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© Koen Van Weel/ANP, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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Littler v Ratajski, Humphries v Van Veen from 7pm GMT
*Searle (1) 2-0 (0) Clayton Another break of throw for Searle! Clayton missed a dart at D16, a terrible effort, and Searle took out 116 on tops with the air of a man strolling to the paper shop on a brisk winter morning. His finishing has been outrageous.
Searle (1) 1-0 (0) Clayton*
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© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters
© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters
© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters
Afghanistan and Yemen excluded from list of 17 priority countries chosen by Trump administration to receive aid laden with demands
The $2bn (£1.5bn) of aid the US pledged this week may have been hailed as “bold and ambitious” by the UN but could be the “nail in the coffin” in changing to a shrunken, less flexible aid system dominated by Washington’s political priorities, aid experts fear.
After a year of deep cuts in aid budgets by the US and European countries, the announcement of new money for the humanitarian system is a source of some relief, but experts are deeply concerned about demands that the US has imposed on how the money should be managed and where it can go.
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© Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
From CMAT and the Carpenters’ fresh starts to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun and Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, starting again is a rich theme in pop. Here are some of the best examples
It’s hard to imagine anyone’s heart not being lifted a little by Right Back Where We Started From: the euphoric rush of new love rendered into three minutes of cod-northern soul (performed, unexpectedly, by various ex members of ELO, the Animals and 60s soft-poppers Honeybus). Avoid the 80s cover by Sinitta at all costs.
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© Photograph: TV Times/Getty Images
© Photograph: TV Times/Getty Images
© Photograph: TV Times/Getty Images
I wasn’t sure journalism was for me until I ended up in a bar with a group of lawless, funny co-workers who complained long and hard about the panther suspended above us in a cage
In the mid-90s, I was working as an admin assistant on the listings magazine of the London Evening Standard, and was about to be fired. OK, I wasn’t that good at the job, but I was also done with it. It was on my mind that I needed an actual job, one that you could describe to someone: “I’m an X.” At what point did you get to say: “I’m a journalist”? And was that even a real thing? A lawyer friend had told me: “I see mine as a profession and yours as more of a trade.” I ruminated on that a lot.
Anyway, some time between my latest misdemeanour and my inevitable disciplinary letter, someone from the main paper, let’s call him Pete Clark because that was his name (everyone else will go by initials, but Pete’s dead now, and he would want to be named, I think), asked if I wanted to go to a party. It was no special occasion, just the launch of a bar; this happened every night in the 90s, even Mondays. He was 43, but all old people look the same when you’re 23, so I felt as if the viscount owner of the paper had noticed me from the top of his gold mountain and invited me to a ball.
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© Illustration: Mark Long/The Guardian
© Illustration: Mark Long/The Guardian
© Illustration: Mark Long/The Guardian
If you don’t fancy the last warm finger or two of beer in your can, save it to bake into these fluffy, flavourful rolls
I often don’t finish a large bottle or can of beer, leaving a bit in the bottom that barely seems worth saving. When I remember, I’ll pop it in the fridge and save it to add to a stew or batter, but today’s rolls are my new favourite way of using it up.
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© Photograph: Tom Hunt. Food and props: Tom Hunt./The Guardian. Food and props: Tom Hunt.
© Photograph: Tom Hunt. Food and props: Tom Hunt./The Guardian. Food and props: Tom Hunt.
© Photograph: Tom Hunt. Food and props: Tom Hunt./The Guardian. Food and props: Tom Hunt.
When I look at Mamdani, I don’t see some radical departure. I see him an heir to the Yiddish socialism that helped build New York
Billionaires raised fortunes against him. The president threatened to strip his citizenship. Mainstream synagogues slandered him as the spawn of Osama Bin Laden and Chairman Mao. But today, Zohran Mamdani became the first socialist mayor of New York City.
For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York.
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© Composite: Getty Images, Kheel Center
© Composite: Getty Images, Kheel Center
© Composite: Getty Images, Kheel Center
Analysts attribute increase to kingdom’s ‘war on drugs’ as authorities kill 356 people by death penalty
Saudi authorities executed 356 people in 2025, setting a new record for the number of inmates put to death in the kingdom in a single year.
Analysts have largely attributed the increase in executions to Riyadh’s “war on drugs”, with some of those arrested in previous years only now being executed after legal proceedings and convictions.
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© Photograph: Nicola Messana Photos/Alamy
© Photograph: Nicola Messana Photos/Alamy
© Photograph: Nicola Messana Photos/Alamy
There’s something quietly radical about indulging in nostalgia – not because the past was better, but as a counterpoint to all that future planning
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Our friend Bridget is serious about Christmas, and she does it spectacularly: come 1 December, her tree will be up, beautifully lit and decorated, her nearest and dearest (us included, thankfully) will get their bespoke Advent calendar (this year it was a cheesy one for me and a puzzle for Sarit – perfect) and a month of fun activities will ensue, culminating in a magnificent day. She is so serious about it, in fact, that her planning for next year starts now: she hits the January sales for everything that’ll keep for the next Christmas holiday – stocking fillers, festive candy, decorations, jumpers and socks – and it’s all stored neatly in a cupboard in anticipation of another gloriously executed December.
