In the meantime, the travelling circus of English cricket rolls on. There is a white-ball series in Sri Lanka starting on Thursday morning, for which – consequences, remember – McCullum remains as coach, Key remains as managing director and Brook remains as captain. In addition Zak Crawley returns to open the batting in the 50-over team, a fitting reward for not playing a single 50-over game in the whole of 2024 or 2025. Nature heals.
In victory for Trump administration, appeals court has temporarily lifted injunction as JD Vance set to visit state
An appeals court has temporarily lifted restrictions from a federal judge in Minnesota that blocked ICE agents from pepper-spraying and arresting peaceful protesters.
In a victory for the Trump administration, the eighth US circuit court of appeals on Wednesday granted the justice department’s request for an administrative stay of a preliminary injunction issued last Friday by Judge Katherine Menendez.
Analysts warn that Trump will probably demand more action from Mexico to counter drug-trafficking groups
Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the latest transfer of 37 Mexican cartel operatives to the US as a “sovereign decision”, as her government strives to alleviate pressure from the Trump administration to do more against drug-trafficking groups.
It was the third such flight in the year since Donald Trump returned to the White House, but analysts warn that while it remains an effective pressure valve, the returns may be diminishing.
US military says it has transported ‘IS fighters’ to Iraq after Kurdish-controlled prisons and camps changed hands
Concerned western officials said they were closely monitoring the deteriorating security situation in north-east Syria amid fears that Islamic State militants could re-emerge after the Kurdish defeat at the hands of the Damascus government.
The US military said it had transported “150 IS fighters” from a frontline prison in Hasakah province across the border to Iraq, and said it was willing to move up to 7,000 to prevent what it warned could be a dangerous breakout.
Cody Bellinger became the last of the top free-agent hitters to reach a deal, agreeing Wednesday to stay with the New York Yankees for a $162.5m, five-year contract, a person familiar with the negotiations told the Associated Press.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement was subject to a successful physical.
Brussels to host emergency summit to discuss options including ‘nuclear deterrent’ of retaliatory sanctions
The European parliament has formally suspended the ratification process on its US trade deal, in protest against Donald Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on EU exports unless the bloc agrees he can take over Greenland.
The pause is the strongest material response the EU has shown so far to what several leaders last week called blackmail.
Intimate correspondence between John Cairncross and Gloria Barraclough features in National Archives exhibition
It was a love letter written by one of the more important British spies of the cold war that made Tom Brass realise he had never fully known his mother.
The spy in question was John Cairncross, the alleged fifth man in the Cambridge spy ring, whose spycraft also helped the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk and turn the tide of the second world war.
It’s not the first time we play in a hostile stadium. We played at Galatasaray. It’s a great stadium [here], great atmosphere.
The moments where I didn’t play him, we were struggling and I tried something else. We have steadied the ship now but we miss goals from all the ball possession and chances that we have. Salah is one of the players that can score a goal.
First of all, it’s really sad that Ibrahima can’t be here. But Joe is a good replacement but he has not played a lot since I have been here. But he has shown he can be a really good player for us.
“Just a heads up that, while I would love it to be true, a win tonight for Newcastle doesn’t put us in the last 16,” writes David. “It puts us in the first round of 16, which is really the last 24 (playoffs), to then get into the actual last 16. Two extra matches just what everyone wants right now …”
The prime minister has a duty to be candid with the British public about the scale of the global realignment caused by a volatile US president
One foreign policy achievement that Donald Trump prefers not to boast about is his role in helping Mark Carney win last year’s Canadian general election. The incumbent Liberal party faced crushing defeat before Mr Trump threatened to annex Canada. Mr Carney’s candidacy was buoyed up by a patriotic rally against US bullying.
Perhaps because his country has also been coveted by Mr Trump, Mr Carney has given one of the most clear-sighted responses of any democratic leader to the US president’s designs on Greenland. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the Canadian prime minister set out the challenge for countries whose security and prosperity have depended on a global system underwritten by the US.
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Jamie Dimon warns of civil unrest but Nvidia’s Jensen Huang argues tech will create rather than destroy jobs
Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, has said artificial intelligence “may go too fast for society” and cause “civil unrest” unless governments and business support displaced workers.
While advances in AI will have huge benefits, from increasing productivity to curing diseases, the technology may need to be phased in to “save society”, he said.
Reporters had been in car on way to new camp, says media group, as two 13-year-old boys killed in separate incidents
Hospitals in Gaza say Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians on Wednesday, including two 13-year-old boys and three journalists, in the latest violence to undermine a three-month-old ceasefire.
Palestinian health officials said the Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinian journalists who were travelling in a car to film a newly established displacement camp in the Netzarim area of central Gaza.
Musée Rodin was the venue for the designer’s second men’s show for the house, and he sought to shun normality
He is one of fashion’s greatest ruminators so where better than the Musée Rodin in Paris to stage Jonathan Anderson’s second menswear show for Dior. Guests including the actors Robert Pattinson and Mia Goth, and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton wandered past Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker as they made their way to their seats on Wednesday afternoon.
Speaking backstage before the show, Anderson, dressed in his signature faded Levi’s jeans and a navy cashmere sweater, described the collection as “another character study”, explaining that this time he set out to explore “the idea of a new aristocracy”, questioning “what it means today” and “what can it be?” The-41-year old designer said when it came to the social hierarchy he wanted to “ignore the aspect of money” and instead home in on “their eccentricity”.
PM also accuses Kemi Badenoch of supporting efforts by the US president to ‘undermine the government’s position’
Keir Starmer has noticeably hardened his rhetoric towards Donald Trump, telling the Commons that the US president’s condemnation of the Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius was intended to weaken the UK’s resolve over Greenland.
