I share the same last name as one of Manchester United’s substitute keepers in Kayla Rendell, no relation though. Do you have a family connection to a footballer or have a similar name and try to pass yourself off as say Sam Kerr’s cousin? Get in touch and let me know by emailing.
3 min: … but then Gabriel inexplicably toe-punts a wild backpass out for a corner. So careless. An early chance for Brentford to cause some of that six-yard-box chaos their manager was talking about before the game.
2 min: Brentford stroke it around a bit. Then Arsenal stroke it around a bit. One of those starts.
American star takes silver behind strong first round
The snowfall coming down on Livigno Snow Park on Thursday night helped produce one of the bigger Olympic upsets in snowboard history, as Chloe Kim’s bid to become the first rider to win three consecutive Olympic halfpipe gold medals ended just short.
Kim finished with a best score of 88.00 from her opening run, settling for silver behind surprise winner Choi Gaon of South Korea, whose heroic third run after an early fall earned 90.25 and rewrote the Olympic record books. Japan’s Mitsuki Ono took bronze with 85.00.
Much-needed supplies but no oil arrive on navy ships as Trump stokes island nation’s economic crisis
As the sun came up on a flat calm Florida Straits, two ships arrived off the port of Havana: the Isla Holbox, a squat logistics ship, followed by the more aggressive looking Papaloapan, whose bow ramp gave the appearance of a large beetle.
The two Mexican navy ships docked on Thursday laden with humanitarian aid as part of Mexico’s efforts to support Cuba amid a deepening crisis exacerbated by Donald Trump’s economic pressure campaign.
There’s fun to be had in Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski’s satisfyingly tech-fearing adventure – but some restraint wouldn’t have gone amiss
Despite directing a phenomenally successful franchise starter (Pirates of the Caribbean), two of its sequels (Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End), a smash-hit horror remake (The Ring), an Oscar-winning animation (Rango), and films starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts (The Mexican) and Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine (The Weather Man), Gore Verbinski never quite broke through as a name the average cinemagoer would instantly recognise. There are some through-lines in his work – a dark sense of humour, an ease with pushing megastars past their limits – but he was mostly there in service of something or someone else, whether it be IP or an A-lister.
After both consumed him in 2013’s loathed flop The Lone Ranger, Verbinski went away and returned three years later with an extravagant “one for me”, the ambitious throwback horror A Cure for Wellness. I ultimately admired what he was trying to do (a gothic, exquisitely crafted original chiller with a real budget) more than what he actually achieved, and with another box-office disappointment under his belt, he disappeared again. A longer wait of almost a decade followed, and now he’s back with an even bigger swing, the sci-fi comedy adventure Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
Comments on the ‘colonisation of the UK’ by the co-owner of Manchester United were erroneous, crass and a gift to divisive forces in British society
In 2020, the year Sir Jim Ratcliffe moved his huge fortune to Monaco, migrants in the United Kingdom made tax contributions estimated to be worth around £20bn. Sir Jim, by jetting off to a tax haven on the French Riviera, saved himself an estimated £4bn. It took some brass neck for the expat owner of Ineos and co-owner of Manchester United football club to lecture the country, using inflammatory and offensive language, on the perils of immigration.
Where to begin? The statistics used by Sir Jim to back his claim that Britain was being “colonised” by migrants, in an interview with Sky News, were flatly wrong. They were also astonishingly crass, coming from a man who presides over a sporting institution famous for and proud of its global fanbase and international connections.
A campaign of ethnic cleansing and ‘tectonic’ new legal measures are killing the two-state solution to which other governments pay lip service
Protecting archaeological sites. Preventing water theft. The streamlining of land purchases. If anyone doubted the real purpose of the motley collection of new administrative and enforcement measures for the illegally occupied West Bank, Israel’s defence minister spelt it out: “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” Israel Katz said in a joint statement with the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
While the world’s attention was fixed upon the annihilation in Gaza, settlers in the West Bank intensified their campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed there since October 2023; a fifth of them were children. Many more have been driven from their homes by relentless harassment and the destruction of infrastructure, with entire Palestinian communities erased across vast swathes of land.
Rollback of government’s ability to limit climate-heating pollution from vehicles will make families ‘sicker and less safe’, environmental advocate says
The Trump administration has revoked the bedrock scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The move was described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.
The endangerment finding, which states that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare, has since 2009 allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron’s Olympic competition is set against backdrop of assault and abuse allegations involving their former partners
The American duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning three-time world champions contentiously missed out on Olympic ice dance gold on Wednesday despite a flawless skate. But the controversy surrounding the event is not merely a debate over artistic and technical merits.
Gold went by a narrow margin to the French duo of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. It was a stunning achievement for a partnership that is less than a year old. But the union was forged after the fallout from sexual assault allegations levelled at Fournier Beaudry’s boyfriend and former ice dance partner, while Cizeron is the subject of allegations of abusive conduct from his erstwhile skating partner.
Scotland slipped up in Six Nations opener in Italy
Townsend keen to lean into strong Calcutta Cup record
Gregor Townsend has warned England against underestimating his Scotland team and believes the hosts can maintain their fine recent Calcutta Cup record in Edinburgh on Saturday. The visitors have only won two of the last eight fixtures between the two countries and Townsend wants his players to feed off the feelgood memories of previous English losses.
While last weekend’s deeply disappointing loss to Italy in Rome has generated plenty of external criticism, England have won only once at Murrayfield since 2017. Townsend is expecting his players to bounce back from their Italian setback and says they will be inspired by past successes. “I would hope they don’t fade into irrelevance because our players have evidence that they’ve won in this fixture,” stressed the head coach.
Villarreal player charged in July with five counts of rape
Former Arsenal midfielder denies all the charges
The footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with two new counts of rape relating to an additional woman who came forward to police with the allegations in August last year.
