Here’s a look at some of the pictures from New York, as Zohran Mamdani was elected the next mayor of the city.
In a short while, we’ll hear from Donald Trump when he hosts a breakfast with Republican senators at the White House. As we noted earlier, the president had choice words about Mamdani’s victory in New York, and other Democratic wins across the country – including the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
Osama Almasri Najim was arrested in Italy earlier this year on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown back to Libya
A Libyan general wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity has been arrested in Tripoli.
Osama Almasri Najim, the former chief of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested over allegations of torturing prisoners, leading to the death of one, at Tripoli’s main prison, Libya’s prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.
Gurban Gurbanov was Qarabag’s manager back in September 2017, when an Antonio Conte-led Blues equalled won 6-0 in this competition. Gurbanov has been in charge since 2008. Chelsea have had 14 managers since, and that doesn’t take into account interim returns from Guus Hiddink and Frank Lampard. There was Rafa Benitez, too.
Seven changes from the weekend’s win at Tottenham for Chelsea, though still plenty of experience with Reece James, Joao Pedro and Marc Cucurella in the team. Plenty of eyes on Tyrique George, Jamie Gittens and Estevao. Andrey Santos, too.
After side-splitting viral videos led to breakout films Bottoms and Shiva Baby, the star gets frank about the darker side of ‘making it’ with I Love LA – a show so funny that choosing a best gag is impossible
Rachel Sennott hops on to our Zoom call and immediately launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding pained. She is only a couple of minutes late, but she is keen to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, it’s exactly what a writer wants to hear at the start of an interview. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who has watched the unapologetically queer, unapologetically crass film Bottoms – which Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman, and starred in alongside her friend, The Bear’s breakout star Ayo Edebiri – will already know that she has plenty to say, be it about gender, sex, or the merits of starting a high-school fight club. And by the end of her new eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that she has even more to say about the darker side of Gen Z life (at 30, she is an honorary member of the gang, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling both generations).
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott is, of course, a fan, citing the show alongside Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for her series, which follows the travails of an influencer, Tallulah (Odessa A’Zion) and her friend and fledgling talent manager, Maia (Sennott). Perhaps the largest spot on the moodboard, though, went to Entourage, the HBO sitcom about a rising A-list actor making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it during the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
ONS data, which includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as neglect, suggests 13.6 million people affected
Nearly a third of women in England and Wales were abused as a child, along with just over a quarter of men, according to new figures which for the first time include emotional, physical or sexual abuse as well as neglect.
The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates 31.5% of women and 26.4% of men experienced some form of abuse as a child, a total of 13.6 million – almost three in 10 – people.
The late-night host invites food and essential donations at his Hollywood center to support Los Angeles charities
The late-night TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is stepping up to help during the ongoing US federal government shutdown by opening a new center for food donations.
The ABC program announced the program, titled “the Jimmy Kimmel Live Big, Beautiful Food Bank” on Instagram on Tuesday, just after Donald Trump reaffirmed his plan to block Snap benefits despite a federal judge’s earlier order for the administration to use emergency funds to continue the food assistance program.
Amazon accuses Perplexity of covertly accessing customer accounts and disguising AI activity as human browsing
Amazon sued a prominent artificial intelligence startup on Tuesday over a shopping feature in the company’s browser, which can automate placing orders for users. Amazon accused Perplexity AI of covertly accessing customer accounts and disguising AI activity as human browsing.
“Perplexity’s misconduct must end,” Amazon’s lawyers wrote. “Perplexity is not allowed to go where it has been expressly told it cannot; that Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick makes it no less unlawful.”
Nottingham Forest owner dismisses case as groundless
Fans charged with causing life-threatening explosions
The trial of the Olympiakos chair, Evangelos Marinakis, and dozens of football fans began in Greece on Wednesday, the biggest case of its kind linked to sports-related violence that authorities have vowed to crack down on.
In total, 142 fans face charges of running a crime organisation and causing life-threatening explosions at sporting events. They have denied wrongdoing.
As Kim Kardashian’s All’s Fair sets a new low for TV, we revisit every single thing our critics have mercilessly panned. Brace yourself for the Mount Rushmore of rubbish!
Lucy Mangan’s Guardian review of Kim Kardashian’s new Disney+ legal drama All’s Fair was something of a rarity. Not necessarily because she didn’t care for it – the scorn has been universal – but because she gave it zero stars.
Not two, the score you give something you want to write off as too mediocre to break sweat over. Not one, which is what you give something if you want to make the people who made it wince. Zero stars. All’s Fair, according to this newspaper, is a product entirely devoid of discernible worth. In the entire 204-year-old history of this publication, only 15 zero-star reviews have ever been written, and All’s Fair is so unremittingly awful it got one of them. These are the other 14, presented here as the Guardian’s Mount Rushmore of crap.
