Hundreds remain missing in Indonesia and Sri Lanka as rescue efforts continue after Cyclone Ditwah

• How cyclones and monsoon rains combined to devastate parts of Asia – visual guide

This interactive shows how warm seas contribute to cyclone frequency and strength:

The climate crisis has affected storm patterns, including the duration and intensity of the annual monsoon season, leading to heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger wind gusts. The Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, has written this useful explainer on the impacts, human causes and affects of flooding generally, and outlines what effective adaptation/management looks like. Here is an extract from the piece:

The burning of fossil fuels has heated the planet, increasing the risk of extreme rains that lead to floods around the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. A well-established rule of physics is that warm air can hold more moisture – about 7% for every 1C – though whether it does so or not depends on how much water is available. When heavy rain does fall, clouds can unleash far more water.

Perhaps surprisingly, a lack of water can also worsen floods, by drying out the ground. Hard, caked soil does not absorb water so it runs off and pools in lower-lying regions, allowing water levels to rise much faster than otherwise.

Ukrainian president embarks on busy week of diplomacy as US ups pressure to end war

Over the past week, there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As Kyiv battles to minimise Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands, including the cessation of territories in the east, the Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, explains why despite some advances, the agreement to a peace deal still appears unlikely.

Signe Gaupset, Rasheedat Ajibade and Lily Yohannes all feature as we start our countdown to the year’s best players

• Meet the judges | 2024 list | 2023 list | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

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Existence of phrase – to describe content intended to make you angry – shows people are aware of manipulation tactics used online, says Oxford Dictionary publisher

Good news for those who find their blood pressure rising as they scroll through their online news feeds: the Oxford English Dictionary’s publisher has highlighted the term they might need to describe how they often feel, naming “rage bait” as its word of the year.

According to the Oxford University Press’ analysis, use of the phrase has tripled in the past 12 months.

• Overtake of Mercedes driver in Qatar earned two points

• Red Bull hinted at foul play with Verstappen in title fight

A furious Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, has lashed out at Red Bull’s “brainless” claim that Kimi Antonelli deliberately moved over for Lando Norris to aid the British driver’s championship challenge.

Norris, whose attempt to win his maiden world crown at the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday was derailed through a McLaren strategy fumble, finished fourth after Antonelli ran off the road on the last but one lap. Norris gained two points from the late mistake which means he now can finish third, rather than runner-up at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, to be assured of beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to the title.

The New York mayor-elect’s devotion to a north London club shows how the global game is winning hearts across the US

• Bryan Armen Graham is the deputy sport editor of Guardian US

When Zohran Mamdani made an appearance on The Adam Friedland Show last week, the newly elected mayor of New York was expecting the typical nimble rundown of politics, jokes and conversational detours. What he wasn’t expecting was Ian Wright suddenly filling a phone screen with a congratulatory video. The former England and Arsenal striker saluted him on “what you’ve achieved”, urged him to channel that “winning energy” into the job ahead before signing off with a nod to the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta. Mamdani cheesed guilelessly as it played before finally blurting out: “I love this man.”

For a moment, the incoming mayor of the most powerful city in the United States was simply another geeked-out Arsenal obsessive left weak by one of his childhood heroes. And in that moment lies something revealing about how football fandom in the US has changed. This was not a politician deploying a sports reference for relatability; it was a display of genuine allegiance that’s planted at the intersection of two different stories about how Americans have come to love the global game.

Bryan Armen Graham is the deputy sport editor of Guardian US

In Silicon Valley, rival companies are spending trillions of dollars to reach a goal that could change humanity – or potentially destroy it

On the 8.49am train through Silicon Valley, the tables are packed with young people glued to laptops, earbuds in, rattling out code.

As the northern California hills scroll past, instructions flash up on screens from bosses: fix this bug; add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race towards artificial general intelligence – when AI systems become as or more capable than highly qualified humans.

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort rewatches is a look back at Joe Dante’s raucously rule-defying sequel

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” Some sage advice from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, talking, glasses-wearing member of the slimy Gremlin horde that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At face value, it’s nothing more than an investment tip from one monster to another. However, in a weird way, it’s also pretty solid life advice. Seriously, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is take things too seriously. The Brain Gremlin knows this. In fact, most of the toothy monsters that populate Dante’s wild 1990 film (arguably his best) have the same sly, self-aware sense of humour when it comes to the blurry line separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s one element of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and the older I get, it’s the theme that resonates the most.

