American author Everett and British writer Harvey have been given the shortest odds of winning the £50,000 literary prize but Ladbrokes say the ‘race is wide-open’

Percival Everett and Samantha Harvey are the bookies’ favourites to win the 2024 Booker prize.

American author Everett was Ladbrokes’ frontrunner before the company closed bets on Monday morning, with 2/1 odds of taking home the £50,000 award for his novel James – a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning , Seb Hutchinson and Nick Ames to discuss all the weekend’s action

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts , Soundcloud , Audioboom , Mixcloud , Acast and Stitcher , and join the conversation on Facebook , Twitter and email .

On the podcast today: Pep Guardiola oversees an unprecedented fourth straight defeat with Manchester City’s 2-1 loss at Brighton . Fabien Hürzeler’s second-half adjustments turned the tide, leaving Liverpool five points clear at the top . Was Aston Villa’s set-piece strategy a disaster, or is Austin McPhee simply out of ideas?

Much is unclear about how Donald Trump’s return to power will affect efforts to tackle global heating, but there are a few things we can say

You’ve likely already heard the worst-case takes: that a second Trump presidency is a disaster for the climate, and will almost certainly lead to emissions being higher than they otherwise would have been. There’s obvious truth in that. But it’s also true that Trump 2.0 will almost certainly not play out in line with immediate post-election predictions.

We have been here before. As the writer and analyst Ketan Joshi points out , in 2016 it was projected that Trump’s policies would lead to a steep rise in US emissions – a fork in the road at odds with the decline forecast if Hillary Clinton had won.

Tech leaders’ politics are encoded into their platforms – and with Trump’s ascent, they have direct access to the Oval Office

I’m a researcher of media manipulation, and watching the 2024 US election returns was like seeing the Titanic sink.

Every day leading up to 5 November, there were more and more outrageous claims being made in an attempt across social media to undermine election integrity: conspiracy theories focused on a tidal wave of immigrants plotting to undermine the right wing , allegations that there were millions of excess ballots circulating in California, and rumors that the voting machines were already corrupted by malicious algorithms.

Scott’s return to the Roman arena is something of a repeat, but it’s still a thrilling spectacle and Mescal a formidable lead. We are entertained

What’s Latin for “Groundhog Day”? Once upon a time, Russell Crowe’s beefy hero Maximus in Ridley Scott’s sword-and-sandal classic Gladiator was the honest soldier outside the snickering metropolitan elite, out to gain vengeance and redeem Roman honour in the blood-spattered arena, his raw courage exposing the politicians’ contemptible decadence. His defiant cry “Are you not entertained?” spoke to the showbiz-political complex of our own time and when it was alleged last year that most men thought about ancient Rome every day , the suspicion was that what they were actually thinking about was … that film.

Now we are a generation along, and little has changed, in fact almost nothing. This sequel is watchable and spectacular, with the Colosseum created not digitally but as a gobsmacking 1-to-1 scale physical reconstruction with real crowds. Yet this film is weirdly almost a next-gen remake, effectively reincarnating almost every single narrative component of the original in a variant form, the events of the first film echoing in franchise eternity.

Jamal Simmons says move would help Democrats seize public’s attention before Trump begins term in January

• US politics live – latest updates

A former communications director for Kamala Harris has made the unlikely suggestion that Joe Biden resign so she can become the first woman to serve as US president after her defeat to Donald Trump in the 5 November election.

Jamal Simmons offered the thought during an appearance as a panelist Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union news show when asked what should be the top priority for the US before Trump begins his second presidency in January.

Four years after the PS5’s release, Sony has now put out a more powerful version. But the asking price is steep

The PlayStation 5 Pro was announced in September , and immediately people reacted with disbelief to the price: £699/$699, without a disc drive. Adjusted for inflation, it is the second-most expensive games console ever released – beaten only by the PlayStation 3, whose price was quickly slashed when it turned out nobody was willing to work a second job to afford one. It’s an addition to, rather than a replacement for, the original PS5 model. All games released so far work on the Pro, and all future PS5 games will work on both models.

For your money, you get an upgraded GPU (graphics processing unit), which is overall 45% more powerful that the original PS5’s; AI upscaling, which makes images more detailed; and advanced ray tracing, which makes the lighting better. In plain English, it’s supposed to make all PS5 games prettier and faster.

Italian city has struggled to shake off image associated with it as a result of murder of Meredith Kercher

The mayor of Perugia, where the British student Meredith Kercher was murdered, has apologised for allowing a controversial TV series co-produced by Amanda Knox to be filmed in the Italian city.

Angry residents displayed banners reading “Rispetto per Meredith” (respect for Meredith) around the city as the crew arrived to film scenes of Blue Moon, an eight-part drama chronicling Knox’s battle to clear her name of the murder, that will be aired on the Disney-owned streaming service Hulu.

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