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Manchester City then. They’re having quite the January window, aren’t they?
First Antoine Semenyo and now, seemingly, Marc Guéhi. The latter has not yet completed his move from Crystal Palace, so obviously won’t play in the derby today, but only the final formalities remain before he joins Pep Guardiola’s super-squad.
‘Hands off Greenland’ rallies have been organised in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg, Odense and Nuuk
During a wide-ranging 45-minute nearly uninterrupted address in the White House East Room on Friday, Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that do not “go along” with his plans to annex Greenland.
Though his comments on the matter were brief, it was the second time this week the president used the threat of tariffs – he had previously said that he would impose a 25% tax on imports to the US from countries that do business with Iran amid a brutal crackdown by its regime that has left thousands dead and imprisoned tens of thousands.
In a social media post, the former Australia batter revealed he had been given a ‘50/50 chance of surviving’ and thanked medical staff and well-wishers
Damien Martyn has declared he is back after overcoming a meningitis scare, which he said took his life out of his hands.
In a heartfelt post on his social media accounts, the former Australia batter said he was given a 50% chance to live after battling the disease, which causes an infection and swelling of fluid and membranes around the brain and spinal cord. The 54-year-old was put into an induced coma on 27 December and was fighting for his life in a Gold Coast intensive care unit until he woke eight days later.
After losing her father to alcohol addiction, author Sophie Calon turned to writing – and found clarity, connection and hope in other stories of relapse and recovery
On the night of Boxing Day 2021, my dad’s body was found near a Cardiff hostel. His death, at 55, was as sudden as it was not. For years, alcoholism had been changing the shape of his heart.
He died less than a mile from his old office; top law firm, equity partner. Four miles from our once tight-knit home in a leafy neighbourhood. He had lost both his family and his job in 2019. Raised in Barry, working class, he had been proud of the beautiful life he had built for us. Others thought he “had it all”. He was widely adored, but drinking made him volatile. He was homeless and often behind bars in his final two years.
Multi-day benders that deplete your mates’ annual leave and wallets are a no-no. Keep it cheeky, cheap and – crucially – enjoyable
A stag or hen do should be a straightforward, fun night celebrating a good friend moving into a new chapter of their life. Instead, thanks to films such as The Hangover and Bridesmaids, as well as the general Americanisation of what a “bachelor” or “bachelorette” party should be, we’ve ended up with too many overindulgent, wildly inconvenient and quite frankly underwhelming send-offs to our friends who are getting married.
Somewhere along the way, they’ve morphed into three-day tests of stamina and disposable income. Groomsmen bankrupting themselves on long weekends in Vegas that are billed as obligatory for anyone who wants to keep calling themselves a friend. Injuries sustained during ill-advised human pyramids on Spanish beaches. Weddings called off after drunken lapses of judgments in strip clubs. To add insult to injury, in 2023, a survey by Aviva found the average person spends £779 attending a stag or hen in the UK – and that goes up to £1,208 when it’s held abroad. Consequently, they’ve become gruelling and – crucially – not even fun any more.
The former Tory MP and The Rest Is Politics host on a dinosaur he’d bring back to life, being thin-skinned and hating his bandy legs
Born in Hong Kong, Rory Stewart, 53, served as Conservative MP for Penrith and The Border from 2010. He was secretary of state for international development when he launched an unsuccessful bid to become Tory leader in 2019. Later that year, he resigned from the party to stand as an independent in the London mayoral elections. He co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is Politics and is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books including The Places in Between and Politics on the Edge. His latest is Middleland. He is married with two children and lives in London.
What is your greatest fear?
I become very anxious if I think I’ve hurt someone.
British No 1’s first game follows men’s match on Sunday
‘I’m just trying to focus and turn it around for tomorrow’
Emma Raducanu has criticised the Australian Open’s “very difficult” scheduling but remains focused on her game after being lined up to compete in a late-night slot on the opening day.
Raducanu will play her first-round match against Mananchaya Sawangkaew on Sunday night, leaving the British No 1 with minimal time to adjust to the conditions at Melbourne Park after competing in Hobart. With the Sunday start, the Australian Open’s first round is now split across three days, so Raducanu’s first match could have been played on Monday.
Mark Davis, running in Florida, says he bought domain because Republican party had gone ‘full fascist’
A Florida congressional candidate says he bought the online domain nazis.us and set it up to redirect visitors to the US Department of Homeland Security, under whom federal agents have been carrying out brutal immigration crackdowns at the behest of the Trump administration.
