Critics say what was once a showpiece for the league has turned into a glorified practice session. But there are signs an updated version may have worked
Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady flashed a look of disdain when recalling last year’s NBA All-Star Game.
“The All-Star Game that we witnessed last year was not an All-Star game,” McGrady told the Guardian. “I don’t know what that was.”
Marseille have a propensity to explode. So when they lost 5-0 to Paris Saint-Germain last Sunday and then lost their manager, it was no surprise. But seeing PSG having to put out fires is an unexpected turn. All the while, Lens have been a tranquil and unassuming force, keeping their dream of a Ligue 1 title alive – even if they don’t yet fully believein it.
By this time last season, PSG were on the march. Unbeaten domestically until the end of April, after which point the league title was already mathematically ensured, Luis Enrique’s side were infallible. But that is not a word that applies to them in the present, as their 3-1 defeat to a managerless Rennes side proved this weekend.
24-year-old tested positive for letrozole in January
The Italian biathlete Rebecca Passler rejoined her team at the Winter Olympics on Monday after a successful appeal against a suspension handed out before the Milano Cortina Games for an alleged doping violation.
Passler began training in the bright sunshine at the Antholz-Anterselva Biathlon Arena on Monday afternoon, firing off shots in bunches of five on the range as her coaches watched intently.
Sebastian Hoeness’ side are back in the top four but face test to keep hold of top talent again this summer
Köln had been here before. “It’s not the second time, but the fifth or sixth time,” said forward Marius Bülter, “that we’ve sat in the locker room after a game, not able to blame ourselves much, but still left with zero points.” His coach, Lukas Kwasniok, described it as “Groundhog Day,” after “a more than decent performance against top opponents”.
Their words are the signal, if it were needed, that Stuttgart really have arrived at the top of German football. Effzeh’s players and coaching staff alike felt that this fitted snugly into a growing list of hard-luck stories; last week’s home loss to RB Leipzig, last month’s game with Bayern Munich when the champions didn’t take the lead until late on, or even the autumn defeat at Dortmund where they were beaten by Maxi Beier’s goal deep into stoppage time.
American was favourite for gold but finished eighth
Video hints that experience may be used in routine
Ilia Malinin has written about “an inevitable crash” after he missed the podium at the Winter Olympics in one of the biggest shocks in the history of figure skating.
The 21-year-old was the overwhelming favourite entering the men’s free skate on Friday in Milan, but he fell twice during his routine. Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov won gold and Malinin finished 15th out of 24th in the free skate and eighth overall.
They’re normally behind the wok or taking orders, year-round. But when it’s time to celebrate, these Chinese restaurant families create their own traditions
Two things are certain at Chinese restaurants in Australian country towns: you’ll find lemon chicken on the menu and the restaurant is open almost every day.
In the 1960s and 70s, Ruby Lee’s parents ran the Pagoda Cafe in Burleigh Heads, a surf town in Queensland. They worked 14-hour days and opened the restaurant year-round, even Christmas. When they did eventually close for one day a year, it was for lunar new year.
The 16-year-old Australian’s classmates and teachers are some of her biggest fans – and say she remains ‘really chill’
On the towering slopes of Livigno in Italy on Sunday, 16-year-old Australian Ally Hickman was a green and gold blur, securing herself a spot in the Olympic women’s snowboard slopestyle final.
She will compete for a medal in the finals on Tuesday – but thousands of kilometres away at her Sydney high school, the teenager is already a legend.
I assume no parent aspires to give their offspring an unmemorable and vanilla childhood. I wanted to be a fun mum, creating love-soaked memories and quirky family traditions for my children right from the get-go. I wanted to be Bluey’s parents before Bluey even existed.
The Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cakes were destined to be a pillar of my perfectly imperfect parenting rituals. One child quickly became three, and that iconic recipe book was in constant rotation. In the early years, I would simply choose a cake that matched my very basic baking skills. I also only owned a round tin, so my kids’ early cakes were circle-shaped, or circle-adjacent: the swimming pool (a round cake filled with jelly), the cat (a round cake with ears) and the race track (two round cakes with the centres removed).
