Rebecca Lowman narrates a superb, claustrophobia-inducing plunge into a relationship descending from bad to worse Halfway through Liars, the story of a new relationship that becomes a marriage, our protagonist, Jane, is asked by a neighbour: “Why are you with him?” It’s a question that has been on the listener’s mind for some time. Jane’s partner, John, lies about his feelings, his financial status, where he is going and where he has been. He is chaotic, lazy, resentful, entitled and given to getting drunk and spending money he hasn’t got. At the start of their marriage, Jane’s career as a writer and academic is on the up, while John – a visual artist and aspiring film-maker – has hit a professional wall. Time and time again, he insists they move cities for better work opportunities, which soon puts a spanner in his wife’s working life. It comes as no surprise that, after their son is born, Jane is left to do the parenting while her husband absents himself from his responsibilities. Available via Picador, 6hr 7min Continue reading...

Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell accused of preventing lawful burial, causing a public nuisance and fraud The bosses of a funeral directors left a man’s decomposing body in an uncooled mortuary room with water dripping down the walls, a jury has heard. Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell, who ran Elkin and Bell Funerals in Gosport, Hampshire, also failed to buy a coffin for the man, though in his lifetime he had made careful arrangements for his funeral, the court heard. Continue reading...

Helpline run by Unseen receives hundreds of calls a year from potential victims of exploitation Hundreds of workers are at risk of modern slavery in the UK construction industry, according to human rights monitors. Data from the helpline of the antislavery charity Unseen, has identified the construction industry as an emerging area of risk. It was second only to the care sector in terms of calls to its helpline in 2024 from people who claimed to be exploited. Continue reading...

Symphony Hall, Birmingham Soprano Helena Juntunen brought Sibelius’ vocal works to dramatic life in a remarkable concert that paired the Finnish composer with late Shostakovich Sibelius and Shostakovich shared a gift for lyric storytelling, lending cohesion to this evening of musical narratives at Symphony Hall, from the frosty myths and legends of Finland to the gnomic utterances of the Soviet composer’s final symphony. Osmo Vänskä has decades of experience where Sibelius is concerned, so it was unsurprising that these meticulous interpretations felt lived in. What was remarkable, however, was the way the Finnish conductor drew out the groundbreaking qualities in some of the more conventional works. This was particularly apparent in the central movement of the Karelia Suite where the warmth of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s strings was underpinned by a folk-inflected harmonic pungency, or in the outer movements where intricate countermelodies that sometimes go unnoticed were revealed. Continue reading...

Brendan Carr, head of FCC, asks if programme ever aired in US which is seen as key to any future litigation A US media regulator led by a close ally of Donald Trump is examining whether an edition of the BBC’s Panorama broke US regulations in the way it edited one of the president’s speeches. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by Brendan Carr, has written to the BBC’s outgoing director general, Tim Davie, asking whether the programme was ever aired in the US. Continue reading...

Jed Mercurio’s police drama is getting a comeback – which gives it the chance to be TV’s greatest cop show once more. Here’s what it needs to do Mother of God, fella, they’re back at last. In a rare piece of good news for the beleaguered BBC, blockbuster drama Line of Duty is to return for a long-awaited seventh series. So long-awaited, in fact, that many fans feared it would never happen. Luckily, the police still need policing. Even the fictional Central police force. The last run of creator Jed Mercurio’s corrupt cop thriller was the top-rated TV drama (excluding soaps) since modern records began in 2002, pulling in an average of 16 million viewers and a whopping 17 million for the finale over 28 days. The show’s three stars will now reprise their roles in a six-part comeback that begins filming in Belfast next spring. Continue reading...

Foreign ministers express misgivings about draft US-Russian peace plan favourable to Putin Europe live – latest updates Europeans must be involved in any attempt to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, the continent’s top diplomats said after reports of a US-Russia plan favourable to Kremlin interests emerged. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, welcomed any “meaningful efforts” to end the war, but said Ukrainian and European input was needed for any plan to work. Continue reading...

