From the drip catchers of coffee pots to the typewriter she used for her first works, the International Booker prize-winning writer reflects on the hidden significance of everyday items

Drip catcher
The carpet hangers disappeared from the rear courtyards when wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners were introduced – when the Persian carpets had been bombed away, when there was no money to buy new ones, when the men who used to carry the rolled-up carpets down the stairs for cleaning had been killed in the war.

The shop where I used to take my tights to get them mended when they had a run in them, back when I was a little girl – a shop called “Run Express” – disappeared when the Wall came down and the west was able to sell its cheap tights in the east.

Analysts say president’s war on Russia’s fossil fuel revenues is a chance to bring peace to Ukraine and profit to US

Donald Trump’s stated mission to broker peace in Ukraine could come down to this simple question: can the US president convince the world to stop buying Russia’s fossil fuels?

Last week, Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in an effort to damage Moscow’s ability to fund its war machine.

One’s a Keir Starmer believer, the other’s a reluctant Labour voter. Could this GP and teacher agree on public sector pay rises and Andy Burnham?

Joe, 33, Brighton

Occupation GP

Yellow markers installed by IDF entrench divide that cuts strip in two, as hopes of moving to next phase of truce fade

A supposedly temporary yellow line marking Gaza’s ceasefire is taking an increasingly physical form as the precarious truce shows signs of stalling, with potentially dramatic consequences for Palestine’s future.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have started installing yellow concrete markers every 200 metres to delineate the area remaining under Israeli control during the first phase of the ceasefire.

• England, 172-2, bt New Zealand, 168, by eight wkts

• Jones hits unbeaten 86 but Ecclestone hurts shoulder

England finished the group stages of the World Cup with a dominant eight-wicket win against a limp New Zealand, after bowling them out for 168 in 38.2 overs.

Sophie Devine’s final ODI ended in disappointment after she departed caught behind to Nat Sciver-Brunt on 23, sparking a collapse which saw New Zealand lose their last five wickets for 13 runs.

In her new book Having it All, Corinne Low outlines how stubborn expectations around work and home fail to accommodate working women

When Corinne Low gave birth to her son in 2017, everything seemed to be lining up. A tenure-track economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, she was working in a career she had long dreamed of. Her husband, stepchild and baby lived in New York City and the two-hour commute to Philadelphia was inconvenient but sustainable. She was embarking on a journey to do it all: a working mom, supporting her family with a career she loved.

As track repairs tripled her commute time, things suddenly felt like they were falling apart. Instead of getting home in time to put her baby son to bed, Low found herself sobbing while breast pumping in an Amtrak bathroom.

Living with elderly grandparents has helped Zach and Luna with the cost of living crisis – but not their sex life
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Sometimes I wear fluffy cat ears and crawl under Zach’s desk while he’s writing his thesis

As we approach the anniversary of the 2024 election, we awake to new horrors each day. But we must not give up hope

One year ago, everything was so different. In late October 2024, before the US presidential election, thoughtful Americans could certainly acknowledge the deep flaws of their country – its injustices and inequality – but they could still recognize it as the United States. A democracy. A place where the rule of law meant something. A nation led by a dignified and decent public servant, despite his advanced age and increasing frailty.

These days, in late October 2025, many of us barely recognize the nation we live in. People suspected of being illegal immigrants are rounded up and shoved into vans, sometimes denied due process. The East Wing of the “people’s house” – the White House – is being destroyed for an obscene ballroom. Donald Trump is persecuting his political rivals or supposed enemies and demanding the justice department hand over $230m. Armed military personnel are being sent into American cities on false pretexts. The Pentagon, relabeled the Department of War, has – in effect – rid itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends what could amount to nearly $1tn of taxpayer money. Universities, law firms, news companies are buckling under the president’s threats, and billionaires are treated like members of the royal family.

Would saying goodbye to every last newspaper clipping, button and book her parents had saved over decades help her mourn?

In the autumn of 2023, I wanted to return to the house where I was raised in order to stand in the garage and look at some marks I made on the wall sometime towards the end of my childhood. I had discovered some tins of black and white gloss paint left on the floor and a narrow house-painting brush and I still remember, once the first dab lengthened into a line, how quickly I was lost in the pleasure of making another line and then another. I drew a woman in a long dress, maybe a kimono, with a wide belt or obi, and her hair dressed high. And when she was done, I stopped.

I doubt it was any good as paintings go but it was the right shape, it was expressive. Also, no one complained. Though the garage was attached to the house it was considered my father’s domain and it seemed he wasn’t bothered by my daub on the wall, though he might have been bothered by the spoiling of a brush. He might have said, “What did you do that for?” which would have been enough to stop me doing more, but there were no serious repercussions that I can remember for my afternoon’s idle graffito.

