I’d like to think Fritz has the power to beat the big two on a good day, but I’m afraid I can’t persuade myself. Every tournament both of them have entered this year, one of them has won.
Storage dwindles in Mashhad, home to 4 million people, as country struggles with drought
Water levels at the dam reservoirs supplying Iran’s north-eastern city of Mashhad have plunged below 3%, according to reports, as the country suffers from severe water shortages.
“The water storage in Mashhad’s dams has now fallen to less than 3%,” Hossein Esmaeilian, the chief executive of the water company in Iran’s second largest city by population, told the ISNA news agency.
Incursions halted flights at Brussels and Liège airports last week with Russia said to be the most likely culprit
Britain is deploying Royal Air Force specialists to help Belgium counter drone threats to the country’s airports after disruptive sightings last week that some politicians blamed on Russia.
Sir Richard Knighton, the head of the UK’s armed forces, said the British military would provide “our people, our equipment” to help Belgium, though he was careful to say “we don’t yet know” the origin of the drones seen last week.
After 45 years as chief fake blood thrower, Ingrid Newkirk is still waging war on everything from leather to cashmere. Is she still relevant?
Ingrid Newkirk was 54 when she thought she was going to die in a plane crash. It was late summer and the founderof People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) was flying from Minneapolis in the US to the company HQ in Norfolk, Virginia when her plane encountered strong wind shear. The pilot attempted an emergency landing, but failed; back up they went.
On the third attempt, with “a teaspoon of fuel” in the tank, he finally got the plane down safely. During those moments, Newkirk, now 76, scribbled a will on a napkin. She has tweaked it over the years, but it still reads like a horror movie prop list: her liver is to be sent to France to be made into foie gras, her skin to Hermès to create a handbag and her lips to whichever US president is in power, to shame them for granting a “patronising” pardon to a turkey each Thanksgiving. As wills go, it’s straight out of the Peta playbook: an audacious stunt of the kind that has made them the world’s most well-known, successful and in some quarters reviled animal rights organisation. “I know I’ll never be made a dame,” Newkirk says, laughing. “I’m too controversial.”
From back gardens to hi-tech hydroponics, the future of food doesn’t have to be rural
In 1982, artist Agnes Denes planted 2.2 acres of wheat on waste ground in New York’s Battery Park, near the recently completed World Trade Center. The towers soared over a golden field, as if dropped into Andrew Wyeth’s bucolic painting Christina’s World. Denes’s Wheatfield: A Confrontationwas a challenge to what she called a “powerful paradox”: the absurdity of hunger in a wealthy world.
The global population in 1982 was 4.6 billion. By 2050, it will be more than double that, and the prospect of feeding everyone looks uncertain. Food insecurity already affects 2.3 billion people. Covid-19 and extreme weather have revealed the fragility of the food system. Denes was called a prophet for drawing attention to ecological breakdown decades before widespread public awareness. But perhaps she was prophetic, too, in foreseeing how we would feed ourselves. By 2050, more than two-thirds of us will live in cities. Could urban farming feed 10 billion?
White House is manipulating voting system, from redistricting to rule changes, to affect midterms
A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.
While Democratic leaders continue to invest their hopes in a “blue wave” to overturn Republican majorities in the House and Senate next year, Trump and some prominent supporters have sought to discredit the possibility that Republicans could lose in a fair fight and are using that premise to justify demands for a drastically different kind of electoral system.
What do Swift and Plath have in common, and should Kamala Harris have spoken out about her political ambitions? The Argonauts author turns her lens on poetry, pop and patriarchy
Maggie Nelson is an unapologetic Taylor Swift fan. She knows the discography, drops song lyrics into conversation and tells me she took her family to the Vancouver leg of the Eras tour. So she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Swiftie? Nelson seems not entirely comfortable with the breathless connotations of that term but yes, the love is real. So much so, she has written a book about the billionaire singer-songwriter, or rather, a joint analysis of Swift and Sylvia Plath, who recurs in much of Nelson’s oeuvre.
The notion of uniting these two cultural titans, who are seemingly poles apart in sensibility – one a melancholic American poet, the other an all-American poster girl – came to her when she heard Swift’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. Alongside its literary references to F Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare, there are heavy resonances of Plath in its introspection and emotional tumult. But the book only started to take shape after a chat with her 13-year-old son’s friend, Alba. “We were making bracelets and she said ‘Have you ever heard of Sylvia Plath?’ I thought that was funny because I’d written my undergraduate thesis on Plath and I was [almost] 40 years older than her. So I said: ‘I have heard of Sylvia Plath.’ As I sat there, I thought, these kids don’t want to hear me talk on this topic but I have a lot to say because I’ve been thinking of it all.”
Annual migration from frigid Canadian winter to Florida sunshine could become thinner as travellers look elsewhere
The annual migration of hundreds of thousands of Canadian “snowbirds” escaping freezing temperatures in their homeland and heading to warmer US states such as Florida for the duration of the winter could be about to become noticeably thinner.
