm elections
After the joy, the trepidation. Or at least the preparation. Democrats, along with many others around the world, cheered this week’s wins in a clutch of off-year elections that saw Donald Trump’s Republicans defeated from sea to shining sea. But now they need to brace themselves for the reaction. Because Donald Trump does not like losing. And he will do everything he can to ensure it does not happen again – by means fair and, more often, foul. Indeed, that effort is already under way.
For now, the Democrats are still clinking glasses, enjoying a success that tastes all the sweeter for coming exactly a year after they lost everything – the House, the Senate and the White House – to a returning and triumphant Trump. The most dramatic win was Zohran Mamdani’s history-making victory in America’s most populous city, New York, but there was success too at the other end of the continent, as voters in California backed Democrats on an apparently technical measure that could prove hugely significant. In between, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia by healthy, double-digit margins.
Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book ticketshere or at guardian.live
Southern European country has more than double the number of people aged over 100 than it did in 2009
The number of people in Italy living to 100 continues to grow sharply, with more than 2,000 reaching the milestone age in 2025, the vast majority of them women.
There are now 23,548 residents in Italy who are 100-years-old or over, compared with 21,211 in 2024, according to the latest figures from Istat, the national statistics agency. Italy has more than double the number of centenarians than it did in 2009, Istat said.
Robert Purkiss faces extradition to Kenya to face charges after Agnes Wanjiru killed near army base in 2012
A man has appeared in court as extradition proceedings began in the case of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan woman who was killed near a British army base in 2012.
Robert Purkiss, 38, who is originally from Greater Manchester, appeared before Westminster magistrates court on Friday , and told the court he intended to contest the extradition. It is understood that he was arrested on Thursday night.
Making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire appears to fit a US investment culture of backing high-flying innovators
For all the headlines about an on-off relationship with Donald Trump, baiting liberals and erratic behaviour, Tesla shareholders are loath to part with Elon Musk.
Investors in the electric vehicle maker voted on Thursday to put the world’s richest person on the path to become the world’s first trillionaire, despite the controversy that is now seemingly intrinsic to his public profile.
Participants ask for their films not to be shown at IndieChina event, which was due to launch this weekend
An independent film festival due to start in New York this weekend has been cancelled after several film-makers pulled out due to harassment from the Chinese authorities, raising concerns about transnational repression.
The inaugural IndieChina film festival was planned to take place between 8 and 15 November. But on 5 November the festival’s curator, Zhu Rikun, posted on Facebook that he had been forced to cancel 80% of the planned screenings because film-makers had pulled out.
The passionately inclusive politics of the newly-elected New York mayor have clear echoes in boundary-breaking movies such as Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding
When Zohran Mamdani was elected as New York City’s first Muslim mayor and the youngest since 1892, headlines naturally focused on his groundbreaking political rise. But for many, the spotlight also turned to a name that had already long resonated on the global stage – his mother Mira Nair.
A pioneering film-maker with a career spanning more than three decades, Nair has continually reshaped how south Asian identity is portrayed on screen. Now, with her son taking a major public office, the cultural legacy she built appears to echo in the next generation.
Invest in the right pieces in your first house (clue – it’s not a sofa), let teens have some say and make spare rooms work harder when the kids move out … interiors experts share their tips for every age
The president has put Snap benefits in jeopardy amid a fight over Medicaid. The nation has lost its moral authority
The Democrats had a great day on Tuesday. It’s crucial that they hone their economic message for next year’s midterms to focus on affordability and fairness.
Trump is doing the opposite. Although a federal court ordered him to continue to provide food stamps to about 42 million low-income Americans who depend on them, Trump threatened to deny them anyway until the end of the government shutdown.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now
Manchester City owner has a co-investment vehicle with the company that is the third-biggest shareholder in FSG
One of the great curiosities regarding the state of Premier League ownership will come into focus when Liverpool visit Manchester City on Sunday.
