JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska voters have rejected the latest attempt to repeal the state’s system of open primaries and ranked-choice voting in general elections.

The ballot measure, decided as part of the Nov. 3 election, marked the second time in two years that voters have rejected attempts to overturn the system and revert to partisan primaries and to general elections in which just one candidate can be selected. The measure also would have repealed some campaign disclosure rules. The Associated Press called the vote on Measure 2 on Friday night, with “no” receiving 53.5%.

Voters in 2020 narrowly adopted the new system, which was used for the first time in 2022. Supporters of open primaries and ranked voting say it gives voters more choices and forces candidates to build a broader coalition of support. They also say it’s had a moderating effect on the state Legislature, which has been governed under bipartisan coalitions in recent years.

Opponents, including President Trump, say it’s confusing. He has railed against the system for years. Elon Musk was among the donors endorsing the repeal effort.

Ruth Hall, deputy campaign manager for the No on 2 campaign, said in a statement that the win was decisive.

“When Alaskans say we want the freedom to choose the best person for the job, regardless of party affiliation, and the right to know who is spending in our elections, we mean it,” Hall said.

A message seeking comment was left for a leader of the repeal effort.

Under open primaries, all candidates in a race appear together on the ballot, and the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the ranked-vote general election.

The major political parties and campaigns have sometimes put pressure on candidates who placed lower during the primary to drop out of the general election in hopes of clearing a better path for the candidates with the highest profiles.

Alaska’s undecided race for U.S. Senate, in which Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, may be decided by ranked choice if neither candidate receives at least 50% of the vote.

After a new tranche of votes tallied Friday heavily favored Peltola, she increased her share to 49.8%, extending her lead over Sullivan to more than 10,000 votes. Ballots cast by election day will continue to be accepted through Wednesday.

Bohrer writes for the Associated Press.

Wales had only come close on a handful of occasions with one-point defeats in 1978, when New Zealand lock Andy Haden infamously dived out of a lineout to gain a match-winning penalty, and then in 2004.

Wales even turned to four New Zealand coaches in Sir Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Warren Gatland and Wayne Pivac to help break the hoodoo, but none of the quartet could inspire a Test victory over the land of their birth.

So there will be added satisfaction that it was a Welshman who masterminded the long-awaited win.

The Wales team of Steve Tandy may not have the household names of teams gone by, nor the winning pedigree, but they had courage when it mattered.

Three times they held up black shirts over the try line during a second-half defensive efforts that at times beggared belief.

Initial statistics had second-row Dafydd Jenkins equalling Thierry Dusautoir’s world record of 38 tackles in a single match, also against New Zealand, in 2007.

Jac Morgan and man of the match James Botham also topped 30 tackles with centre Eddie James and captain Dewi Lake not far behind.

It earned high praise from former New Zealand captain Sean Fitzpatrick.

A winner in all six meetings with Wales, the ex-hooker has ties to that day seven decades ago when his father Brian made his New Zealand debut.

Observers say he was unlucky not to be awarded a try after he was adjudged to have been tackled just short of the line. How different history might have been.

“New Zealand played well in patches and terrible in others but this is all about Wales,” said Fitzpatrick, now a board member of Welsh region Scarlets.

“They way they started the game and took their tries showed the amazing belief they had. But the defensive effort was out of this world.”

In Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, the pope urges people not to respond to injustice with brutality.

Pope Leo XIV has called for an end to the violence gripping Peru, urging people not to respond to injustice with brutality, as he visited communities he once served as bishop.

“We feel threatened by the uncertainty of widespread violence and by the unspeakable suffering that continues to afflict so many of our brothers and sisters, he said, speaking at his former cathedral in Chiclayo.

Peru’s homicide rate has nearly doubled over the past five years, from 5.8 to 10.7 per 100,000 people. Reported extortion cases rose from 2,421 in 2019 to 26,734 in 2025, according to official figures cited by The Associated Press.