(Deutsche Grammophon) Olafsson’s account of Beethoven’s Op 109 is one of the most beautiful on record, the centrepiece of a recording that links the composer to Bach and Schubert Disinclined to follow the herd and record Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas as a job lot, Víkingur Ólafsson has chosen to circle one of them, No 30 in E major, Op 109, locating it in a musical timeline that reflects both the composer’s past and the Viennese milieu of the early 18th century. For Ólafsson, looking backwards means turning to Bach, whose musical fingerprints he detects all over late Beethoven. The latter’s uninhibited invention, he argues, has its roots firmly in the baroque with its improvisatory elements and enthusiasm for the dance. Continue reading...

Alleged trafficker Zhi Dong Zhang escaped via a tunnel in Mexico before flying to Cuba and reportedly Russia but now finds himself on trial in a Brooklyn courtroom The China-Mexico fentanyl pipeline: increasingly sophisticated and deadly Like so many great escapes, it involved a tunnel. One night in July, in the Mexico City neighbourhood where he was under house arrest, Zhi Dong Zhang snuck through a hole into the property nextdoor and escaped from under the noses of the soldiers guarding him. Continue reading...

F1, FIA and Bernie Ecclestone are defending the claims Brazilian former driver says he is the rightful winner Felipe Massa’s £64m claim against Formula One, its governing body the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone over Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 world championship in 2008 can go to trial, a high court judge has ruled. Massa claims he is the rightful champion after the Brazilian lost by a single point when Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashed at the Singapore Grand Prix. Ecclestone, who was F1’s impresario for four decades before he was deposed in 2017, suggested in 2023 that the sport’s executives were aware of the cover-up – which became known as Crashgate – before the 2008 campaign concluded. The 95-year-old Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management are defending the claims. Continue reading...

The acclaimed documentarian’s latest epic series has been in the works for a decade and features A-list contributions from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks Ken Burns is no longer a mere documentarian; he is a brand, a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. When he has a new project heading for the small screen, everybody wants a part of him. Burns has done “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, nearing the end of nine-month promotional tour that included 40 cities, 80 screenings and hundreds of interviews. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.” Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Do you know fine leg from third man? Test your knowledge of cricket fielding positions with this interactive quiz Cricket is full of jargon. Someone can be out for a duck, fooled by a doosra or fielding in the gully. If you are listening to a game on the radio, it can be hard to interpret the vocabulary – silly, short, square etc – used to identify the positions of the fielders. Test how well you know cricket positions with the quiz below. This is an updated version of the same quiz we ran in 2023 Continue reading...

Judge says Nnamdi Kanu used his Indigenous People of Biafra to incite attacks on security officials and civilians A Nigerian court has convicted the Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu on terrorism-related charges. Judge James Omotosho said prosecutors had shown that Kanu, who also holds British citizenship, had used his Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to incite attacks on security officials and civilians in south-east Nigeria. Continue reading...

Launch on 80th anniversary of groundbreaking legal effort comes after 25-year project by Harvard law school library A fully digitised collection of the records of the Nuremberg trials is being launched online to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the groundbreaking legal effort to bring leading Nazis to justice. Open access to every official document from the trial held by the Harvard law school library will be available to all researchers, whether amateur or professional, for the first time from Thursday after a 25-year endeavour by a 30-strong team of historians, metadata curators and librarians. Continue reading...

As the veteran actor turns 100 he reveals that he was approached to play the British spy in the early 60s, but realised his accent wouldn’t have been up to scratch For more than six decades, the actor Dick Van Dyke has been pilloried for his attempts at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964). Now, the actor who has since apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” as chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic has revealed he was in the running to play another UK icon on screen: James Bond. Speaking on the Today TV programme in the US, Van Dyke, who turns 100 next month, said that Bond producer Albert Broccoli approached him to ask if he fancied the role of the British spy in his first big screen outing. Continue reading...

