Updates from the men’s singles final at Melbourne Park
Big-match preview | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail Daniel

Our players are ready to come out. This is going to be special.

I keep saying it, but it bears repetition: we’re at the start of a golden age in women’s tennis. Sabalenka, Rybakina, Gauff, Swiatek and Osaka at their peaks, Anisimova coming, Andreeva getting there, then Mboko, Baptiste and Jovic on the match; ooooh yeah.

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© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

Mandelson, who was fired from the role as British Ambassador to the US in Sept. 2025, was seen wearing a dark t-shirt and briefs while talking to a woman wearing a robe. The woman’s face has been redacted.

Shakur Stevenson beat Teofimo Lopez to win a title in a fourth weight class, taking a unanimous decision to capture the WBO junior welterweight belt.

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Good morning and welcome to Sunday’s matchday live. Decent day in the Barclays yesterday wasn’t it? Goals aplenty. Let’s hope for more of the same today. We’ll be building up to four fixtures in the Premier League, five in the WSL and a Women’s Champions Cup double-header at Emirates Stadium, where Arsenal will be going for the inaugural title in the final.

Before we get to that, let’s have a quick look back at yesterday’s headlines…

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© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

The Winter Olympics was first staged in Italy, 70 years ago. We take a look back at some archive imagery from the settimana bianca

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© Photograph: Marka/Touring Club Italiano/Universal Images Group/Getty

© Photograph: Marka/Touring Club Italiano/Universal Images Group/Getty

© Photograph: Marka/Touring Club Italiano/Universal Images Group/Getty

Saturday’s home defeat leaves Rovers in relegation trouble amid pitch problems and fan anger with Venky’s

For Blackburn managers of the recent past, this has been the cruellest month. Jon Dahl Tomasson and John Eustace left the club in February 2024 and 2025 respectively when they became disconnected from the club’s unpopular owners, Venky’s. The problem for the current manager, Valérien Ismaël, is that fans are growing increasingly anxious for another change in the dugout as the cycle repeats itself. It has been another winter of discontent at Ewood Park.

After finishing seventh last season thanks to a late season surge under Ismaël, there will be no push for the top six this time. A scrappy defeat by Hull via Lewis Koumas’s 81st-minute winner made it one win in 15 games in all competitions, Rovers now mired in the relegation zone and the prospect of dropping to League One is alarmingly real with a three-point gap to West Brom in the last safe position.

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© Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

© Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

© Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

About 20 countries including G7 states in talks on rare earths including calls for US to guarantee minimum price

Ministers from the US, EU, UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will meet in Washington this week to discuss a strategic alliance over critical minerals.

The summit is being seen as a step to repair transatlantic ties fractured by a year of conflict with Donald Trump and pave the way for other alliances to help countries de-risk from China, including one centred on steel.

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© Photograph: AP

© Photograph: AP

© Photograph: AP

In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished – and how some progressives are turning the tide

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

• Part one: How liberals lost the internet

• Part two: How the right won the internet

There is politics before the internet, and politics after the internet. Liberals are floundering, the right are flourishing, and what of the left? Well, it’s in a dire state. This is despite the fact that the key political problems of the last decade – rising inequality and a cost of living crisis – are problems leftists claim they can solve. The trouble is, reactionaries and rightwingers steal their thunder online, quickly spreading messaging that blames scapegoats for structural problems. One reason for this is that platforms originally built to connect us with friends and followers now funnel us content designed to provoke emotional engagement.

Back when Twitter was still the “town square” and Facebook a humble “social network”, progressives had an advantage: from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street, voices excluded from mainstream media and politics could leverage online social networks and turn them into real-life ones, which at their most potent became street-level protests that toppled regimes and held capitalism to account. It seemed as though the scattered masses would become a networked collective empowered to rise up against the powerful.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

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© Illustration: Antoine Cossé/The Guardian

© Illustration: Antoine Cossé/The Guardian

© Illustration: Antoine Cossé/The Guardian

Dear Abby advises a concerned man whose high school sweetheart is likely the victim of a romance scam.

Five years after the junta’s coup, the civil war devastating Myanmar has reached a turning point. The military is carrying out large-scale counter-offensives across the country to reclaim territory seized by pro-democracy rebels of various ethnic and religious backgrounds

In Tanintharyi, the southernmost region of Myanmar, the local resistance has managed to contain the military. After five years of guerrilla warfare, the revolutionary youth there remain determined to restore democracy through armed struggle.

A long, narrow stretch of land at the southern tip of Myanmar, between the Andaman Sea to the west and Thailand to the east, Tanintharyi region is one of the areas where the resistance challenges the military’s authority. For decades, the region has been home to an armed rebellion led by the Karen ethnic minority, which operated mainly in the peripheral mountains.

