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US had accused Italian pasta companies of selling products at unfairly low prices
The US government has slashed proposed tariffs on Italian pasta that would have almost doubled the cost of many brands for shoppers.
Donald Trump had threatened to impose tariffs as high as 92% on Italian pasta companies, after accusing 13 producers including Barilla, La Molisana and Pastificio Lucio Garofalo of selling their products at unfairly low prices.
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© Photograph: Jobrestful/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jobrestful/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jobrestful/Getty Images
⚽ Read Jacob Steinberg on Maresca’s Chelsea departure
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Who was at a game yesterday? Commiserations to those at the Gtech Stadium for that Brentford-Spurs stinker, and Liverpool v Leeds wasn’t exactly a barrel of fun either. Sunderland (and Arsenal) fans will have enjoyed their own stalemate rather more though. Meanwhile Ipswich are coming up on the rails in the Championship promotion race and Bristol City filled their boots in a 5-0 romp against Portsmouth.
Here’s some accounts of yesterday’s action:
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© Photograph: Simon Dael/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Simon Dael/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Simon Dael/Shutterstock
More than 100 people still in hospital, many severely injured, after fire in Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana that killed at least 40
Here is an image of Emanuele Galeppini, who was the first victim of the fire to be named (see 9.02am GMT).
In a post on its website, the Italian Golf Federation paid tribute to a “young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values”. While numerous news outlets have shared this news, officials are yet to confirm the names of any victims.
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© Photograph: X
© Photograph: X
© Photograph: X
Paul Ovenden argues time spent discussing political prisoner was symptom of government struggling to focus
Efforts to free Alaa Abd el-Fattah regularly distracted Keir Starmer’s government from focusing on bread-and-butter domestic political issues, according to one of the prime minister’s closest former advisers.
Paul Ovenden, who stood down last year as the prime minister’s director of strategy, said the case of the British political prisoner became a “running joke” among those in government frustrated by the slow pace of change.
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© Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
© Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
© Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
From Doom and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to Metropolis, Hollywood hasn’t predicted the most stable of years ahead
2025 sounds more futuristic. Maybe it’s the “f” sound on “five.” But 2026 is one step beyond, and it’s where we are now, with every science-fiction-style development – principally the widespread adoption of AI – looking dystopian, or maybe worse. (Doesn’t it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually work a bit better?) Didn’t anyone warn us about this?
The answer, at least with regards to our sci-fi movies years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it’s worth examining where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we’d be situated by this time in our planet’s evolution. So let’s take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.
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© Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX
© Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX
© Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX
The return of hit bonkbuster Rivals, the horny hockey show taking the world by storm, Richard Gadd’s follow-up to Baby Reindeer … and Buffy is back! Here’s your complete guide to 2026’s unmissable television
As the writer of conspiracy thriller Utopia and Covid-era relationship drama Together, Dennis Kelly has form for creating darkly perceptive TV drama. This excellent series stars Josh Finan (whose performance in The Responder earned him a Bafta nomination) as Dan, a philosophy teacher with a troubled family past, working in a prison. As he explores issues around freedom, luck and destiny with the inmates, he starts to wonder if he actually belongs behind bars like his abusive father. Soon, his anxieties threaten to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• BBC One, 3 January
© Composite: Guardian Design; Robert Viglasky/Channel 4; Disney+
© Composite: Guardian Design; Robert Viglasky/Channel 4; Disney+
© Composite: Guardian Design; Robert Viglasky/Channel 4; Disney+
The novelist on how The Rainbow made him want to write, the strange genius of Penelope Fitzgerald and finding comfort in Tintin
My earliest reading memory
Sitting on the sofa with my mum reading Mabel the Whale by Patricia King, with beautiful colour illustrations by Katherine Evans. I think it was pre-school. My mother was not always a patient teacher, and I was often a slow learner, but the scene, the tableaux, in memory, has the serenity of an icon.
My favourite book growing up
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s a story set in Roman Britain; the Eagle is the lost standard of the ninth legion. I was a boy already obsessed by all things Ancient Roman (the alternative to the kind of boy obsessed with dinosaurs). One of the places I remember reading it is in bed with my dad. On Sunday mornings my brother and I would climb into the big bed. My parents had long since split up. There was a picture on the wall, a modest reproduction of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus. To me, this voluptuous woman gazing at herself in a mirror was my mother. It’s interesting to me how the setting in which you read is such an integral part of the reading experience.
© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
BPG hopes to find buyer for Grade II-listed structure by the summer after slump in profits and rising costs
Brighton’s historic Palace Pier has been put up for sale after a decline in tourist numbers, a drop in profits and increase in costs in recent years.
The leisure group that owns the 126-year-old structure, which has appeared in famous films including Brighton Rock and Quadrophenia, said it hoped to find a new owner by the summer.
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© Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
Today’s fluff has a dusty war chest
Two days in, and we have our first piece of Mohamed Salah transfer jabber. Reports in Italy suggest Liverpool’s unsettled forward could be Roma-bound. According to La Repubblica, the Giallorossi are keen to bring Salah back to the club he played for in 2015-17 but are unlikely to move for him until the summer. If he does hang around at Anfield for any length of time, Salah could have a new teammate in the form of the Club Brugge central defender Joel Ordóñez. The Mirror suggests Liverpool are set to shell out an initial £35m rising to £43m for the Ecuador international. The Premier League champions have a clearer run at a deal too now that Chelsea have withdrawn their interest.
The furiously energetic Conor Gallagher has been kicking his heels of late, having started only four league games for Atlético Madrid this season, and is thus attracting interest from Premier League clubs looking to rev up their midfields. Manchester United were linked with him in the summer and are thought to be still sniffing around, though Tottenham are also said to be keen. Atlético will want at least £26m for the English midfielder, who’s under contract until 2029.
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© Photograph: MI News/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: MI News/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: MI News/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Reports say actor, 34, found unresponsive in corridor of Fairmont hotel in early hours of New Year’s Day
Victoria Jones, the daughter of the actor Tommy Lee Jones, has been found dead in a San Francisco hotel.
Jones, 34, was discovered in the early hours of New Year’s Day according to TMZ, which cited law enforcement sources.
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© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
The surprise hit series has reopened a familiar debate: why, in the National Hockey League, visibility is still treated as a problem rather than a possibility
At around the midpoint of the first episode of Heated Rivalry, just after Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov – one Canadian, the other Russian, both hockey’s top prospects – have had their first tryst, Hollander sits at the side of his hotel bed and says: “So. You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?” Rozanov, lying naked beside him, replies sarcastically: “Me? Yes, Hollander, I’m going to tell everyone.” Hollander reinforces the point: “Because no one can know,” he says. Rozanov utters something under his breath in Russian, then: “Hollander. Look, I’m not going to tell anyone, OK?” Hollander replies: “OK.”
No one can know. If hockey were to have an unofficial slogan, this might be it. Heated Rivalry, the surprise 2025 hit series from Crave and HBO, is layered drama, prompting timely questions about the barriers to acceptance that persist within sport even as they are lowered elsewhere across society. But it may be that hockey’s existential battle with its culture of silence is the show’s deepest target.
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© Photograph: Sabrina Lantos/AP
© Photograph: Sabrina Lantos/AP
© Photograph: Sabrina Lantos/AP
(Babel Label)
The 80s sax star leads an A-list quartet, plus a shared trumpet role for Laura Jurd and Ballamy’s son Charlie
Opening 2026’s jazz reviews with a story from the mid-1980s might be risking audience restiveness, but that was the decade in which a far-sighted young saxophonist on the UK jazz scene called Iain Ballamy first appeared on this writer’s radar. The cross-generational lineup and captivating ideas of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, testify to exactly why he has stayed there for 40 years.
In their 20s, Ballamy and pianist/composer Django Bates frequently joined forces as two mavericks, skilfully respectful of the classic jazz tradition while adventurously and often mischievously transforming it. They were key figures in a gifted UK generation that created some of the sparkiest European jazz of the 1980s and 90s, most influentially in the revolutionary orchestra Loose Tubes, which brought together genres from old-school swing to vaudeville, improv and avant-rock, and on occasion really did get people dancing in the streets.
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© Photograph: Dave McKean
© Photograph: Dave McKean
© Photograph: Dave McKean
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