Moscow expecting debrief from US negotiators as minister rules out any territorial concessions by Russia
We are now getting first lines from the Kremlin, saying that Russia has yet to see the details of proposals on security guarantees, and stressing that Moscow would not want a ceasefire “which will only provide a pause for Ukraine to better prepare for the continuation of the war,” Reuters reported.
Government says it received distress calls, as daughter of ex-president Jacob Zuma accused of luring men to frontline
South Africa’s government is in talks with Russia to bring home 17 South African men fighting for Russia in Ukraine, after the men were allegedly tricked on to the frontlines of the war by a daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma.
Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla has been accused in multiple lawsuits of luring the 17 South African and two Botswanan men to Russia in July, by telling them they would be training as bodyguards for her father’s uMkhonto weSizwe political party or attending a personal development course.
The precarious, cruel but dazzling world of a foundling hospital is brought wonderfully to life by the author of Botticelli’s Secret
Joseph Luzzi, a professor at Bard College in New York, is a Dante scholar whose books argue for the relevance of the great Italian art and literature of the late middle ages and Renaissance to our own times. A great populariser and advocate of the humanities in public life, he has done for Dante what his Bard colleague Daniel Mendelsohn did for Homer in An Odyssey and other books.
This short volume tells the story of the Hospital of the Innocents in Dante’s home town of Florence, a building Luzzi has been fascinated by since encountering it in 1987 on his college year abroad. The Innocenti, as it is known, was the first institution in Europe devoted solely to the care of unwanted children. The first foundling, named Agata because she was left by its gates on Saint Agata’s Day 1445, had been nibbled at by mice.
In an industry not exactly known for it, Reiner was an exceptionally nice guy. But he was too much of a showman to make a straight shocker. The result was rich, terrifying – yet cherished
You can love a film without, apparently, ever having paid full attention to it. I realised this only recently when I came to understood something crucial about Misery, the 1990 psychological horror film adapted from the novel by Stephen King and directed by Rob Reiner. What are the chances, I used to think, that Paul Sheldon, the bestselling novelist kidnapped and tortured by unhinged superfan Annie Wilkes, came off the road right when she happened along? It didn’t occur to me that the reason she was there in the first place was because she was stalking him or even (a conclusion not supported by the text) that she caused the crash. You think and think about these films that you love – and they come up different every time.
Reiner’s main strength as a film-maker is what made news of his death particularly horrifying, which is to say the man’s warmth – a sense, widely felt by millions who knew him only through his movies, that at heart, and in an industry not exactly known for it, Reiner was an exceptionally nice guy. His movies were smart, sophisticated, knowing, but when I think about the hits he had across every genre, the defining characteristic for me is their absence of cynicism.
The best we can hope for is that Paul does not get seriously hurt. Joshua, Netflix and the sport itself should know better
Precisely 85 years ago, one of the most fearsome heavyweight boxers in history stunk out the joint. Joe Louis was in the midst of his “Bum of the Month club”: a staggering run of 13 world title defences in 29 months against an assortment of stiffs, wild men and colourful characters. And when he arrived in Boston on 16 December 1940, most believed that Al McCoy would rapidly become his next victim. Only it didn’t quite turn out that way.
“McCoy was expected to crumple under the first punch Louis tossed in his direction,” the New York Times’ correspondent wrote. “Instead, the wily New England veteran made Louis appear ludicrous at times. Adopting a crouching, bobbing, weaving style, McCoy was an elusive target for the paralysing fists of the titleholder.” After the messy contest was stopped at the end of the fifth, a storm of jeers rang out. Louis had won, but only his bank balance had been enhanced.
Early season chaos has given way to an approach based on solidity and utilising the squad’s attacking strengths
The table does not lie and Nottingham Forest were proudly fifth in the Premier League on Sunday night. Admittedly, the reality is they sit 16th but since Sean Dyche took over as manager only four teams have bettered their points tally, with a breezy win against Tottenham a further sign of revolution in action.
Considering the shambolic nature of the season before Dyche was appointed on 21 October, the fact Forest find themselves out of the relegation zone is impressive enough. They were 18th with five points after nine matches that included four defeats from Ange Postecoglou’s five league fixtures. It may have felt even sweeter for fans that the latest humbling handed out was against the Australian’s previous club.
The oil and gas industry must be legally bound to cut methane emissions. With climate tipping points approaching, time is running out
• Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados
The timing is brutal. Just as the world celebrates the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris climate agreement this month, new evidence shows that the world is crashing through the main defence that was constructed against climate catastrophe.
The three-year temperature average is – for the first time – set to exceed the Paris guardrail of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2025 will join 2023 and 2024 as the three warmest since the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the accelerating pace of the climate crisis.
It will come as little surprise that Italian cuisine has been added to Unesco’s cultural heritage list. Here are a select few of the country’s countless regional specialities
Last week’s announcement that Italian cuisine has been added to Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list came as no surprise to anyone familiar with that country’s obsession with food. Unesco called Italy’s cooking a “communal activity” in which “people of all ages and genders participate, exchanging recipes, suggestions and stories”.
