Australia: Travis Head (capt), Josh Inglis (wk), Cameron Green, Tim David, Marcus Stoinis, Glenn Maxwell, Matt Renshaw, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Adam Zampa, Matt Kuhnemann.
Cooper Connolly and Xavier Bartlett drop out of the XI with Tim David and Ben Dwarshuis coming in. Steve Smith is yet to join up with the group after all, but Head says – with a hint of uncertainty and a laugh – that he will arrive tonight. The Australia stand-in skipper seems typically relaxed.
We’re used to a bit of chaos early in a tournament. We just have to put another good performance in. I think given the conditions we did really well [against Ireland]. We did it in a different way to what we normally do but today is a different pitch and we’ll have to adapt again.
Everyone should get their eyes tested every two years, but there are other ways to optimise your vision, say ophthalmologists – and yes, eating carrots may help
Eye health is often something that we take for granted until we encounter problems. But lifestyle choices such as screen time and smoking can affect your vision. Here, ophthalmologists share their tips on maintaining healthy eyes, from sight tests to sunglasses.
Kremlin’s repeated targeting of infrastructure has left thousands without heating, reliant on shelters and desperate home hacks
Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, play with Lego. “We are taking a break from the cold,” she said as children made drawings inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside it was -18C. There was bright sunshine and snow.
“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate so we give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t use to feel like a frontline city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The idea is to make us leave and to create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”
Natalia and Danylo near the ‘resilience point’ in Troyeshchyna district
You have to be careful managing supplies – there is one delivery a year
The first time anyone goes to the Antarctic is truly special. Just getting there is an adventure: it takes several planes, and about three to five days. Travelling there was a childhood dream of mine. I saw it as a way to test myself against something so much bigger. I nearly applied for a role at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) 30 years ago, but then my wife and I were expecting our first child. Instead, I’ve worked as a chef in Michelin-star restaurants in Paris and London, hotels in Kuala Lumpur and St Moritz, and even at a school in Oxfordshire.
In 2016, I took a sabbatical and finally joined BAS as a chef for a summer. Five years later, I went back for the winter, and last year, I became the organisation’s full-time catering manager. I felt ready for an adventure. Now I oversee the catering across BAS’s five Antarctic stations: bases for the organisation’s research and also where the staff live. Each year, I spend three months there; for the rest of the time I work at BAS’s HQ in Cambridge.
Destined to a perilous life with no right to an education or to vote, state recognition ‘gives them hope’, campaigners say
Through the decades that the Daulatdia brothel in Bangladesh has existed, children born there have been invisible, unable to be registered because their mothers were sex workers and their fathers unknown. Now, for the first time, all 400 of them in the brothel village have their own birth certificates.
That milestone was reached after a push by campaigners who have spent decades working with Bangladesh’s undocumented children born in brothels or on the street. It means they can finally access the rights afforded to other citizens: the ability to go to school, to be issued a passport or to vote.
The Games could have showcased Milan’s abundant culture and architecture. Instead it has filled the city with gaudy pavilions and gentrification
On a bad day, Milan can feel less like a city than an open-air shopping mall. Since winning the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2019, the urban landscape has been flattened into construction dust and swamped in corporate messaging. What started as a logo on a tram has gradually evolved into a feverish, full-scale takeover of the public realm. From Piazza del Duomo to the Sforzesco Castle, the city’s most popular spaces have been appropriated by gaudy pavilions, turning Milan into a bizarre spectacle staffed by dancing mascots.
Last Friday, I sat down with friends to watch the opening ceremony, broadcast live from the San Siro, the much-loved brutalist football stadium that has been slated for demolition The reaction in the room was telling. On the one hand, after so much buildup, most people were excited the big moment had finally arrived. But as the proceedings went on and the parade of familiar faces gave way to the peculiar sight of bobble-headed puppets of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi dancing to Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa, the melancholy kicked in. Was this really what these years of disruption had been for? Was this strange, kitsch pop concert worth all the political repression, the public inconvenience, the relentless marketing, the unspecified millions of euros in cost?
Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence
The genre-hopping bass virtuoso has backed Ariana Grande and Herbie Hancock, appeared in Star Wars and become a dedicated boxer. Ahead of his fifth album, Stephen Bruner explains his polymath mindset
It is an overcast Thursday afternoon at the end of January, and Thundercat is telling me about the time he tried to interest Snoop Dogg in the mid-70s oeuvre of Frank Zappa. He wasn’t Thundercat then, he explains. He was still Stephen Bruner, bass player for hire, who had fetched up in what he calls a “stupid-as-hell, Rick James-level band” backing the venerable rapper, packed with Los Angeles jazz luminaries who would later contribute to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly: Kamasi Washington, Josef Leimberg, Terrace Martin. Alas, their jazz chops were sometimes deemed surplus to requirements. At one point, while Bruner was playing an expansive bass solo on stage, Snoop sidled up to him and flatly announced: “Ain’t nobody told you to play all that.”
So perhaps it was in the spirit of horizon-broadening that Bruner took it upon himself to play Snoop the song St Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, a knotty, marimba-heavy slice of jazz-rock from Zappa’s 1974 album Apostrophe, which switches time signatures three times in less than two minutes, and features lyrics about a man stealing margarine and urinating on a bingo card. “Yeah, I hit him with the rollercoaster,” Bruner chuckles. “He was smoking, and he almost ate his blunt, saying: ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said: ‘My sentiments exactly.’ I think I did a cartwheel after that and left the band: I played Snoop Dogg St Alfonzo’s Breakfast, my job is done here, I have no more work to do.” He thinks for a moment. “Or maybe I got fired: ‘Get out of here dude, you’re too weird.’ I forget. It was a great moment.”
Sydney’s Northern Beaches council has banned bikini-clad and shirtless passengers from riding its free community bus service after receiving feedback from passengers.
The Hop, Skip and Jump is a daily 30-seat shuttle bus that services the coastal suburbs of Manly, Fairlight and Balgowlah and is frequented by beachgoers.
Prime minister to meet mourners in mining town as families speak of their loss in one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is to join mourners in Tumbler Ridge on Friday, as authorities and relatives released details of the six children and assistant teacher killed by a shooter in the remote mining town’s high school.
Carney will attend a vigil in Tumbler Ridge in memory of the victims, and he invited leaders from all political parties to join him in the town, the site of the country’s deadliest mass shooting in years.
Japan’s fisheries agency said the vessel failed to comply with an order to stop. The incident comes weeks after a row between China and Japan over Taiwan
Authorities in Japan have seized a Chinese fishing boat and arrested its captain in a move that is likely to inflame an ongoing diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing.
The seizure, which occurred on Thursday about 170km from the south-western port city of Nagasaki, came after the skipper refused an order to stop for an onboard inspection, according to media reports.
An American man who spent a year discussing extreme conspiracies with the Queensland family behind the Wieambilla shootings has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
Donald Day, 58, was arrested in the US after a year-long investigation into his contact with Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train before the trio killed two police officers and a neighbour at their rural Queensland property.
A suspect who broke into a jewellery store using a forklift, allegedly stole 150 grams of gold, and fled the scene on a donkey was arrested in Kayseri, central Turkey. Police teams from the provincial police department identified the suspect after reviewing security camera footage following the incident.
Voting was largely peaceful in an election seen as a test of Bangladesh’s democracy after years of political turmoil under autocratic ruler
The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) led by Tarique Rahman has claimed a sweeping victory in the country’s first election since a gen-Z uprising toppled the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina.
By Friday morning, results had shown a clear win for the party, returning them to power after 20 years. The vote had been seen as the first free and fair election held in Bangladesh for almost two decades and came after a period of significant political upheaval in the country.
Emails show Kathy Ruemmler had close ties to convicted sexual abuser she called ‘Uncle Jeffrey’
Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, has announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.
Ruemmler said in a statement on Thursday that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026”.
New York City officials raise flag at site of rebellion once again after ‘act of erasure’ by administration
Days after the Trump administration oversaw the removal of a Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument, officials in New York City again raised the flag at the historic site.