Many have ditched plans to visit their southern neighbor and are looking to spend their valuable dollars elsewhere, largely put off by Donald Trump’s escalating economic war with Canada and strict new immigration rules that have created fear and confusion.
Two men and a woman died in separate incidents after sudden sea surges battered the Spanish island
Three people have died and at least 15 were injured in separate incidents linked to rough seas battering the Spanish island of Tenerife pulling several people into the ocean, emergency services said.
A rescue helicopter airlifted a man who had fallen into the water at a beach in La Guancha, a municipality in the north of the island, but he was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
Americans have shown a tremendous amount and variety of opposition – more than some may realize
A young white woman in yoga clothes berating masked ICE agents in a parking lot this spring. A pope speaking up again and again for immigrants. Furious judges dressing down the Trump administration and ruling against it time after time after time, in response to the blizzard of lawsuits filed by human rights and environmental groups, states, cities and individuals. A senator speaking nonstop for 25 hours and another flying to El Salvador to find out what happened to his kidnapped constituent. The biggest day of protest in US history as an estimated 7 million people showed up for No Kings on 18 October in small towns and red counties as well as big blue cities.
Weekly protests at Tesla salesrooms earlier this year that succeeded in damaging the brand, depressing global sales and prompting Tesla CEO Elon Musk to retreat from his Doge slash-and-burn project. Federal workers resisting sometimes merely by adhering to law, truth and fact, and sometimes by speaking out as whistleblowers or in protests, as with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff who staged a walkout in late August in solidarity with senior staff who’d just resigned in protest against the health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine policies.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
Trump’s team flirts with weakening the dollar, threatening US influence, low borrowing costs and global stability
Magical thinking is indispensable to understanding Team Trump’s economic policymaking. The White House often seems to believe two opposing policies can work together while one policy can do two or three contradictory things.
A heavy dose of hocus pocus will be needed to make the administration’s dollar policy work in the interest of the United States, for it appears that they want to end the US dollar’s supremacy in global finance.
New York City mayor-elect refused to ‘be in the shadows’ in the face of Islamophobic attacks during his campaign
Across the country, Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants has shaken neighbourhoods, torn apart families and engendered a sense of panic among communities. But in New York, on Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York, and an immigrant from Uganda, chose to underline his identity. “New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” he told an ecstatic crowd at Paramount theater in Brooklyn.
The son of a Muslim father and a Hindu mother, he was born in Kampala, raised in Queens, and identifies as a democratic socialist. Almost every aspect of Mamdani’s identity had been an issue of contention during the election. Earlier this week, the Center for Study of Organized Hate published a report highlighting the surge in Islamophobic comments online between July and October, most of which labelled Mamdani as an extremist or terrorist.
Authors are sounding warnings about the length of the modern attention span, but my series of abandonments is a sign of something else
This is embarrassing, but here goes. There are five novels beside my bed, all partially read. On my phone, I am partway through 36 audiobooks, which pales in comparison to the 46 ebooks I have abandoned on my Kindle. This doesn’t count the growing pile of advance copies beside my coffee table, vying for blurbs, now that I am a published novelist myself.
At first glance, these stats seem to corroborate Ian Rankin’s words. Commenting a fortnight ago on how easy it is to lose a reader’s focus, when it is fragmented by social media and the news cycle, the writer said: “Maybe as people’s attention spans change the literature will have to change with them.” But as someone who used to doggedly finish whatever I was reading, I now consider it a human right to put down a book that I’m not in the mood for.
Assistant coach is using psychological, tactical and physical profiling to help Thomas Tuchel give his England team an edge at the World Cup
Ten years ago, life looked a little different for Anthony Barry. The England assistant coach, whose focus is fixed on helping Thomas Tuchel win the World Cup next summer – nothing less – was playing for Accrington Stanley in League Two. He was in the twilight of a career spent in the bottom two divisions of the Football League and in non-league, and he had taken the first step on the journey that would define him, accepting a voluntary position as the Accrington Under-16s coach.
“It was in the evenings, third of a pitch, asked to do 11 v 11 … flat balls, not enough bibs,” Barry says with a smile. “I was hooked. I’d found what I was destined to do and I thought about what it could become. I’m pretty sure nobody else could see it. But that’s part of dreams.”
Will Unwin got to sit down with Liverpool’s hottest striker.
What other guidance has Slot offered Ekitiké? “Obviously keep my shirt on,” he says with a smile. “I would say he’s on my back, but not for a bad thing. He just wants to help me, so I don’t take that badly. He wants me to give more and more. Maybe sometimes you feel like it’s a little bit too much and you want to complain. It’s a good thing because I think if a coach doesn’t like you, he will not speak to you or not try to get the best of you.”