Mark Davis, who says he is running as a Democrat for Republican Vern Buchanan’s seat in November’s midterms, took responsibility for the ploy in a Friday X post – as polling showed most Americans believe the killing of Minneapolis woman Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent demonstrated problems with the way ICE has been operating.
Sinner is the Spaniard’s clear rival but Swiatek, Rybakina, Bencic, Gauff and others are in Sabalenka’s way
Everyone wants to know exactly why Carlos Alcaraz split up with Juan Carlos Ferrero. It was, by some margin, one of the most surprising coaching separations in the history of tennis, a decision that came with no clear warning immediately after the greatest season of Alcaraz’s career. The discourse has since ranged from his alleged determination to reside exclusively at home in El Palmar, Murcia and train in his home academy, to potential discontent at Ferrero’s absences from numerous tournaments last year.
The coach has offered his own perspective in interviews, repeatedly expressing his sadness at a split he did not want. Alcaraz, however, has opted for silence. His mandatory pre-tournament press conference at the Australian Open on Friday marked his first time publicly speaking about the split, and the 22-year-old offered as little information as possible on the reasons behind it.
Goaded by my colleague into a half-marathon, I can’t say I’m enjoying the training but I’m slowly improving, and at least Great Ormond Street benefits
My name is Barry and I’m a runner. As a clinically obese 52-year-old Irishman who regularly binge drinks (the NHS’s joyless definition, not my own), I would love to be able to say I took up running for health reasons but that would be a lie. Truth be told, I was railroaded into it by my Football Weekly associate Max Rushden, who publicly challenged me to run the London Landmarks Half-Marathon after I had belittled the efforts of a friend who completed it by asking: “How hard can running 13 miles be?” To cut an already short story shorter, in April I hope to plod from Whitehall, past Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament across Westminster Bridge, along Victoria Embankment and on to Trafalgar Square in the company of more than 20,000 fellow runners, most of whom should finish in front of me if they have so much as a modicum of shame.
I will be running for Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity, not because of any particularly heartwarming or tragic link I have to this wonderful hospital, but because the bloke in charge of their fundraising heard the gauntlet being thrown down and asked me first. Presumably, that’s why he’s the boss. In return for the £25,096 raised thus far due in no small part to the astonishing generosity of the Football Weekly audience, the charity has sent me a 100% recycled polyester men’s turquoise running singlet bearing a teardrop-shaped logo in which a small and presumably unwell child is smiling and crying simultaneously. It’s 2XL, the biggest size they had available. I don’t think it’s supposed to be skintight.
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At 17 Niki vowed to give her newborn son, born blind and profoundly disabled, the best life she could. Thirty years on she and Jimmy are travelling Australia in a Toyota Troopy, balancing hard-won freedom with constant care
Outside a supermarket in Exmouth, a small town 1,250km north of Perth, a man notices Niki carrying Jimmy on her back. She is 152cm tall and he weighs 45kg. “He should be carrying you!” the man says.
Strangers often misjudge Niki’s son, who is 30 but looks, she says, “like he’s eight or nine”. Jimmy is blind and has panhypopituitarism, a hormonal disorder that affects fewer than one in 100,000 Australians each year. This condition halted his development, leaving him unable to walk or speak, with severe intellectual disability.
Niki hoists Jimmy on to her back for a walk along the beach in Exmouth. She has always carried him
The US president vowed to ‘end childhood cancer’. But his administration is dismantling the search for a cure and sending families scrambling for treatment
For seven years, Jenn Janosko cared for children with cancer on the ninth floor of New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital.
Yes, ‘corridor care’ horrors persist, yet statistics show my timely, efficient treatment wasn’t a matter of fortune but quite ordinary
It was a bad start to the new year. Slipping on ice, I fell and broke my right wrist, so now I can’t hold a pen with my writing hand. But my experience of the NHS was a good reminder of a few facts.
Heading to the nearest A&E, I expected one of those 12-hour waits and corridors lined with trolleys of the near-dead, rowdy with drunken and psychotic mayhem. The Guardian recently found that violent incidents recorded by 212 NHS trusts in England rose from 91,175 in 2022-23 to 104,079 in 2024-25, the equivalent of about 285 cases reported every day. So I was ready for whatever. Notices warned that there would be zero tolerance of abuse of staff.
My jaw was left agape by this rich, moving spinoff. Its two lead characters have the making of a classic comic double act
The Game of Thrones franchise has fruited again, like an abundant oak. Where’s left to go? A startling opening, in which a lumbering oaf takes a dump behind a tree, gives us a clue. Chronologically, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Monday 19 January, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) sits between the juggernaut original and its courtly prequel, House of the Dragon. Tonally, it’s in a world of its own.
