US president announces efforts being made to strike a deal having earlier threatened to stop island importing oil

Washington is negotiating with Havana’s leadership to strike a deal, Donald Trump has said, days after threatening Cuba’s reeling economy with a virtual oil blockade.

“Cuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up. So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.

• Final: Arsenal 3-2 Corinthians (aet)

• Smith 15; Wubben-Moy 58; Foord 104; Zanotti 21, Albuquerque 90+6 pen

The most decorated women’s club in England made more history at the Emirates stadium on Sunday night, Arsenal securing a 3-2 win over the Copa Libertadores champions Corinthians in extra time to see them crowned winners of the inaugural Fifa Women’s Champions Cup.

They were made to work for their victory, the Brazilians twice coming from behind to force another 30 minutes of football, but it was somewhat of an inevitability. The Uefa Champions League winners benefited from being mid-season with players at full fitness, in contrast to Corinthians being in their pre-season and Concacaf Champions Cup winners Gotham FC in their off-season, and from the decision to hold the tournament in London, and play the final at the Emirates. This was a competition set up for European success and Arsenal delivered. They are officially the world’s best club and they have a nice trophy to prove it. The 13-point gap, albeit with a game in hand, between them and WSL leaders Manchester City though, says otherwise.

Rotterdam film festival
The Repo Man director relocates Gogol’s surreal novella to the old west in what he says will be his final film

English film-maker Alex Cox comes riding into town with this jauntily odd and surreal western which he has indicated will be his swansong, shot on the rugged plains of Almeria in Spain and also Arizona. Cox himself is the star – an elegant, dapper presence – and his co-writer is veteran spaghetti western actor Gianni Garko.

The story has obvious relevance to contemporary America, and a flash-forward makes some of this clear. But it is also inspired by the classic novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, a mysterious parable of greed and vanity about a man who travels around offering to buy the souls of dead serfs on various estates in pre-revolutionary Russia so landowners can lower their tax bills, but plans to claim that they are still alive and therefore pass himself off as a wealthy man.

• Government gives approval to compete in tournament

• Pakistan will not play India in Colombo on 15 February

Pakistan will boycott their Twenty20 World Cup match against India on 15 February, the Pakistan government said on Sunday while approving the team’s participation in the tournament.

“The government … grants approval to the Pakistan cricket team to participate in the World T20, however, the Pakistan cricket team shall not take the field in the match against India,” the post on the government’s X account said.

• Spaniard beat Serbian to complete career grand slam at 22

• Alcaraz also youngest man to win seven grand slam titles

Novak Djokovic called Carlos Alcaraz a tennis legend at the age of 22 after the Spaniard became the youngest male player in history to complete the career grand slam by defeating Djokovic 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-5 in the Australian Open final.

The world No 1 had entered this tournament seeking to complete his collection of grand slam titles after previously winning each of the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open twice. He played a mature match against Djokovic, the fourth seed, maintaining his composure after a blistering opening set from the Serbian to win in four sets. Alcaraz is also the youngest man in the open era to win seven grand slam titles.

At the end of a wild occasion, this the definition of the game of two halves, it was difficult to state the case for Manchester City’s Premier League title-winning aspirations with any confidence. The manner of their second-half capitulation saw to that. If they were impressive before the interval, they were so brittle thereafter, blown off course after Tottenham stirred. Pep Guardiola was beside himself with frustration on the touchline.

The City manager has now seen his team drop seven points since the turn of the year with goals they have conceded in the second half of matches. After a fourth draw in six league matches, a run that has included the defeat by Manchester United, City find themselves six points behind the leaders, Arsenal.

Deputy US attorney general says victims ‘want to be made whole’ but that doesn’t mean ‘we can just create evidence’

The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, the point person on the Trump administration’s Epstein files release, told ABC News on Sunday that prosecutors’ review of the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case “is over”.

Separately, in comments to CNN about Epstein, Blanche said that “victims want to be made whole” after surviving the scheme attributed to the late convicted sex offender and which led to a 20-year prison sentence for Maxwell beginning in 2022.