It might have added people of all walks of life, too, because in Italy being a foodie is not the “preserve” of the chattering classes. I’ve heard building workers in a low-cost trattoria gravely discussing what starter and wine best complement a certain lunch dish, and a shabbily dressed nonna at Turin’s Porto Palazzo market enthusing over a variety of carrot available only at her favourite stall.
Nour AbuShammala has returned to her partly destroyed apartment in Gaza City. This is her story of multiple displacements, injury and devastation over the last two years
When 26-year-old Nour AbuShammala stepped back into her family’s apartment in Gaza City in October the rooms were gutted, the walls were damaged by bombing, and there was no water or electricity, but it was still home.
Since the outbreak of war in October 2023 she has been forced to flee six times. This is her story of relentless displacement, survival and loss, told using photography and videos provided by AbuShammala and satellite imagery of a ruined Gaza.
A four-hour documentary observes life in a Paris squat and perilous Mediterranean crossings – but its non-narrative structure tests the limits of endurance and empathy
Egyptian-American film-maker Sam Abbas’s experimental documentary was made over four years and shows footage of African and South Asian immigrants making the treacherous journey up through Libya and across the Mediterranean to a Parisian squat. That’s a misleadingly linear description of the film; it’s actually cleaved into two parts which would seem back to front if we were following the stories of specific people. The first section observes life in the squat where the residents support each other as they face eviction threats and the bureaucracy of asylum-seeking, while the second part looks on as other people make the rough sea passage. Time is also spent aboard boats run by organisations such as Doctors Without Borders who seek to help the migrants.
All that might make this sound like any number of 21st-century documentaries (Fire at Sea, for instance) and dramas (Io Capitano) about immigrants crossing continents with deadly results. But this one is aggressively non-narrative, composed of a series of long static shots and still images that linger many beats longer than might seem necessary to get the point across. Body parts and faces, what looks like a fuse box, a child being delivered by a rough emergency C-section (gory stuff, be warned), someone’s phone showing text messages, water, sick people laid out like cordwood on a deck; it’s all a jumble of images, unexplained and raw, and sometimes barely visible in the low-lit conditions.
The Indigenous Canadian author brilliantly captures the interdependence of humans and the natural world, in a darkly satirical critique of colonialism
Noopiming, the first of Canadian writer-musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s books to be published in the UK, means “in the bush” in the language of the Ojibwe people. The title of this startlingly original fiction is an ironic reference to Roughing It in the Bush; or, Forest Life in Canada, an 1852 memoir about “the civilisation of barbarous countries” by Susanna Moodie – Simpson’s eponymous “white lady” – a Briton who settled in the 1830s on the north shore of Lake Ontario, where Simpson’s ancestors resided and she now lives.
That 19th-century settlers’ guidebook went on to be hailed as the origin of Canadian women’s writing; Margaret Atwood adopted the Suffolk-born frontierswoman’s voice in her 1970 poetry collection, The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Though she mentions Moodie’s book only in an afterword, Simpson’s perspective is different. For Moodie, extolling “our copper, silver and plumbago mines” in the extractivist British colony, the “red-skin” was a noble savage, and the “half-caste” a “lying, vicious rogue”. Yet, rather than a riposte to the toxic original, Noopiming – first published in Canada in 2020 and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary award in 2022 – sets about building a world on its own terms. The “cure”, then – the antidote to Moodie’s blinkered vision – is this book.
Veteran batter’s omission means Josh Inglis retains spot at No 7
Travis Head to open as Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon return to side
Usman Khawaja could be facing the end of his international career after being overlooked for the third Ashes Test. Pat Cummins, who will return to captain Australia after what he called an “aggressive” rehabilitation from his back injury, has just about kept the door ajar for the opener.
Cummins is one of two changes for the hosts as they look to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in this Ashes series. Nathan Lyon makes a comeback on his former home ground, with Brendon Doggett and Michael Neser the bowlers to miss out despite the latter’s five-wicket haul in Brisbane.
United took lead three times in draw with Bournemouth
Ruben Amorim insisted he does not need to strengthen Manchester United’s defence despite conceding four goals in a frantic draw with Bournemouth.
A breathtaking contest had United take the lead three times and featured three late second-half goals from minutes 77 to 84 starting with Bruno Fernandes’s free-kick. This made it 3-3 after United first went ahead just before the quarter-hour through Amad Diallo.
The Scotsman is a wry, slightly daft ex-plumber who wears his heart on his sleeve. So why does the Ally Pally crowd enjoy goading him?
By the time Cameron Menzies finally leaves the arena, the blood gushing from the gash on his right hand has trickled its way down the whole hand, down his wrist, part of his forearm and – somehow – up to his face. Smeared in crimson and regret, and already mouthing sheepish apologies to the crowd, he disappears down the steps, pursued by a stern-looking Matt Porter, the chief executive of the Professional Darts Corporation.
