Today’s rumours are misty-eyed
The fun has only just begun at Old Trafford where Michael Carrick will become the head coach until the end of the season. As someone who knows a thing or two about central midfielders, Carrick will immediately realise Manchester United are desperately in need of one. Al-Hilal’s Rúben Neves is on the radar, as is Atlético Madrid’s Marcos Llorente. The 30-year-old is valued at £30m, leaving Jason Wilcox and chums plenty to ponder.
There are, supposedly, admirers of Sassuolo’s Tarik Muharemovic at United but if they really want to acquire the centre-back’s services they will need to overcome competing interest from Tottenham and Newcastle.
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© Photograph: Jose Breton/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Jose Breton/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Jose Breton/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Biopic charting Naseem Hamed’s rise has reopened old wounds but is also a reminder of what was and what might have been
The first time I watched Prince Naseem Hamed train, my jaw couldn’t have dropped any faster if he had hit me with one of his lassoing uppercuts. I had followed all his fights on TV, of course. But to see him in the flesh in September 1994, a year before he became world champion, was an altogether more visceral and mesmeric experience.
Hamed’s punches sounded like firecrackers welcoming in the new year as they smashed into the pads. He was almost impossible to hit. And, most staggering of all, despite standing 5ft 4in tall and weighing only nine stone, he would bully far bigger men in sparring – including fighters such as John Keeton, who went on to become the British cruiserweight champion – until my great uncle, Brendan Ingle, called time.
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© Photograph: Sam Talor
© Photograph: Sam Talor
© Photograph: Sam Talor
Specialists in choreographing sex scenes have come under fire from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Mikey Madison – is there any weight to their complaints?
When intimacy coordinator Adelaide Waldrop gets asked about her job at parties, she contemplates lying. “I’ve considered saying I’m an accountant,” she says. When she reveals the truth, the response is almost always seedy. There are questions about erections, merkins, and inappropriate celebrities. “Or it’s a lot of, ‘Oh we could use one of you at home with me and the missus’, and questions about my sex life,” Waldrop adds. “We’re a hot button topic.”
Lately, the heat has been on high. To some, intimacy coordinators are an auspicious part of a post-#MeToo industry, one that protects cast and crew while providing crucial creative input – Michelle Williams, Alexander Skarsgård, and Emma Stone are among those to have gushed about their experiences. To others, they’re the sex police, impeding artistry for the sake of avoiding an HR headache. Mikey Madison didn’t want an intimacy coordinator for her Oscar-winning sex worker film Anora. Gwyneth Paltrow asked hers to “step back a little bit” while making Marty Supreme. Jennifer Lawrence couldn’t even remember if she had one while filming Die My Love (she did), but said it wouldn’t have been necessary because her co-star, Robert Pattinson, “is not pervy”.
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© Photograph: FlixPix/Alamy
© Photograph: FlixPix/Alamy
© Photograph: FlixPix/Alamy
Former England midfielder needs to avoid the same pitfalls as Ruben Amorim, but he showed a dogmatic streak at Boro
In many ways Michael Carrick is the antithesis of Ruben Amorim but Manchester United’s soon-to-be-appointed interim head coach does have something significant in common with his Portuguese predecessor.
Like Amorim, Carrick has proved remarkably resistant to tactical change. So much so that at Middlesbrough the former United and England midfielder’s determination not to compromise a philosophy constructed around a patient, possession-heavy passing game arguably cost him his job.
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© Photograph: Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images
Eastern region on high alert as authorities try to track animal tearing through villages in Jharkand after apparently becoming separated from herd
Forest officials in India are on the hunt for an elephant that has killed more 20 people in a days-long rampage through the eastern state of Jharkand.
Since the beginning of January, 22 people have been killed by a single-tusked elephant that has been tearing through forests and villages in West Singhbhum district of Jharkand.
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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own – it’s their inventors’ motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned about
If much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead.
To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle those seeking intimacy in “synthetic personas”.
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© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
A brutal nomadic sport, quiet childhood reveries and stark human endurance define the photographs that wowed this year’s judges
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© Photograph: Todd Antony
© Photograph: Todd Antony
© Photograph: Todd Antony
Tibetan directors, who all live outside Tibet, deliver a quartet of films that explore the pain of separation and migration
The wrench of exile is the theme of this quartet of short films from Tibetan directors, who themselves all live outside Tibet. Their intimate, emotional family dramas tell stories of separation and migration. In two of them, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama smiles out from photographs on shrines, a reminder of the precariousness of Tibet’s future. As a character in one of the films puts it bluntly: will there be anything to stop China erasing Tibetan identity when its rock-star spiritual leader is no longer around?
In the first film a Tibetan man lives in a kind of complicated happiness in Vietnam. He loves his wife, and they both adore their sunny-natured little daughter, but he has mournful eyes. Home is a town on the banks of the Mekong River, which has its source in Tibet. The river is a constant reminder of the region – and of Chinese might too, since Chinese hydropower dams are the cause of drought downstream in Vietnam.
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© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
This was even though I had revoked my citizenship and now have dual British and German nationality
I want to flag a discriminatory experience I’ve had with the Co-op’s will-writing service.
I asked it to update a will it had drawn up for me in 2020, with my partner and our daughter as the beneficiaries. I received no follow-up for two months.
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© Photograph: Libby Welch/Alamy
© Photograph: Libby Welch/Alamy
© Photograph: Libby Welch/Alamy
In the days after the worst mass shooting in Australia since Port Arthur, a wave of misinformation spread across social media. A video of Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett claiming four Indian nationals had been arrested, with a Guardian watermark on screen, was in fact a deepfake made from a genuine video of a press conference Barrett had given on 18 December. The video was flagged by online factcheckers, but not before being watched hundreds of thousands of times. As Guardian Australia's technology reporter Josh Taylor explains, these deepfakes are only getting easier to make
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© Photograph: Various suppliers
© Photograph: Various suppliers
© Photograph: Various suppliers
Relatives pay tribute to ‘extraordinary mother’ and hope killing by ICE agent leads to meaningful change
Renee Good’s extended family said on Monday it wanted justice and accountability for her death at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, but urged people stirred to outrage by the shooting of the 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three to root their conversations in “humanity, empathy, and care for the family most affected”.
In a statement and in interviews with the Guardian, the family members – most of them relatives of Good’s late husband Timmy Macklin Jr, the father of her youngest son – paid tribute to Good, her children, and to Macklin, and said they hoped the “unimaginable loss” the family had suffered would lead to meaningful change and “fewer families [who] have to endure this kind of pain”.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Renee Good's family
© Photograph: Courtesy of Renee Good's family
© Photograph: Courtesy of Renee Good's family
Warrington 16-year-old is inspiring young boys to embrace drama
Standing on stage at the Golden Globes in front of Hollywood’s elite, Owen Cooper said that the experience simply “did not feel real”.
The 16-year-old from Warrington picked up best supporting male actor for his performance in Netflix’s “incel” drama, Adolescence, which was one of the big winners at the ceremony and dominated the cultural conversation around male toxicity for much of 2025.
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© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
© Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
At least 646 people have been killed in Iran as authorities continue a violent crackdown on protesters
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Sir Keir Starmer is reportedly set to approve the proposal ahead of his trip to China
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