Despite a rivalry that has defined the past decade and has led to both sides’ team coaches being attacked, a £1m legal settlement being paid by Liverpool after City claimed their scouting database had been hacked, and accusations from City officials that Jürgen Klopp had made borderline xenophobic comments about state-backed owners, which the German rejected, the two clubs have more in common than some of their feuding fans may wish to acknowledge.
The European Commission is considering plans to delay parts of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, after intense pressure from businesses and Donald Trump’s administration.
The commission confirmed that “a reflection” was “still ongoing” on delaying aspects of the regulation, after media reports that Brussels was weighing up changes with the aim of easing demands on big tech companies.
The Celebrity Traitors drew to a magnificent close this week – and proved that these lying double-crossers are of a far finer calibre than our MPs
This article contains spoilers about the final episode of The Celebrity Traitors
The Celebrity Traitors final was so good that the TV moment of the year (Nick revealing he’d written Joe’s name on his slate) only held its crown for six minutes before the actual TV moment of the year (Alan revealing he’d been a traitor all along) completely stole it. Epic congratulations to Alan, a full-spectrum entertainment booking, who from the first minutes of this season catapulted himself to the status of high-value national treasure, while Joe Marler also leapfrogged 27 stardom categories in the public imagination and should now be made Duke of York. And look, it wasn’t all bad for historian and Guardian Scott Trust board member David Olusoga. Thanks to the deputy PM and justice secretary, he was only the second most spectacularly wrong David of the week.
But why am I bringing politics into it? After all, one of the most remarkable shifts I haven’t been able to help noticing during this epic first run of The Celebrity Traitors is that no senior politician has attempted to refer to the show as a way of currying public favour. They’d certainly get short shrift if they tried. But this represents a radical break with the past 20 years, where politicians and prime ministers became transfixed by the popularity of reality TV. In the first twisted heyday of the genre, politicians really thought it was the answer and they could steal its best bits to succeed in their own trade. Now I think that even they realise a show like The Celebrity Traitors is the thing people escape to in an age when none of our leaders have any answers.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Echoes of Inside Out and Coco in streamer’s engaging enough caper about a brother and sister journeying through their dreams
Once upon a time, Pixar had the kind of winning streak that most companies could only dream of. The studio didn’t just maintain a robust production line that won over both critics and crowds, they also managed to change our concept of what animation could achieve as an art form. Radically expansive visuals were matched with surprising, weighty ideas, conjuring the kind of magic that had been largely absent from Disney’s output in the years prior.
While many blamed the ensuing fade on Covid, in truth it had already started before then. Like the rest of the industry, the company had become overly reliant on sequels, with the four years before 2020 seeing one original versus four follow-ups and as cinemas shuttered, their latest offering, Onward, was middling enough to suggest that even superfans should be concerned about the future. It’s been a case of ongoing underwhelm ever since, a low point reached by this year’s Elio, a patchworked mess that had the lowest opening ever for a Pixar film (their only bright spot Inside Out 2 has left their upcoming slate looking predictably sequel-heavy).
Three of Australia’s most acclaimed writers have teamed up to write The Mushroom Tapes, about the weeks they spent at the triple-murder trial, picking apart lies, media ethics and evil
“None of us wants to write about this. And none of us wants to not write about it.”
The profound inner conflict of the three narrators begins on page two of The Mushroom Tapes and never quite resolves, lingering as an ethical tension that colours almost every page.
Sacrifices made to reach final – defying social stigma, lack of resources and juggling jobs between training – makes victory still more extraordinary
Growing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket. But in her small town of Rohtak, in the north Indian state of Haryana, cricket was not a game for girls. Aged nine, desperate to play, she cut her hair short, entered a tournament disguised as her brother, and went on to win man of the match.
Verma’s determined father, Sanjeev, in the face of refusal from every cricket academy or training centre who would not accept his daughter, enrolled her as a boy. “Luckily, nobody noticed,” he recalled, as Verma made her debut for the national women’s team at 15 years old.