Back at the ATP finals one year after reaching the last hurdle, Fritz remains a top-five talent. It’s a reminder that a certain major-title drought is not his burden to bear
I would like to have some words with ESPN broadcaster Chris Fowler about what he said after Novak Djokovic beat Taylor Fritz, for the 11th straight time, in the US Open quarter-finals. Look – Fritz is American, Fowler is American – and sports often lend themselves to nationalism. A little bit of disappointment was appropriate. Instead, Fowler invoked the continued drought of American men at the majors: none of them had lifted a trophy since Andy Roddick in 2003, and Fritz had been the last one standing in the tournament.
We all love a narrative, myself included. But come on. Even if Fritz had beaten Djokovic for the first time, force of nature Carlos Alcaraz was waiting in the next round, who Fritz has yet to beat in an official match. And if he’d somehow survived that, it would have been defending champion Jannik Sinner in the final, against whom Fritz had lost 10 of the last 11 sets. Alcaraz and Sinner had also split the last seven major titles (and Alcaraz went on to thrash a fatigued Djokovic in the next round). Fritz said in press after the loss that he actually liked his draw, because it presented the opportunity to beat the three best players in the world in succession. Fritz is more than within his right to aspire to the accomplishment; an athlete is meant to believe in themselves. But going into that Djokovic quarter-final who else in their right mind had the drought of American champions on the brain?
The singer was inspired by her mum’s love for Basement Jaxx and spent 69p on Jamiroquai, but what does she put on when she’s feeling down?
The first song I fell in love with
The first song that I remember really feeling inspired by was Good Luck by Basement Jaxx. My mum had all their CDs. Good Luck was the first song I sung for my managers before they took me on board, so I still have a big love for it.
The first single I bought
My mum gave me money to go and buy Feels Just Like It Should by Jamiroquai for 69p from HMV in Oxford Circus. It was the first time I’d bought a physical CD.
Afghan Women United is comprised of players forced to flee their homeland and is another step in beating barriers
“When I step on to the pitch everything else is automatically erased from my mind,” says the captain of Afghan Women United, Fatima Haidari, when asked how football helps her cope with the traumas she has suffered.
“I train, I play, and a fire inside me is lit, not just because of the power that I feel at that moment as a player, but because I feel I have many other girls with me. It’s like I’m taking their hands. Like I’m playing with them. It’s not just for me, and I feel powerful.”
It is a test of Steve Borthwick’s coaching credentials to develop speedster Henry Arundell into the player he so obviously can become
Some things never change. Twickenham can always make a hash of the pre-match festivities, Fiji will always take the breath away and there is no substitute for pace in the elite game. If there is one thing that Steve Borthwick takes from this helter-skelter victory over Fiji, it must be Henry Arundell’s 70th-minute try on his first England appearance since the 2023 World Cup. Some way to celebrate his 23rd birthday.
Chasing down Marcus Smith’s grubber kick, Arundell gave Fiji’s outside-centre Kalaveti Ravouvou an enormous head start yet still won the foot race. Suffice it to say he does not lose many and at a stroke, the Pacific Islanders were finally put out of sight. There are plenty of caveats, those who will consider hyping up Arundell’s cameo as getting carried away. He was fresh, having just come off the bench whereas Ravouvou was not. One swallow does not make a summer.
Exclusive: report by Stand.earth says subsidiary of power plant received truckloads of whole logs at biomass pellet sites
Drax power plant has continued to burn 250-year-old trees sourced from some of Canada’s oldest forests despite growing scrutiny of its sustainability claims, forestry experts say.
In a bid to exercise absolute power, today’s crop of authoritarian leaders is recruiting – and exploiting – believers
Donald Trump’s crusading threat to invade Nigeria and save Christians from Islamist terrorists is typical attention-seeking. Surely even he must realise that unilateral US military intervention would invite disaster. And he’s got his facts wrong. The threat of Islamist terrorism is real, but it affects Nigerian Muslims as much, if not more, than Christians. There’s no evidence of genocide, contrary to the alarmist claims of US far-right internet warriors. Trump’s intervention was about politics, not faith.
In speaking out, he was massaging a key domestic constituency, not acting from genuine, God-fearing concern for “our cherished Christians” in a land he’s never visited. Christian nationalist votes helped clinch Trump’s two presidential victories despite the obvious insincerity of his professed beliefs. His support among white evangelical Protestants is much higher than the average – 72% in April, compared with 40% among all US adults. Trump’s histrionics about Nigeria were primarily for their (and his) benefit.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Half of UK public unaware of contribution made by 2.5m British Asian members of armed forces who served in second world war
British Asian families are being urged to record the experiences of relatives who fought for Britain for “future generations” as data reveals half the British public don’t know that Indian members of the armed forces served in the second world war.
The My Family Legacy project, backed by the Royal British Legion, is building an online archive of Asian veterans’ experiences to raise awareness of the shared histories and sacrifices of Britain’s diverse communities.
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