The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupted on Sunday, sending lava fountains, ash and smoke into the air. The US Geological Survey said it was the 42nd episode of lava fountains since the current series of intermittent eruptions began in December 2024. The plume from the latest eruption reached more than 10,000 metres (35,000 feet), according to the National Weather Service
Mme Pelicot’s innate dignity shines through, as she explains why she waived her anonymity – after her husband drugged her so that dozens of men could sexually assault her
It’s hard to judge an interview with Gisèle Pelicot in the normal terms. Let’s start with the easy bit: Victoria Derbyshire is the ideal interlocutor. The co-presenter of Newsnight has a kind of steely warmth that meshes well with the innate dignity of Mme Pelicot – as she is called throughout – while they walk unflinchingly through her terrible story.
Her “descent into hell” began on 2 November 2020 when the local police called her and her husband, Dominique Pelicot, to the station. They believed it was to do with his recent arrest for covertly taking pictures underneath the skirts of three women in the supermarket. It was not. In the course of that investigation they had found on his laptop thousands upon thousands of videos and photographs accumulated over a decade of his wife unconscious and being raped by strangers.
Authorities in Cyprus have urged residents to reduce their water intake by 10% – the equivalent of two minutes’ use of running water each day – as Europe’s most south-easterly nation grapples with a once-in-a century drought.
The appeal, announced alongside a €31m (£27m) package of emergency measures, comes as reservoirs hit record lows with little prospect of replenishment before the tourist season starts.
Swiss police say derailment near Goppenstein injured five as large areas of western Alps remain under category 5 avalanche risk
Avalanches from heavy snowfall in the European Alps claimed more lives over the weekend, as a train was derailed by a snow slide in Switzerland on Monday and roads and villages around Mont Blanc were closed or placed under evacuation orders.
As large areas of the western Alps remained under a high risk of avalanche – following a week in which alerts reached category 5, the highest level – Swiss police said a train derailment caused by an avalanche injured five people near the town of Goppenstein.
Minnows denied by Curran and Overton in final overs
England did enough to beat Italy and secure a spot in the Super Eights, if not – again – to establish themselves among the form teams of this World Cup. Harry Brook had previously declared of this tournament that he would “rather not start amazing and finish amazing than start amazing and finish bad”, and in that sense alone it is proceeding entirely according to plan. The next stage is unlikely to be so forgiving.
They got the result they desperately needed, but if once more the full member nation beat the associate there were plenty of awkward moments along the way. Set a target of 203 after England scored the second highest total in their T20 World Cup history, and reduced to one for two at the end of their first over, Italy simply refused to accept they were beaten.
Juve directors condemned Pierre Kalulu’s dismissal but beyond the outrage there were reasons to take heart
At the end of a spectacular, ferocious Derby d’Italia, none of Juventus’s players nor their manager would answer questions from the media. Instead, their chief executive, Damien Comolli, and director of football strategy, Giorgio Chiellini, spoke on the club’s behalf. They were not there to discuss tactical nuance.
“You can’t talk about football today,” said Chiellini. “Something unacceptable happened.” Comolli offered an even more grave verdict: “Juventus lost three points, but Italian football lost much more.” A strong claim. If true, might Comolli have done better to acknowledge his part in it?
While goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin’s last-gasp header meant more for the hosts, Madrid cannot take the challenge lightly now they return in the playoff round
Nineteen days later Real Madrid fly back to Lisbon to try again. For all the drama, for all that Benfica’s goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin rose through the rain to head an astonishing 98th-minute goal and José Mourinho raced up the line with his arms around a ballboy, everyone in the Estádio da Luz losing their minds; for all that Álvaro Arbeloa’s team “crashed out” of the top eight, the biggest club of all have a second chance. Which is, of course, the way the Champions League is designed. So here they go again and things are better now. But then they thought that back then, too.
What followed, as one headline had it, was a “total write-off”, Madrid not just beaten 4-2 but battered. Trubin’s late goal, the moment of the competition, changed everything for Benfica but didn’t really alter Madrid’s fate; already destined for the playoff, it just deepened the “shame”, in Kylian Mbappé’s words. Three weeks on, they meet again on Tuesday in Lisbon – Madrid against Benfica, Mourinho against “my boy” – with an opportunity to start over, some hope and enthusiasm allowed back in. A little easily perhaps, renewed belief built on not much and yet to withstand a proper test, but there may be something in it.
British women in Spain and Greece face ‘huge problems’ entering UK because of differing surname rules
New rules requiring British dual nationals to show a UK passport when entering Britain are “discriminatory” against women, campaigners claim.
From 25 February, British dual nationals are required to present a British passport when boarding a plane, ferry or train to the UK, or attach a new document, a “certificate of entitlement”, which costs nearly £600, to their second passport.