In a sometimes angry exchange with Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions, Starmer denounced the Conservative leader’s use of Trump’s words to push back against the Chagos deal, saying the president had not been sincere in his objections.
Club also in market for striker, with Mateta among targets
Aston Villa are exploring a move for Milan’s Ruben Loftus-Cheek, as they seek to absorb the absence of Boubacar Kamara amid fears he will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury.
Villa are poised to step up interest in the former Chelsea midfielder, who in September was recalled to the England squad after a six-year absence but was omitted from Thomas Tuchel’s most recent camp in November.
The opportunity for this tournament’s legacy is in the fan fests, camps and tune-ups accessible to more than the lucky few
In Germany, fans watched the games on screens in crowded town squares, their roars careening off ancient buildings, or from the banks of rivers, peering at floating, double-sided big screens on barges. At the next World Cup, in South Africa in 2010, people gathered in parks and open-air markets and hotel lobbies and unlicensed, makeshift bars in people’s garages. In Brazil, four years later, fans spilled from the bars on the Copacabana or watched in restaurants or in streets closed for the occasion – not as if anybody was driving during the Seleção’sgames anyway.
During the 2018 World Cup, Russia surprised visitors – and its own citizens – with its friendliness as spontaneous parties broke out all over the country. The reason the 2022 World Cup in Qatar didn’t entirely feel like a real World Cup is that those sorts of spontaneous soccer gatherings just didn’t seem to be happening, or not at the same scale, at any rate. The absence of hordes of supporters just milling about everywhere contributed to the feeling of being at a Potemkin World Cup.
Reform leader says he agrees ‘strategically’ with Trump but adds that views of Greenlanders must be respected
The world would be a “better, more secure place” if America took over Greenland, Nigel Farage said at Davos, while insisting that he still believed in the sovereignty of nation states.
During a panel at the World Economic Forum’s “America House” in the Swiss ski resort on Wednesday, the Reform UK leader said he had “no doubt” that the world would be safer if a “strong America” was in Greenland “because of the geopolitics of the high north, because of the retreating ice caps and because of the continued expansionism of Russian icebreakers, of Chinese investment”.
US president touts ‘very productive meeting’ with Nato chief Mark Rutte, drops tariffs on European allies and adds deal will involve ‘Golden Dome’ and ‘mineral rights’
House Republicans are starting a push on Wednesday to hold former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, opening the prospect of the House using one of its most powerful punishments against a former president for the first time.
The contempt proceedings are an initial step toward a criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice that, if successful, could send the Clintons to prison.
They’re not above the law. We’ve issued subpoenas in good faith.
For five months we’ve worked with them. And time’s up.
Opponents say proposal to end sick notes issued over phone would fill up doctors’ waiting rooms unnecessarily
A German proposal to end the right to get short-term sick leave from a doctor over the telephone as a means of cracking down on skiving has met with outcry from labour groups and the medical profession.
Germans enjoy some of the most generous employee illness policies in Europe, a fact the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, says is undermining efforts to kickstart the EU’s biggest economy, whose growth has largely stalled since 2022.
Appeasing Trump has only emboldened him. But European leaders are not as helpless as the US president believes
Georg Riekeles is the associate director of the European Policy Centre
EU leaders’ tough rebukes to Donald Trump in Davos must be followed by concrete action when they convene in Brussels on Thursday night. The US president’s attempt to strong-arm Greenland and Denmark, backed by explicit tariff threats against those who refuse to comply, is not bluster or improvisation. It is economic coercion, openly deployed to force political submission and territorial concessions. The danger lies in the demand itself, but also in how Europe responds.
The EU has reached a moment of truth. If it cannot defend one of its member states whose most basic interests are under direct threat, then the EU is weakened as a geopolitical actor and emptied of purpose.
Georg Riekeles is the associate director of the European Policy Centre
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As Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen decide ‘to live in truth’, what will it take for Starmer to call out Trump?
Donald Trump has told the Davos economic forum “without us, most countries would not even work”, but for the first time in decades, many western leaders have come to the opposite conclusion: they will function better without the US.
Individually and collectively, they have decided “to live in truth” – the phrase used by the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel and referenced by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, in his widely praised speech at Davos on Tuesday. They will no longer pretend the US is a reliable ally, or even that the old western alliance exists.
It is the year 2029 and an LA cop finds himself accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to clear his name before robo-justice sends him down
Irish writer Marco van Belle delivers an entertaining script for this real time futurist thriller-satire set in LA in 2029, in a world (as they say) where AI is wholly responsible for assessing criminal guilt or innocence. You’ve heard of RoboCop. This is RoboJustice. Veteran Russian-Kazakh film-maker Timur Bekmambetov directs, bringing his usual robust approach to the big action sequences, and Chris Pratt stars as the LAPD cop accused of murder. (Longtime Pratt fans will appreciate a cameo appearance here of Pratt’s fellow cast-member from TV’s Parks and Recreation, Jay Jackson, effectively reprising his performance as sonorous TV newsreader Perd Hapley.)
The film’s ostensible target is the insidious power of AI, though the movie partakes of today’s liberal opinion doublethink, in which we all solemnly concur that AI is very worrying while not having the smallest intention of doing anything about it. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, an officer with a drinking problem but nonetheless a poster boy for LA law enforcement in 2029 for having brought in the first conviction under the city’s creepy new hi-tech justice system, ironically entitled Mercy (it doesn’t appear to be an acronym). AI is now the sole arbiter of justice and defendants each have a 90-minute trial to make their case in front of Judge Maddox, an AI-hologram played by Rebecca Ferguson who icily insists on the facts but is capable of weird Max-Headroom-type glitches.
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