Now he’s free of the BBC, he’s gone combative. He drives a horse and cart through a piece of Dominic Grieve sophistry, and tries his best to skewer the institution based around a jewelled velvet hat

Settling down in front of David Dimbleby’s new three-parter, and looking at that confrontational title, you wonder why the question it asks is not debated more often. Dimbleby himself has trailed the series by worrying aloud that during his stint as a BBC staffer he was part of an organisation that didn’t challenge the monarchy robustly enough. But retirement means the shackles he wore when he was the corporation’s top politics presenter have been loosened.

The opening episode cleaves closest to the titular question – parts two and three are more like “Is the Monarchy a Giant Ponzi Scheme?” and “Are the Monarchy Personally Repellent?”, respectively – with its theme of how much power the monarchy has and how it wields it.

Fancy a bit of history? Under the floodlights of this storied old ground you were welcome to take your pick. The inevitable Erling Haaland smashed through the 100-goal barrier and a Premier League record. Phil Foden scored his second brace in four days. City raced to a 5-1 lead before an hour was even on the clock only for Fulham to come agonisingly close to parity by the end. All of it culminating in one of the highest-scoring matches in three decades of the Premier League. Not bad.

Full value for money was achieved before half-time as City imposed themselves on their hosts with ruthless timing. Erling Haaland had come into the game on 99 Premier League goals, but had drawn a blank in his past two league matches. With just five minutes gone and bearing down on Bernd Leno, after being played in by Phil Foden, it appeared the wait was swiftly over. But in the most unusual of occurrences, Haaland calmly wrapped a shot beyond the Fulham keeper but watched stunned as the ball hit the post.

• England 2-0 Ghana

• Young star Kendall courts praise from Wiegman

Lucia Kendall was already living the dream, slotting into life in the WSL after she joined Aston Villa from Southampton this summer with an ease that earned her a first senior call up in October. The 21-year-old made her full debut against Australia, remarkably picking up the player of the match trophy at the end of the 3-0 win.

In the cold and rain at St Mary’s against Ghana on Tuesday night, it took her just six minutes to ensure the dream remains a recurring one, slotting in from close range after Bénédicte Simon had scuffed her clearance from Chloe Kelly’s cross and the ball fell fortuitously at the midfielder’s feet.

US president’s xenophobic rant comes amid reports of stepped-up effort to deport Somalis in Minneapolis-St Paul

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump on Tuesday called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said they should be sent back home in a rant that came as the administration is reportedly increasing immigration enforcement against undocumented Somalis in Minnesota.

In a xenophobic rant during a cabinet meeting, Trump went off on Somalis and Ilhan Omar, the congressional representative who is from Somalia and is a US citizen. He said Somalia “stinks” and is “no good for a reason”.

New episodes of sci-fi series achieve 59.6m views in first five days of release, a new record for an English language show

The upside-down is still the right way for Netflix – Stranger Things 5 is now the company’s biggest English-language debut ever.

The fifth season of the streaming company’s flagship sci-fi series achieved 59.6m views in its first five days on the platform, making for the best premiere week for an English-language series ever on Netflix, and the third biggest debut overall behind the second and third seasons of the Korean sensation Squid Game.

Exclusive: Petition says Colombia citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in US airstrike on 15 September

A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.

The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.

Smith stood up to West Indies bowling and scored centuries against Australia in the most demanding of circumstances

A Robin Smith square cut was more than a whip‑crack snap of the bat. For English cricket fans of the late 80s and early 90s, it was a nudge in the ribs that, underneath the pastings, the dismal collapses and Rentaghost selections, the national team would fight another day.

Smith’s cut, alongside a David Gower cover drive, gave hope where there was little left in the bucket. Those famous forearms – half oak, half baobab – the white shirt unbuttoned past the clavicle, the chain glinting through his chest hair, smelt enticingly like bravery, and old spice and one last throw of the dice.

Netflix and 50 Cent’s harrowing new series looks back at the disgraced music mogul’s rise to fame and fall from grace

The controversial Netflix docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning had already been called a “shameful hitpiece” by the disgraced mogul’s lawyers after a trailer was released on Monday.