Pedro Sánchez says his country must defend the democratic freedom ‘wrenched from us for so many years’ Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but with a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”. Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975. Continue reading...

Musician says seeing national flags on recent visits to Luton and Dublin ‘doesn’t make me feel safe’ The UK and Ireland are entering “dark times”, according to the singer Joy Crookes, who said the influence of far-right ideology on mainstream politics is comparable to the 1970s when the National Front was at its peak. Crookes, who has just played two sold out shows at the O2 Academy in Brixton, said that the recent wave of nationalism and the far-right march through central London in September made her feel unsafe in the UK. Continue reading...

Labour accused of delaying new rules to avoid backlash, after leak of EHRC guidance saying trans people could be questioned based on looks The UK government has insisted it will take as much time as necessary to “get right” new rules on access to single-sex spaces after a leak of guidance submitted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) raised concerns that its publication was being deliberately delayed. The equalities watchdog submitted its formal guidance on how public bodies, businesses and other service providers should respond to April’s landmark supreme court ruling on biological sex to the UK government in September. Since then, its outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, has urged the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, to approve it “as soon as possible”. Continue reading...

Wales and Northern Ireland could meet for finals place Ireland to face Denmark or North Macedonia if they win Wales and Northern Ireland will do battle for a place at the 2026 World Cup if they navigate playoff semi-finals of differing toughness in March. The pair would fight it out in Cardiff for a ticket to next year’s showpiece if Wales win a home tie against Bosnia & Herzegovina and Northern Ireland prevail in a fiendish trip to Italy, who are out of form but will be strongly favoured. It is a particularly appetising draw for Craig Bellamy’s Wales, who are flying after defeating North Macedonia 7-1 on Tuesday and are two home victories from a return to the most exalted stage. Continue reading...

Medical officials say 17 people killed in Khan Younis area and 16 in strikes on Gaza City Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month. Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women. Continue reading...

US says Johannesburg meeting cannot issue final statement without its presence and says summit’s priorities ‘run counter to US policy views’ South Africa has accused the US of attempting “coercion by absentia” after Donald Trump’s administration confirmed it would boycott the G20 meeting in Johannesburg and said no final statement by G20 leaders could be issued without its presence. The US sent a note last weekend confirming none of its officials would be attending the G20 leaders’ summit on 22-23 November, the first to be held in Africa, and that it would not accept any declaration issued at the end of it. Continue reading...

Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London A rollercoaster accident leaves six choristers in limbo, each having to make their case for a second chance on Earth in this eccentric show Well, this is a peculiar musical. Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell’s cult hit, which began life in a fringe theatre in Canada in 2009, has the spirit of the circus woven into its fabric. It arrives in London, quirks and all, in a wonderfully eccentric production directed by Lizzi Gee. A story about six high-school choristers sent spiralling to their demise from a rollercoaster is hardly the most conventional ground for an all-singing, all-dancing show. But as we travel with them into a space between life and death, where they are forced to compete for a second chance on Earth, the narrative gradually slips away from its morbid trappings and celebrates life. Continue reading...

Funding announcement expected in next week’s budget as part of attempt to secure thousands of new homes Rachel Reeves is expected to announce funding for an extension of the Docklands Light Railway at next week’s budget in an attempt to secure thousands of new homes. A Treasury source said the chancellor is expected to back the extension of the DLR to Thamesmead, in south-east London. The area has long been without public transport, which has been blamed for preventing the redevelopment of a riverside site that could include new homes. Continue reading...

Former defender on his challenge as sporting director at Ligue 1 club and using Arsène Wenger as an inspiration Returning to Brittany was the obvious choice for Laurent Koscielny. Having left Lorient for Arsenal in 2010, the former defender is back at the Ligue 1 side as the sporting director. “My wife and I were keen to come back, it’s a beautiful region, and the people are welcoming and kind,” the Frenchman says of the seaside town, known for its annual Celtic music festival and military naval base. Continue reading...