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Arsenal v Wolves: The final Premier League match of the day sees first meets worst as the league leaders host bottom of the table at the Emirates Stadium. Mikel Arteta has insisted Gabriel Jesus will not be sold and can be his first-choice No 9 after Jesus made his injury comeback as a second-half substitute in the 3-0 win against Club Brugge on Wednesday following 11 months away.

The Brazil international, 28, brings an extra dimension to Arteta’s frontline but he has just 18 months to run on his contract.

No, I don’t consider that [selling him], especially with the situation that we have right now.

Gabriel has a lot to offer to the team and he’s proven that straight away in the first minute that he was available to play. He’s put so much to be in this position again and now the focus is to be with us.

I’ve been trying and learning all the moments and all the challenges, but every single week that we play, the numbers are not amazing for us, but we have been breaking so many of those numbers as well, it’s been incredible.

I love this type of challenge. I love it, because if the club didn’t achieve it in the past, there is a reason and right now, we can change the story. Simple as that.

With Trump championing Pete Rose and pressuring MLB’s commissioner, the Hall of Fame vote became a referendum on power, memory and whether integrity still matters

Since mid-May, when Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced Pete Rose would be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration and explained his specious reasonings behind it, last week’s Hall of Fame vote by the 16-member Classic Era committee carried with it a certain air of inevitability for Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, the two greatest players currently not enshrined in Cooperstown.

Rose was championed by Donald Trump, who used his populism to demand the Hit King finally be allowed into the Hall, an honor denied Rose since 1989 when baseball placed him on the permanently ineligible list for betting on games when he managed the Cincinnati Reds. After Rose died in September 2024, Trump then won the presidency five weeks later and immediately increased the pressure on Manfred to end Rose’s 36-year banishment – despite the absence of any evidence suggesting Rose was any less guilty in death of gambling on the sport than he had been alive. Nevertheless, Manfred acquiesced to Trump, and in 2027, for the first time, Pete Rose will be eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame.

• Argentinian makes 20-minute appearance in Kolkata

• Supporters climb fence and hurl objects from stands

Lionel Messi’s tour of India kicked off on a chaotic note on Saturday as fans ripped up seats and threw them on to the pitch after the Argentina and Inter Miami forward’s brief visit to the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata, the ANI news agency reported.

Messi is in India as part of a tour during which he is scheduled to attend concerts, youth football clinics, a padel tournament and launch charitable initiatives at events in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi.

Colm Tóibín, Robert Macfarlane, Elif Shafak, Michael Rosen and more share the novels, poetry and memoirs that make the perfect gift

I love giving books as presents. I rarely give anything else. I strongly approve of the Icelandic tradition of the Jólabókaflóðið (Yule book flood), whereby books are given (and, crucially, read) on Christmas Eve. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is the one I’ve given more often than any other; so much so that I keep a stack of four or five to hand, ready to give at Christmas or any other time of the year. It’s a slender masterpiece – a meditation on Shepherd’s lifelong relationship with the Cairngorm mountains, which was written in the 1940s but not published until 1977. It’s “about the Cairngorms” in the sense that Mrs Dalloway is “about London”; which is to say, it is both intensely engaged with its specific setting, and gyring outwards to vaster questions of knowledge, existence and – a word Shepherd uses sparingly but tellingly – love.

While UAE-backed forces are accused of mass killings in Sudan, the NBA is deepening its partnership with the controversial Gulf state. This is what sportswashing looks like

As paramilitary fighters from the brutal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran the largest city in western Sudan – carrying out mass executions, rapes and ethnic cleansing with weapons supplied by the United Arab Emirates – the NBA’s annual in-season tournament, the Emirates NBA Cup, tipped off on Halloween night, proudly sponsored by the very same Gulf state.

The tournament is the most visible example of the NBA’s expanding partnership with the UAE – a partnership that includes annual preseason games in Abu Dhabi, a lucrative sponsorship deal with Emirates airlines, and plans for a new NBA Global Academy at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus.