Pope Leo approves decree saying co-redeemer title risks eclipsing exclusive role of Jesus in saving humanity
Pope Leo has instructed Catholics not to refer to Mary as having helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation, amid the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues and self-styled prophets.
A decree from the Vatican’s doctrinal office approved by the pontiff says Jesus alone saved humanity from hellfire and therefore Catholics must not call Mary the “co-redeemer” or “co-redemptrix”, ending a long-running debate among church scholars that has even divided popes.
His win is a huge victory for all New Yorkers, but it is also meaningful far beyond the five boroughs of this city
The people of New York have spoken. Despite all the odds, a 34-year-old Muslim Democratic socialist has been elected to lead the largest city in the United States. Zohran Mamdani’s win is a huge victory for all New Yorkers, but it is also meaningful far beyond the five boroughs of this city.
Just as amazing was that this election wasn’t even close. Mamdani’s main opponent, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, ran a campaign that was as devoid of imagination as it was of hope and even personality. Having dramatically lost the democratic primary this past summer, Cuomo was forced to run as an independent, an almost comical political affiliation for a man whose campaign was utterly dependent on donations from the billionaire class.
A surprisingly revealing and honest new docuseries looks back at the fallen star’s career in sport with eye-opening frankness
Alex Rodriguez is no mere ballplayer. He’s a chip off baseball’s Mount Olympus, the 18-year-old top draft pick who appeared all but destined to take his place alongside Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and other immortals of the game when he broke into the majors in 1994. And while Rodriguez distinguished himself as a Willie Mays-grade offensive demon and one of the best infielders who ever lived, he played under the stress of the game’s richest contract (infamously, he signed for a record $252m in the year 2000) and under the harsh glare of the New York media spotlight after joining the Yankees in 2004; to meet the pressure, he turned to performance-enhancing drugs – a cardinal sin in the sport – and was ultimately banished from baseball’s hallowed pantheon.
Worse, Rodriguez lied about doping after getting caught twice (the first time before there was an explicit major league policy against PEDs), shattering trust with baseball fans who eventually came to see him as a classic narcissist – albeit one who has been linked to Madonna and JLo and was alleged to have a painting of himself as a centaur hanging over his bed. (He can deny that, but not the Details magazine photo of him kissing his mirror image.) Sadly, Rodriguez’s present-day reinvention at age 50 into a Bloomberg TV thought leader and part-owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves has done little to sway an American public that still feels badly burnt by him.
The multiple Bafta, Emmy, Globe and Oscar-winning actor will receive the film prize in recognition of her ‘transcendent performances and commitment to her craft’
Helen Mirren, the British actor who is already the winner of awards including an Oscar, four Baftas, three Golden Globes, five Emmys and a Tony is to add another to the shelf: the Cecil B DeMille Golden Globe for lifetime achievement.
Mirren, 80, who was given a damehood in 2003 and made a Bafta fellow in 2014, will pick up the award in a ceremony on 8 January, three days before the main Golden Globes take place, as part of an event billed by the Globes as the “Golden Eve”.
Algerian man, 24, ‘released in error’ from HMP Wandsworth two days after stronger checks for jails were brought in
Police have launched an urgent search for a second foreign prisoner freed mistakenly, two days after the UK justice secretary, David Lammy, brought in stronger checks for jails.
The 24-year-old Algerian man was wrongly released from Wandsworth prison in south London last Wednesday, with the Metropolitan police informed only this week.
Plan to cut journey times between major cities could reduce Berlin-Copenhagen trip from seven to four hours
Breakfast in Berlin, lunch in Copenhagen, with a fast and easy train journey to pass the morning? Or a midday meal in Sofia, then taking the high-speed line to arrive in Athens just in time for an evening aperitif? Both could be possible if a vision for European high-speed rail travel ever becomes a reality.
A faster, “truly European” high-speed rail network could be possible by 2040, the EU executive said on Wednesday, as it revealed plans to dramatically cut journey times between major cities.
Arne Slot now finds himself tasked with turning his team’s victory over Real Madrid into a solid platform for recovery
Arne Slot called for a repeat of Liverpool’s performance against Real Madrid when the Premier League champions visit Manchester City and will no doubt repeat himself in the coming days. For Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior on Tuesday, read Erling Haaland on Sunday. Nullifying another of the game’s finest strikers, while keeping a third clean sheet in a row, would reinforce Slot’s post-Madrid message that Liverpool remain in the chase for the biggest prizes. They do not include the Carabao Cup.
The Champions League victory over Xabi Alonso’s La Liga leaders, who had 13 wins from 14 games before their arrival at Anfield, was the perfect remedy for a Liverpool team looking to heal the wounds of the worst run of Slot’s reign. It was also perfect preparation for what awaits at the Etihad Stadium: an opponent that wants to play out, that will not sit in a low block and carries an obvious, rampant threat.