Security was a top concern for Peruvians in the last election. Conservative President Keiko Jujimori took office in July after promising to tackle crime. She has since declared states of emergency, including in Lima in August, then in September in prisons holding inmates linked to criminal organisations.

She has also pursued closer ties with Washington, bringing Peru into the ‘Shield of the Americas,’ a US-led regional coalition formed to carry out joint military operations against drug cartels.

Later on Saturday, in the Andean town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba with a population of about 6,000, about 20,000 people came to an outdoor Mass, where Leo also addressed violence in society.

“Selfishness, injustice and evil are not overcome by brutality, but by prayer, patience and perseverance in denouncing what is wrong, by making our pleas with determination and working diligently to bring about the necessary changes,” said the leader of the Roman Catholic church.

He also drew attention to the suffering of rural communities he used to serve, where migration and declining birth rates are emptying villages.

“Let us think, for example, of the suffering of those who are forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future for themselves and their families in the great coastal cities,” he said.

Originally from Chicago in the United States and formerly known as Robert Francis Prevost, Leo arrived in Santa Cruz de Succhabamba by helicopter and was welcomed by a local band singing “Pope Leo, welcome home.”

He’d made the journey to the remote area many times before during his time as bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023, driving himself along winding mountain roads in a pick-up truck.

The pope, who holds both US and Peruvian citizenship, spent about two decades working in Peru as a missionary priest and bishop.

It is not clear the US is actually proposing Nato membership – the White House has not yet replied to a request for comment and it is understood that Ukraine itself sees that as unrealistic.

Other Nato members are wary and the Kremlin has always been fiercely opposed. It is one reason why Russia started this war in the first place.

It is possible the American envoys were exploring Ukraine’s “red lines” when it comes to occupied land in the Donbas. Zelensky said recently that the US mediators believed Kyiv only had to cede territory to achieve peace and were applying pressure, keen to do a deal as soon as possible.

Ukraine is sure that Russia’s ambitions are far greater and has long seen Nato as its only sure protection.

So it is also possible that Zelensky made this suggestion public in order to re-open a discussion that had been considered all-but closed.

He maintains that the idea is now “back on the agenda” as part of an “extremely difficult conversation” on European security.

It also looks like Ukrainian push-back against Russia’s renewed hardline stance. Moscow now talks about a “new European security architecture”, which is long-standing Russian code for a weaker Nato.

The issue appears to have been the main focus at the latest round of talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US in Abu Dhabi this week.

Russia has insisted again that it will not agree to cease fighting until a final peace deal is in place that would include handing over territories its troops have not captured, in addition to the Crimean peninsula it annexed illegally in 2014.

Russia currently occupies roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including most of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that compose the Donbas.

The latest round of talks come after a period of fraught relations between Kyiv and Washington over Ukrainian strikes on oil facilities deep inside Russia, which Trump had asked Ukraine to pause to facilitate the supply of Russian diesel to ease global fuel prices.

Zelensky then accused US officials of limiting Ukraine’s Starlink internet service, which it uses to co-ordinate defensive operations, while Trump said it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president” and called for fresh elections.

Elections are suspended while Ukraine remains under martial law, but Zelensky has previously said he was willing to hold them within months of a peace deal being reached and would give up the presidency in exchange for Nato membership.

Jilly Cooper’s Rivals season two has finally returned to screens after a break following its mid-season finale

Disney’s Rivals is finally back on our screens but fans have one major complaint.

Season two of the 80s-set drama returned with three fresh episodes on Wednesday (November 11), throwing viewers into the aftermath of the heart-breaking mid-season finale. Fans will remember that Lady Monica Baddingham (Claire Rushbrook) was killed by a falling tree after running out into a storm having discovered that her husband Tony (David Tennant) was having an affair with Maud (Victoria Smurfit).

