News from the series opener in Colombo, 9am GMT start
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And why not, with a gazillion spin options in their team.

“I’m very excited about today’s match,” writes Nick Parish. “This is my favourite line-up in action again, possibly my favourite of all time. I know there were some dodgy moments in Australia, but I’m confident we’re going to get somebody fabulous entertainment today. But anyway, enough about you and Harris. What do you think of the chancers on the pitch?”

Updates from the evening session at Melbourne Park
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Cilic has punched his ticket into round three for the first time since 2022, with the 37-year-old and 2014 US Open champ taking out the 21st seed Shapovalov in straight sets. Decent win, that. He’ll face the winner of Casper Ruud v Jaume Munar.

Stan is still alive! He’s broken Gea in the final game of the fourth set to snatch it 7-5, finishing off with a vicious backhand winner down the line. It’s got to be one of the most devastating shots in tennis hasn’t it? I don’t think even Federer’s single-handed backhand quite had the equal beauty and brutality that Wawrinka’s does. They’re going to a fifth.

Après des mois de silence et de spéculations, le voile se lève enfin sur la plus grosse puce graphique d'Intel, mais la nouvelle risque de laisser les joueurs sur leur faim.

Face aux accusations de "russophobie" visant la célèbre franchise d'Activision, la Russie se dit prête à financer la création d'un jeu de tir militaire concurrent. Un projet pharaonique soutenu par le gouvernement, avec un budget potentiel de 10 milliards de roubles (environ 128 millions de dollars) et d'importantes incitations fiscales pour les studios locaux.

Does your movie call for a golden, diamond-encrusted Furby or replica nuclear missile? The prop master will find one for you – or even make it from scratch

The red and blue pills in The Matrix. The Rosebud sled in Citizen Kane. Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction, contents unknown. The (real) severed horse head in The Godfather. Every sword, gun, wand and lightsaber that has been brandished by an actor on a screen or stage. What do these items have in common? Nothing, except that they are a tiny sample of the staggering range of objects, from the iconic to the instantly forgotten, known as props – or, to use their formal name, “properties”.

Props are, properly defined, anything used in a performance that is not part of the set or costumes. Sourcing or fabricating them is the job of a team overseen by the prop master; the term is gender-neutral, although the prim-sounding “prop mistress” is occasionally heard. It’s a massive undertaking, but not one that gets much attention. “It’s nice that you are asking about props, because they’re not really acknowledged,” says Jode Mann, a TV prop master in Los Angeles.

No one is suggesting the sort of decision Brooklyn made is taken lightly, but support networks and the language of therapy seem to lessen the sting

As we continue to unpack the meaning of the Beckham family feud, I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the roast chicken. Perhaps you were busy having a life in December and missed it. But this week’s explosion by Brooklyn Beckham was the culmination of a chain of events triggered last month when Victoria Beckham, advisedly or otherwise, chucked a like at her son’s video of a roast chicken on Instagram.

For some, the takeaway was that Brooklyn’s chicken looked undercooked. For others, it was a reminder that you could draw a face on a balloon and achieve roughly the same level of sentience as Brooklyn in his cooking videos. All of which was to miss the point: that according to the new semiotics of family alienation, Brooklyn’s mother, by liking his post, had crossed a fraught boundary between “NC” (no contact) with her son to “VLC” (very low contact). Had Brooklyn not blocked her and the rest of the family immediately, she may have gone the whole hog and escalated to LC – “low contact” – at which point all bets would’ve been off.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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Randy thinks throwing in a line or two lightens the mood. Taylor says it’s an avoidance tactic. You decide who’s out of tune

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

He will throw in lines from songs during serious conversations – it is an avoidance tactic

Yes I should tone it down, but a lyric can lighten the mood and there’s one for every occasion

Passes, shots and goals are all down on last season. It might keep tacticians happy but it’s not as much fun

By Opta Analyst

Gerard Piqué spoke to his former Spain teammate Iker Casillas on his podcast last February and the topic of goalless draws came up. You might expect a centre-back and goalkeeper to be excited about the art of defending but rather Piqué suggested that teams should be punished for participating in goalless draws.

“It can’t be that you go to a football stadium, spend €100, €200 or €300, and the match ends 0-0,” said Piqué. “Something needs to change. One proposal to consider would be that if the match ends 0-0, the teams would score zero points. Then the match would open up in the 70th minute.”

Ambitious owners and financial growth have allowed WSL and WSL2 clubs to assert dominance in the transfer market

“If anyone didn’t take our ambition seriously, I hope they really do after this window, because it shows what we’re pushing for.”

Amy Merricks was answering a question about Birmingham City breaking the second-tier transfer record to sign Wilma Leidhammar from Norrköping, but the head coach’s words could easily sum up the English January transfer window as a whole, as teams in the Women’s Super League, and in WSL2, demonstrate where the financial power lies in the women’s game.

Selon des sources proches de DigiTimes, NVIDIA s'apprête enfin à lancer ses très attendus processeurs portables N1 et N1X au cours du premier trimestre 2026. La feuille de route mise à jour indique que la plateforme Windows-on-Arm de NVIDIA fera ses débuts avec le N1X dès ce trimestre, tandis que le modèle N1 classique serait attendu pour le deuxième trimestre 2026. Après des années de rumeurs, et un lancement initialement pressenti autour du CES 2026, NVIDIA semble enfin prêt à se positionner face aux plateformes Windows-on-Arm concurrentes, notamment les Snapdragon X2 Elite et X2 Plus de Qualcomm. À la Ferme du Hardware, nous suivons déjà de près l'évolution du N1X, avec plusieurs fuites et benchmarks prometteurs publiés ces derniers mois : - Premiers benchmarks du SoC NVIDIA N1X : Les premiers benchs du SoC NVIDIA N1X viennent de tomber, prometteur - Passage dans Geekbench et détails techniques : Un passage dans Geekbench et les détails du N1X de NVIDIA sont révélés - Score FurMark pour la puce N1X : Un score FurMark pour la puce N1X de NVIDIA […]

Xbox est heureux d'annoncer aujourd'hui que l'application Xbox est désormais disponible sur tous les appareils Windows 11 équipés de processeurs Arm, permettant aux joueuses et joueurs de télécharger et de profiter d'un large éventail de jeux issus du catalogue de l'application Xbox sur PC. Grâce à cette mise à jour, plus de 85 % du catalogue Xbox Game Pass est maintenant compatible avec les PC Windows 11 Arm, et cette prise en charge continuera de s'étendre à mesure que les capacités de la plateforme évoluent. Pour les titres qui ne fonctionnent pas encore nativement, les joueuses et joueurs peuvent y accéder via le Xbox Cloud Gaming depuis l'application Xbox sur PC. En parallèle, les équipes Xbox travaillent avec leurs partenaires pour élargir la compatibilité. […]