Trump administration claws back billions from Minnesota, California and should consider a lottery system to give back that money to disadvantaged Americans.
Newly unsealed documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens.
Trump deploys former ICE director Tom Homan to Minnesota as immigration enforcement tensions escalate amid sanctuary policies and public safety concerns.
Trump administration fires back at Arlington County official who urged residents to call 911 when they see ICE agents conducting enforcement operations.
⚽ News and previews heading into the weekend’s action ⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail Dominic
Marc Skinner has said Manchester United are unlikely to sign any more players in this transfer window, as Tuesday’s WSL deadline day approaches, and that the club are pleased with the early business they did this winter.
United added Hanna Lundkvist, Lea Schüller and Ellen Wangerheim, while Geyse and Rachel Williams left and the full-back Hannah Blundell was among those to go on loan.
“Right now, there’s nobody that’s imminent,” the head coach said before Sunday’s meeting with Liverpool. “I’m really happy with the work that we’ve done as a collective, in this window, but we’re still working towards summer targets as well.
“Unless there’s a miracle, probably not [any more signings in this window], at this moment. We’ll wait and see, but right now we’re in a space where nobody is imminently coming in.
“We’ve prepped and we’ve done our work early [and] you can already see them coming up to speed.”
Forgive me for picking out my own passage in the Rumour Mill. This, on clubs’ summer plans, I found extraordinary. We’ll wait to see if any of it comes to pass.
Plenty of clubs have seemingly given up the ghost on the notoriously tricky January window and are already plotting their summer swoops. In totally-feasible transfer news, Chelsea want Jude Bellingham, Arsenal and Liverpool are chasing Eduardo Camavinga and Real Madrid, in this scenario having been gutted and stripped of their best assets, are targeting … Diogo Dalot.
Ukrainian president doubles down on target for accession despite pushback from some European leaders
Separately, the Ukrainian air force reported that Russia launched over 100 drones and just one missile at Ukraine overnight.
On Thursday, US president Donald Trump has claimed that Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for one week after he issued a personal appeal to the Russian leader due to the extreme cold in Ukraine.
We’ll have a bit of a delay before the next semi-final as the spectators leave and the night session ticket holders come in.
So what does this mean for Sinner and Djokovic? Well if either of them goes on to win the title on Sunday, they owe Zverev a huge favour for beating up Alcaraz tonight. “It’s one of the most demanding matches I have ever played,” says Alcaraz, whose brother then helps him carry his bags as he hobbles off court. Alcaraz looks like Djokovic did after his five-hour, 53-minute 2012 Australian Open final against Nadal; absolutely spent. But Alcaraz has somehow got to find a way to play another match in less than two days’ time.
After a very hard landing into fame in the 00s, he decided to take a softer approach – and hit on a winning formula for classic comedy. The star talks his fantastical new show Small Prophets, his obsession with middle-age and being ‘weird-looking’
In Small Prophets, BBC Two’s new six-parter, Mackenzie Crook plays Gordon, the manager of a massive DIY store. Sometimes it feels as if we’re falling through time, because it’s like watching Gareth, Crook’s breakthrough part in The Office, a quarter of a century on. “Pedantic and jobsworthy, he could be Gareth grown up, just with more disappointment, without the West Country accent,” says Crook. “I wrote Gordon as a monster, but by the end, I was actually quite fond of him.”
In person, Crook has a jumpy, modest energy. When he was young, on screen it used to look like nerves, but now looks more like curiosity. He has a surprising number of tattoos, but maybe I should stop being surprised when people have those.
The January transfer window is about to close (surely it cannot slam shut with the same melodrama as its summer counterpart) and, as always, certain clubs are getting a little twitchy as the deadline looms. A fine example is Raheem Sterling who has not kicked a competitive football in eight months yet somehow finds himself on more wishlists than a Tamagotchi in the late nineties.