The second half of the season dives into the grief Monica left behind, as well as Tony and Declan O’Hara’s (Aidan Turner) tense battle for the Cotswolds crown. Meanwhile, the synopsis teases: “Rupert Campbell-Black is forced to confront his own personal demons”.

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It continues: “Against a backdrop of hedonistic parties, Bonfire Night chaos, the Hampshire Hunt Ball and a turbulent Christmas, affairs unravel, alliances fracture and rivalries intensify. Caught in the middle of the frenzied franchise war, Taggie O’Hara must find the courage to follow her heart, while those around her face the consequences of ambition, power and secrets that can no longer remain hidden. But as series two draws to a close, who will get their happy ending?”

While viewers have been counting the days until the period drama’s return, many have been left disappointed by its staggered release scheduled. Following this week’s trio of episodes, Rivals will drop a new episode every Wednesday until December 2nd.

Venting on Reddit, one fan said: “Okay but why…? Why do we have to wait even longer for the rest of the series to drop? All these months waiting for part two and we only get the first half of that for now as well? Not a big fan of this move.”

The show’s mid-season finale aired back in June, meaning fans were forced to wait five months for new episodes. In comparison, the first season was released all in one day.

Someone else echoed the frustration, posting: “It’s ruined the momentum for me.” Yet another viewer wrote: “Making us wait this long for part 2 and only dropping half of it is painfullllll.”

And others even assumed the season was over, with one fan admitting: “Omg guys I thought that was the end of the series.” But some supporters have praised the weekly release schedule because it “keeps them excited”.

“I like it. Keeps me excited. I miss episodes dropping week to week for shows it keeps me interested longer and actually makes me retain what happens. I get bored binging!!!,” said one watcher.

While a second added: “I like weekly release. It gives you time to think about the show, “be” in it. If you binge you forget about it two days after.”

Rivals season 2, part 2 is streaming now on Disney Plus

A decades-old, antiquated telecommunications system that federal air traffic controllers rely on will continue to have problems until it is properly funded and fully upgraded with modern equipment, according to FAA Administration Bryan Bedford.

“But let’s not kid ourselves,” he said

Nations Championship

England (49) 78

Tries: Joseph 5, Steward, Genge, Murley, Earl, Martin, B Curry, M Smith, Fisilau Cons: Ford 4, Slade Pen: Ford

Japan (10) 15

Tries: Dearns, Helu Con: Saito Pen: Saito

Will Joseph marked his comeback after four years out the Test game with a record-equalling five tries as England tore through Japan and set their sights on New Zealand next weekend.

A teenage Joseph made his debut as a late replacement in a game against Australia four years ago.

Since then he has endured his boyhood club London Irish going bust, an underwhelming spell at Harlequins and the loss of hearing in his left ear after an auto-immune reaction.

But his superb early season form for Gloucester has thrust him back into the international picture and he took his opportunity superbly, showing work-rate and intelligence as well as raw top-end speed.

Four other players – Douglas Lambert, Rory Underwood, Josh Lewsey and Henry Arundell – have scored five tries in a single match for England.

Japan were vastly over-matched, unable to rev up the ball movement and quickfire rucks that have made them a threat to the game’s major powers in the past.

With the outcome clear as England raced out to a 32-3 lead inside 20 minutes, the focus sharpened on a number of individuals attempting to press their case alongside Joseph.

Centre Max Ojomoh, making his first appearance since an excellent performance against Argentina 12 months ago, was smart and sharp in midfield.

The Bath man burst into a pocket of space to help set up Joseph’s second and his slick hands opened up a corridor of space for his team-mate’s gleefully acrobatic fourth as Japan were buried beneath an avalanche of points.

Henry Pollock, afforded only his second start in his eye-catching England career, carried gamely but didn’t have the impact he has shown so often off the bench.

Replacement Greg Fisilau’s pair of wince-inducing hits and burrowing try added more intrigue to the back-row equation.

And while George Ford sewed together England’s backline neatly enough, his failure to convert more of England’s early tries won’t help his hopes of regaining the 10 shirt on a more permanent basis.