• 2nd T20i: England, 173-4, bt Sri Lanka, 189-5, by 6wkts (DLS)

• Banton 54*, Brook hits 36 off 12 balls for 2-0 series lead

Numerous apologies, serious scrutiny and, still, he goes and does that. Harry Brook’s 12-ball 36 helped England chase down a revised target of 168 in the second Twenty20 international against Sri Lanka, securing a series victory.

England had initially been set 190, but a rain break changed the equation; when Brook emerged England needed 87 from 7.5 overs. He put on an exhibition over the off side to turn the chase his team’s way. While the captain’s knock was brief, Tom Banton made his case for a starting spot at the T20 World Cup, putting aside his tough time in the field to stay the course with an excellent, unbeaten 54. He has three red-inkers in successful chases since joining the T20 middle order last summer.

Speaker Mike Johnson is ‘convinced’ the impasse over homeland security funding will be resolved by Tuesday

The ongoing partial US government shutdown is expected to continue into early next week, with no reopening likely before Tuesday, if what federal officials on both sides of the country’s political aisle are saying is any indication.

House Democrats have so far said they are refusing to guarantee the votes needed to speed passage of a funding measure that would restore government operations.

Europe’s India and Vietnam deals signal a historic shift away from coercion towards cooperation that respects developing countries’ sovereignty

For the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s trade pact with India was the “mother of all deals”. Seen from the other end of the telescope, it looked like the mouse of all deals, with just €4bn (£3.5bn) in tariff reductions – a rounding error in a €180bn trading relationship. But that misses the point: this is about economic heavyweights resetting the terms of their cooperation because of Donald Trump’s use of tariffs as a tool of economic and political compulsion.

Last week marked a turning point. In upgrading ties with Vietnam in the wake of its India deal, Europe is no longer trying to lock Asian partners into fixed industrial roles. The EU wants Hanoi to move into hi-tech production. That shift will probably displace Vietnam’s labour-intensive manufacturing elsewhere. India is an obvious beneficiary, able to absorb that demand.

⚽️ Updates from the 4.30pm (GMT) kick-off
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An email from Spurs fan SF Devereux:

As well as those eight you mentioned (Maddison, Kulusevski, Kudus, van de Ven, Bentancur, Bergvall, Porro and Davies), we’re also without Richarlison, Kevin Danso, Djed Spence and Wilson Odobert. We just need a goalkeeper to go down injured today and we’ll have a pretty competitive, tactically balanced XI missing, with a couple of options available to come off the bench.

After stories revealed high levels of contamination in neighborhood around factory processing US toxic waste, government announces sweeping array of tactics

The Mexican government has announced it will pursue a sweeping array of tactics to combat industrial pollution, from $4.8m in fines against a plant processing US hazardous waste to the rollout of a new industrial air-monitoring system, following investigations by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, a Mexican investigative unit.

Those stories revealed high levels of heavy-metal contamination in the neighborhood around the factory, Zinc Nacional, in the Monterrey metropolitan area, and showed the broader extent of industrial pollution in the region, linked to Monterrey’s role in manufacturing and recycling goods for the US market.

Employees of Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, DTEK, were travelling about 40 miles from frontline, says police

A Russian drone attack on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 people, officials said.

The bus was driving about 40 miles (65km) from the frontline, according to police. Images published by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed what appeared to be an empty bus, its side windows shattered and windscreen hanging from the front.

Exclusive: Dr Susan Gilby, who won £1.4m bullying payout, says whistleblower protections must be strengthened

Patients are being put at risk by NHS bosses launching “sham investigations” into whistleblowers to shut down concerns, a former hospital chief executive who won a £1.4m bullying claim has said.

Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby case. She was awarded the payout – one of the biggest in NHS history – last month after a tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about alleged bullying and harassment by the chair of the hospital board.