A large crowd gathered near the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to see it return to the space where, in 1969, the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement was ignited. Nearly six decades ago, police raided the popular gay bar, and set off an uprising that, as the Library of Congress notes, would “fundamentally change the discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ activism” in the US.
US secretary of state says ahead of Munich Security Conference appearance that ‘we live in a new era of geopolitics’; Ukrainian cities pounded in latest attacks. What we know on day 1,451
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said he will have a chance to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy at this week’s Munich Security Conference. A year after the vice-president, JD Vance, stunned assembled dignitaries with a verbal assault on many of the US’s closest allies in Europe, Rubio plans to take a less contentious but philosophically similar approach when he addresses the annual gathering on Saturday, US officials say. Before boarding his flight on Thursday evening, Rubio used reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans. “We’re very tightly linked together with Europe,” he told reporters. But he also made clear it wouldn’t be business as usual, saying: “We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like.”
The war in Ukraine is on the conference’s agenda, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron – who is making the trip to Germany – has said he hopes for a resumption of talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Macron said on Thursday he did not expect to speak with Putin in the coming days, and that European nations first needed to agree what they wanted from Russia. “It’s not a matter of days, there are preparations involved,” he told reporters after EU leaders’ talks.
Russia pounded Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones overnight on Thursday, further battering its energy system and leaving tens of thousands in the capital, Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa without heat, power and water, officials said. In Kyiv alone, about 3,500 apartment buildings were without heating on Thursday after the latest winter attack on Ukraine’s power grid knocked out supplies to nearly 2,600 high-rises, on top of the 1,100 already affected by previous strikes, said mayor Vitali Klitschko. More than 100,000 families were without electricity, according to private energy firm DTEK.
Odesa was hit twice in less than 24 hours. Late on Thursday, the regional governor said a second wave of drone strikes had damaged houses, industrial sites and energy infrastructure and disrupted electricity, heating and water supplies. The attack also sparked a fire that engulfed one of the city’s markets, injuring one person, said the military administration. In the industrial south-eastern city of Dnipro, a combined missile and drone strike wounded four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, the regional governor said. In the north-eastern Kharkiv region bordering Russia, two people were killed and six more wounded in an attack on the railway hub of Lozova, prosecutors said.
Vladyslav Heraskevych has accused the International Olympic Committee of doing Russia’s propaganda for them after he was barred from racing in the Winter Games because he wanted to wear a “helmet of memory” in honour of Ukraine’s war dead, reports Sean Ingle. In one of the most controversial decisions in recent Olympic history, the 27-year-old Ukrainian skeleton racer was informed only minutes before he was due to compete that his accreditation had been rescinded. A wave of support for Heraskevych swept Ukraine over the ban, while Zelenskyy said the IOC’s decision played “into the hands of aggressors”.
Ukraine’s western allies have already pledged around $35bn in military aid to Kyiv this year, the British defence minister, John Healey, said on Thursday. The figure included new commitments by individual countries but also previous promises made by Ukraine’s allies, including €11.5bn ($13.6bn) already announced by Germany, a diplomat at Nato said. “We will step up military assistance to Ukraine,” Healey said after a meeting of Ukraine’s allies. “We will step up pressure on Russia.”
More than 220,000 people in Russia’s Belgorod region were left without electricity after a Ukrainian attack caused an accident at a substation, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday. “Emergency crews are working. Restoration will take at least 4 hours,” he wrote on Telegram.
Another group of Russian and Ukrainian children have been reunited with their families by the US first lady, Melania Trump, the White House said on Thursday, without specifying how many children were reunited or when it took place. It was the third time the first lady had brokered such a repatriation, it said.
US president, who blamed aide for post depicting Obamas as apes, maintains video is not a problem
Donald Trump on Thursday continued to brush off widespread backlash over a racist video posted to his social media account last week, and said no White House staffer had faced consequences for the offensive post.
Asked by Weijia Jiang of CBS News on Thursday whether he had “fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas”, Trump said that he had not.