Northampton scrum-half Archie McParland made his debut as a replacement, but a host of front-line names will return next Saturday as England attempt to take down an All Blacks side smarting from defeat by Wales.

More to follow.

England: Steward; Joseph, Slade, Ojomoh, Murley; Ford, Van Poortvliet; Genge, Cowan-Dickie, Opoku-Fordjour, Itoje (c), Martin, Coles, Earl, Pollock

Replacements: Dan, Iyogun, Heyes, Clark, B Curry, Fisilau, McParland, M Smith

Japan: Ueda; Ishida, Riley, Tua, Tokito; Kitahara, Saito (co-c); Kamimori, Harada, Takeuchi, Hockings, Dearns (co-c), Gunter, Shimokawa, Cornelsen

Replacements: Sato, Otsuka, Helu, Stolberg, Costley, Fujiwara, Komura, Lee

Sean Duffy, the country’s transportation secretary, said his agency is ‘going to hold people accountable’.

The top United States transportation official has said work being performed on an antiquated telecommunications system could be to blame for a rare, hours-long US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop that halted all air traffic inside the country.

At a news conference in Washington, DC, on Saturday, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about routine maintenance that was performed on Friday to upgrade a router from copper to fibre at a “very remote location”.

Duffy said “contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment” caused the router in question to start flooding other ones in the country’s air traffic control system.

“We had 1,000 connection attempts ever four to five seconds,” he told reporters at the Transportation Department.

When those connection issues caused disruption in radar feeds and communications between air traffic controllers and aeroplanes, Duffy said a ground stop was ordered.

“When we see that, your safety is paramount. We shut down the airspace,” he said.

The Transportation Department identified the contractor of Friday’s maintenance as L3Harris, a US-based aerospace and defence company that has been tasked with modernising the communications system for the FAA.

“What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it … installator error from L3Harris? Or did they install a faulty router?” Duffy said. “We haven’t determined what the fault was.”

Duffy added that L3Harris, which he said had performed decades of work for the FAA, “didn’t meet the moment”.

“They own this network. They’re our prime contractor. I can’t go somewhere else. They own it,” he said. “Or was it a faulty router? And we’re going to find that out. And frankly, we’re going to hold people accountable.”

Al Jazeera has reached out to L3Harris for comment on the allegations but has not yet heard back.

Amid concerns that Friday’s ground stop was the result of a cyberattack, the US government said Saturday it did not “believe” that was the cause.

“Once we were able to isolate the work being done at this location, all of our systems came back online,” Duffy said. “So, we don’t believe this was cyber at all.”

The head of the FAA, who also spoke at Saturday’s news conference, echoed the transportation secretary’s remarks, saying the system outage was caused by an equipment error.

“We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said.

A root cause analysis would be shared with the public when it is available, he added.

As airlines and thousands of travellers begin the process of digging out from Friday’s groundstop, the longest and only second nationwide stop since 9/11 , the FAA said full schedule integrity is expected by the end of Sunday.

“We have crews and aircraft that are out of position for 12,000 flights that were lost,” Bedford said. “These crews, pilots and flight attendants need to get to their points of reconnection with their schedules.”

Bedford said the FAA expects about 4,000 to 5,000 flights out of the 41,000 scheduled on Saturday to be cancelled.

“That will set us up for a full recovery tomorrow,” he said. “I do think the worst is behind us.”

Italian regulators have fined social media giant Meta €805m (£670; $887m) for accessing Android users’ photos without their specific consent.

Italy’s Data Protection Authority said Meta did not properly inform about 20 million smartphone users that it had access to their photos and videos via a feature of the Facebook app.

It has given Meta 60 days to disable the feature by default and seek users’ consent separately.

The fine is among the largest an Italian authority has ever imposed on a tech giant.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it planned to appeal.

The charge is related to a feature which suggests photos and videos from a user’s phone gallery as ideas for posts.

