Saturday’s Chepstow showpiece could be a huge showcase for front-running nine-year-old’s massive frame and engine

When jumping fans of any age talk about a “proper, old-fashioned steeplechaser”, they have a strapping colossus of a horse in mind, with the strength to keep jumping and powering on through the deepest of winter ground when lesser rivals have cried enough. A horse like Pendil or The Dikler in the 1970s, Desert Orchid or Carvill’s Hill a decade or so later, or Denman lugging top weight to victory in the Hennessy - when it still was the Hennessy, back in 2009.

Or, in the here and now, a horse like Mr Vango, the second-favourite for Saturday’s Welsh Grand National at Chepstow. Even in a year when Harry Redknapp has a live runner in the King George VI Chase at Kempton a day earlier, a win for Mr Vango this weekend would quite possibly be the most popular and heartwarming result of the entire festive racing programme.

The statement says the release was ‘a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation’

• Schumer to ask Senate to back legal action over partial Epstein files release

CNN reports that some CBS staffers are “threatening to quit” over the controversial cancellation of a 60 Minutes investigation into the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants.

Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s decision to pull the story – taken last night three hours before broadcast - has been blasted by members of Congress and the veteran correspondent involved, Sharyn Alfonsi, who had interviewed people deported by the Trump administration to the notorious mega-prison about the “brutal and torturous conditions” they faced.

Game developer, who was also involved in Medal of Honor and Titanfall, reportedly killed in a car crash

Vince Zampella, the co-creator of the Call of Duty video game series, has died aged 55.

The head of the video game developer Respawn Entertainment and the co-founder of Infinity Ward was killed in a car crash in California, NBC Los Angeles reported.

One person has died amid flooding and an atmospheric river is forecast to drive storms across the state this week

One person has died in California amid heavy flooding, as residents across the state brace for a week of brutal storms that are predicted to bring extensive rainfall throughout the Christmas weekend.

Authorities in Redding, a city in northern California, reported that a motorist died on Sunday after becoming stranded in their vehicle.

The Danish postal service has announced it will cease deliveries from 30 December after 400 years. Eventually, other countries may go down a similar route

Predictions of the demise of letter writing are not new. The invention of the telegraph and the rise of the postcard were both seen as potential threats to a more leisurely, reflective form of communication. Yet by the close of the 20th century, more letters were being sent than ever, as social correspondence began to be supplemented by a boom in business mail.

From Europe’s most tech-savvy society, however, comes ominous news. As of next week, Denmark’s state-run postal service will end all letter deliveries after doing the rounds for 400 years. Around 1,500 jobs are being cut, and the country’s beloved red letterboxes are being sold off. It will still be possible for Danes to send a card or a love letter to someone far away next Christmas, but only via the shops of a smaller private company or a costly home collection.

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The late musician bristled against his record companies, his producers and fame itself – but that friction ignited both his AOR hits and his raw, spirited take on the blues

• Chris Rea, rock and blues singer-songwriter, dies aged 74
• Gallery: a life in pictures
• Comment: Driving Home for Christmas captures the season’s true spirit

For an artist best-known for a string of slickly commercial adult-oriented rock hits – Josephine, On the Beach, The Road to Hell, the Yuletide perennial Driving Home for Christmas – Chris Rea’s career was a rather more fraught business than you might have expected.

He had something of the splendidly grumpy refusenik about him. His debut single, Fool (If You Think It’s Over) was a transatlantic hit, earning him a best new artist Grammy nomination (he lost to Billy Joel, an artist the single had garnered comparisons to), but Rea announced that he “despised” the song: “It’s just not me.” He chafed at his record company’s expectations: his 1978 debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? got its title after his label suggested that he might consider adopting a stage name, and he later protested that the producers he worked with made his music too glossy and “smoothed-out”.

• Christmas-loving player’s run goes beyond 25 December

• No 7 seed Wade loses 3-2 in biggest upset so far

Ricky Evans gave himself a post-Christmas walk-on song dilemma by dumping the seventh seed, James Wade, out of the PDC world championship.

Evans missed seven match darts before winning the final set 6-4 in legs for a 3-2 second-round victory at Alexandra Palace. Four-time world championship semi-finalist Wade became the highest seed to depart this year’s tournament after missing his own match dart at double five when 4-3 ahead in the final set.

• NBA seeks investors for new Europe-wide men’s league

• Permanent franchises plus annual qualification pathway

• League aims to avoid clashes with domestic competitions

The NBA confirmed Monday that it would begin pursuing teams and ownership groups for a new professional European men’s league it hopes to launch in partnership with Fiba.

The prospective league would feature permanent teams and additional spots up for grabs via an annual qualification pathway. Clubs in Fiba-affiliated domestic leagues around Europe could qualify for the new league through the Basketball Champions League or an end-of-year tournament.

Black Diamond Pool eruption provides dramatic footage after being captured on official camera

A hot spring in Yellowstone national park that erupts sporadically was captured on an official camera exploding in spectacular muddy plumes at the weekend.

Volcanic experts at the US Geological Survey described the eruption as simply “Kablooey!”

⚽ Premier League updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Table | Ten things we learned | Mail Scott

2 min: Hudson-Odoi makes his presence felt up the other end, pulling a cross back for Jesus, whose shot is instantly blocked. Both teams already showing signs of being well up for this!

1 min: The first minute of the game still isn’t up, and Anderson’s clearing header hits Hudson-Odoi on the chest, the ball then rearing up and brushing the arm. A huge shout for a penalty kick. It’s never going to be given.

The 82-year-old singer says the disease is in its early stages and he plans to be back on stage in February

Barry Manilow has revealed that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will undergo surgery.