Two suspects in their 30s detained on Saturday evening in relation to €88m robbery, according to French media

Two suspects have been arrested in relation to last Sunday’s heist at the Louvre museum in Paris, in which a gang of four men made off with crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m), French media have reported.

The Paris public prosecutor confirmed on Sunday that one man had been detained by organised crime squad officers at about 10pm (8pm UK time) on Saturday at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, but did not say how many arrests had been made.

Experts see move as Trump’s latest attempt to shift power of the purse away from Congress and into executive branch

By ordering that US military personnel receive paychecks even though the government is shut down, Donald Trump is seeing to the needs of a politically untouchable constituency that has been caught up in the congressional logjam over federal spending.

But experts who spoke to the Guardian warn that he is doing so in a way that is almost certainly illegal and, if left unchecked, bodes ill for Congress’s constitutional authority to control government spending. Some fear it could set the stage for the president to unilaterally fund other contentious decisions in the future, such as the deployment of the military on US soil.

The Baltimore band have built a vast fanbase with their explosive live performances, but an incident at a recent show laid bare the challenges they face as they ascend to superstar status. Can they maintain their hardcore ethos?

On a Wednesday evening in September, about 6,000 people cross footbridges to reach Brown’s Island, a bucolic park in the middle of the James River in Richmond, Virginia. They’re here to see Turnstile, the Baltimore band who came from the hardcore punk underground but whose reach expands far outside that world.

Turnstile take the stage to a shimmering swell of keyboards – the intro from Never Enough, the title track from their new album. It’s a slow song by Turnstile standards, a tender confession of self-doubt that builds into a cathartic singalong. The moment that the song ends, Turnstile jump directly into TLC (Turnstile Love Connection), a frantic fist-pumper from 2021’s Glow On, and the crowd become a mass of flailing limbs. For the next hour-plus, bodies fly in all directions, as strangers scream lyrics into each other’s faces. Every new riff, every change in tempo, brings a fresh wave of sweaty euphoria.

‘Trumped-up’ charges spark diplomatic row as scientists express fears for health of 70-year-old Leonid Pshenichnov

• Antarctic krill: how did a paperclip-sized crustacean cause a diplomatic row – and why are they so important?

A diplomatic row has erupted over the “illegal” detention of one of Ukraine’s scientists, who has been accused by the Kremlin of undermining Russia’s industrial trawling for krill in Antarctica.

Leonid Pshenichnov, 70, a Ukrainian biologist who is an expert on Antarctica, has a decades-long record of scientific research and contributions to conservation, including support for marine protected areas in the region.

Watching the film I Swear, at first I was irked by the shouting and swearing from an audience member. But I ended up thanking him

What do vicars do in their spare time? Last week, I went with two friends, both fellow vicars, to see the new film I Swear. I knew from the trailer that it was about a man with Tourette syndrome (TS). What I didn’t know was that it was about a real person: John Davidson who was the subject of a 1989 BBC documentary called John’s Not Mad and who later received an MBE for his efforts to educate people about the condition and support his fellow sufferers.

Before that programme, most people had never heard of TS. Nearly 40 years later, everybody (sort of) knows what it is, but it’s still often treated as a punchline – particularly on the comedy circuit.

Ravi Holy is the vicar of Wye in Kent and a standup comedian

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• LA beat Toronto 5-1 in Game 2 of Fall Classic

• First World Series complete game since 2015

• Dodgers even matchup 1-1 heading back to LA

Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw a four-hitter for his second consecutive complete game, the first in the World Series since 2015, and the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-1 on Saturday night to tie their best-of-seven matchup at one game apiece.

Coming off a three-hitter against Milwaukee in the National League Championship Series – the first postseason complete game in eight years – Yamamoto retired his final 20 batters. The previous pitcher to go the distance in the Fall Classic was Kansas City’s Johnny Cueto against the New York Mets in Game 2 a decade ago.

• NZ all out for 168 in teams’ final group game

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11th over: New Zealand 58-1 ( Plimmer 20, Kerr 27) Better from Sciver-Brunt, just a single from it. It’s hot, hot, hot out there – 40 degrees in the middle.

10th over: New Zealand 57-1 ( Plimmer 20, Kerr 26) Charlie Dean replaces the struggling Smith, and Kerr sweeps her immediately and with gumption for four. Eccleston is still off the field after hurting her left shoulder fielding on the rope earlier in the innings.