That oaf eventually gets a name: Dunk. Contrary to expectation, Dunk is a knight. Specifically, a “hedge knight”, a lower-status category whose kind cannot afford their keep and must sleep under trees. “Any knight can make a knight” we are reminded, by simply dubbing them. This lack of gatekeeping has resulted in a class system in which highborn valiants scorn their ignoble brethren. They are knights in name only, and only just. Of course, there’s nothing just about this.
Being able to understand the comedian talking in French in his Dress to Kill show led to me learning several languages and working on the continent
Until the age of 13, I had never taken much interest in school French lessons. I had visited the country a couple of times, on family driving holidays to Brittany and Normandy, but my parents did all the talking and I didn’t see the point of learning le and la, soixante-dix or quatre-vingts. It was just something on the curriculum that I had to do.
Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard’s standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I’d caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny. I was young and some of the material was probably too rude but I enjoyed the surreal and absurd comedy, impressions and mad tangents.
From Clarissa Strozzi and Charles V to Tom Parker and Walt Disney, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 What did LA plumber George Holliday videotape on 3 March 1991? 2 Named after a Greek god, what is Earth’s largest land biome? 3 Abigail, in November 2015, was the first what? 4 Which literary character says, “Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books!”? 5 Which Play School presenter sits in the House of Lords? 6 What cricket fixture was played from 1806 until 1962? 7 Which rescue organisation is based in Poole, Dorset? 8 The Kanneh-Mason siblings are famous names in what field? What links:
9 Babington; Parry; Ridolfi; Throckmorton? 10 Bleu; saignant; à point; bien cuit? 11 Basilisk lizard; fishing spider; jacana; pond skater; Clark’s grebe? 12 Virginia (8); Ohio (7); New York (5); Arkansas, California, Hawaii (one each)? 13 Enhanced Fujita; Modified Mercalli; Saffir-Simpson; Torino? 14 Ben Bradlee; Walt Disney; Jim Lovell; Colonel Tom Parker; Chesley Sullenberger? 15 Clarissa Strozzi; Charles V with a dog; Philip II; Pope Paul III and his grandsons?
In historic speech to mark UN’s 80th anniversary, secretary general makes impassioned plea for multilateralism and international law amid drastic US funding cuts
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, will warn on Saturday of the peril posed by “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in an address to mark the 80th anniversary of the UN’s first major meeting.
Speaking in London’s Methodist Central Hall – the site where eight decades earlier delegates from 51 countries came together for the inaugural session of the general assembly – the UN head will make an impassioned plea for the virtues of multilateralism and international law to prevail during a period of deepening global uncertainty.
As international treaty comes into force, bill to make it law in Britain is moving at ‘glacial pace’ through parliament
The UK risks being shut out of a historic oceans summit because parliament has failed to ratify the UN’s high seas treaty, environmental charities and campaigners have warned.
The high seas treaty, formally known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, comes into force on Saturday, after two decades of talks.
A warming, scoop-it-up tomato and egg dish a bit like shakshuka, but the zippy lemony yoghurt and harissa give away its Turkish roots
I am not the type of person to say, “These eggs will change your life”, but these eggs changed my life, so they may also make a sizeable dent in yours. The recipe is based on (but not authentic to) the Turkish dish menemen. There is much to love about these eggs, not least how magnificently delicious they are and how fun it is to scoop them up with hot flatbread. On a practical note, meanwhile, they can be eaten at any mealtime and, if not finished, reheated later. Which, if you love eggs and leftovers as much as I do, is a (small) dream come true.
Bruised and tainted by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the Labour peer still has admirers – and the drive to go again
The BBC’s interview with Peter Mandelson had offered ample evidence of the Labour peer’s “formidable political brain”, according to Louis Mosley, UK head of the US data firm, Palantir Technologies.
An indefensible error of judgment had been made by Mandelson, Mosley said in a panel discussion with Laura Kuenssberg after the airing of some of the 30-minute interview on her Sunday morning political show, but “he is a masterful interpreter of Trump and we now live in a world where that man will determine much of what happens, and we need people who can be that translation function”.
How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality, with deadly consequences
Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,” she says.
The email was in Finnish. It was jarringly polite. “We are contacting you because you have used Vastaamo’s therapy and/or psychiatric services,” it read. “Unfortunately, we have to ask you to pay to keep your personal information safe.” The sender demanded €200 in bitcoin within 24 hours, otherwise the price would go up to €500 within 48 hours. “If we still do not receive our money after this, your information will be published for everyone to see, including your name, address, phone number, social security number and detailed records containing transcripts of your conversations with Vastaamo’s therapists or psychiatrists.”
Connexion
