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 The death toll in Sri Lanka has increased to 355, the country’s disaster management center said in its latest situation report, adding that another 366 people were missing. Most of the deaths (88) occurred in the city of Kandy, followed by the central mountainous tea-growing regions of Nuwara Eliya (75) and Badulla (71), according to the officials. Continue reading...

Firm failed to protect thousands of people switching from an analogue to a digital landline, Ofcom rules Business live –latest updates Virgin Media has been fined £23.8m for putting thousands of vulnerable people “at risk of harm” when switching them from an analogue to a digital landline. The media watchdog, Ofcom, found the company failed to protect people who relied on telecare alarms to call for help, after Virgin Media self-reported a number of “serious incidents” in November and December 2023. Continue reading...

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

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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 Continue reading...

The route showcases the North Pennines’ unsung landscapes. We road test a 50-mile section that takes in golden forests, high moors and pretty villages Up on Langley Common the wind is rising. The tussocks under my boots cover the Maiden Way, perhaps the highest Roman road in Britain, but the sense of being close to the sky – today a simmering grey – remains as palpable as it would have been 2,000 years ago. Looking north, a rainbow arcs across the horizon, the full reach of it clearly visible from this high ground. Buffeted by the squall with every step, it feels as though I’m striding across the top of the world, which is apt, since I’m following the new Roof of England Walk. This 188-mile, multi-day trail was developed by the North Pennines national landscape team, and launched in September. Taking in lofty footpaths and some of the best-loved elements of the North Pennines – among them High Force, Cross Fell, High Cup Nick, the Nine Standards and England’s highest pub, the Tan Hill Inn – the aim is to showcase this sometimes overlooked corner of the country. Continue reading...

One-time wunderkind of UK energy market faces battle for new investment – but it continues to pay out millions to its founder’s company As Britons braced for freezing wintry weather in early months of the 2022 energy cost crisis, the country’s fourth largest gas and electricity supplier urged struggling households to try “doing a few star jumps” to keep warm. This poorly judged suggestion, alongside others such as “having a cuddle with your pets”, was branded insulting and offensive by consumer groups. For many, the gaffe marked the beginning of Ovo Energy’s precipitous fall from grace. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

Weird tales of meter mix-ups, incomprehensible bills, and to foment the drama, a teenager threatened with a trashed credit rating On a dark winter’s night, what could be more engrossing than my latest tragifarce about energy firms, guaranteed toset spines tingling? Continue reading...

The Celebrity Traitor winner teams up with fellow comedian Lee Peart for a hilarious attempt to demystify vino. Plus, David Suchet narrates Dickens’s spine-tingling tales “It’s not like a lads, lads, lads podcast this, is it?” says Alan Carr in the first of his new wine show with comedian pal Lee Peart. There are tastings, reader dilemmas and a Q&A with wine expert Tom Gilbey. The real highlight is the pair’s banter. Carr’s response when Peart says he wants to get him “back on white” so he gets to have his favourite type of wine when they share a bottle? “You could have told me this off camera … I didn’t know this was Relate!” Alexi Duggins Widely available, episodes weekly Continue reading...

Siddiq, who serves as an MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, has denied the allegations A Bangladesh court has sentenced British MP and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail, in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land. Siddiq, who serves as an MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, had denied the allegations and the trial was conducted in her absence. Continue reading...

Violence erupts in series based on Patrick Radden-Keefe’s award-winning book. Plus: poignant memories are evoked in The Marvellous Miniature Workshop. Here’s what to watch today 9pm, Channel 4 First shown on Disney+, this brutal, gripping drama tells the story of IRA volunteer Dolours Price. Based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s award-winning book, it begins with the abduction of Belfast mother of 10 Jean McConville in 1972. Meanwhile, as violence erupts, Dolours swears she isn’t getting involved … It stars Maxine Peake as the older Dolours, and Lola Petticrew, who recently crushed hearts in Trespasses, as the younger. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

Gigglemug’s musical revisits 1991’s cake-or-biscuit VAT dispute, John C Reilly gets romantic and Beauty and the Beast rock out Is it a cake or is it a biscuit? That’s the juicy question at the centre of this jolly courtroom musical. Gigglemug’s comedy revisits the 1991 dispute between McVitie’s and HMRC, about whether the VAT charged on chocolate biscuits should be levied on Jaffa Cakes. Its catchy songs will stay with you long into the new year. Available from Lounges.TV along with Gigglemug’s Scouts! The Musical. Continue reading...

Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region It is clear now that the ceasefire in Gaza is only a “reducefire”. The onslaught continues. There are near-daily attacks on the territory. On a single day at the end of October, almost 100 Palestinians were killed. On 19 November, 32 were killed. On 23 November, 21. And on it goes. Since the ceasefire, more than 300 have been killed and almost 1,000 injured. Those numbers will rise. The real shift is that the ceasefire has reduced global attention and scrutiny. Meanwhile, Israel’s emerging blueprint becomes clearer: bloody domination not only in Gaza, but across Palestine and the wider region. A “dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal”, is how Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, described this post-ceasefire period. Israeli authorities have reduced attacks and allowed some aid into Gaza, she said, but “the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.” Not a single hospital in Gaza has returned to being fully operational. The onset of rain and cooling weather has left thousands exposed in dilapidated tents. Since the ceasefire on 10 October, almost 6,500 tonnes of UN-coordinated relief materials have been denied entry into Gaza by Israeli authorities. According to Oxfam, in the two weeks after the ceasefire alone, shipments of water, food, tents and medical supplies from 17 international NGOs were denied. Continue reading...

Data comes as KPMG highlights soft consumer spending as one factor likely to hold back growth in 2026 Shoppers held back from visiting high streets over Black Friday, data shows, amid fears weak consumer spending will put the brakes on economic growth in 2026. Visitors to all UK shopping destinations were down 2% on Friday and 7.2% compared with the equivalent days last year, according to the monitoring company MRI Software, with locations near central London offices among the few to experience a lift in visits. Continue reading...

Reports highlight devastating impact of slashed funding, especially in parts of Africa, that could lead to 3.3m new HIV infections by 2030 In Mozambique, a teenage rape victim sought care at a health clinic only to find it closed. In Zimbabwe, Aids-related deaths have risen for the first time in five years. In Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), patients with suspected HIV went undiagnosed due to test-kit stocks running out. Stories of the devastating impact of US, British and wider European aid cuts on the fight against HIV – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – continue to mount as 2025 comes to an end, and are set out in a series of reports released in the past week. Continue reading...

Residents in Batn al-Hawa have all but given up hope and blame the Gaza war which, they say, has created ‘an atmosphere of hate’ towards them The dome of the al-Aqsa mosque gleamed in the late afternoon autumnal sun as Zohair Rajabi looked out from his balcony towards the skyline of Jerusalem’s Old City. Christian pilgrims spilled out of buses, while observant Jewish worshippers gathered outside the gate to the Western Wall. New flags now fly a few metres from Rajabi’s home. Blue and white and bearing the Star of David, they mark where residents were evicted recently from their homes by Israeli police. After more than 20 years of activism, Rajabi knows his days in Batn al-Hawa, a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood less than a mile south of the Old City, are almost certainly numbered. Continue reading...

Refugee Council says Home Office figures show safe and legal pathways are ‘disappearing when most needed’ The number of refugees allowed to settle in the UK under UN-facilitated schemes has dropped by more than a quarter in a year, according to figures released by the Home Office. Just 7,271 people were granted protection through refugee resettlement programmes in the year ending September 2025, about half of whom were Afghans whose lives were at risk after an accidental data breach by a UK defence official. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

Blue Wiggle Anthony Field and ‘Tree of Wisdom’ appeared in now-deleted video from singer Keli Holiday Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Wiggles want to make one thing very clear: they do not condone the use of MDMA. After two of its members appeared in a controversial TikTok video, the group – which has entertained children around the world for decades – issued a statement on the weekend denying any suggestion it supports the use of drugs. Continue reading...