⚽ News, previews and discussion before the day’s action
⚽ Sid Lowe on Sunday’s clásico | Email matchday live

Scottish Premiership

Hearts v Celtic

Aberdeen v Hibernian

Rangers v Kilmarnock

Mallorca v Levante

Real Madrid v Barcelona

Osasuna v Celta Vigo

Rayo Vallecano v Alavés

Bayer Leverkusen v SC Freiburg

Stuttgart v Mainz

Torino v Genoa

Verona v Cagliari

Sassuolo v Roma

Fiorentina v Bologna

Lille v Metz

Angers v Lorient

Auxerre v Le Havre

Rennes v Nice

Lyon v Strasbourg

Wolves v Burnley

Arsenal v Crystal Palace

Aston Villa v Manchester City

Bournemouth v Nottingham Forest

Everton v Tottenham (4:30pm)

Stevie Wonder rocked the singer’s 10-year-old world and he’s secretly a huge fan of the Carpenters. But what novelty song did he drunkenly sing in karaoke in Japan?

The first song I fell in love with
I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You by the Beatles are like my villain origin story. I was two years old and have no conscious memory of life before that. I can remember walking around our little apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, singing those songs.

The first album I bought
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian conservative family. Remember Footloose? It was exactly like that. No dancing, no movies, no records. My aunt bought me Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants and I fell in love with Send One Your Love.

Given that we’ve literally grown up with them, we often know surprisingly little about how our bodies work. This new series aims to fill the gaps

All vertebrates yawn, or indulge in a behaviour that’s at least recognisable as yawn-adjacent. Sociable baboons yawn, but so do semi-solitary orangutans. Parakeets, penguins and crocodiles yawn – and so, probably, did the first ever jawed fish. Until relatively recently, the purpose of yawning wasn’t clear, and it’s still contested by researchers and scientists. But this commonality provides a clue to what it’s really all about – and it’s probably not what you’re expecting.

“When I poll audiences and ask: ‘Why do you think we yawn?’, most people suggest that it has to do with breathing or respiration and might somehow increase oxygen in the blood,” says Andrew Gallup, a professor in behavioural biology at Johns Hopkins University. “And that’s intuitive because most yawns do have this clear respiratory component, this deep inhalation of air. However, what most people don’t realise is that that hypothesis has been explicitly tested and shown to be false.”

• 1st ODI: New Zealand, 224-6, bt England, 223, by four wkts

• Daryl Mitchell hits 78no after Harry Brook’s defiant ton

A chaotically entertaining game characterised by batting that was either sensational or – more frequently – shambolic was eventually settled by Daryl Mitchell’s ability to find serenity amid the calamity.

Mitchell’s sober 78, most notably assisted by Michael Bracewell (51), took a side floundering at 24 for three in pursuit of a superficially straightforward target and set them on the path to victory, ultimately wrapped up by four wickets and with 13.2 overs to spare.

A fragile ceasefire is in place, but what’s needed is an international tribunal for resolution and reparation. That’s the only route to lasting peace

Donald Trump insists the war in Gaza is over. No, it isn’t. The violence is much reduced. Yet Israeli forces have reportedly killed about 100 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more since the 10 October ceasefire began. Food aid supplies are still heavily restricted. The occupation continues, in Gaza and the West Bank. US officials fear prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his accomplices may renege on the deal, as in the past.

Likewise, Hamas elements and rival gangs have kept fighting. The terrorist group is not disarming; Israeli forces have not fully withdrawn to the agreed lines. US-framed security, governance and reconstruction proposals remain vague, hypothetical and contentious. The war’s root causes, principally the denial of Palestinian sovereignty and statehood, are not addressed. Unless that changes, it will all kick off again, sooner or later.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

With their election looming, the Argentinian club hope stable leadership can reverse worst form in four decades

Stefano Di Carlo was two months old when, in 1989, his grandfather, Titi, became the president of River Plate, taking over after the resignation of Hugo Santilli. He was seven months old when, that December, his grandfather narrowly lost the presidential election. He was three years old when his grandfather took him to his first River Plate game.

Titi Di Carlo remained a senior figure at the club and was on the board when he went to a Copa Libertadores quarter-final against Banfield with the 16-year-old Stefano. The first leg had finished 1-1.

With more and more people moving to big cities such as Nairobi and Abidjan, daily commutes are becoming tougher

Africa is a rapidly urbanising continent. Since 1990, the proportion of people who live in towns and cities has risen from 28% to 44%, according to the World Bank. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts the continent’s urban population will double to 1.4 billion by 2050.

In many cases, public transport has failed to keep up with this growth, with hours-long traffic jams a common feature of many metropolises. While some cities have light railways, such as Addis Ababa and Lagos, and others have public bus networks, many commuters rely on private minibus taxis.

With tourists outnumbering locals by 20:1, islanders say levy is needed to help protect neolithic sites and maintain public services

Artisan jewellery, gift and whisky shops crowd the main street of Kirkwall on Orkney. The town even has a new sushi shop, offering bento boxes and matcha cheesecake.

Once home to the Viking earls who ruled the islands, Kirkwall has hit it rich: it tops the UK’s charts for cruise ship visits, as American, German and Italian tourists descend on remarkable neolithic sites such as Skara Brae and its medieval cathedral.