Elordi and co-star Margot Robbie walked the carpet at Sydney’s State Theatre on Thursday night for Emerald Fennell’s lavish, hyper-stylised adaptation of Emily Brontë’s doomed romance
Sussan Ley will soon quit politics, saying she plans on “stepping away completely and comprehensively from public life” after being defeated in a party room spill for the Liberal leadership.
The decision sets up a byelection for Ley’s seat of Farrer, which could result in the opposition’s parliamentary numbers dwindling further.
Dispute about rules elevates from insults to fisticuffs, with as many as 20 players becoming involved
A dispute over a rule led to a brawl during a pickleball game at a central Florida country club, authorities said, with one player hitting his opponent in the face with a paddle and punching him on the ground before others got involved.
A 63-year-old man was charged Sunday with two counts of felony battery on a person 65 or older, and his 51-year-old wife, who joined the fight in Port Orange, was charged with a single count of felony battery on a person 65 or older, according to an arrest affidavit.
Burnley have the chance of a Cup run, Leicester fear an unwelcome repeat and Brighton fans get a raw deal
Chelsea have kept two clean sheets in 10 games since appointing Liam Rosenior as head coach last month. Repeated doziness at the back has cost them. They have held commanding advantages against Charlton, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Leeds, only to give away silly goals. It is a bad habit and proved costly when a 2-0 lead was squandered during Tuesday’s draw with Leeds. Rosenior was livid afterwards, and is waiting for a consistent performance. Chelsea travel to Hull , Rosenior’s former club, on Friday night. They will surely advance against Championship opponents, but how they do it will matter. It is time for them to get serious. Jacob Steinberg
Hull City v Chelsea, Friday 7.45pm (all times GMT)
Glimpse of sun after weeks of unrelenting rain marks end of longest sunless period in area since records began
Aberdeen has finally had some sunshine, for the first time in 21 days – marking the end of the longest sunless period in the area since Met Office records began in 1957.
Residents of the Granite city in north-east Scotland glimpsed the sun late on Thursday afternoon, with sunshine having been last recorded on 21 January.
Australia stands at a crossroads as it rolled out the red carpet for some, while greeting others with batons
Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia was not a routine diplomatic engagement. It was an ethical and political test of the Australian state. At the very moment a red carpet was rolled out for a man accused of inciting genocide, peaceful Australian citizens were met with batons while exercising their democratic right to protest.
For me, this was never an abstract political debate. Before the visit, I pursued the legal channels that are meant to protect citizens and lodged a formal complaint with the Australian government about the role Herzog played in rhetoric and policies that contributed to the destruction of my family in Gaza. Seven of my relatives were killed. My father died because of a lack of medicine, food and water. My brother, his wife, their four children and her father were also killed. Their bodies remain buried beneath the rubble. Despite the seriousness of this complaint, I have received no response from the government.
Semi-final first leg: Atlético Madrid 4-0 Barcelona
E García 6og, Griezmann 14, Lookman 33, Alvarez 45+2
You must always have faith, Diego Simeone had insisted and so it was. A biblical storm blew through the Metropolitano, leaving Barcelona in pieces and Atlético Madrid closer to a first Copa del Rey final in 13 years. “I’m not a wizard but I did believe that the team could play like this,” Simeone said at the end of a wild night, yet even he could not have imagined anything quite like this, 45 extraordinary minutes giving his team a 4-0 lead to take to the Camp Nou in three weeks’ time.
“This will remain in the memory however the tie ends,” Simeone said, careful to note that this is not over yet. Hansi Flick, meanwhile, vowed that his Barcelona team will fight, claimed they had been handed a “great lesson” that might yet be helpful, and outlined a plan for the second leg: 2-0 in each half. But an an own goal from Eric García and three more before half-time here from Ademola Lookman, Antoine Griezmann and Julián Alvarez, did the kind of damage that will be mightily difficult to fix. Barcelona could not begin that task here, a Pau Cubarsí effort ruled out after a seven-minute VAR check the only “goal” of the second half. Indeed, another VAR check made their second leg task even harder when Eric García was sent off in the final minutes.
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