Facebook requested access to users’ photo galleries through a single app-wide authorisation. According to the Italian regulator, a preceding notice did not make clear that this would also allow Facebook to generate suggestions based on photos in their gallery.

The regulator said it took into account “the high number of people affected” and the fact it is “still ongoing for those who have not updated the app and for those who have already given their consent to the system”.

It also cited “Meta’s lack of co-operation”.

Meta told the BBC: “We strongly disagree with the [regulator’s] assessment of the facts, its application of the law, and the disproportionate level of the fine.

“This is a straightforward feature which helps people post photos and videos to Facebook. People must give permission on their device before it can operate, and they can change this permission at any time via their settings.”

Last month, Meta, which is also behind Instagram and WhatsApp, was hit with its largest fine ever for its business practices.

A US judge in New Mexico ordered the company to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) after it found that found it had spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data.

Zelenskyy rejected the possibility of Ukraine committing to neutrality and said he refused to cede territory to Russia.

US negotiators have floated the idea that Ukraine should cede parts of eastern Donbas in exchange for NATO membership, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after the latest rounds ⁠of Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi and Ireland.

This is the first time the question of linking NATO membership to territorial concessions has been raised, Zelenskyy told reporters in remarks released by his office on Saturday.

“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from ⁠Donbas?” he said. “That is why I believe NATO is back on the agenda.”

Zelenskyy said the parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine the US asked about were areas Russia does not control. The Ukrainian president said he refused to cede territory.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s desire to change borders in Europe is a fact. I am sure this is part of his concept of revising security guarantees in Europe,” he said. “This is dangerous because, in my view, it is precisely things like this that lead to wars or escalations.”

Putin has long said that Ukrainian membership of NATO is a red line for Moscow, citing the issue as one reason for launching Russia’s full-blown invasion in 2022.

Zelenskyy did say that if Ukraine received a comprehensive package, including security guarantees, military and reconstruction funds, and a recovery plan from the US and other partners, he would put the question about ceding parts of Donbas to a national referendum.

“If the American side confirms precisely this to us, together with other NATO partners, then I will ask our Ukrainian society what it thinks: do we accept it or not?” Zelenskyy said.

He stressed that any arrangement would not involve recognising occupied territories as Russian. Zelenskyy also rejected the possibility of Ukraine committing to neutrality, saying that would require changing the country’s constitution.

“If Putin expects Ukraine’s neutrality to be enshrined, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’re not in NATO right now anyway.”

Despite the diplomatic push to end the conflict, Russia and Ukraine reported numerous overnight attacks. Russian officials reported on Friday that about 1,200 Ukrainian drones were fired at the country, with oil infrastructure among the targets, while Ukraine reported attacks on a hospital and the port of Odesa.

At the summit in Ireland over recent days, EU leaders agreed that Europe’s team for any Ukraine peace talks would comprise five major military powers – non-EU member Britain plus France, Germany, Italy and Poland – as well as EU officials. They would hold talks ‌with ‌US and Ukrainian officials, but not with Russia.

Innovation Minister Alyn Smith recently said data centres were “the whisky bonds of the AI sector”.

However protesters made it clear they disagree – carrying slogans such as “AI data centres threaten humanity” and “AI data centres: costing the Earth”.

Some attended to voice their opposition to plans for data centres in particular communities – including Cockenzie, East Lothian, and Larbert, Falkirk.

Kim Cairns, a campaigner for ‘Say No To Chapelcross AI Data Centre’, told BBC Scotland News her community was worried about noise, road closures and access problems during the construction phase.

She was also concerned about the noise the centre would generate when it was operational.

Kim said: “It’s not going to enrich anybody’s lives. For Chapelcross it’s the sheer size of it, the amount of electricity it’s going to need.

“At the moment it’s green fields with sheep and cows in it. It’s going to be a monstrosity on the environment.

“The air pollution, the light pollution – it’s just not needed.”

