Negotiations among EU leaders continue ahead of critical European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday
If you want to test various scenarios ahead of tomorrow’s debate on Russian frozen assets, you can use this handy calculator to see what is needed to get the proposal passed under the so-called qualified majority vote, or QMV (expect to hear a lot about it in the next 48 hours).
As we know, the opposition is led by Belgium and its outspoken prime minister Bart de Wever, with Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Malta also against. Italy has some doubts too (at least for now?), and Hungary, traditionally, is against anything that would help Ukraine.
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© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock
© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock
© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock
Fuelled by social media and a rare visit by Japan’s elite wrestlers, growing numbers of Britons are taking part in the centuries-old sport
It is a centuries-old Japanese tradition, steeped in ceremony, with roots deep in the ancient faith of Shintoism … and it also happens to be super popular on TikTok.
Sumo is finding a new audience in the UK and, not only that, many Britons are now donning a loincloth – or mawashi – and taking up the sport themselves. So much so, in fact, that amateur wrestlers from across the UK and Ireland are gearing up for the first ever British Isles Sumo Championships, due to be held in six weeks.
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© Photograph: Conor Maguire
© Photograph: Conor Maguire
© Photograph: Conor Maguire
This story of a teenage druid whose body is discovered in a peat bog has memorable moments – but its evocation of time and place is unconvincing
Anna North’s fourth book, Bog Queen, is a stranded or braided novel. First “a colony of moss” speaks – or rather, does not speak, but “if such a colony could tell the story of its life”, here’s some of what it might say. Then we have Agnes in 2018, American, tall, awkward, expert in forensic pathology and uncertain about everything else, including much of life in England. And then, in the first person, there is an iron age teenage girl, the druid of her village, riding towards a Roman town with her brother Aesu and friend Crab: “I had been druid for two seasons at that point and everyone said I was doing very well.”
Agnes has a post-doctoral fellowship in Manchester, from which she is summoned to the discovery of a body in a peat bog in Ludlow. The story shadows that of Lindow Man, found by peat harvesters in a bog near Wilmslow in 1984. In this novel, “Ludlow” is a town in which “the steel mill has closed down” leaving nothing but “[a] few shops, a Tesco, a Pizza Express”. It’s “the Gateway to the north” and a bus ride from Manchester. Novelists may of course invent time and place as they see fit, but it’s an odd choice to borrow the location of a bourgeois satellite town of Manchester and give it the name of a pretty medieval market town in the Welsh Marches, with a history that belongs to neither.
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© Photograph: Jenny Zhang
© Photograph: Jenny Zhang
© Photograph: Jenny Zhang
Some monikers are a perfect fit for the audience and reflect a player’s style of play; others are just too hot for TV
It’s September 2017, and a humble Challenge Tour quarter-final at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan is about to change the course of darting history. Luke Humphries and Martin Lukeman are two promising young throwers making their way on the Professional Darts Corporation’s second-tier tour, dreaming of the big time. But there’s one problem.
Humphries has styled himself “Cool Hand”, based on the 1967 Paul Newman film that to date he has still never watched. Lukeman, meanwhile, has decided to call himself “Cool Man”: less catchy, doesn’t really scan, but still just about works. And though the pair are firm friends, when the draw in Wigan pits them against each other, they decide that this best-of-nine match will settle matters once and for all. Winner gets the nickname. Loser has to think of something else.
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© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images
© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images
© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images
Leave support is falling. That’s an opportunity the PM should seize before pro-Europe challengers for the Labour leadership do
Seven years ago, it took just eight words to electrify the Labour conference and to show the party was falling out of love with its then leader. Although not exactly the kind of soaring oratory that gets reproduced on T-shirts, the words were greeted with wild cheering as most of the hall rose in spontaneous acclamation.
As the commotion died down, Keir Starmer, then Brexit spokesman, stood at the podium, blinking in surprise. He wasn’t really accustomed to his speeches having such an effect. All he had said was: “Nobody is ruling out remain as an option.” But context is everything.
Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
Plus: which European champions were top at Christmas, players giving each other presents and other festive trivia
Mail us with your questions and answers
“Just reading a book about Christmas No 1s,” begins Paul Savage. “The section about Wham!’s Last Christmas says Andrew Ridgeley was watching football at George Michael’s parents on a Sunday, when George got the melody and wandered off to record it upstairs. Greatness obviously awaited but I want to know: which match was it? It’s 1984, a Sunday and presumably on terrestrial TV. Was the second half worth Ridgeley not getting involved in the recording?”
Last Christmas by Wham! didn’t become a Christmas No 1 until 2023, having been kept off top spot by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas in 1984. As Paul mentioned, George Michael wrote the song in his childhood bedroom while his parents and Andrew Ridgeley watched football on TV downstairs.
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© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy
© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy
© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy
Usman Khawaja digs in for 82 while Archer has 3-29
After the pandemonium of Perth and Brisbane’s pink-ball palooza came an outbreak of more familiar looking Test cricket at Adelaide Oval. For the locals it was one to savour as their boy, Alex Carey, delivered a sparkling century at his home ground on an opening day that Australia edged.
Not that England, 2-0 down and clinging on in this series, could be too downbeat. Ben Stokes had lost what appeared an ominous toss and, though far from perfect, his bowlers kept plugging away in 35C heat. At stumps Australia were 326 for eight from 83 overs – runs on the board but surely short of ambitions when Pat Cummins got the choice first thing.
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© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters
© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters
© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters
© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian
© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian
© Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian
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