
From Sierra Leone to Milan, cities are introducing their own rules and innovations in the face of rising temperatures
Wooden stakes bearing pictures of young men were driven into the yellow sands of Copacabana beach this week, opposite Rio de Janeiro’s swanky hotels on Avenida Atlântica where 300 mayors and their entourages were staying during the C40 World Mayors Summit.
Smiling up at the mayors in their hotel suites were photographs of four officers killed in what was the deadliest police raid in Brazilian history, just a few days before the summit. A further 117 people were killed in the operation in two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas – the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha – in what the police said was a clampdown on organised crime.
Continue reading...Rachel Reeves has unnecessarily blocked her options of what to include in her budget
All the signs suggest that the government will cling to a dangerous set of false choices at the budget later this month. Constrained by the debt and borrowing rules that she has imposed upon herself, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems to think she only has three options: take benefits from those who are unable to work; tax those who work and are already struggling to make ends meet; or ask those who don’t need to work to pay a bit more. My worry is that she will not only make the wrong choices, but fail to challenge the dangerous orthodoxies that forced her to see these as the only choices in the first place.
Labour’s political rhetoric gives the impression that working people need not worry. Its 2024 election manifesto committed the party to rebuilding the country so that it “once again serves the interests of working people”. Only a few weeks ago, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, mentioned “working people” no fewer than 17 times in his conference speech. The chancellor was just behind him, using the phrase on 16 occasions during hers.
Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is chief executive of the New Economics Foundation and author of Power to the People
Continue reading...Midway through the Broadway run of Waiting for Godot with his Bill & Ted co-star Keanu, the actor-director talks about his new film, Adulthood, overcoming the abuse he endured as a young performer, and why we’re wrong about artificial intelligence
Six weeks ago, Alex Winter was on stage at the first night of previews for Waiting for Godot – the latest Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, in which Winter plays the puttering Vladimir to Keanu Reeves’s equally aimless Estragon.
Winter is an old pro at live performance: he spent almost all of his middle and high school years on Broadway, eight shows a week. He and Reeves, his longtime friend and most righteous co-star of the Bill & Ted movies, had the idea for the revival three years ago and have been prepping ever since.
Continue reading...Iraq 2003-2004
Continue reading...Everton need more edge in attack, Potts lifts West Ham’s leaden midfield and Liverpool face a rampaging Haaland
Time is running out for Richarlison. Injuries to Dominic Solanke and Randal Kolo Muani gave the Brazilian a consistent run in Thomas Frank’s starting XI but, with just one goal since the first league game of the season, he has not taken his opportunities. Now, with Kolo Muani fit, the former Everton striker has had to make do with a place on the bench and failed to impress against FC Copenhagen in midweek, missing a penalty that another striker, Dane Scarlett, won. Competition is fierce, even for a Spurs side that registered 0.1 xG in the defeat to Chelsea – the lowest by any Premier League team this season – and speculation has already begun before the January transfer window. Both Ivan Toney (who played under Frank at Brentford) and Dusan Vlahovic (whose contract at Juventus is up next summer) have been linked. Tottenham have money to spend so Richarlison must make the most of his minutes if wants to have a future at the club, as well as keep himself in contention for Carlo Ancelotti’s Brazil squad with the World Cup coming up next summer. Michael Butler
Tottenham v Manchester United, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)
Everton v Fulham, Saturday 3pm
West Ham v Burnley, Saturday 3pm
Sunderland v Arsenal, Saturday 5.30pm
Continue reading...David Zwirner Gallery, London
From cruel pictures of elderly widows to a shocking image of motherhood, the American photographer’s genius is on full display in a show that finds ugliness all around her
In 1971, at the age of 48, the American photographer Diane Arbus killed herself. Someone should have seen the clues, for her photography is not so much tragic as utterly alienated from the human species. Here is a woman nursing her baby, a modern Madonna – except the woman’s limbs are as thin as an addict’s, her face wizened and the infant resting in her arms, dressed in baby clothes, is a monkey. Just to make clear that this is an absurd, miserable travesty of Madonnas and motherhood Arbus captioned it: “A woman with her baby monkey, NJ, 1971.” It is an utterly pitiable image of desperation, of someone trying to make sense of a life that can’t be made sense of. And the despair mirrors that of Arbus herself.
You might want to see her many images of gender-blurring positively. There’s a photograph called Transvestite at Her Birthday Party, NYC 1969: she lies on her bed laughing, double chinned and gap-toothed in a blond wig, in a shabby hotel room with balloons. But Arbus actually said how macabre and pathetic she found the occasion: “She called me up and said it was her birthday party and would I come and I said, ‘How terrific.’ It was a hotel on Broadway and 100th Street … I’ve been in some pretty awful places but the lobby was really like hades.” The elevator was broken so Arbus walked up to the fourth floor. “You had to step over about three or four people every flight. And then I came into her room. The birthday party was me and her, a whore friend of hers and her pimp, and the cake.”
Continue reading...Exclusive: Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action
More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion, new research reveals.
Lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries – which are mostly responsible for climate breakdown – have been allowed to participate in the annual climate negotiations where states are meant to come in good faith and commit to ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading...Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally released on 29 October but only reported missing on 4 November
A convicted sex offender who was released from prison by mistake a week ago is back in custody.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, from Algeria, was accidentally freed on 29 October from Wandsworth prison, in south London. He was arrested in Islington on Friday, the Metropolitan police said.
Continue reading...Julia Wandelt made calls, left messages and visited home of McCann family during extensive campaign
A woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been found guilty of harassing the girl’s family – but has been cleared of stalking.
Julia Wandelt, 24, a Polish national, waged an extensive campaign, including making calls, leaving messages and turning up at the home of the family of Madeleine, who disappeared in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007, Leicester crown court heard.
Continue reading...Mark Fellows, Lee Newell and David Taylor charged with murder of Kyle Bevan at high-security West Yorkshire prison
Three prisoners have been charged with the murder of a convicted child killer in a high-security West Yorkshire prison.
Kyle Bevan, 33, was found dead in his cell in HMP Wakefield on Wednesday morning. He was two and a half years into a minimum sentence of 28 years for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter, Lola James, in the family home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020.
Continue reading...