RITA Ora has landed a film role following a slew of previous acting parts – in her latest move away from music.

The singer and television personality, 35, has been landing bigger roles in recent years.

According to Variety, Rita is set to star in an upcoming sci-fi adventure film titled The Signalers.

The premise follows a remote air traffic controller and his niece finding an unexplained signal deep in the Canadian wilderness.

This troubling signal also causes dangerous phenomena to take place, prompting them to investigate.

Rita, along with Galaxy Quest actress Missi Pyle, will play research scientists encountered by the pair.

RITA’S AURA

Rita Ora’s hubbie Taika Waititi reveals what it’s really like to work with her

RITA’S AURA

Rita Ora commands attention in gothic masquerade ensemble on red carpet

The cast also includes Umbrella Academy’s Tom Hopper starring in the leading role.

Over the past decade, Rita has appeared in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, Pokemon Detective Pikachu and Twist – the latter inspired by Oliver Twist.

It comes as the star radiated confidence on the BFI red carpet last month, rocking a stunning Gothic look.

She attended the 70th BFI London Film Festival alongside her director husband Taika Watiti to see the premiere of his new movie, Klara and the Sun.

In the snaps Rita wore a beautiful black bodycon gown featuring all-over lace details.

The bottom of the skirt was structured out into a circle using a hoop to create a unique silhouette for the evening.

Rita and Taika got married in 2022 after only a year of dating, and four years after first meeting as friends in LA.

New Zealand-born Taika, 51, has directed two of Rita’s music videos and they are planning on making a romcom together.

She reportedly filmed a scene for his new sci-fi flick but it was cut at the last minute.

Speaking exclusively to The Sun at the South Bank, Taika said: “I’m really amazed and surprised by what she does, but also super confused at the same time.

“She has a similar thing with me about the process of making films, and that’s how we make it work.”

Friday’s nationwide ground stop that led to the cancellations of thousands of flights into Saturday happened after an update was made to an older communications system used by air traffic controllers and managed by L3Harris Technologies (LHX).

Transportation Secretary Sean

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday’s air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis began when a contractor was performing routine maintenance at a remote FAA location to switch telecommunication lines from 1980s-era copper wire to a fiber line.

The new equipment began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system — sending more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds — causing radar and communications disruptions, he said. As a safety measure, the FAA decided to ground all planes for more than four hours.

It is currently unclear whether the contractor, L3 Harris, or the piece of new equipment itself was at fault.

“This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment,” said Duffy. “A contractor didn’t meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment — and it caused the outages.” L3 Harris could not be immediately reached for comment.

On Saturday morning, thousands of planes were back in American airspace, but airlines warned it would take several days to recover and urged passengers to change their flights to later dates where possible. On Friday, there were more than 7,400 flight delays within, into, or out of the United States and more than 9,000 cancellations, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The incident sparked barbed political discourse over who is to blame for failing to fix the aging infrastructure and frustrations over the initial lack of clear communication from White House officials.

“The Transportation and Homeland Security leaders were slow to provide updates, and when they did speak, they didn’t have good explanations about what was happening, nor whether it would happen again,” Rep. George Whitesides (D-Santa Clarita) said in a statement on X.

Whitesides, who was himself stuck in an airport for seven hours Friday, criticized the president for installing a Transportation Secretary with “basically no professional transportation experience in one of the most crucial jobs we have as a country.” Duffy is a former sports television personality, prosecutor, congressmember and CNN political contributor.

Trump, who rarely shies away from the spotlight, has not publicly commented on the unprecedented telecommunications outage. He had posted on social media about other issues, including criticism of Gavin Newsom, but nothing yet on the airspace issue.

When asked about the president’s silence at a Friday evening news conference, Duffy said that Trump was “fully engaged” behind the scenes.