Droughts and heatwaves causing water in some areas to reach 41C, killing fish and endangered dolphins, say researchers
Amazonian lakes are being transformed into simmering basins hotter than spa baths as severe heatwaves and drought grip the region, research shows.
The temperature of one lake exceeded 40C (104F) as water levels plummeted under intense sunlight and cloudless skies. The extreme heat triggered mass die-offs among endangered Amazon river dolphins and fish, which cannot survive in such high temperatures.
One of the new Paramount ownership’s first acts has been to end the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto series of Trek movies. But surely they can’t stop making them forever?
There have been many Star Treks over the decades. First up we had a 1960s morality play performed on cardboard sets; then it became a billion-dollar movie saga about space diplomacy. More recently we’ve been gifted an ever-expanding collection of streaming spinoffs, each one more determined than the last to prove itself the true keeper of the sacred flame. Now we have a franchise that no longer has any idea what to do with itself. According to Variety, its producer Paramount has shelved the most recent film trilogy, known unofficially as the “Kelvin-verse”, that starred Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. What comes next is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps the more pertinent question here might be whether this grand old sci-fi saga is now really suited for the big screen at all. The recent films – 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond – won critical plaudits, yet were also criticised by fans for trying to turn a utopian thought experiment about empathy, cooperation and the perils of militarism into a knockabout space opera.
Dispute began with Dutch government takeover of Nexperia and China halting exports, threatening car production
The vital flow of chips from China to the car industry in Europe looks poised to resume as part of the deal struck last week between Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
The Netherlands has signalled that its standoff with Beijing is close to a resolution amid signs China’s ban on exports of the key car industry components is easing.
If Keir Starmer’s election campaign was carrying a ming vase across an ice rink, then this budget – according to one minister – is like “wrestling a squirrel across a minefield”.
It is an allusion to the biggest risk for Rachel Reeves, not the markets or big business, but Labour MPs. It was those MPs who were the key audience for the chancellor’s highly unusual speech preparing the ground for possible income tax rises.
Howard Phillips was looking for money when he offered his services to officers who were posing as agents, judge says
A man found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service after handing over personal details of the then defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to two undercover officers he believed to be Russian agents has been jailed for seven years.
Howard Phillips, 66, was convicted in July after jurors heard he had been seeking “easy money” when he offered his services to the undercover officers, known as Dima and Sasha.
The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner
When Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”
The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined”. Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he says. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his cruising public toilets and parks as a teenager are recounted unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he writes. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Fuck off.”
Ahead of the hit show’s final chapter, Netflix has unexpectedly dropped a clip of the opening episode – and a surprise flashback will send chills up spines
The fifth and final series of Netflix’s supernatural smash hit Stranger Things is set to be one of the biggest shows of the year. The first part airs on 27 November, but a clip of the chilling opening five minutes has been shared online.
The episode, The Crawl, takes fans back to the start of the series in 1983, after the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).
The 28-year-old’s platform, Hidden, offers a Tumblr-like sensibility in an industry roiled by slop and lets adult content creators earn without burning out
Stella Barey has an hour for lunch. At 1.30pm, she loads her banged-up Tacoma with her three Belgian malinois and drives to a secret Los Angeles hiking trail. There, she gulps down a tapioca pudding and laces up her sneakers. After checking over her shoulder for foot traffic, she pulls down her brown sweatpants and jiggles her bare ass for the camera. Then come the undies. Her coiffed landing strip hovers above the rocks as a rush of urine floods the trail. Every mile she walks, she films another video: a flash, a moon, a finger up the ass.
When Barey decided in 2020 to pursue porn full-time, she did not imagine that at 28 she would spend more time hunched over a desk – not in the fun way – making flow charts, scheduling Zoom calls, and sending pitch decks. “I’m at my happiest when I’m making a video like putting a strawberry in my butt and pushing it out,” she says. “Now I’m on calls all day and I have tech neck.” Known online as the “Anal Princess”, with large, blinking Shelley Duvall eyes and an American Girl doll pout, she will try anything once – even the title “tech founder”.
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