The TNT Sports pundits Cole and Owen Hargreaves, who played in the 2004/05 tie between these sides, are reminiscing about José Mourinho hiding in a laundry basket to give a team talk, due to a Uefa touchline ban.
“This is what it’s all about,” says pundit Joe Cole of tonight’s mouthwatering clash, which is a fair point.
Right then, the preambles have been entirely and completely completed, and as soon as Liverpool break from their huddle we can get on with kicking off.
The players are in the tunnel. The crowd have assuaged their lonely-walk-based fears. Not much stands between us and football.
Central bank moves to set rates at range between 4 and 4.25% but decision unlikely to satisfy Donald Trump
The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday, its first rate cut since December, as the central bank moved to stabilize a wobbling labor market even as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to push up prices.
Rates are now at a range of 4% to 4.25% – the lowest since November 2022. But the decision is unlikely to satisfy Trump, who has lambasted the Fed for acting “too late” and called for a far bigger cut.
Asprilla will be at St James’ Park 28 years after hat-trick
Hansi Flick talks up Marcus Rashford’s qualities
It is only two years since Eddie Howe attended his first Champions League match but now Newcastle’s manager is on a mission to disrupt Europe’s elite.
As Barcelona arrived on Tyneside on Wednesday Hansi Flick’s La Liga champions certainly displayed no sign of complacency. Indeed Flick warned of the “intensity” his players must be braced for at St James’ Park on Thursday night.
Video from ‘unite the kingdom’ rally captured man saying ‘someone needs to shoot Keir Starmer’
A man allegedly captured on video at the far-right rally in London on Saturday threatening to kill Keir Starmer has been arrested by police.
An investigation was launched on Sunday in connection with the video, which was filmed at the event organised by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson.
Alyssa Healy admits side was outplayed in New Chandigarh
Australia fall well short of 292 target as World Cup looms
Australia’s all-conquering cricket women have been given a wake-up call with their World Cup defence approaching as India handed Alyssa Healy’s side their biggest ever one-day international defeat in Punjab.
Healy admitted the champions had been “outplayed” in New Chandigarh on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) as they suffered a 102-run loss, a thumping so heavy that it even surpassed the Australians’ previous record 92-run defeat to England in Birmingham 52 years ago.
Study finds chimpanzees’ enthusiasm for guzzling ripe fruit puts their ethanol intake at about 14g per day
Someone have a word with the chimps? Observations of the apes in the wild show them imbibing the alcoholic equivalent of a half pint of beer a day through the vast amount of fermented fruit in their diet.
Researchers arrived at the first estimates of wild chimp daily alcohol intake after measuring ethanol levels in fallen fruit that the apes gather from the forest floor in Kibale national park in Uganda and in Taï national park in Ivory Coast.
Gardaí believe body is that of Daniel Aruebose, whose 2022 disappearance was not noticed by authorities until last month
Irish police investigating the fate of a boy who disappeared four years ago but was only registered by authorities as missing last month have found the remains of a child on Dublin wasteland.
Gardaí named the missing boy as Daniel Aruebose, who is thought to have vanished in 2022 aged three, after they discovered the remains on Wednesday in the Donabate area of north Dublin.
The Javier Mascherano-led side has an outside chance of repeating as Supporters’ Shield winners, but MLS Cup remains the ultimate goal
Much about Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale was typical. The weather was sticky and humid. The crowd at Chase Stadium was lively. And on the field, Lionel Messi assisted Jordi Alba, and vice-versa, in a 3-1 win for Inter Miami. That the victory came against the Seattle Sounders, the side that beat Miami in a contentious Leagues Cup final two weeks ago, gave the squad a measure of revenge. But there are bigger factors at play.
“It was important to regain positive feelings,” Miami head coach Javier Mascherano told reporters afterward.
Third option for juries – blamed for country’s lower conviction rates for rape and sexual assault – abolished
The Scottish verdict of “not proven” – a global legal anomaly thought to be a key factor in the country’s significantly lower convictions rate for rape and sexual assault – has been abolished.
MSPs agreed to scrap the unique Scottish verdict as they voted through a series of major changes that Angela Constance, the justice secretary, said “put victims and witnesses at the heart of a modern and fair justice system”.
Top former officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of hobbling the country’s ability to respond to outbreaks and disease threats.
The two officials testified at a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) committee. Susan Monarez, the CDC director chosen by Kennedy, was fired after less than a month. Debra Houry, chief medical officer at the CDC, resigned after serving under six CDC directors during both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Meta’s former president of global affairs says agreement will leave UK more reliant on US tech firms
A multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement announced to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit represents “sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley”, Nick Clegg, Meta’s former president of global affairs, has said.
The former deputy prime minister said the deals, heralded with great fanfare by the government as it tries to foster growth in the UK, were “mutton dressed as lamb” and would make the country ever more reliant on US tech firms.
EU’s top diplomat concerned after India joins Russian military exercises ‘that are an existential threat to us’
The EU has called for closer ties with India while admitting there was no “mutual understanding” with Narendra Modi’s government over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and lead negotiator on trade, Maroš Šefčovič, outlined an EU-India strategy on Wednesday as part of Europe’s drive to build and strengthen alliances in a world shaken by Donald Trump’s challenges to the postwar order.