Consultancy’s move to embrace artificial intelligence follows Disney’s use of the term ‘imagineers’

• Business live –latest updates

Accenture has reportedly begun calling its 800,000 employees “reinventors”, as the consultancy tries to position itself as a leader in artificial intelligence.

The consultancy’s chief executive, Julie Sweet, has already started referring to staff by the new label and the business is now pushing for the term to be used more widely, the Financial Times reported, citing people at the company.

A disaffected Portuguese NGO worker dallies with a drag queen as he wrestles with white man’s privilege in Pedro Pinho’s intelligent drama

‘What disgusts me the most are good men,” says a Bissau-Guinean sex worker to Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), a Portuguese environmental engineer working for an NGO on a road construction project in the country. He’s struggling to perform, as if his private life is letting slip some fundamental doubt about his role in Africa.

There’s a good dose of self-flagellation about western paternalism and hypocrisy in Pedro Pinho’s fifth feature, but it’s smart enough to know that this hand-wringing, extended over three hours, is yet another form of white man’s privilege. First seen driving through a sand blizzard like one of Antonioni’s existential wanderers, Sérgio seems to want to avoid thinking about the power dynamics at play around him. Being “here now”, in the moment, is his superpower – as he tells Gui (Jonathan Guilherme), the lofty Brazilian drag queen he dallies with. Gui’s gender-fluid posse, who hang out at the bar run by market hustler Diara (Cleo Diára), is a racial and sexual utopia ready to accept anyone, including this white expat. But, as Gui intuits, Sérgio’s bisexuality mirrors something noncommittal, even opportunistic, about him. He both lives in the expat enclave and the streets, without belonging to either.

The actor himself has promised to accept all future cameos as the beloved claw-gremlin, but this will only wear out his superpowers

There was once a time when Hugh Jackman Wolverine cameos made a sort of sense. Bursting out of a cell in full Weapon X gear, massacring half a bunker, then vanishing, in 2016’s otherwise pretty forgettable X-Men: Apocalypse. Telling potential recruitment team Magneto and Professor X to, er, go fuck themselves while propping up a bar in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Even popping up via archived footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2018’s Deadpool 2. These were cameos we could accept: quick, self-contained sideshows that understood the sacred rule that such things ought to be fun and brief. They also arrived at a time when Jackman didn’t yet carry the weight of 25 years of audience investment.

Last week, in an appearance on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, Jackman revealed that he has banned himself from saying no to future appearances as the surly mutant. “I am never saying ‘never’ ever again,” he said. “But I did mean it when I said ‘never’, until the day when I changed my mind. But I really did for quite a few years, I meant it.” There are suggestions that he could make a brief appearance in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday, in order to capitalise on the success of Marvel’s recent $1bn megahit Deadpool & Wolverine, even though he wasn’t mentioned in an interminable name-on-chair live stream from earlier this year, in which most of the main cast members were revealed.

Ruben Amorim is happy to ‘steal’ from others, Phil Foden is central to City and Thomas Frank is in trouble at Tottenham

• Latest Premier League table | Top scorers

As Barney Ronay has noted, Arsenal are facing a weekly renewal of the Game You Just Have to Win If You Want to Be Champions. Did this represent a Game You Just Have to Win Because Chelsea’s Moisés Caicedo Was Sent Off? Yes and no. The hosts will naturally be more pleased with a point in the context of the first-half red card, while Arsenal perhaps looked a little jaded and below their best overall. But Enzo Maresca’s side were excellent throughout, despite having to play so much of the match with 10 men, and they deserved something from it. Compared with some Chelsea v Arsenal encounters from the olden days (when more overtly physical iterations of the Blues traditionally used to crush the fragile Gunners) there were no signs of weakness, mental or otherwise, from Arteta’s Premier League leaders in a fierce and physical derby. They will experience few harder tests than this, and a point was fair. Luke McLaughlin

San Francisco are a flawed team with serious injuries. But with no great teams in the league this year, the playoffs are wide open

The 49ers’ season felt over after Week 6’s loss to Tampa Bay. Yes, they were 4-2. Yes, they were tied with the Seahawks and Rams and had already won head-to-head games against both. But that’s when they hit rock bottom. All Pro linebacker Fred Warner was the latest casualty, following in the footsteps of All Pro edge rusher Nick Bosa with a season-ending injury. Brock Purdy had also struggled with injuries. George Kittle was hurt in Week 1. Both were not expected to return for several games. Brandon Aiyuk had no plans to play any time soon, at least not for San Francisco. By Week 7, the only big names in action were Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams.