Cush Jumbo, Hugh Laurie and Matthew Macfadyen bring extra twinkle to Rowling’s magical tale
It has become tradition for Audible to bring out the big guns in the run-up to Christmas and deliver star-studded adaptations of well-known novels; the last few years have brought terrific productions of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Bleak House and David Copperfield.
Now attention has turned to younger listeners with a new, full-cast recording of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of the Potter books in which the orphaned Harry, consigned to sleep in a cupboard in his aunt and uncle’s house, learns he is a wizard and is to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Good Wife’s Cush Jumbo is our narrator, steering the story alongside a cast including Hugh Laurie as venerable wizard-in-chief Albus Dumbledore; Michelle Gomez as Professor McGonagall; Riz Ahmed as Professor Snape; Mark Addy as Hagrid; Matthew Macfadyen as Lord Voldemort; and newcomers Frankie Treadaway, Max Lester and Arabella Stanton as young wizards Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
Creative industries are ‘crucial to the economy’ but film-making and tax have long had an uneasy relationship in Britain
Only the most geeky of movie buffs will have heard of him but Alan Latham is one of the UK’s most prolific film producers.
Credited on 81 releases dating back to 1996, according to the online film bible IMDb.com, Latham has been behind a string of barely known films fronted by much better known actors.
The singer is giving away millions – but the parameters for criticising the super-rich are very narrow, and hardly anyone qualifies
What exactly happened with Billie Eilish at the Wall Street Journal Magazine Innovator awards last week? Look it up, and you have a perfect thumbnail of the modern information environment, its highs and lows. You can find out the exact words used by the event host, Stephen Colbert, as he introduced her and announced that the 23-year-old singer was giving away $11.5m (£8.8m) to fight food poverty and the climate crisis. You can find out the exact words she used after she took the stage. “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than kind of ever, especially in our country,” she said. You can also get straight to the controversial bit. “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
You can get an instant read on Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction, at least if you believe the New York Post – he was there while his wife, Priscilla Chan, received an award, and he signalled his displeasure by reportedly refusing to clap. You can do a deep dive on what Eilish meant by “shortie” (was it a catcall, an endearment or a simple statement of that fact that Zuckerberg is 5ft 7in and, by sheer coincidence, so is Jeff Bezos?). And you’ll find plenty of global backlash, so familiar and predictable that it feels almost naive to question its assumptions. “As gen Z are wont to do,” one Sky News Australia presenter said, “she seems to be a bit of a socialist, despite the fact that she has millions and millions of dollars in the bank.” He segues straight to Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, noting that his biggest support is from “high-income earners”.
The Fortnite tie-in is only the latest in a longstanding relationship between The Simpsons and video games, showing how the hit sitcom has survived as a cultural icon
And so Fortnite has done it again. Over the past five years, developer Epic Games maintained the relevance and awareness of its ageing online shooter by churning out pop culture collaborations, from Marvel to John Wick to Sabrina Carpenter. For limited periods, players get to take part in the game as their favourite movie characters and music artists, an arrangement that provides refreshed audience numbers for the game – and a tidy revenue stream for the brands.
Now it’s the turn of The Simpsons. This month, the Fortnite island has become a miniature Springfield, complete with popular characters and well-known locations. If you want to play as Homer and shoot up Moe’s Tavern, you can. If you want to take Bart to Kwik-E-Mart for a squishee, go ahead. Everywhere you look there’s a fun little Simpsons Easter egg, from the fact that the Battlebus (which delivers players on to the island) is now driven by Otis to the presence of Duffman, Seymour Skinner’s steamed hams and drooling aliens.
‘Melanie was my then wife – I couldn’t earn enough from photography, so we got a bank loan and opened the shop, with Janet as a partner. My photos from that time feel important now because that community is gone’
This picture was taken in our beauty shop in Bradford, called Shade. Janet (right) was a friend of my then wife Melanie (left). I’d spent a good two years taking photos and I enjoyed it, not that I thought my work was good enough to be shown in an art gallery. I couldn’t earn enough from photography to cover the costs of the materials, so we decided to get a bank loan and open the shop instead, with Janet as a partner.
I first got into photography in 1983, aged 28, after I was made redundant from my truck-driving job. I had a friend who did photojournalism and I used to go and watch him develop black-and-white photos in his darkroom, where you have a red light on to see what you’re doing. So when I heard about someone who was selling a colour kit, I jumped at the chance. I thought my friend was going to help me learn how to use it but he didn’t know how to develop colour photographs. It was only when I started teaching myself that I realised how difficult it is.
According to Country Life magazine, today’s true gentleman will never expose his shoulders or modify restaurant orders, but can cook splendid omelettes
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