Exclusive: A trio of candidates have been interviewed by the PM, but he could still decide to directly appoint someone else

Keir Starmer is poised to choose a new ambassador to Washington from a shortlist of three as relations with the US are tested over Ukraine and Donald Trump’s attacks on European leaders.

The prime minister held interviews with three finalists for the role this week, the Guardian has learned, with Downing Street preparing to make an appointment before the end of the year.

The former British Vogue editor reflects on his early years in London, the importance of celebrating diversity and why he takes comfort in the younger generation

When Edward Enninful was scouted on the tube travelling through London in 1988, it changed his life. The Ghanaian teenager, newly arrived in Britain, was drawn into the capital’s creative scene of the 90s – as a model, then stylist and, by 18, the fashion director of i-D magazine.

“It was the height of the YBA [Young British Artists] movement – Jay Jopling, Tracey Emin. I met Kate [Moss] at a casting,” he recalls. “Then Naomi [Campbell] for a cover, and I knew we’d be great friends. We all hung out across disciplines. Friday rolled into Saturday into Sunday. I miss that rawness.”

Plenty is up in the air as the Ashes tourists escape the Sunshine Coast goldfish bowl, but sharks are circling for next week’s third Test

All being well, England’s cricketers should land in South Australia on Saturday. Those on the port side of the plane will have spotted the mighty Adelaide Oval during their descent. Although at 2-0 down in this Ashes series, a visual cue as to what is at stake next week is hardly needed.

The mini-break spent licking wounds in Noosa generated headlines and interest but was hardly unprecedented as modern tours go. Among the reaction was Alex Carey recalling how Australia’s players scattered after the third Test on the 2023 Ashes tour and he personally visited Edinburgh.

My reduced vision badly affected my ability to appreciate films and art, but the stripped-back staging and immediacy of the play gave me back my sense of self

I began to notice my sight deteriorating in my 40s, but not just in the way that you expect it to with age. I had night blindness and blind spots in my field of view. At 44, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that causes the retina cells to die. I had always been a very visually oriented person: I was a practising architect, and someone who loved to read, draw, go to the cinema and visit art exhibitions. So when black text disappeared on a glaring white page, films became impossible to follow and artworks only took shape once explained to me, I questioned who I would be without my vision.

Around the age of 50, I had a particularly stressful year: I got divorced; dissolved my business; started a new job; moved house; and my dad died. As my life fell off a cliff, so did my eyesight, so that by 2015 my field of vision had decreased to only 5-10 degrees (a healthy average person’s is about 200 degrees). I was registered blind, but for a long time I lived in denial, not telling anyone how much vision I had lost. At work, feeling vulnerable and like I could lose my job, I presented as fully sighted, a daily performance that became exhausting. I was in survival mode, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, hoping I wouldn’t get found out. I refused to see myself as disabled, and resisted using a white stick, but once I eventually did, I found people saw my disability before they saw me. I felt a total loss of identity. And I stopped doing the cultural things that once brought me joy.

Release of 43-second video comes as senior church figures speak out against dangers of Christian nationalism

The Church of England has released a video in response to a Christmas carols event on Saturday being organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson amid calls from a growing number of senior church figures to challenge Christian nationalism.

In the 43-second video, Christmas Isn’t Cancelled, posted on the church’s YouTube channel, more than 20 people from the archbishop of York to schoolchildren speak about the “joy, love and hope” of Christmas. The message is “a simple reminder that Christmas belongs to all of us, and everyone is welcome to celebrate”, the C of E said.

From demon, equal and encyclopedia to The Tour of Life and Before the Dawn, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Inflation adjusted, what is the highest-grossing film of all time?
2 What was revamped in 1279, 1560, 1696, 1816 and 1971?
3 Dorothy Parker “fwowed up” in a 1928 review of which children’s classic?
4 Native to South America, what is the world’s largest bird of prey?
5 Which fabric is protected by the orb certification mark?
6 The Almanach de Gotha is a directory of what?
7 Which amusement park was opened in Vienna in 1766?
8 What British term for rare US R&B 45s was coined by Dave Godin?
What links:
9 Năstase; Connors twice; Tanner; McEnroe twice?
10 Menevia, c600; County Down, c460; Lydda, c303; Patras, c60?
11 Choral by Beethoven; The Great by Schubert; From the New World by Dvořák?
12 Reverend Joy Carroll Wallis; hotelier Donald Sinclair; US military surgeon Richard Hornberger?
13 Demon; equal; encyclopedia; eon; fairy; medieval; primeval?
14 The Tour of Life in 1979 and Before the Dawn in 2014?
15 Charles X’s sword; Corot’s The Road from Sèvres; Empress Eugénie’s tiara; Mona Lisa?

