Stuart Leslie, 46, and Shaun Overy, 51, died while skiing off-piste in Val d’Isère amid red avalanche alert
Two British skiers who died in an avalanche in the French Alps have been named as Stuart Leslie and Shaun Overy.
The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, skiing off-piste in Val d’Isère in south-east France on Friday when they were swept away by falling snow.
Advisory board member says Europe already paying price for lack of preparation but adapting is ‘not rocket science’
Keeping Europe safe from extreme weather “is not rocket science”, a top researcher has said, as the EU’s climate advisory board urges countries to prepare for a catastrophic 3C of global heating.
Maarten van Aalst, a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC), said the continent was already “paying a price” for its lack of preparation but that adapting to a hotter future was in part “common sense and low-hanging fruit”.
China’s Eileen Gu second, Italy’s Flora Tabanelli third
Briton, fourth again, says: ‘I really did have to go for it’
This time, Kirsty Muir must surely have believed that a Winter Olympic medal was in her grasp. But as a thrilling big air competition reached its denouement, an Italian with no anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee came down a 180‑feet ramp and drove a stake through the Briton’s heart.
It all looked so promising when the 21-year-old from Aberdeen landed a stunning left double 1620, with four and a half rotations, to move into the medal positions after two of the three rounds. However, with just four jumps of the competition remaining, Flora Tabanelli, who tore her ACL in November, did the same trick as Muir but only better to score 94.25 points to steal the bronze medal.
“We are top of the league,” sang the Coventry City supporters on loop after returning to the summit of the Championship with a victory that quelled the nagging noise surrounding Frank Lampard and his promotion-chasing side. Coventry, pace-setters for the majority of the season, had won just four league games since the end of November. But Haji Wright hit a timely hat-trick as Coventry again traded places with Middlesbrough, whose six-game winning run came to an abrupt half, to renew belief in these parts.
Riley McGree pulled a goal back midway through the second half but from the restart Boro conceded a penalty that allowed Wright to claim the match ball. Coventry’s lead may be a single point but this felt a significant victory – psychologically as much as anything – having taken just 16 from the previous available 39. “There have been quite a few questions asked and I think the lads should get a lot of credit,” Lampard said. “It was a big game, a really good game, which probably showed why we are one and two in the league. We have to take this as a bit of a template of what has to go into a game.”
The standing ovation from the Macclesfield fans at full time was deserved. Their side may have lost 1-0 on the night, their dream FA Cup run coming to an end just when a lucrative trip to West Ham’s London Stadium in the fifth round had veered into sight, but pride was the overriding emotion.
Ultimately it had taken an unfortunate own goal from Sam Heathcote, a PE teacher plying his trade as a part-time footballer in the National League North, to nudge Premier League Brentford into the fifth round.
It took her five Olympics, but she finally got there: USA’s Elana Meyers Taylor won gold in the monobob on Monday, capping a long and brilliant career.
The 41-year-old competed in her first Olympics at Vancouver 2010, and since then she has won three silver medals and two bronze across two events, the monobob and the two-woman bobsleigh. Her victory at the Milano Cortina Games came down to the final run of the competition with Laura Nolte competing to best Meyers Taylor’s time of 3min 57.93 sec. But the German could not respond and Meyers Taylor became America’s oldest-ever female Winter Olympic champion.
England’s Tommy Freeman has revealed the extent of his mental struggles after the victorious British & Irish Lions tour of Australia at the end of a season when he exceeded the player welfare limits for the number of appearances.
Freeman played in 34 games last season – 19 for Northampton, nine for England and six for the Lions – and has spoken of a “built-up anxiety” as a result of the workload. The mandated limit is 30, but players were given dispensation for the Lions tour on the proviso they were allowed five weeks off on returning from Australia and missed the first two rounds of the 2025-26 season.
Rayo had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. But they still managed to upset Atlético Madrid
One day in November, the coach of Rayo Vallecano decided that was it: he was out. The captain in whom he finds strength had reached a similar conclusion long ago, handing in his armband as an act of protest and dignity. Two Fridays ago, the squad signed a statement saying they couldn’t carry on like this. And last Friday, the fans who’ve been through it all before decided they too would walk away. Yet 48 hours later, after another week that proved them right, resisting everything, there they were still, celebrating another implausible success, another day when they had stuck it to The Man. If not, admittedly, the man they’d like to stick it to.
