Anders Fogh Rasmussen calls for air shield on Nato territory and deployment of European protection force for Ukraine

Ukraine is facing a “forever war” and a slow erosion of territory unless Europe dramatically increases pressure on Russia, including by deploying troops and establishing a missile and drone shield on Nato territory to protect Ukraine from Russian attacks on its infrastructure, a former Nato secretary general has said.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who held the Nato post from 2009 to 2014 and was the prime minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009, said in an interview with the Guardian that if countries such as Poland agreed to host such air defences, Russia would understand that an attack on Ukraine would be an attack on the whole of the Nato alliance.

Key figures accused of harassment, bullying and attacks as US employees work without pay to keep services running

As the US federal shutdown enters its second month, government workers are accusing the Trump administration of being “out of control” and bullying people who are “simply trying to do their best”.

The shutdown surpassed 35 days this week, beating the previous record set under Donald Trump’s first presidential term. About 700,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay, and about 700,000 additional federal workers have been working without pay through the shutdown.

Whatever he manages to accomplish as mayor, much of potentially national significance can be learned from his candidacy alone

The thing that should surprise us most about Zohran Mamdani’s election is that it wasn’t a surprise. Well before the result was called on Tuesday night, weeks of reliable surveys had already suggested his victory in New York’s mayoral race, by a nine point margin over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, would be a foregone conclusion ⁠— an extraordinary finish for a man unknown to the vast majority of New Yorkers when he launched his run just over a year ago. The campaign that followed was one of the greatest in American history.

True as it may be that both Cuomo and incumbent mayor Eric Adams were deeply flawed candidates marred by scandal, it was by no means inevitable that Mamdani would be the leading candidate against them ⁠— as recently as February he was polling at 1% in the Democratic primary, well-behind a slew of challengers with more name recognition, more experience and deeper roots in city politics. They were defeated by an ever-growing army of volunteers ⁠— 90,000 by the summer ⁠— led substantially by organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America. Early in the campaign, it was a given to many commentators that an openly leftist campaign for the mayorship of the world’s financial capital would face impossible headwinds. In Tuesday night’s victory speech, Mamdani opened with a quote from Eugene Debs. Per exit polling from CNN, one out of four New Yorkers who went to the polls described themselves as socialists.

Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist

Genteel manners of first world war story about repressed passion delivered with surprising sexual candour

Alan Bennett’s new film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is a quiet and consistent pleasure: an unsentimental but deeply felt drama which subcontracts actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense. Music itself mysteriously exalts and redeems the community, and I mean it as the highest possible praise when I say that The Choral reminds me of Victoria Wood’s musical That Day We Sang, about the recording of Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds by Manchester Children’s Choir.

The film is about men in a fictional Yorkshire town during the first world war who are variously too old or too young to fight, and the women who have to deal with the menfolk’s repressed emotions and their own. The place is upended by the arrival of Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) who is to be the choirmaster, directing the music society’s annual production; he scandalises some with the fact that he once lived in Germany and has a scholar’s love of that country’s literature and music – as well as the fact that he is a bachelor who had a close friendship with another young man now serving overseas.

Crammed with cameos, this recreation of Springfield in Fortnite’s evolving virtual playground is a delight for long-time fans of the show. Shame it’s not here for long

After years of collaborations with Disney on Marvel and Star Wars, it’s finally happened: The Simpsons have arrived in Fortnite. Whereas most of these crossovers comprise themed skins and emotes, this is a complete takeover, with an entire stylised map based on Springfield to explore. It’s a smart way of introducing American TV’s longest-running sitcom to a younger audience – especially with news of a second movie on the way – but for millennials, this is the culmination of a year-long campaign to catch our attention, if previous collabs with Power Rangers, Scream and Mortal Kombat are anything to go by.

Though this could have been a quick ploy for those who grew up on a diet of afterschool BBC Two repeats to open their wallets, it’s no lazy cash-in. The familiar sights of Springfield you’d expect are here: there’s the Simpsons home on Evergreen Terrace, the sloping lawns of Burns Manor, and a town square with Moe’s Tavern and a statue of Jebediah Springfield, detachable head and all. Towards the edge of the map is the nuclear power plant, pumping cartoon steam into the sky, featuring meltdowns that you can avert by tapping a control console to the tune of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”. Cletus’s farm and a Slurp factory (the game’s spin on Duff – no beer on tap here) sit on the corners of the island, and every match starts with a charming recreation of the show’s intro, complete with parting clouds, title card and iconic theme song, before you thank Otto as you leave the battle bus and descend on to the map.