We may not be quite as organised and foresightful as Bridget, but we are looking ahead to the coming year with the usual mix of excitement and angst, and starting to mentally put things in the calendar: maybe you have a spring holiday, or an autumn baby? Maybe there’s a visitor from abroad you’re looking forward to, or tickets for a once-in-a-lifetime gig? Even if there is nothing planned yet, summer is something we are always excited about, and the coming year starts to slot into place, as plans become experiences and, before we know it, memories. Time rushes forward, and suddenly it’s gone.
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© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Loic Parisot.
© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Loic Parisot.
© Photograph: Robert Billington/The Guardian. Food styling: Loic Parisot.
Italian departs Stamford Bridge role after 18 months
Tensions behind the scenes damaged relationships
Enzo Maresca has left his job as Chelsea’s head coach. Maresca’s relationship with the club’s board has broken down and the split has led to a parting of the ways.
It had seemed Chelsea would give the Italian time to turn around his side’s form but events have moved quickly during the past 24 hours. There was deep dissatisfaction with the 45-year-old’s decisions during games but the bigger issue was his conduct away from the pitch. The situation has been volatile ever since Maresca made cryptic comments about experiencing his “worst 48 hours” at the club after the win over Everton on 13 December.
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© Photograph: David Cliff/EPA
© Photograph: David Cliff/EPA
© Photograph: David Cliff/EPA
At 50, I find myself in a gazing-up-at-trees phase. What does it all mean? It’s not completely clear – but it’s certainly bothering my kids
According to research undertaken by Stanford Medicine in 2024, adult human beings are subject to two “massive biomolecular shifts” – spikes in ageing, in other words – one at 44 and another at 60, confirming what most of us instinctively know to be true: that we get older in jagged bursts – not with gentle, steady progression. As the new year issues its annual invitation to stocktake, the thing I keep thinking is where we might place the equivalent emotional pivot points, those periods in which, after years of – God willing! – pottering along feeling roughly the same, suddenly, one day, there’s a change.
I bring this up because I seem to be in the middle of one, an inflection point that manifests in the number of times on the walk back from the school drop-off I stop to look at a bird in a tree, or a snail on a wall, or any number of other overwrought visual metaphors that allow me to feel momentarily like I’m inside a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hard to put one’s finger on what’s going on, but it has to do with the sense of an ending, which, if it’s sad at all, isn’t sad-sad; rather, it occupies that category of sadness I think of as the anticipation of future nostalgia.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Nikoletta Stoyanova/The Guardian
© Photograph: Nikoletta Stoyanova/The Guardian
© Photograph: Nikoletta Stoyanova/The Guardian
(4AD)
The standout act in the sprechgesang wave, the four-piece’s newly expansive sound carries singer Florence Shaw’s distinctive tales of mundane lives spiralling out of control
Dry Cleaning’s third album features a lot of strikingly odd lyrics. Take your pick from “alien offshoot mushroom, going the gym to get slim”; “my dream house is a negative space of rock”; or, indeed, “when I was a child I wanted to be a horse, eating onions, carrots, celery”. But it’s an ostensibly more straightforward line, from Cruise Ship Designer, that seems destined to attract the most attention. “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work,” says vocalist Florence Shaw as the track draws to a conclusion, the muscular guitar riff that’s driven it along devolving into a janky, trebly scrabble.
Initially, the lyric appears to characterise what Dry Cleaning do, and Shaw in particular. From the moment they first appeared with the 2018 EP Sweet Princess, the south London quartet have attracted adjectives such as “surreal”, “enigmatic” and “inscrutable”. Most of the British bands who emerged around the same time bearing a roughly equivalent blend of post-punk guitars and spoken-word vocals sounded angry or sarcastic or straightforwardly comedic. Dry Cleaning, on the other hand, seemed mysterious. Shaw’s lyrics were collages of overheard remarks, recycled YouTube comments, lines from adverts and non sequiturs, delivered in a voice that was too icy to sound whimsical. It’s variously been characterised as “anhedonic” and “achromatic”, but might more straightforwardly be described as sounding politely bored. She occasionally shifts from speaking into singing in an untutored voice that brings to mind Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants’ line about their understated vocalist Alison Statton sounding “as if she was at the bus stop or something”. It was all intriguingly confusing: here were songs that could indeed contain hidden messages, that seemed like puzzles to be unpicked.
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© Photograph: Max Miechowski
© Photograph: Max Miechowski
© Photograph: Max Miechowski
Polling indicates strong public backing for a much less permissive approach to promotion, including sponsorship
Ministers will come under mounting pressure to introduce curbs on gambling advertising this year, as MPs and campaigners latch on to polling that indicates widespread public support for tougher restrictions.
Policies affecting gambling have been the subject of fierce debate over recent years, leading to stricter regulation of the £12.5bn-a-year sector and higher taxes announced in November’s budget, despite intensive lobbying by the industry.
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© Photograph: Mark Kerton/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Mark Kerton/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Mark Kerton/Shutterstock
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