Actually, ‘there’? Not all of them were in the same place, even if that was a way of showing they were in this together. Because Rayo fans were out on the streets of the self-styled independent republic of Vallecas with their banners and scarves and songs on Sunday, while their team and coach were 10km south, playing in a different city. With their training ground unusable and their home home ground declared to be so too, they had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. Where, in front of 9,000 empty seats, and kicking off in the relegation zone, they only went and beat Atlético Madrid 3-0, three days after Diego’s Simeone’s side had battered Barcelona 4-0.
Vienna turns into a playground of camp, cruelty and aristocratic disdain in a blackly comic take on the Báthory legend – with Huppert gloriously suited to the title role
From the dark heart of central Europe comes a midnight-movie romp through the moonlit urban glades of Euro-goth and camp from German director Ulrike Ottinger. As for the star … well, it’s the part she was born to play. Isabelle Huppert is Countess Elizabeth Báthory, 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, legendary for having the blood of hundreds of young girls on her hands and indeed her body, in an attempt to attain eternal youth. The “blood countess” has been variously played in the past by Ingrid Pitt, Delphine Seyrig, Paloma Picasso, Julie Delpy and many more, but surely none were as qualified as Huppert who importantly does not modify her habitual hauteur one iota for the role.
Her natural aristocratic mien and cool hint of elegant contempt were never so well matched with a part. She gives us the classic Huppert opaque gaze – part dreamy, part coldly assessing – and the politely bemused half-smile of concealed distaste, merging into a pout, at the absurdity or ill manners of someone to whom she cannot avoid being introduced. Unlike the other mere mortals in this film, Huppert’s face is lit like that of a Golden Age Hollywood star, giving her impeccable maquillage a ghostly sheen of profane sainthood.
Police confirm suspect is one of dead in incident at boys’ hockey game that injured four in Pawtucket
At least three people are dead and three more hospitalized in critical condition in a mass shooting at an indoor ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during a high school hockey match on Monday afternoon, the police said.
The Pawtucket police chief, Tina Goncalves, told reporters at a news conference that the suspect is one of the dead.
State’s governor had demanded impartial inquiry into the shooting of the VA nurse by federal immigration agents
Minnesota law enforcement authorities have said the FBI is refusing to share any evidence on its investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal immigration authorities in late January.
Pretti was shot on 24 January by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement operations in the city. His killing came just two weeks after an immigration official shot and killed Renee Good and 10 days after the shooting of Julio C Sosa-Celis.
Abbas Araghchi is steeped in more than a decade of nuclear dealmaking with a book on the art of negotiations
If the US and Iran are to avoid a regional war, both sides need to start to make concessions at talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and also to accommodate one another’s very different bargaining styles.
The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces.
A United States women’s hockey team already being hailed as one of the best ever assembled is right where they expected to be: playing for Olympic gold. The Americans brushed aside Sweden 5-0 in the first of Monday’s semi-finals, setting the stage for a potential seventh gold-medal showdown with Canada.
Twenty years ago, almost to the day, the USA women absorbed one of the great Olympic shocks when Sweden stunned them in a shootout just down the A4 autostrada in Torino, ending a streak of 25 straight losses to the Americans during which they’d been outscored 187-29. There would be no such ambush this time, even if Sweden coach Ulf Lundberg had suggested the US team were “just human beings” and might not have been overly keen on facing his team in the semi-finals.
President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London
Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.
“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”
Keir Starmer was challenged on Monday morning over the list of U-turns he has made since entering government less than two years ago, including on cuts to winter fuel payments, cuts to disability benefits and hikes in inheritance tax for farmers.
“I am a pragmatist. I am a common-sense merchant,” he told the BBC presenter Jeremy Vine in his defence.
Experts say the detention centres were a breeding ground for extremism and a new generation of IS members
Humanitarians warned for years that the camps in north-east Syria holding tens of thousands of family members of suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters would have to be dealt with. Calling them a “ticking time bomb”, relief groups said the women and children could not just be left to rot in squalid desert camps indefinitely, because eventually they would come home.