• ICE agents will be in Milan for opening ceremony

• LA Games chair named in new batch of Epstein files

The International Olympic Committee has admitted that it is “distracting and sad” that the buildup to the Winter Olympics has been dominated by the deployment of ICE agents to Milan-Cortina and the appearance of the Los Angeles 2028 chair, Casey Wasserman, in the Epstein files. However Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president, insisted that once the Games begin on Friday, their “magic and spirit” would take over.

Coventry refused to comment directly on the protests in Milan against immigration and customs enforcement agents and said she hadn’t spoken to Wasserman, who has apologised for flirty emails sent to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 when he was married, which only surfaced on Friday.

Boy and his father back in Minneapolis after being detained by ICE and held in immigration facility for more than a week

A five-year-old boy and his father were back in Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they were held for more than a week, according to US House representative Joaquin Castro.

“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam,” Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a post on X. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”

Airports identified as biggest winners of government’s £4.3bn support package with Heathrow alone taking £900m discount

Struggling hotels, restaurants and nightclubs are calling for more financial help with business rates after it emerged that Heathrow is among the biggest beneficiaries of a multibillion-pound package of state support.

The UK’s biggest airport is in line for a discount of nearly £900m on its rates bill over the next three years. That is a fifth of the total £4.3bn “transitional relief” fund announced by the chancellor in the budget for all businesses facing big bill increases.

Benjamin Sesko will never forget the stoppage-time pirouette and finish in front of the Stretford End that burst Bernd Leno’s net and earned Manchester United a memorable victory over Fulham.

Just 180 seconds earlier Kevin had curled a peach of an equaliser past Senne Lammens that hushed the Old Trafford faithful and seemed to have grabbed a point for the visitors.

Melania, however, cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has reportedly beaten box office expectations and recorded the strongest start of any documentary in over a decade, taking $7m at the US box office during its lavishly-promoted opening weekend. But it also cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

And Amazon – which recently cut 16,000 corporate jobs – has been hit with criticism that making the documentary about the first lady, and paying so highly for it, was little more than a ploy to curry favor with her husband, Donald Trump, during his second presidency.

After six consecutive years on the throne, Chelsea’s reign as English women’s football’s top team is over. It was a chastening afternoon for Sonia Bompastor’s side at the Etihad Stadium where Manchester City dismantled the champions to open up a surely unassailable lead at the top of the Women’s Super League.

In an emphatic victory symbolic of the ongoing changing of the guard, Kerolin scored a hat-trick as the runaway leaders won 5-1 and their jubilant fans were taunting Chelsea with chants of “easy, easy, easy” before the end. City are coasting towards clinching their first title since 2016 and this latest victory almost left their head coach lost for words.

Aston Villa were already angry at trailing to 10-man Brentford and then, four minutes into the second half, those frustrations grew tenfold.

Tammy Abraham thought he had made a goalscoring return, his first Villa goal since winning promotion from the Championship seven years ago, but then it was all eyes on the referee, Tim Robinson, and the big screens flagging a review. At Stockley Park, the video assistant referee, Paul Tierney, rewound the clock by 19 seconds, to the moment Leon Bailey, at the opposite end of the pitch, was deemed to have failed to keep the ball in play.

The Pillion star gives a so-so episode his all with sketches targeting the tactics of ICE officers, Tarzan and Trump voters changing their minds

The thousandth episode of Saturday Night Live opens with White House “border czar” Tom Homan (Pete Davidson) addressing members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) amid the continuing chaos in Minneapolis. He stresses that ICE commander Greg Bovino wasn’t dismissed for doing a bad job, publicly lying about the killing of civilians, or even dressing like a Nazi, but because he “was filmed doing these things – the president no likey that.”

When asked what the mission in Minneapolis is, his ICE goons plead ignorance, causing him to flip out: “I’m Tom Homan, OK? I’m the separating families at the border guy. I’m the on film taking a $50,000 bribe guy, and you all are making me look like the upstanding, reasonable adult in the room. That’s crazy!”