Ryan Murphy’s glossy, star-packed new show has received some of the most shocking reviews we’ve seen for a long time, including many zero star takes

If you get a secret thrill from reading bad reviews, this week has basically been your Christmas. This is when the embargo dropped for Ryan Murphy’s new Kim Kardashian-starring Hulu legal drama All’s Fair, and hoo boy. Lucy Mangan’s zero-star extravaganza was a classic of the form, starting with the line “I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad,” and only getting more despairing from there.

But then something incredible happened. More All’s Fair reviews started popping up, and they were just as scathing. Every last one of them, without exception, absolutely hated it. In his zero-star review, The Times’s Ben Dowell observed that the show felt like it had been written “by a toddler who couldn’t write ‘bum’ on a wall.” USA Today’s Kelly Lawler wrote: “It’s so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.” The Wrap said: “One wonders if Murphy is engaged in some sort of social experiment to see if he can get away with making the most transparently terrible show on Disney’s dime.” In his one-star review (comparatively a rave), The Telegraph’s Ed Power called the show a “disaster zone of soapy plotting and reeking dialogue”.

Winds of Melissa’s strength are now five times more frequent due to the climate crisis, research says

Every aspect of Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm ever to hit Jamaica, was worsened by the climate crisis, a team of scientists has found.

Melissa caused widespread devastation when it crunched into Jamaica as a category five hurricane on October 28, with winds up up to 185mph.

YouGov study of six countries finds those in Denmark most likely to approve of nudism and have been naked in public

Germans may have a hard-won reputation for being Europe’s most enthusiastic nudists, but a survey suggests Danes are not only more accepting of stripping off in public, but more likely to have actually done so.

The YouGov survey of six western European countries – the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – found that Danes were the most likely to say it was perfectly OK to bare all in public places – and to have followed through.

Project in southern Nigeria to honour the city’s centuries-old artistic traditions and bring a new audience to contemporary art

For weeks, residents of Iyekogba in Benin City have seen a 15-metre-high tower rising up in the middle of their quiet, residential neighbourhood. On 8 November, the building, a domed bamboo pavilion, will finally be unveiled at the start of Nigeria’s inaugural Black Muse art festival.

Designed by the renowned Nigerian architect James Inedu-George, the pavilion is the centrepiece of the Black Muse sculpture park, a 3,500 sq metre landscaped site created to honour the city’s centuries-old artistic tradition and bring a new audience to contemporary art.

Many of Dharavi’s 1m residents fear community hub will become playground for rich under Adani Group’s redevelopment plan

For months, the threatening phone calls kept coming. First, allegedly from an ex-police officer and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims, he was summoned to the police station and told clearly: keep quiet or there will be real trouble for you.

Shaikh is among those fighting a multimillion-dollar project in which Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be bulldozed and redeveloped by the multinational conglomerate Adani Group.

When it comes to mouthwatering baked eggs, you don’t really need the oven. Just reach for a lid and let the steam do its work

So, hear me out: the best baked eggs don’t ever hit the oven … When testing these recipes, I found that simply adding a lid creates a steamy environment to cook the top of the eggs, delivering a gently cooked, perfectly poached egg with a tender white and a warm, runny yolk. The intense, dry heat of the oven is much more aggressive than steam, and has a tendency to dry everything out and overcook the yolk. I’ve given you two sauces as a jumping-off point, but get creative. One is a super-simple turmeric coconut curry, while the merguez ragu is a riff on eggs in purgatory, or, to the likes of you and me, eggs baked in spicy tomato sauce.

The New York mayor-elect sells a political message further to the left than any American politician has dared to in recent memory

The morning after Zohran Mamdani’s startling mayoral victory in New York, the most arresting visual image was not of the mayor-elect celebrating in an applause-filled room, but the breakdown of voting patterns across the city. Street by street, practically building by building, you could index New Yorkers’ support for Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo to the probable amount of rent they were paying. A middle-income precinct on the Upper West Side, for example, showed up as a small island of Mamdani voters in a sea of Cuomo-voting wealthier neighbourhoods. Solid lower-income support for Mamdani in modest midtown gave way to the incredible banking wealth of Tribeca and its majority support of Cuomo.