Now after all four episodes have been dropped on Netflix, it’s been called “grimly necessary” and a “relentless” portrait of “a terrifying individual” by critics.

As US-Venezuela tensions have long simmered, Trump’s alleged ultimatum may tip relations to boiling point

• Deadly airstrikes and a military buildup: how the US pressure campaign against Venezuela has unfolded in the Caribbean

Weeks of saber-rattling, dark threats and a US military buildup not seen in Latin America since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis led on 21 November, somewhat anticlimactically, to a telephone call, when Donald Trump rang the man he has cast as his arch-adversary, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

By Trump’s own account, it was less an attempt at opening dialogue en route to a mutually beneficial compromise than a bid to up the ante by imparting an ultimatum.

Alison Bechdel and Joe Sacco return; plus Black Country cowboys, vengeful gods and an angling classic reimagined

Many of 2025’s best graphic novels looked to the past with mixed emotions. Growing up in 1970s California, Mimi Pond found the aristocratic Mitfords, born in the early years of the 20th century, compellingly exotic. She shares her lifelong fascination in Do Admit! (Jonathan Cape), a splendid book of geopolitics, jolly hockey sticks and gossipy asides, as the sisters choose between fascism and socialism and help shape attitudes to everything from class to funeral rites.

Pioneering photographer William Henry Jackson captured the old west for posterity, yet the popularity of his images speeded its destruction. Veteran cartoonist Bill Griffith recounts his great-grandfather’s life in Photographic Memory (Abrams), which takes in the civil war, slavery, the obliteration of the Great Plains peoples and the inauguration of the United States national parks, as well as the brutal legwork and dangerous alchemy of 19th-century photography. The narrative sometimes clunks, but the story is so good it’s hard to care.

⚽ Premier League updates from the 8.15pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Table | Read Football Daily | Mail Scott

Tottenham Hotspur kick off. A fine early-evening-pints-fuelled atmosphere at St James’ Park. Spurs are kicking towards the Gallowgate in this first half.

The teams are out! Newcastle in their famous black and white stripes, Spurs in 1982 FA Cup final yellow. A quick blast of the theme from Local Hero and we’ll be away. Howay!

⚽️ Premier League and La Liga updates from 19.30pm GMT

⚽️ Live scoreboard | And mail Will

Elsewhere … England are playing Ghana in a friendly. Join Yara El-Shaboury for that one.

Barcelona: Joan García; Koundé, Cubarsí , Balde, Gerard Martín; Pedri, Eric García; Olmo, Lamine Yamal, Raphinha; Lewandowski.

⚽️ Updates from 7pm GMT kick-off at St. Mary’s
⚽️ Top 100 countdown: Nos 100-41 | Email Yara here

8 min: England with most of the possession. Kelly whips the ball in again but Beever-Jones is offside and it is just too far for Park to reach.

Kendall came through as a young player at Southampton and she scores her first England goal at St. Mary’s. Kelly gets the ball on the left and crosses it into the box. Simon makes a mess of her clearance and the ball lands on a plate for Kendall who fires it home from close range.

American Bitcoin Corp’s shares fell from $2.39 to $1.90 after closing in what some are calling ‘crypto winter’

Shares in Eric Trump’s crypto mining business lost more than half their value in less than 30 minutes on Tuesday.

The nosedive of American Bitcoin Corp, which triggered repeated trading halts, followed the steep decline of many cryptocurrencies and crypto-linked companies into what some observers are calling the onset of a “crypto winter”. Bitcoin’s value has fallen sharply since the start of October and erased a year of large gains.

Exclusive: George Cottrell ‘gave control’ of gambling accounts to syndicate headed by Tony Bloom, the owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC

George Cottrell, a close associate of Nigel Farage and a key figure in Reform UK’s inner circle, acted as a front for a major gambling syndicate that was “given control” of his betting accounts, a high court document alleges.

Cottrell acted as a stalking horse for a syndicate involving one of the world’s most successful gamblers, Tony Bloom, it is claimed in the public documents, filed at the high court.