Erika McEntarfer says Americans should be concerned about independence of key economic institutions
The former chief US economics data statistics who Donald Trumpfired last month called her sudden removal “dangerous” and said Americans should be concerned about the independence of key economic institutions.
“Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated,” said Erika McEntarfer, former head of the Bureau Labor of Statistics, on Tuesday in her first remarks since her firing. “Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences.”
Career experts warn of decades of progress lost as administration fires staff, slashes budgets and buries data
Donald Trump’s second presidency has spelled upheaval or worse for multiple spheres of US government. But for science – long a key driver of the US’s global preeminence – it has heralded the perfect storm.
In public health, climate science, environmental protection and nuclear safety, seasoned career specialists have been left bewildered and often jobless under a ferocious onslaught from the president, apparently aimed at gaining control over a sector about which he has displayed strongly-held views, if frequently flawed understanding.
Late-night hosts discuss Maga’s baseless claims about ‘violence’ from the ‘far left’ and Trump’s new $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times
Late-show hosts recap Donald Trump’s chilly reception in the UK, his corrupt business deals with the UAE and Maga’s fearmongering around the “radical left”.
Exclusive: Firm that runs Aberdeenshire resort says it is ‘categorically wrong’ to suggest it has caused environmental damage
Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course has breached sewage contamination limits 14 times since 2019, documents reveal.
The 36-hole golf course, one of two that Trump owns in Scotland, also has a five-star hotel, a whisky bar and two restaurants. Trump International Golf Links, Scotland has a private sewage system that treats wastewater before releasing it into the ground by soaking it through gravel beds in raised filter mounds.
The announcement features some of the biggest names from Silicon Valley: the chipmaker Nvidia; the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI; and Microsoft. Big numbers were involved, with Microsoft hailing its $30bn (£22bn) investment as a major commitment to the UK – and adding, in an apparent swipe at its rivals, that it was not making “empty tech promises”.
Pointless and witless, this atrociously acted ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes should be cast back into the water
There are horror movies that walk the viewer through their deepest fears, others that use the genre to explore broader social issues and anxieties, and others that are just about thrill rides and LOLs. And then there is silly, sadistic trash like this: a micro-budget ripoff of cannibal-killer franchise The Hills Have Eyes, its lousy sequels and suchlike. It even features an actor from the original 1977 Hills’ cast: Susan Lanier here plays Martha, a blowsy barmaid with a taste for human flesh. But Hills at least attempted to craft some sort of backstory for its mayhem; Martha and her skeezy friends’ tastes are just a given, as if encountering cannibals is just one of the hazards of the boating life, like sharks or equipment failure.
The lambs to this slaughter are a quintet of mostly stupid young people in their 20s, who get together for partying purposes on the yacht of rich boy Chad (Zachary Roosa). Passengers include Chad’s permanently bikini-clad girlfriend Dana (Meghan Carrasquillo), stag buddy Franklin (Jamal R Averett), and lesbian couple Brandy (Amy Byrd) and Jess (Caitlin Rose). Yards of cocaine are snorted, gallons of booze consumed and makeouts embarked on as teasers for the film’s real idea of fun: putting the young’uns at the mercy of the tattooed boatyard body-eaters, who bring them ashore when the yacht runs out of gas at sea.
A growing number of shooters are in conversation with their digital communities, which are becoming extreme
On the day that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson shot and killed rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, prosecutors say, he texted his roommate to confess what he’d done. While appearing to admit to the murder and describe how he was planning to retrieve his gun, he pivoted to mention why he had carved messages into the ammunition.
“Remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme,” Robinson texted, according to authorities.
Morale has plummeted as staff charged with protecting US workers feel their core mission is being undermined
A giant banner featuring a serious-looking Donald Trump now hangs down the front of the Department of Labor’s Washington DC office. Covering the windows of nearly three floors, the poster reads: “American Workers FIRST.”
“Mr President, I invite you see your big beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker,” the labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeReme, said last month at a cabinet meeting with the president.
The artist and curator of photography talks about her relationship to the work of Black pioneers of photography and the influence of her 2000 book
When Dr Deborah Willis was an undergrad student at the Philadelphia College of Art, she asked the question that informed her work for years to follow: “Where are all the Black photographers?”
From photos by Gordon Parks in Time magazine to Black image-makers capturing daily life in Ebony and Jet magazines – she knew that Black photographers, like her father, were making their impact on the world. Growing up, her father was an amateur photographer, and her father’s cousin owned a photo studio, and seeing them photograph people as a child created a desire in her to become an image-maker.
Version of company’s Gemini 2.5 AI model solved complex real-world problem that stumped human programmers
Google DeepMind claims it has made a “historic” artificial intelligence breakthrough akin to the Deep Blue computer defeating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997 and an AI beating a human Go champion in 2016.
A version of the company’s Gemini 2.5 AI model solved a complex real-world problem that stumped human computer programmers to become the first AI model to win a gold medal at an international programming competition held earlier this month in Azerbaijan.
‘Sometimes, less really is more,’ says chef as Michelin-starred restaurant offers Mindful Experience option
When gazing at the bill after a Michelin-starred meal, the average diner’s first thought is not usually: “I wish I’d got less food for that.”
But Heston Blumenthal has come up with a new menu catering to just that sentiment, tailored to reflect a growing demand for smaller portions, driven by weight-loss drugs.
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