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

Palestinians who have worked the ‘breadbasket’ area for generations face being replaced by Israeli settlers

The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

The goofy star of Mary Poppins becomes a centenarian on Saturday. And what a precocious performer he has proved, sustaining scrappy mischief through seven decades of mainstream entertainment

All Hollywood stars grow old and die except perhaps one - Dick Van Dyke - who turns 100 today. The real world Peter Pan who used to trip over the ottoman on The Dick Van Dyke Show is still standing. The man who impersonated a wind-up toy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn’t wound down just yet. He has outlived mentors, co-stars, romantic partners and several studios. He’s even outlived the jokes about his performance in Mary Poppins. These days his mangled cockney accent is regarded with more fondness than contempt. It’s seen as one of the great charms of the 1964 classic, along with the carousel chase or the cartoon dancing penguins.

Charm is the magic ingredient of every popular entertainer and few have possessed it in such abundance as Van Dyke, the impoverished son of a travelling cookie salesman who dropped out of high school and educated himself at the movies. “His job in this life is to make a happier world,” his Broadway co-star Chita Rivera once said - and this may explain his stubborn refusal to quit, not while times are tough and he feels that audiences still need cheering up.

As Paramount, with close ties to the Trump administration, entered the bidding, experts predict any merger will ‘raise red flags’ among regulators

Over the first 10 months of his second presidency, Donald Trump has not hidden his desire to control the US media industry – from encouraging TV networks to fire journalists, comedians and critics he dislikes to pushing regulators to revoke broadcast licences. Now he seems determined to set the terms for one of the biggest media deals in history.

It’s a deal that could have repercussions not just in the US, but across the world, with not just the future of Hollywood at stake but also the landscape of news.

The watershed summit in 2015 was far from perfect, but its impact so far has been significant and measurable

Ten years on from the historic Paris climate summit, which ended with the world’s first and only global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to dwell on its failures. But the successes go less remarked.

Renewable energy smashed records last year, growing by 15% and accounting for more than 90% of all new power generation capacity. Investment in clean energy topped $2tn, outstripping that into fossil fuels by two to one.

Rita, 35, a travel agent, meets Tom, 40, a social media manager

What were you hoping for?
To have a refreshing new experience. I was curious to see who the Guardian would match me with.

Hobnobs, ricotta, chocolate and amaretto – what’s not to like?

I believe in divine communion, especially when it comes to food; an alliance of ingredients that come together as though they were meant to feed spirit and body. It might be too lofty to say that this semifreddo is divine, but the combination of Hobnobs, ricotta, chocolate and amaretto really does it for me. That said, there are many alliances that can be formed in the Christmas store-cupboard, so use this as a base for any biscuits, dried fruit and chocolate to which you feel most spiritually aligned.

Three months after Hatton’s death, his bereft former trainer Billy Graham, friend Jane Couch and his brother Matthew are all trying to find a hopeful future amid the grief

“Of course I remember,” Billy Graham says quietly as he pushes back his straw trilby to show me his wounded expression. “I can remember everything.”

Graham, who trained Ricky Hatton for all but the last three of his 48 fights, used to sit with his fighter on the grimy steps outside their first boxing gym in Salford in the late 1990s. It was a more innocent time and, rather than being called The Preacher and The Hitman, they were just Billy and Ricky then.

From pie-and-mash to the swank of a Michelin star, everyone has their own idea of what’s ‘best’. What’s yours?