Too slick, too quick and, ultimately, just too good at football; Spain reaffirmed their standing as the best team in the world as they outclassed Germany and retained the Women’s Nations League title in spite of the absence of their injured superstar Aitana Bonmatí.

The world champions were playing their first game since their Ballon d’Or-winning midfielder was ruled out for five months after undergoing surgery on a broken leg, but anybody who worried that her absence may disrupt Spain’s stylish football was immediately proved wrong, as they demonstrated the extensive depth of talent across their classy team and eventually played some ruthless football to dispatch their rivals at the Estadio Metropolitano.

Pop star calls out White House’s ‘inhumane agenda’ after post that soundtracks immigration raids to her song Juno

Sabrina Carpenter has spoken out against Donald Trump’s White House for using her song Juno to soundtrack videos of immigration raids.

In response to a video posted on the official White House X account, which depicts Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officials arresting several people in what appears to be Chicago, the singer wrote: “this video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

Move to arm all 2,375 estimated troops marks shift in rules of engagement for domestic military deployments

• US politics live – latest updates

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that every national guard member deployed in Washington DC would now be armed with live weapons, and that they had begun conducting joint patrols with the local police department.

“I can confirm that everybody in DC is now armed, and a lot of our DC national guardsmen are now also doing joint patrols with members of the police department here in DC,” said Kingsley Wilson, the defense department’s press secretary, at a press conference.

Much improved response systems are struggling to cope with ever more powerful and destructive storms

• Death toll from Indonesia floods passes 700 as 1 million evacuated

Families stranded on their rooftops. Homes buried by fast-flowing mud. Jagged brown craters scarring lush green hillsides.

The scenes are the result of a series of cyclones and storms in a heavy monsoon season that have struck Asia with torrential rains, gutting essential infrastructure and reshaping landscapes. The violent weather has killed at least 1,200 people in the past week and forced a million to flee without knowing whether their homes will still be standing when they go back.

Ben Stokes is still bullish but the omens suggests pink-ball Test could be a nightmare on Vulture Street

My first day at the Gabba was 23 years ago, half a lifetime having passed since I slept on my brother’s sofa across the river and followed the Ashes tour as a backpacker. The coin went up, Nasser Hussain decided to have a bowl, and Steve Waugh’s Australians cashed in on generosity.

Having not returned until 2017‑18, and then covered the Covid tour four years later, the Sydney finale in 2003 remains the only time I have seen England win a Test on Australian soil. Even then I missed the last day: flat broke and forced to head back to Queensland to find work, I eventually found myself on a farm upstate, shovelling melons like a scrum-half for eight hot hours a day while dodging venomous snakes underfoot.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s comedy thriller named best film by Gotham awards and New York Film Critics Circle

Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed comedy thriller One Battle After Another has emerged as an early best picture frontrunner as the awards season kicks off.

The Thomas Pynchon adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an ex-revolutionary searching for his daughter, was named best feature at Monday’s Gotham awards. “I didn’t expect this, actually,” Anderson said on stage. “I started to think I didn’t know what was going on.”

Two-day meeting under new, RFK Jr-appointed chair could see radical overhaul of US childhood immunizations policy

A reversal of a decades-long program of childhood immunizations, including a recommendation to scrap hepatitis B shots for newborn babies, could come as early as this week in a vote by an advisory committee of allies convened by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Kirk Milhoan, the new chair of the federal advisory panel on immunization practices, said members would vote whether to push for the axing of the hepatitis B requirement during its two-day meeting ending Friday.

Relations between French company Dassault and the German unit of Airbus are reportedly ‘very strained’

The leaders of France and Germany have a “strong willingness” to build a new fighter jet together despite bitter internal rivalries, according to the chief executive of engine manufacturer Safran.

A row over who should lead between French aerospace company Dassault and the German unit of Airbus has threatened to break apart the countries’ efforts to make a next-generation fighter jet.

New date to approve site near Tower Bridge in London aligns with Keir Starmer’s planned visit to Beijing

The government has delayed its decision on whether to approve China’s super-embassy in London until January, when Keir Starmer is expected to visit Beijing.

Ministers are expected to greenlight the controversial plans after formal submissions by the Home Office and Foreign Office raised no objections on security grounds.