Allowing for large anomalies – Staten Island, a middle- to lower-income part of the city, voted heavily for Cuomo, as did lower-income Hassidic neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens – the message of the huge turnout for Mamdani in the US’s most expensive city seemed to be one of affordability; even of a referendum on capitalism as we know it. And so the most pressing question became: was it a crank result from an unrepresentative city, or the beginning of a new political wave?

• Australia need 168 to win with the T20 series tied 1-1

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5th over: India 38-0 (Abhishek 13, Gill 24) Xavier Bartlett changes ends but it’s much the same story for the right-arm quick. Abhishek swings wildly but fails to make contact but Gill is making scoring look easy as he clobbers another boundary through midwicket - that’s his fourth from 16 balls without taking any risks.

4th over: India 31-0 (Abhishek 12, Gill 18) Nathan Ellis is the first change after causing India all sorts of problems through this series with six wickets in three matches. But Gill takes a liking to him straight away with a flick off the pads for four. The right-hander picks up two more from much the same stroke then adds another boundary with a crunching straight drive.

EV drivers would face 3p-a-mile charge on top of other road taxes to offset falling revenue from petrol and diesel cars

Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles to announce in this month’s budget worth an extra £250 a year on average, according to reports.

Under the plans expected to be announced on 26 November, EV drivers would face a new charge of 3p a mile on top of other road taxes to offset falling revenue from petrol and diesel cars as drivers switch to greener options.

The Succession actor is utterly brilliant in every moment of this punchy historical miniseries. His portrayal of the crank who killed the US president in 1881 takes his mastery to the next level

“My name,” says Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), the anti-hero of punchy four-part historical miniseries Death by Lightning, “will be known one day all across this country!” Guiteau was, until now, wrong. He tried to insert himself into history by assassinating the US president, James Garfield, in 1881 – but Garfield was only four months into his tenure, so all Guiteau did by shooting him was turn them both into difficult pub quiz answers.

Death by Lightning pays careful tribute to Garfield, a quietly extraordinary statesman, but its focus is Guiteau and, if this show is a hit, he might finally get his wish. If so, it’ll be because Charles Guiteau has become a byword for the sort of pitiable crank that Matthew Macfadyen plays better than anyone else on television.

Shareholder votes on a pay package worth $1tn to be tallied 6 November – but it contains milestones beyond growing the company’s market cap

If Elon Musk can grow Tesla to over $8tn in value for stockholders over the next decade, he will be well on his way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

That is if stockholders approve the company’s latest proposed compensation plan for the “Superstar CEO”, as a judge once called him, at this week’s annual shareholders meeting in Austin, Texas, set for Thursday afternoon.

Priscilla knows that when Chioma calls her ‘Pris’ she means no harm – but finds it very annoying. You get to name the offending party
• Take part in the Guardian’s You be the judge live event
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I hate being called Prissy – my cousins used to call me that when I was a kid and I’d get upset

Her nickname was born out of love. I feel hurt she’s framing it as if I’ve been disrespecting her

The Scottish midfielder on the constant battle to keep his place, the ‘stigma’ of employing a home chef, and why he believes Aston Villa will win a big trophy soon

John McGinn has spent the best part of half an hour reflecting on his journey to this point, his next appearance for Aston Villa his 300th for the club, when he volunteers something of a confession. Asked whether he has lasered in on nutrition to maximise performance, perhaps inspired by Erling Haaland revealing his penchant for raw milk and honey, the Villa captain smiles a little sheepishly. “Yeah, I have, which makes me feel quite uncomfortable because I’m from a very humble part of the world,” he says, referring to his roots in Clydebank, a few miles north-west of Glasgow.

“They will all laugh at me and wind me up for it but I do have a chef at home. I think there is a stigma towards it: ‘Who do you think you are?’ Which I get, because it used to be me thinking that. I was more nervous about telling my siblings and my mum and dad about the idea of having a chef than actually having one. My mum and dad were always running us about to training and if my dad was cooking it was always whatever is left in the fridge.

He was mentored by Buddy Guy as a teen and played for Michelle Obama in the White House. Now, the 26-year-old Mississippi guitar hero is bringing the blues back into the spotlight – and taking it to the top of the box office

Founded in 1848, Clarksdale, Mississippi, soon earned the title “the Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt”, a place where enslaved Africans and their descendants picked cotton by the tonne. But mechanisation in the 1960s changed things. Today, the small city’s median household income is $35,210, with 40% of the populace living below the poverty line. And 80% of Clarksdale’s 14,400 residents are African American. Just another left-behind town in the poorest state in the Union? This is how Clarksdale appears to many outsiders.