Despite the warnings, most states ignored the problem, refusing to repatriate their citizens. At least 8,000 women and children from more than 40 countries have been stranded in the camps of north-east Syria since 2019.
In Instagram post, TV host whose mother disappeared 15 days ago in Arizona says ‘you’re not lost or alone’
The TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie issued a fresh appeal to anyone who knows the whereabouts of her missing mother, saying that “you’re not lost or alone” and “it is never too late to do the right thing”.
The Today anchor, who is stepping away from NBC’s morning broadcast, urged “whoever has her or knows where she is” to come forward, but did not make reference to any ransom demands or communication with any abductor.
Offsetting Charli xcx, Chaney’s take on 19th-century ballad Dark Eyed Sailor accompanies Margot Robbie on the moors – but it’s just a tiny part of her culture-crossing, history-vaulting musical catalogue
An hour into Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Margot Robbie is in a gauzy wedding dress, gliding forlornly across the moors towards the man her character feels she has to marry. A lone female English voice appears to accompany her, high and pure against the buzzing drone of a harmonium, singing about a woman roaming alone, and a man who, for “seven years, left the land”, before his eventual return.
Long before Emerald Fennell found Olivia Chaney’s version of 19th-century ballad the Dark Eyed Sailor online, Chaney was preparing to sing it for a 2013 live session on Mark Radcliffe’s BBC Radio 2 folk show, in the midst of her own Brontë-esque love triangle. “I was at the beginning of my relationship with the man who is now my husband and the father of my two children – he nearly married someone else, and I nearly had kids with someone else.”
Former Rochdale defenderLuke Matheson actually scored against Manchester United as a 16-year-old in 2019. After playing for a number of clubs, including Wolves, Matheson finds himself at Macclesfield. Speaking before tonight’s game he said:
To give back to the fans of this town is the proudest thing you can do as a footballer. For us to be able to give them moments like the Palace game and then another against Brentford brings us such joy as players.
Wrexham and Mansfield host big guns in round five while Newcastle face Manchester City and Liverpool go to Wolves
TNT have kicked off with a walk-and-talk around a packed Macclesfield dressing room, the only problem being that the camera lens keeps steaming up. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
Three minutes until the draw, according to an on-screen countdown that will inevitably prove to be inaccurate. I think the fifth round is my personal favourite round of the Cup; close enough to Wembley but still with plenty of room for surprises.
La Penna wrongly sent off Juve’s Kalulu against Inter
Official could face one-month ban following incident
The referee Federico La Penna has received dozens of death threats after wrongly sending off a Juventus player at Inter on Saturday. Italian police have reportedly advised him not to leave his home.
La Penna sparked fury among Juventus fans after dismissing Pierre Kalulu, showing the defender a second yellow card for a challenge on Alessandro Bastoni. Replays showed Bastoni had clearly simulated the fall. Juventus officials and fans argued that the decision heavily influenced the game, which Inter won 3-2, despite the Bianconeri having fought back to level the score with 10 men.
From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast in Apocalypse Now, just to see him on screen made me smile
Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Duvall was famously bald (the rare roles needing hairpieces always looked artificial on him) and so he looked the same age almost all his acting life: forever in his vigorous fortysomething prime – though often playing figures complicated with tenderness and woundedness.
Duvall had a long, rich career, starting out with notable roles in To Kill a Mockingbird, M*A*S*H, The Conversation and Network, but it was destiny to be chiefly known for two sensational and very different roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola at either end of the 1970s. One was Tom Hagen, the quiet, self-effacing consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather (1972), with a complex relationship both with the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando, and his youngest son and heir, the coldly imperious Michael, played by Al Pacino. And the second was his extraordinary turn as the surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgorein Apocalypse Now (1979), who with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a gigantic attack on a Vietnamese village in broad daylight, with speakers blaring The Ride of the Valkyries – in theory to airlift Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, and his boatful of men into the river’s strategic entry point. But all too clearly, it’s because he just wants an excuse for a whooping and hollering cavalry attack.
Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.
“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook.
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