Dire as the 49ers appeared on paper, they hung in. It helped that the Cardinals, Falcons, Giants, and Panthers featured in their upcoming schedule. They beat all four of them, losing only to the Texans and Rams in the next few weeks. None of the wins inspired much confidence, though. The Cardinals outgained the 49ers by 200 yards. Purdy threw three interceptions against the Panthers.

As Ethiopia teeters on the brink of renewed conflict the Fano, a local nationalist militia, are already fighting the government across the remote highlands, cut off from the outside world by federal forces. This photographic report offers a rare glimpse into the tensions tearing the country apart

Three years after the end of the Tigray war, Ethiopia is grappling with a violent armed insurgency devastating the north-west of the country. The Fano, an ethno-nationalist militia composed mainly of former soldiers from the Ethiopian regional special forces, now control large areas of the Amhara region.

Abuses committed by federal forces in an attempt to quell the insurgency are widespread: kidnappings, massacres, sexual violence, and attacks on humanitarian personnel. The situation is out of control, and more than 2 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in a region that is also hosting refugees from the war in Sudan.

Landscapes in the Lasta mountains, in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. This area spans a vast mountainous and hilly zone, bordering Tigray and Sudan. Its geography, typical of the Ethiopian highlands, offered a strategic position to the early kingdoms, making it the country’s main political, economic, and religious centre for centuries.

Moderate wine consumption may benefit your cardiac health, but foods such as grapes and berries offer similar advantages without the negative effects

“People shouldn’t think that drinking wine is good for you,” says Dr Oliver Guttmann, a consultant cardiologist at the Wellington hospital in London.

Alcohol consumption is linked to high blood pressure, liver disease, digestive, mental health and immune system problems, as well as cancer.

The case of a planned Cumbrian coalmine shows how governments around the world are being threatened by litigation in shadowy offshore courts

How do you reckon our political system works? Perhaps something like this. We elect MPs. They vote on bills. If a majority is achieved, the bills becomes law. The law is upheld by the courts. End of story. Well, that’s how it used to work. No longer.

Today, foreign corporations, or the oligarchs who own them, can sue governments for the laws they pass, at offshore tribunals composed of corporate lawyers. The cases are held in secret. Unlike our courts, these tribunals allow no right of appeal or judicial review. You or I cannot take a case to them, nor can our government, or even businesses based in this country. They are open only to corporations based overseas.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Moisés Caicedo was too pumped up before his rash red card but the Blues’ progress under Enzo Maresca is undeniable

This was the resumption of a bitter rivalry. It felt spicy from the moment Marc Cucurella sent Bukayo Saka flying with the first foul of the afternoon and, although it ended with Arsenal still dominant in first place, they will look at Chelsea’s defiant response to Moisés Caicedo’s reckless red card and conclude that Enzo Maresca’s young side will be coming for them in the future.

There were probably more reasons for Chelsea to feel positive at the end of this bruising 1-1 draw. Their dominance of Arsenal was once routine, back in the days when Didier Drogba would delight in dragging Philippe Senderos around Stamford Bridge, but the balance of power has shifted in recent years.

For a limited time only, buy a numbered and signed edition print from renowned photographer Mimi Mollica, whose latest work, Moon City, captures the tension between the ancient pull of the moon and the restless ambition of London’s financial skyline. This limited edition sale ends on 8 December

• Buy your prints here

Mimi Mollica is an award-winning documentary photographer whose work explores identity, environment, migration and social change. He is the founder of Offspring Photo Meet and the Sicily Photo Masterclass, and the author of Terra Nostra, East London Up Close, and his latest book, Moon City.

In Moon City (co-published with Dewi Lewis Publishing), Mollica spent more than five years photographing the lunar surface and the city’s glass and steel towers, overlaying images of people walking the streets, captured through telescope and mobile phone.

We would like to hear from centenarians, their family and friends

The number of centenarians (aged 100 years and over) in the UK has doubled from 8,300 in 2004 to 16,600 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.

MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London denies allegations and condemns ‘flawed and farcical’ trial

• What led to Bangladesh trial of Tulip Siddiq in her absence?

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced the British MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

In a ruling on Monday, a judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister.

The return of Nobel laureate Han Kang; film-making under the Nazis; stuck in a time loop; Scandinavian thrills; and essential stories from postwar Iraq

We Do Not Part
Han Kang, translated by e yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hamish Hamilton)
The Korean 2024 Nobel laureate combines the strangeness of The Vegetarian and the political history in Human Acts to extraordinary effect in her latest novel. Kyungha, a writer experiencing a health crisis (“I can sense a migraine coming on like ice cracking in the distance”), agrees to look after a hospitalised friend’s pet bird. The friend, Inseon, makes films that expose historical massacres in Korea. At the centre of the book is a mesmerising sequence “between dream and reality” where Kyungha stumbles toward Inseon’s rural home, blinded by snow, then finds herself in ghostly company. As the pace slows, and physical and psychic pain meet, the story only becomes more involving. This might be Han’s best novel yet.

On the Calculation of Volume I and II
Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland (Faber)
“It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought.” Book dealer Tara Selter is stuck in time, each day a repeat of yesterday. Groundhog Day it ain’t; this is more philosophical than comic – why, she doesn’t even bet on the horses – but it’s equally arresting. Tara slowly begins to understand how she occupies space in the world, and the ways in which we allow our lives to drift. At first she tries to live normally, recreating the sense of seasons passing by travelling to warm and cold cities. By the end of volume two, with five more books to come, we get hints of cracks appearing in the hermetic world – is Balle breaking her own rules? – but it just makes us want to read on further.

Through static compositions and observational detail, the documentary explores how Laos’s visitors and residents inhabit the same spaces in very different ways

Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s idiosyncratic documentary gazes upon sights and vistas that would not be out of place on travel postcards. Minimal in its camera movements, the film looks at glimmering golden temples, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and processions of monks moving through lush landscapes. It also shows what is absent from glossy brochures, namely the intrusion of tourists. The disruption to the local rhythm of life is at once visual and aural: we see throngs of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of shorts and T-shirts a stark contrast to the ancient architecture. Their occasionally rowdy leisure activities are intercut with more mundane moments from the locals’ everyday lives, like schoolchildren heading to class or laywomen offering alms to monks by the roadside.

There’s a sense of tension between the static camera and the movements that occur within the frame. Scenes of tourists being loaded on to buses bring to mind Jacques Tati’s 1967 classic Playtime, which gently pokes fun at the idea of an authentic cultural experience attained via consumerist means. The point of view in Takesue’s film, however, is on shakier grounds. Some of the visual juxtapositions veer towards reiterating well-worn binaries between the east and west, the regional and the global. For instance, most of the tourists seen in Onlookers are white; in truth, visitors to Laos largely come from neighbouring Asian countries. Likewise, the Laotian population is also far from homogeneous: one sequence shows middle-aged men playing a game of catch, with the caption telling us they are “arguing in Lao” – yet some of them are speaking Vietnamese.

Auctioneer found the Flemish artist’s masterpiece – depicting a crucified Christ – in a Paris mansion as he was preparing for the property to be sold

A long-lost painting by baroque master Peter Paul Rubens has sold at auction in France for €2.3m ($2.7m) – well beyond its asking price.

The work, of Jesus Christ on the cross and painted in 1613, was unearthed by auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat in a Paris mansion last year after being hidden for more than four centuries.

A fishy festive centrepiece that’s ready in next to no time but still has pizzazz

While I tend to stick pretty close to tradition when it comes to my Christmas Day side offerings, I can’t remember the last time I cooked a turkey or goose as the showstopper. You see, my family is mostly made up of pescatarians, so anything larger than a chicken or cockerel (my personal favourite) for the meat eaters is just excessive. So, alongside a lovingly cooked smaller bird, I also make something fishy – hopefully something with a bit of star-quality, but not too shouty. A dish that will be delicious, fancy, but stress-free all at the same time. These pan-fried monkfish fillets are this year’s solution. It’s the sort of dish that can be made in next to no time while everything else finishes off in the oven, but that still has all the glitz and glamour of Christmas.