Or it did until one of the biggest movies of 2025 opened with the words: “Clarksdale, Mississippi – October 16, 1932”. Why was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners set in Clarksdale? Because this forgotten settlement is also a blues mecca. The crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly “sold his soul to the devil” is here. Bessie Smith, shattered after a car crash on Highway 61, drew her last breath in Clarksdale. WC Handy, Muddy Waters, Robert Nighthawk, Junior Parker, Ike Turner and Sam Cooke are just a handful of the celebrated blues and R&B musicians who were either born or based themselves in Clarksdale at some point across the 20th century. Now, after decades of neglect, Clarksdale is using its musical heritage to re-establish its place on the map – and one of the city’s native sons, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, is bringing the blues back to the centre of American culture.

Fallout from the goalkeeper’s autobiography a reminder of the danger inherent in sport becoming a disposable human drama

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?
Write day and night like you’re running out of time
Every day you fight, like you’re running out of time
Keep on fighting in the meantime …”
Hamilton (2015)

But let’s leave Mary Earps to one side for a moment. Let’s leave Hannah Hampton and Sarina Wiegman and Sonia Bompastor, and who did what, who said it when. Let’s talk about you. How do you feel you’ve conducted yourself during the past few days? How would you rate your words and actions? To what extent do they stack up against your own personal morals and values?

Former Chelsea and England maverick on being portrayed as spoilt at 16, Max Dowman’s future, his admiration for Mikel Arteta, and a big dream of managing England

“Someone who worked a lot with rock stars told me that the age that they become famous is the age they stay for the rest of their life. I thought: ‘That doesn’t bode well for me,’” Joe Cole says ruefully. “I was in the public eye at 16 and thrust in front of the media. You grow up, you become a dad, but you’re still a footballer. And then, all of a sudden, it stops but your whole identity is still wrapped up in it.”

The former West Ham, Chelsea and England footballer, a gifted maverick who always felt a man out of time, playing a game years ahead of most of his contemporaries, smiles when I ask how old he feels now: “Forty‑four. I’m 44 [this Saturday]. My wife will laugh if she reads this, but you emotionally mature quite quickly as a footballer.”

The small communes of Lago and Conflenti are putting themselves back on the map with a series of community-run music and food festivals

On the lamp-lit steps of a sombre gothic church, a young woman stands before a microphone. Beside her, a man plucks a slow melody from his guitar. Arrayed on chairs and cobblestones in front of them, a large crowd sits in an expectant silence. From a nearby balcony, laundry sways in the sultry Calabrian breeze.

The guitar quickens, and the woman issues a string of tremulous notes with all the solemnity of a muezzin. She clutches a hand drum, beating out a rhythm that draws the crowd to its feet. As people surge forward, stamping and whirling around the square, the singing intensifies and the drum’s relentless thud deepens. The festival of Sustarìa has begun.

Street photographer Daniel Arnold searches out the candid human moments of NYC, capturing a complex city alive with characters and contradictions

This hit debut from Finland is intensely readable, but could have delved more deeply into the links between human progress and environmental destruction

In November 1741 Georg Wilhelm Steller, “theologian, naturalist, and curious man”, was shipwrecked on an island between Alaska and Russia. There he found, floating in the shallow waters, a vast sirenian, Hydrodamalis gigas, nine feet long and soon to be known as Steller’s sea cow. Having made it through the winter, largely by eating the sea cows, the following August Steller and the remaining survivors of the Great Northern Expedition left the island. Within 30 years, Steller’s sea cow was hunted to extinction.

Having described these events, Finnish author Iida Turpeinen’s debut novel goes on to describe the lives of other historical figures, each of whom are touched in some way by the sea cow, now reduced to bones. There is Hampus Furuhjelm, governor of Alaska, in search of a complete skeleton, and his sister Constance, who finds peace and intellectual autonomy among her taxidermy collection. Later, there’s Hilda Olson, a scientific illustrator, and John Grönvall, specialist in the reconstruction of birds’ eggs, who is tasked with preparing a sea cow’s relics for exhibition.