The 82-year-old singer, whose parade of high-spirited hits from Copacabana to Mandy has made him one of pop music’s most beloved showmen, will have surgery to remove part of his lung in an effort to fight off the disease, which is in its early stages.

Controversially appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss says: ‘I held that story and I held it because it wasn’t ready’

CBS News was dealing with internal and external uproar on Monday after it pulled at the last minute an investigation for its flagship 60 Minutes show into the harsh prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans from the US earlier this year.

The episode about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X late that afternoon, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”

Additional reporting by Jeremy Barr

Artist confirms image in Bayswater is by him, but gives no indication about another outside Centre Point tower

A new Banksy mural that shows two children lying down and looking at the sky has appeared in west London.

The artist revealed he was behind the artwork above a row of garages on Queen’s Mews in Bayswater by posting a photo of it to his Instagram account on Monday afternoon.

Platform with 700m users says it is investigating after Anna’s Archive claims to have scraped tracks and metadata

An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

Long sentences in case of Afro-Ecuadorian ‘Guayaquil Four’ focuses attention on president’s crackdown on crime

A court in Ecuador has sentenced 11 air force personnel to decades in prison over the forced disappearance” of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys aged between 11 and 15 during security operations in the country’s largest city last year.

The case of the “Guayaquil Four” is widely seen as the starkest example of human rights abuses under the iron-fist security policy pursued by the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa, who placed the armed forces at the centre of the fight against drug trafficking.

Philip Young, 49, is accused of 56 sexual offences, including drugging and raping his now ex-wife

A man has been charged with drugging and raping his then wife over a period of 13 years, with five other men also charged with sexual offences against her.

Philip Young, 49, formerly from Swindon but now living in Enfield in north London, has been charged with 56 sexual offences.

La Poste’s websites, apps and banking service affected by a DDoS incident, which is also delaying postal deliveries

The websites and apps of France’s national post office and its banking service have been hit by a suspected cyber-attack, disrupting deliveries and hampering online payments and transfers at the busiest time of the year.

Three days before Christmas, La Poste said on Monday that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, had “rendered its online services inaccessible”. Customer data was safe, it said, but mail distribution, including parcels, had been slowed.

By rejecting the bombast of 80s pop, the late singer-songwriter’s track has endured, and thereby perfectly captures the nostalgic feelings at the heart of Christmas

• Chris Rea, rock and blues singer-songwriter, dies aged 74
• Chris Rea – a life in pictures

Britain isn’t a great island for road songs. It’s not big enough, really, for you to hit the road and drive. And if you try, you may just end up stuck in traffic on the A1, where the late Chris Rea found himself in Christmas 1978, his wife behind the wheel of her Mini, he beside her as they tried to get from Abbey Road Studios in London to their home in Middlesbrough, 220 miles away.

He wrote the song on a whim, scribbling down the lyrics whenever passing headlights illuminated the car interior (as he told this paper’s Dave Simpson in 2016), then put it away with his other unfinished scraps when he got home. Eight years later, he paired his lyric with some jazzy chords he’d written and a song was born. At first, he shoved it on a B-side, but in 1988 he rerecorded it for a compilation, put it out as a single, and … it was not an instant hit. Instead it was a slow burner that went from radio playlists and department store PA systems into people’s hearts over many years.

• Milan v Como was intended for Perth on 8 February

• Asian Football Confederation wanted to impose conditions

The proposal to play a Serie A match between Milan and Como in Perth, Australia, has been cancelled due to football sanctions and conditions imposed by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The game was set to become the first major European domestic league fixture to be played outside its home country but will now not go ahead because of the financial risks and last-minute complications.

Lilac Hill warmup, Alex Carey’s glovework and Pat Cummins’ control of Joe Root are key parts of the story

It’s not a complete exaggeration to say that Australia won the 2025-26 Ashes on 15 October 2024. That was when Cricket Australia announced the schedule for the series: Perth first, Brisbane second. Starting the series on the bounciest, most Kryptonicious pitches in Australia – and the only major venues where England haven’t won a Test since 1986-87 – was a masterstroke, especially as Australia also had a day-night advantage at the Gabba. By the time England reached more batting-friendly climes, many of their batters already had scrambled brains.

Lisbon court rules the posters could incite hatred and tells party leader Andre Ventura to remove them within 24 hours

The leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party has been ordered to remove street posters attacking the Roma community, after a Lisbon court ruled they were discriminatory and could incite hatred.

Judge Ana Barao said the posters’ wording “attacks an ethnic minority” and she gave Andre Ventura 24 hours to remove them or face a daily fine of €2,500 (£2,200) per poster.

A side that once looked resilient has collapsed into historic futility, with Wolves now facing the grim task of avoiding the worst season English league football has ever seen

Saturday’s defeat at home to Brentford means Wolves have taken just two points for 17 games. No side in the entire history of English league football, in any division, has ever made a worse start than that. To reach 11 points, the record low for a Premier League season set by Derby County in 2007-08, would require a significant improvement.

How can this have happened? Wolves finished 16th last season, recovering after a dismal start. When Vitor Pereira took over on 19 December last year, they were second bottom on nine points from 16 games. They picked up 23 points from the final 22 games of the season and effectively ended any prospect of relegation with a run of six successive victories in the spring. How can a team go from averaging near enough a point a game to a 10th of that? The drop-off is extraordinary.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

Guardian investigation reveals at least 119 direct attacks on hospitals and delivery wards since start of wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan

• ‘I can’t forget the horror’: a young mother on giving birth twice during the Gaza war

Thirty women were sheltering in the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, on 28 October when the massacre began. Some had just given birth and others were still in labour.

Working at the hospital that night, lab technician Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, 28, was one of the few known survivors. “I heard the voices of women and children screaming,” he says. “They were killing everybody inside the hospital. Those of us who were able to run, did.”