Seven “Champions League level” clubs are said to be keen on Sterling – now a free agent after he and Chelsea went their separate ways – most notably Tottenham, whose manager Thomas Frank is ‘on board’ with the idea of signing the 31-year-old. Heaven knows Frank needs a boost from somewhere. Having represented Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in a frankly remarkable career to date, a move to Spurs would leave Raheem with just one more to complete the big six set. Old Trafford in 2028, here we come. Napoli, Juventus and Burnley are also linked with Sterling, Champions League level clubs all.
(Ronin Rhythm) The composer’s first unaccompanied album turns extended harp technique into music of intimacy, restraint and conviction – inspired by the women who shaped her world
When the London jazz festival ran online only in 2020, an enthralling livestreamed performance by Swiss harpist Julie Campiche’s avant-jazz ensemble was a startling highlight, introducing UK audiences to a virtuoso instrumentalist and composer who was already turning heads in Europe. Campiche plucked guitar, zither and east Asian-style sounds from the harp, mingled with vocal loops, classical music, Nordic ambient jazz and more. You might call her soundscape magical or otherworldly if it didn’t coexist with a campaigner’s political urgency on environmental and social issues. But Campiche is too much of a visionary to overwhelm the eloquence of pure sound with polemic, as her new album, the unaccompanied Unspoken, confirms more than ever.
Campiche’s extra-musical agenda here is a celebration of sisterhood, dedicated to women in public and private lives who have inspired her. The opening Anonymous is built around a Virginia Woolf quote – “for most of history, ‘anonymous’ was a woman” – repeated by a chorus of women’s voices in different languages building to a clamour. Grisélidis Réal is named after the Swiss artist and writer who took her physical and mental life to every precipice, including sex work, expressed in gently lyrical harp lines around the spooky sounds of footsteps clicking on pavements.
By ousting his top generals, Xi Jinping has secured absolute control but also hollowed out the command structure preparing for possible war over Taiwan.
Gen. Zhang Youxia was China’s top general until he was placed under investigation in a stunning escalation of Xi Jinping’s purge of the military elite.
Leonkoro Quartet (Alpha) The young quartet givea fiercely alert account of Berg, Webern and Schulhoff – beautifully capturing Vienna’s prewar musical fault lines
Founded in Berlin in 2019, the Leonkoro Quartet is no stranger to the UK having won first prize and nine special awards at the 2022 Wigmore Hall international string quartet competition. In their new disc they explore three composers who embody the musical cutting-edge that might have been encountered in the Austrian capital either side of the Great War.
Alban Berg and Anton Webern took Schoenberg’s theories of free atonality and the 12-tone system in rather different directions. Berg’s Lyric Suite was a fervent outpouring to his mistress, and the quartet aptly captures the moody sensuality of this intense, intricate music. The Andante Amoroso swoons; the Allegro Misterioso tiptoes on muted strings; the Presto Delirando is positively coital. The playing is unflinching and seethes with imaginative detail.
American stars meet at sold-out Madison Square Garden
Stevenson rises to 140lb in bid for title in fourth division
López enters in rare underdog role that suits his history
When Teófimo López and Shakur Stevenson come together on Saturday night inside the big room at Madison Square Garden, a junior welterweight title and a claim to American fistic supremacy will be on the line before a sold-out crowd of more than 20,000 spectators.
Two of the finest US-born fighters of their generation are set to collide in a delicious matchup that pits volatility against control, power against precision, chaotic ambition against measured discipline. Both men arrive as world champions across multiple weight classes, both are 28 and prime, and both view the contest as a gateway to pound-for-pound recognition and the untold opportunities it confers.