Partey will appear at Westminster magistrates court on 13 March in relation to the additional charges issued by the Crown Prosecution Service over allegations that date from 2020.
The head of a Labour-affiliated union has called for Angela Rayner to replace Keir Starmer, warning that Starmer risks leading the party into a heavy election defeat to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Maryam Eslamdoust, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), told the Guardian she wanted the former deputy prime minister to take charge after this month’s Gorton and Denton byelection.
Skeleton racer sacrificed his dream of winning a medal and succeeded in putting the horrors of the war in Ukraine back on the agenda
To be an Olympic-class skeleton racer requires extraordinary guts and impeccable nerve, as the corners loom and then whoosh past at frightening speed. So did anybody really believe that Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych would lose his when the world’s eyes were upon him?
Not the International Olympic Committee, who flipped between threats of expulsion and sweet talk over the past fortnight, without coming close to changing his mind. And certainly not those of us who have spoken and messaged Heraskevych, and found a man utterly prepared to sacrifice his dream of winning a Winter Olympic medal for a higher purpose.
American actor best known for his role in the television drama Dawson’s Creek
For a worldwide generation of young television viewers in the 1990s, James Van Der Beek, who has died aged 48 after suffering from cancer, provided the role model of a sensitive male teenager. As the fresh-faced Dawson Leery in the American drama Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) – shown in the UK on Channel 4 and then on Channel 5 – he starred in a series portraying friendship, first love and the trials and tribulations of adolescence in the fictional coastal town of Capeside, Massachusetts.
The nerdy Dawson’s idealism and habit of over-analysing often give him unrealistic expectations and a tendency to make long emotional speeches. “It’s not about the kiss – it’s about the journey and creating a sustaining magic,” he reflects in an early episode.
Elbridge Colby tells meeting in Brussels that US plans to reduce conventional forces in Europe but remains committed to Nato alliance
The Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, has told European Nato defence ministers in Brussels that they need to step up their combat capabilities and take the lead in protecting their continent from the Russian threat.
The influential undersecretary for war, sent by the White House in place of his boss, Pete Hegseth, said the US would reduce conventional forces in Europe but insisted Washington remained committed to the military alliance.
Move puts AI firm in opposition to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which has advocated for less stringent AI regulations
Anthropic will spend $20m to back US political candidates who support regulating the AI industry, according to a company statement released on Thursday. Anthropic’s donation puts it in opposition to the ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which has advocated for less stringent regulation of AI.
The company is donating to Public First Action, a political group that opposes federal efforts to quash state AI regulations like a December executive order issued by Donald Trump. One of the candidates that the group is backing is Republican Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor in Tennessee and who opposed an effort in Congress to bar states from passing AI laws.
Protesters are enjoying greater freedom of expression since Nicolás Maduro’s downfall despite lack of regime change
Protesters have taken to the streets of cities across Venezuela in the latest sign of an embryonic political shift after Nicolás Maduro’s recent downfall.
Student demonstrators gathered on the campus of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas on Thursday to demand the release of all of the country’s political prisoners, the return of exiled activists and a full transition to democracy. “Who are we? Venezuela! What do we want? Freedom!” they shouted.
The Bob Coveiro (the Gravedigger) Law ‘recognises the emotional bond between guardians and their pets’
A dog that remained beside his former owner’s grave for 10 years has now given his name to a new state law allowing pets to be buried alongside their loved ones in São Paulo.
The new law – already being informally referred to as the Bob Coveiro (the Gravedigger) Law, in tribute to its inspiration – was signed this week by the governor of Brazil’s most populous state, the conservative Tarcísio de Freitas.
Donald Trump was crowned the “undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal” during a White House ceremony on Wednesday, during which the president received a trophy after ordering the US defense department to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of power from coal plants.
The award was reportedly granted by the Washington Coal Club, an advocacy group with financial ties to the coal industry.
British racer poised for podium after opening rounds
Sledder turned in back-to-back Cortina track records
This was the race that will always be remembered for the one man who didn’t make the start. Exactly 21 minutes before the men’s skeleton was scheduled to begin the International Olympic Committee put out its press release announcing that it had revoked the Olympic accreditation of the Ukrainian slider Vladyslav Heraskevych after he refused to compete without his helmet decorated with the images of his fellow athletes who have been killed during the Russian invasion of his country. It was so late the two British competitors, Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt said they didn’t even find out about it until after they had finished.
By then, the news had already spread around the world, and the one Ukrainian journalist present, Stanislav Oroshkevych, from tribuna.com, found he was suddenly surrounded by colleagues from Germany, Britain, Japan, and a dozen other countries, all asking him for public comment on what was going on. Soon, the Ukrainian press attache arrived to save him and announced that Heraskevych would come to give an impromptu press conference himself. The photos of Heraskevych standing behind the barriers near the finish, his helmet tucked under his arm, addressing a crowd of 30 journalists, will be one of the iconic images of these Olympics.
Seamer was set to spend February helping at his father’s restaurant until late World Cup call – now he’s focused on another England upset
It is fair to say that England’s first two games at the T20 World Cup have not inspired much confidence – unless you’re one of their future opponents. For Scotland, last-minute call-ups after the decision to banish Bangladesh from the tournament last month, English travails have put some extra pep in their step ahead of the now-crucial Group C clash in Kolkata on Saturday.
“Definitely,” says the seamer Safyaan Sharif. “They’ll be feeling pressure because they know they have to win if they want to qualify. Obviously that’s the same with us, but I don’t think we have too much to lose. I think they have more to lose than us. Nepal gave them a good run and they were stressed in that game. They were panicking a lot – you could tell, the way they were playing in the final few overs. So it’s how they handle the pressure.
Connexion