• Jonathan Nunn is the author of London Feeds Itself

Almost 24 years ago, a small British food magazine called Restaurant assembled an all-star panel – made up of Gordon Ramsay, John Torode, Aldo Zilli and 65 other food guys – to adjudicate on the world’s most stupid question: what is the best restaurant on the planet? It didn’t matter that no judge had been to all the restaurants on the shortlist, or that two of the judges happened to be Jeremy Clarkson and Roger Moore – what the editors of Restaurant understood is that people love a list, and if you order a group of restaurants from 50-1 and throw a party, people might take it seriously.

“This could run and run,” the editors wrote in their intro, half hoping. They were right. Within two decades, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants had gone from what critic Jay Rayner described as a “terribly successful marketing exercise” to an insurgent alternative to the ossified Michelin Guide, solidifying the reputations of El Bulli, the Fat Duck and then Noma as the “world’s best restaurant”.

Jonathan Nunn is a food and city writer based in London who co-edits the magazine Vittles. He is the author of London Feeds Itself

Rehearsals for a live broadcast at short notice reduce us to silence then swearing. This does not bode well

On Wednesday afternoon I receive a text that seems to suggest the band I’m in has been invited to play live on national radio. Twenty minutes later, the guitarist rings me.

“Did you get my text?” he says.

As 27 European countries urge changes to laws forged after second world war, human rights chief says politicians are playing into hands of populists

The battle had been brewing for months. But this week it came to a head in a flurry of meetings, calls and one heady statement. Twenty-seven European countries urged a rethink of the human rights laws forged after the second world war, describing them as an impediment when it came to addressing migration.

Amnesty International has called it “a moral retreat”. Europe’s most senior human rights official said the approach risked creating a “hierarchy of people” where some are seen as more deserving of protection than others.

Women’s football is booming – but the bigger it’s got, the messier it’s become for players. Through it all, the hot tip for Sports Personality of the Year has kept a cool head

At the end of last year, Chloe Kelly was seriously considering stepping away from football. She was deeply unhappy at Manchester City, her team since 2020, where it seemed as if they wouldn’t let her play, nor let her leave. She wasn’t getting enough time on the pitch, so wasn’t sure that she would be selected for England, who were preparing to defend the title she had helped win in 2022 in the Euros tournament. She was 26, about to turn 27. She had been a professional footballer since she was 18, but her mother was starting to get concerned. She desperately wanted her daughter to be happy again. “I remember my mum coming up to see me and she was meant to go home, but she didn’t go home, because she was so worried,” recalls Kelly.

Less than a year later, and things are very different. At the time of writing, Kelly is favourite to win Sports Personality of the Year after a history-making comeback. At the end of January, she was loaned to Arsenal and in May she lifted the Champions League trophy with the team, very much the underdogs in the final against Barcelona, whom they defeated 1-0. At the end of July, she scored that penalty for England, securing them a second Euros title, against arch-rivals Spain. She was fifth in the Ballon D’or Féminin, and named in the Fifpro World 11 squad for the first time – a peer-voted list of the best footballers in the world. Against the odds, then, 2025 has turned out to be a great year. “For sure,” Kelly smiles. “To bounce back, that’s what makes it the best year of my career.”

Nigel Farage’s party is gunning for power – so what is it like in the places where they’ve already got it? We embedded with Lancashire county council to find out what happens when rhetoric meets reality

22 May 2025: a new dawn for Lancashire. Outside Preston’s grand old county hall, 53 brand new Reform UK councillors in turquoise ties – and one petite woman with an enormous turquoise hair bow – are hot-footing it past a gaggle of protesters for their first full council meeting. Most keep their heads down and get into the building as quickly as possible. But Joel Tetlow, a first-time politician who has made a few unfortunate headlines before even taking his seat, is intrigued. He stands in the doorway, vaping, as a demonstrator bellows: “Reform is a far right party and Nigel Farage is a racist and a fascist!”

Tetlow – late 40s with a full head of vertiginous hair, wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit – insists he isn’t bothered. “They don’t know us as people,” he shrugs. “It’s a word that’s slung around now so much, to be a racist. You know, what is it to be a racist? All we want to do is stand for our country, look after the people within it. So we’re not racist. None of us are racist.” (Farage, too, has denied accusations of racism, and Reform dispute that they are a far right party.)