Duffy praised Trump for pushing to modernize the FAA’s infrastructure and securing $12.5 billion through his 2025 “Big Beautiful Bill” — a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities — to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control and airspace systems. Duffy called on Congress to approve up to an additional $50 billion in funding to fully modernize the nation’s aviation infrastructure.

Friday’s stoppage marks the second full ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The most recent full ground stop, which lasted about 90 minutes, was in 2023 when a pilot notification system went down.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

Wales: Murray; Rees-Zammit, E James, Llewellyn, Hamer-Webb; Costelow, Tomos Williams; N Smith, Lake (capt), Griffin, D Jenkins, Beard, Botham, Morgan Basham.

Replacements: Elias, G Thomas, D Lewis, Carter, Plumtree, Morgan-Williams, Edwards, Hennessey.

New Zealand: B Barrett (capt); Fineanganofo, Tupaea, Lienert-Brown, Moorby; Mo’unga, Ratima; Bower, Aumua, Newell, S Barrett, Lord, Segner, Lakai, Sititi.

Replacements: Bell, Numia, Tosi, Hannah, E Blackadder, Fainga’anuku, Preston, R Ioane.

The EU said that “Israel must enable the work of the UN and its agencies” after the group was blocked access into Gaza.

The European Union has urged Israel to reopen all Gaza border crossings and grant “immediate, unimpeded access” for aid groups to provide humanitarian relief in the territory following devastating flooding in Gaza this week.

Civilian infrastructure and medical facilities in Gaza “must be protected,” said an EU statement released on Saturday by the office of Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and the Vice-President of the European Commission.

The EU call came as an Israeli drone attack killed two more Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday.

The drone struck them as they walked down a street in Jabaliya on the northern edge of Gaza City, according to Mohamed Abu Selmiya, director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where the casualties were taken. The American field hospital said several other people were wounded but did not provide a number.

The Israeli military said it struck two Hamas “militants” in the area.

An Israeli air attack on Thursday at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza killed at least six Palestinians, including a surgeon, and left dozens wounded.

“The EU underlines the need to respect international law, including international humanitarian law, at all times,” the 27-nation bloc said on Saturday. “This includes the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as medical personnel and facilities. The recent airstrike on the Nasser Hospital is deeply alarming,” it added.

Heavy rains

Damage from Israeli attacks on Gaza’s infrastructure has worsened floods caused by heavy rain, which have submerged large areas of the enclave, local officials and the UN said this week. Gaza’s media office reported that more than 700km of Gaza’s sewage network has been destroyed.

Heavy rain has directly affected at least 106,000 people in Gaza in recent days, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, with thousands of tents for displaced Palestinians submerged and latrines overflowing into camps.

In response, the EU said that “Israel must enable the work of the UN and its agencies, and humanitarian organisations including NGOs, and comply with all its obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”

The EU reaffirmed “its commitment to the two-state solution” and called for “the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza” as it called for “sustained distribution of humanitarian assistance and early recovery support at scale” to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

When composing the score of a horror movie, are you empathetic toward its victims, or acting as their tormentor?

Ethel Cain and Robin Carolan pondered that as they composed the mournful and guttural score for Robert Eggers’ forthcoming film “Werwulf.” The movie, set in 14th century England, is Eggers’ latest dive into meticulously researched, period-piece horror. After 2024’s smash “Nosferatu,” “Werwulf” (in theaters Dec. 25) looks to be Eggers’ most historically exacting film since his colonial-America nightmare “The Witch,” and his most brutal and upsetting movie yet.

For this particular sound of pastoral despair, the singer and composer tried to understand how the freezing, terrified peasants of medieval England (here played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, and Lily-Rose Depp) would have felt being stalked by an entity beyond their comprehension.

“I started to wonder — is the music coming from a sympathetic place toward the characters, or is it coming from the antagonism of the evil that’s pursuing them?’ Cain asked in an interview about their single “Wynter Waxeth,” which also serves as a theme in the film. “Or is it more of this neutrality of nature watching it all unfold?”