Soldiers from the Karen National Union (KNU) inspect the ruins of a Buddhist monastery destroyed by a junta airstrike in Myeik district, Tanintharyi region

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© Photograph: Robin Tutenges/Hors Format

© Photograph: Robin Tutenges/Hors Format

© Photograph: Robin Tutenges/Hors Format

Pressure mounts after government said it would publish names of those killed during recent unrest

Calls are growing inside Iran for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would oversee the publication of the names of the deceased.

The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to head off claims that crimes against humanity have been committed and that as many as 30,000 Iranians have been killed. Iran’s official death toll released by the Martyr’s Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security services.

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© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

Late singer said kids loved his personality and wanted to touch and hug him, and ‘sometimes it got me into trouble’

As Michael Jackson saw it, children would become enamored with his personality as well as want to touch and hug him – and “sometimes it [got] me into trouble,” the late US pop superstar says in previously unheard audio recordings contained in a new documentary.

The UK’s Wonderhood Studios included the recordings of Jackson voicing those thoughts for a new four-episode documentary series beginning on Wednesday that explores his acquittal on child sexual abuse charges after a 14-week criminal trial near Los Angeles in 2005.

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© Photograph: Michael A Mariant/AP

© Photograph: Michael A Mariant/AP

© Photograph: Michael A Mariant/AP

From a bioluminescent nightime sea to rare wildlife, natural wonders are on tap in the Gothenburg archipelago

Out on the water, paddling across the straits between two small rocky islands, the dusk fades and the stars appear. Jennie has done her best to coach me in local geography before darkness, showing me the map with its patchwork of islands and bays, and describing the shape of each landmark. All to no avail. I’m more than happy to be lost at sea, leaning back in my kayak to gaze at the constellations, occasionally checking that the red light on the stern of her kayak is still visible ahead. We stop in the sheltered lee of an island and hear a hoot. “Eurasian eagle owl,” says Jennie. “They nest here.” Then she switches off all the lights. “Let’s paddle slowly close to shore. Watch what happens.”

As soon as we move, the sea flickers into life, every paddle stroke triggering thrilling trails of cold, blue sparkles. When we stop, I slap my hand on the surface and the sea is momentarily electrified into a nebulous neural network of light, like some great salty brain figuring out this alien intrusion. Below that, squadrons of jellyfish pulse their own spectral contribution.

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© Photograph: Amazing Aerial/Alamy

© Photograph: Amazing Aerial/Alamy

© Photograph: Amazing Aerial/Alamy

Snow is falling in the Carolinas and Virginia as a major winter storm moves across the Southeast, bringing dangerous cold, blustery winds and even the possibility of blizzard conditions throughout the weekend.

• Stevenson beats López to become four-weight champion

• Unanimous 119-109 cards underline one-sided bout result

• Newark southpaw controls tempo, distance all night long

Shakur Stevenson delivered the most complete performance of his career on Saturday night, outmaneuvering, outthinking and ultimately outclassing Teófimo López over 12 rounds to claim the WBO and lineal junior welterweight titles at Madison Square Garden and further cement his standing among boxing’s elite.

Stevenson won a unanimous decision by identical scores of 119-109, 119-109 and 119-109, numbers that reflected a fight largely contested on his terms from the opening bell. (The Guardian had it 118-110.)

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© Photograph: Cris Esqueda/Cris Esqueda Matchroom Boxing

© Photograph: Cris Esqueda/Cris Esqueda Matchroom Boxing

© Photograph: Cris Esqueda/Cris Esqueda Matchroom Boxing

Brandon Johnson gives police ‘clear procedure’ to follow if they witness or get reports of agents involved in illegal activity

Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson has ordered Chicago police to investigate and document alleged illegal activity by federal immigration (ICE) agents in the city, a move that will escalate tensions over jurisdiction between local and federal authorities.

The executive order, titled ICE on Notice, gives Chicago police “clear procedure” to follow if they witness or receive reports of ICE agents involved in illegal activity and refer evidence of potential violations to city prosecutors.

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© Photograph: Chris Riha/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Chris Riha/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Chris Riha/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

As Djokovic bids for the grand slam singles record of 25 titles, Alcaraz can become the youngest man in history to complete the career set

© Getty Images

Liverpool came from behind to trounce Newcastle as Hugo Ekitike showed what the Magpies missed out on last summer.

© PA Wire

Once the unassailable ‘Queen of Rap,’ Nicki Minaj has grown increasingly estranged from the music industry — and embraced by conservatives — culminating in a public show of support for Donald Trump that stunned fans. Carsen Holaday traces the controversies, feuds and fan backlash that reshaped her career

© Getty Images

Protests and strikes are sweeping Israel over record levels of violence targeting the country’s Palestinian citizens

© Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

A family including baby twins has been forced to live in a wooden canoe after their home in a historic Lagos neighborhood was demolished

© Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Stars will arrive on the red carpet this evening ahead of awards being handed out by Harry Styles, Charli XCX and Carole King

© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Winners will be announced at the ceremony tonight in Los Angeles

© Getty

The biggest night in music is taking place this weekend. Music editor Roisin O’Connor goes through her predictions for who could take home the top prizes

© Getty