The physical scars from Menzies’s encounter with the Alexandra Palace drinks table after his 3-2 defeat against Charlie Manby will be gone within a few weeks. Most probably there will be a fine of some sort. What about the rest? Man loses game of darts, punches table three times in fury, goes to hospital, repents at leisure: simple cause and effect. But of course this is not, and this is never, the whole story. In a way this tale is a kind of parable for elite darts itself, a pub game elevated to the level of a prize-fight, even – very occasionally – a bloodsport.
At least 15 people, aged between 10 and 87, were killed when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukah celebration in Sydney on Sunday
Holocaust survivors, dedicated volunteers, faith leaders, and heroes who tried to stop the shooting have been named among the 15 victims of the Bondi beach terror attack in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday.
Most were attending a celebration for the first day of Hanukah when the shooting began. It is the worst mass shooting in Australia since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
This page will be updated with more details as they become available
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and Griefline on 1300 845 745. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Chancellor’s claim to be helping trade met with disbelief in England and Wales amid soaring staff costs, energy bills and other overheads
Emma Harrison has begun to wonder how her business will survive in recent weeks. The managing director of the Three Hills pub in Bartlow, Cambridgeshire, is struggling to see how she will make a profit after examining the impact of her rising tax bill.
“I’m really terrified about this coming year,” Harrison says. “We’re a well-run pub, we’ve won lots of awards, but this is going to be really hard.”
Demands for oversight grow after inquiry calls sector an ‘unregulated free for all’ and families seek stronger safeguards
Ministers are expected to back calls to regulate England’s funeral industry for the first time, after a series of scandals over the handling of remains.
Bereaved families have called for a new investigatory body and rules governing professional qualifications after an official inquiry declared the sector an “unregulated free for all”.
Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks
As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.
The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.
A ruby-red, melt-in-the-mouth delight and an ice-cream encased in chocolate and marsala-drenched panettone – both to make ahead of time
While strictly speaking this is a zuccotto – that is, a dome-shaped cake filled with ice-cream and enrobed in chocolate – I take disproportionate pleasure in the fact that it looks very much like a Christmas pudding. Even more delightful is the knowledge that it can be made weeks ahead of time, and whisked out of the freezer and brought to the table as needed. There’s allo a wibbly-wobbly jelly with a soft melt-in-your-mouth set, rather than the more solid, gelatinous variety I so strongly associate with childhood tea parties. Plus, it has sparkling booze in it, which, of course, makes the whole thing feel very grown-up.
It is hoped the institution can help foster new bonds in a fractured nation, but such optimism will be a stretch for some
It was a night at the museum like no other. As the staccato sound of firecrackers and explosions rang out across Martyr’s Square in the heart of Tripoli, for once it was not Libya’s militias battling it out for a larger stake in the country’s oil economy, but a huge firework display celebrating the reopening of one of the finest museums in the Mediterranean.
The National Museum of Libya – housing Africa’s greatest collection of classical antiquities in Tripoli’s historic Red Castle complex – had been closed for nearly 14 years due to the civil war that followed the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall. Its ceremonial reopening came at the climax of a lavish show compressing Libya’s rich history and attended by diplomats and Arab celebrities, with a full-size Italian orchestra, acrobats, dancers, arches of fire and lights projected on to the fort. It did not lack for circus drama or cost, peaking with a billowing Ottoman sailing ship arriving high above the port on wires to be greeted by an angelic-appearing Libyan woman.
Ten years after I first followed the proposed route, I retraced my steps to see what life was like along the world’s most expensive, heavily delayed railway line
Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed to run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few. People whose homes were under threat of demolitionwere petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.
The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. The fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is catastrophically over budget. When complete, HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France. HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.
First new treatments for sexually transmitted disease in decades approved by US Food and Drug Administration as number of cases worldwide surge to 82m
The first new treatments for gonorrhoea in decades could be a “huge turning point” in efforts to combat the rise of superbug strains of the bacteria, researchers have said.
Gonorrhoea is on the rise around the world, with more than 82m infections globally each year and particularly high rates in Africa and countries in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific region, which reaches from Mongolia and China to New Zealand. Cases in England are at a record high, and rates in Europe were three times higher in 2023 than in 2014.
Our cultural aversion to superficial answers leaves ‘Wie geht’s?’ sounding like a trick question. Perhaps it is time to let our guard down
In the early autumn, over pizza and wine, I had a conversation with a dear friend. He’s Turkish. We were in Ayvalık, a small town on Turkey’s Aegean coast, talking about cultural imprints, when he suddenly paused and looked at me. “You know what?” he said. “Whenever I ask you how you are, you never really answer. You go into a meta space immediately – talking about politics or about bigger things that worry you – but you never say how you actually are.”
I’ve been thinking about his observation ever since, debating in my mind whether it was true – and I’ve recently reached the conclusion that, unfortunately, he was right.
Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter and journalist who lives in Berlin and Istanbul. She is the author of Three Women Dreamed of Socialism
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