For the score, Cain — the cult-favorite Southern gothic project from singer-songwriter Hayden Anhedönia — joined up with Carolan, the founder of the tastemaking indie label Tri Angle and a composer who worked on the music Eggers’ “Nosferatu” and “The Northman.” Cain’s voice is a spectral presence throughout the movie, in terribly beautiful harmonies that serve as a portent of its characters’ desperate faith and impending doom.

Carolan’s instrumentation is grounded in period-accurate instruments like the hurdy gurdy (they had a custom “mega-stretch” model made that requires two people to play it), distended through spectral reverbs and percussion made from crunching bones and chopped wood.

“What I really wanted to capture was that kind of rugged, in-the-earth feeling, really plunging you into the medieval world because it would have been a very hard world to have lived in,” Carolan said. “My favorite parts of the process are doing the research, finding the instruments, thinking about the music of the time and then thinking, ‘How can I subvert this?’

“I also wanted the score to sound mysterious and otherworldly as well,” he added, “because the characters were incredibly superstitious and obsessed with God, demons, devils. It was a time of very heightened emotions because there was so much superstition, and so much of a lack of understanding of the world around them.”

Those themes, from a very different angle, are core concerns of Cain’s catalog too. The closest reference point for the sound of “Werwulf” might be “Perverts,” the divisive but profoundly emotional noise record she made to detonate possible pop stardom after 2022’s hit “Preacher’s Daughter.” The score harkens back to a formative interest of Cain’s — Gregorian chant — that predates and runs alongside her singer-songwriter material. Both of these projects are obsessed with God, sin, filth and salvation.

“It feels a little full circle to be coming back around and creating this very fantastical, superstitious, religious fervor,” Cain said. “But you can also go off the rails in the sense that it’s still a horror movie, so you can bend it to create something that toes the line between a horror movie soundtrack and something echoing off the walls of a monastery. It’s really nice to go into this meticulously crafted universe, and then dig in the dirt with it.”

For “Wynter Waxeth,” Cain sings in Middle English lyrics written with Eggers (“Werwulf’s” dialog is written and spoken in the same dialect). She’s always been a particularly commanding vocalist, attuned to devastating melodic turns and gorgeously pained phrasing.

The resolutely autonomous Cain wasn’t used to being coached on much of anything in music. But working with Eggers to wrap her voice around the phonemes of Middle English, the sessions brought something ancient and profound out of her.

“You’re getting to take words that, to the English speaker’s ear, sound vaguely English because it is, but you get to incorporate different kinds of trills and glottal stops,” Cain said. “Different languages have different cultural connotations, and they carry so much weight with them. It really does take you into a different headspace. I loved to wear all my black drapes to the studio and sit with the harpist invoking this feeling that I haven’t felt in a very long time. It was nice to say hello to a new ghostly image that I would like to get to know a little bit better.”

“Wynter Waxeth” builds from the hymnal melodies of a frostbitten gothic abbey, into groans of percussion and stacks of frantic, escalating chants. You feel both the majesty of faith and the gnash of claws in the treeline.

While “Nosferatu” took aesthetic liberties with a timeless vampire tale, and “The Northman” dropped viewers into a mythopoetic Viking era, the score work for “Werwulf” comes closest to inhabiting its characters’ real fears and moments of solace as death slinks outside.

“The film is brutal, I think it’s Rob’s most devastating film,” Carolan said. “But there are certain scenes where there was space for tenderness. You want to embrace the characters, especially when you know the hardships they’re going through and where the story is headed.”

“I feel less like I’m sympathizing with the characters being terrified and helpless, and it almost sounds like we are on the creature’s side,” Cain laughed. “It feels like we are creating the atmosphere that is so terrifying.”

“Your voice is in a lot pretty evil scenes,” Carolan agreed. “What Hayden’s doing with her voice, it’s antagonistic. They’re some of the the most intense music cues in the film. Hayden’s a little bit of heaven and a little bit well, not heaven.”

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