Construction works for Milano Cortina have been a lightning rod for suspected infiltration by organised crime, but anti-mafia groups have adopted an approach that will help future hosts
Early on the morning of 8 October, the Provincial Command of the Carabinieri in Belluno put out a press release announcing three arrests, in the culmination of a year-long investigation they called “Operation Reset”. Two of the three were brothers, were both known members of the notorious SS Lazio Ultras, the Irriducibili, it was stated in the release, and had boasted of having personal ties to former boss Fabrizio Piscitelli, who was murdered in 2019. The crimes the brothers had been arrested on suspicion of had not been committed in Rome, but 400 miles north, in the small alpine ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo, high in the Dolomites, and home, for the next three weeks, to the Winter Olympics.
The brothers are still awaiting trial, but the local public prosecutor’s office has alleged that they were running an operation in three phases. The first was taking control of the drug distribution network in Cortina, the second was to take control of three local nightclubs, and the third was to extort the local council into awarding the construction contracts for the works being done for the Games. Among the evidence the prosecutor says it possesses is a note on one of the brothers’ phones saying: “We want the cemetery area for the garages, the former pastry shop, the slip road and the new ring road, the construction of the tourist village.”
The Uzbek GM, 21, has a half-point edge, but rivals from his own country, the Netherlands, Germany, the US, and Turkey are all within one point
Nodirbek Abdusattorov still has a narrow lead as the “chess Wimbledon” at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee heads into its final three rounds this weekend, but the Uzbek, 21, is battling to stay ahead of a quintet of rivals after being held to two draws and a loss in his last three games.
Leading scores after 10 of the 13 rounds are Abdusattorov 6.5, Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan), Matthias Blübaum (Germany) and Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands) 6, Hans Niemann (US) and Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus (Turkey) 5.5. The world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, is among three players on 5.
Ahead of the centenary of Davis’s birth, musicians including Terence Blanchard and John Scofield analyse his brilliance: from his soft phrasing and spiritual feel to his raspy cussing and leather outfits
The architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959’s Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to “cool” jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop. Always honing his ear for fresh talent, he turned his bands into incubators for rising artists, providing early starts for the pianists Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, saxophonists Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, and drummers Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette.
With 2026 marking the centenary of Davis’s birth, I asked several of his surviving collaborators to select his greatest recordings and discuss his enduring influence, including the 95-year-old Rollins, who played with Davis in the 1950s; the guitarist John Scofield and the saxophonist Bill Evans, who both played with Davis in his 80s fusion groups; and several contemporary jazz stars.
(Nettwerk) The quartet edge away from their trademark sound with louder guitars and bolder intentions – but their reinvention is more gradual than radical
Yumi Zouma are breaking up with dream pop. After a decade together, the New Zealand four-piece have honed an airy, lush, lightly melancholic sound – but now they want change. “More extreme everything, more boldness,” guitarist Charlie Ryder has said of fifth record No Love Lost to Kindness, written during the band’s “most friction-filled creative period” to date. While it’s true that their latest singles are faster, louder and more distorted, these bright, pretty tracks will rattle only their longest-serving fans.
Bashville on the Sugar locks eyes with an ex on the subway and rushes with Olivia Campion’s breathless drumming, while Blister flips the band’s knack for whistleable melodies into pogoing, enjoyably predictable pop punk that professes “venom and rage” but is far more fun than furious. Drag begins as a genuine switch-up, with threatening bass and an uncharacteristically deadpan performance from singer Christie Simpson as she picks apart an ADHD diagnosis, but soon blossoms into billowy, even dreamy, layered vocals and luminous guitar.
In the first part of our series on digital politics, we look at how centrists have lost ground fighting disinformation – when the real battle is over emotion and attention
Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London
There’s a strange tendency to describe social media as something other people use – those young people on TikTok, that conspiratorial uncle on Facebook, the rightwing trolls on X. In truth, we’re all online now. The number of global social media users surpassed 5 billion in 2024. To put that into perspective there are 8 billion people on the planet.
The internet has totally transformed the ways in which we communicate and share information. First the internet came for print. As free online content began outcompeting subscription newspapers, publishers briefly found new audiences on Facebook, only to see referral traffic plummet after the platform began suppressing posts with external links.
Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London
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