Mico Montes’s perplexing horror portmanteau relies more on atmosphere than its actors for effect
Writer-director Mico Montes’s debut feature is a workably creepy, fitfully absorbing horror effort that centres around a group therapy session run by squeaky-voiced shrink Dr Hedonia (Rachel Alig). One would think at least one of the good doctor’s patients would have wondered how their therapist came to have a surname that means pleasure in Greek, and why this might be. Sadly, none of these hapless souls, all of whom are seeking help for trauma, seem to have even a cursory acquaintance with classical languages.
That said, most of them do seem prone to a florid monologue style as they describe what’s brought them to the room. Lenny (Torrey B Lawrence), for instance, while talking about the fire that destroyed his house and all his possessions, waxes lyrical in the most violently violet prose style, incanting about “the night’s breach” how he was “perplexed by taunting thoughts” and so on. Does anyone actually talk like this?
A study says IHL is at ‘critical breaking point’ amid horrendous violations in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere. But to declare its demise would be premature
Is international humanitarian law (IHL), the law designed to spare civilians as much as possible the hazards of warfare, at risk of imploding? That is the conclusion of a new compendious study of current armed conflicts around the world, citing the killing of civilians and other atrocities in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere. “While the threat to IHL is not yet existential,” it warns, “it is at a critical breaking point.”
There is no doubt that the disregard for civilian life in these conflicts has been horrendous. In Gaza and Sudan, it has risen to the level of genocide. But do these represent serious violations of the law or its demise?
Moon was a distraction and Mars the goal for billionaire SpaceX chief – could Trump have influenced his U-turn?
Barely a year ago, the moon was “a distraction” to Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX then fixated on his ludicrously ambitious project to build a self-sustaining city on Mars within 20 years.
Why bother returning to the orbiting chunk of rock humanity conquered half a century ago, he reasoned, when the greater prize of the red planet lay tantalizingly in reach for his company’s mighty Starship rockets?
A crusty-topped marvel that pilfers all the parts of a puttanesca, sploshes them on gnocchi, smothers them in mozzarella, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and crisps it all up under the grill
Puttanesca purists, look away now. This dish takes the classic elements of a puttanesca – that is, anchovies, capers, olives, tomatoes – and combines them into a rich sauce for gnocchi, which are then covered in mozzarella, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and flashed under the grill. It’s exactly what you want on a rainy night. In fact, my sauce-averse toddler thought it smelled so good that she stole half of my plate – a win all round. (Although her pretty decent suggestion was that next time I use it as a pizza sauce, rather than on pasta or gnocchi. Noted.)
JD Vance is seeking to create a ‘trading bloc’ as shortages and climate crises mean a kaleidoscope of rare earths are increasingly jealously guarded
The announcement by the US vice-president, JD Vance, that the country is seeking to create a new critical minerals “trading bloc” is a final, exotic, nail in the coffin of the old global trading system. The era of mass abundance, as supplied by unfettered free trade and global markets – “neoliberalism” – is over. We live in a new world of strategic competition between states over scarce but essential resources, with shocks to supplies from human activity and natural disasters an ever-present risk.
This means recalibrating how we think about our economy: the new economic fundamentals today are resource constraints and climate and nature crises, and these, rather than human activity, will increasingly shape the world we inhabit. Flows of finance and stocks of wealth will matter less than stocks and flows of real material resources.
A simple, warmingly spiced supper, irrespective of whatever mince you choose to use
I make variations of these meatballs every fortnight for my children, usually with chicken mince. The texture is fantastic and, whisper it, they’re even better made in an air fryer. Yes, I finally got one and it’s fantastic. You do, however, have to cook them all in one layer, which, depending on the size of your air-fryer basket, might mean cooking them in multiple batches. It feels more efficient to make them all in one go, though, so I’ve provided oven timings below.
More than 130,000 people considered missing or disappeared in Mexico as drug cartels expand
It was a bright morning in August 2022 when Ángel Montenegro was taken. A 31-year-old construction worker, Montenegro had been out all night drinking with some work buddies in the city of Cuautla and was waiting for a bus back to nearby Cuernavaca where lived.
At about 10am, a white van pulled up: several men jumped out and dragged Montenegro and a co-worker inside before speeding off. Montenegro’s co-worker was released a few hundred meters down the street, but Montenegro was driven away.
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