1st over: Oman 4-1 (Jatinder 0, Sonavale 4) There some significant swing out there, the pitch has apparently been sweating under covers for a few hours but there’s also movement through the air too. Bartlett has it on a string! He beats Karan Sonavale three times in a row. The batter decides enough is enough, trots out of his crease and spanks through the covers for four.
DROP! A huge knick the next ball, Glenn Maxwell shells it in the slips! Such an easy chance, right in the bread basket – Maxwell cannot believe what he’s just done.
American halfpipe competitor says he has no regrets
‘I’m not going to let controversy like that get in my way’
At the start of these Winter Olympics, Donald Trump called Hunter Hess a “real loser” after the US skiing star admitted he had mixed feelings about representing his country. As he swooped down the halfpipe in Livigno on Friday, Hess delivered his response, flashing an L-sign with his hand after qualifying for Friday night’s final.
“Apparently I am a loser,” Hess said when asked about his gesture. “I am leaning into it.” And asked whether he had any regrets, Hess was just as firm. “I stick with what I said,” he replied.
Class-action suit accused Epstein’s lawyer and accountant of aiding and abetting his sex trafficking, filing says
Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has agreed to pay as much as $35m to resolve a class-action lawsuit that accused two of the disgraced financier’s advisers of aiding and abetting his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls, according to a court filing.
Boies Schiller Flexner, a law firm representing Epstein victims, announced the settlement in a brief filed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday.
The increasingly popular shade has appeared on fashion week catwalks and award season red carpets
On the fashion colour wheel, green has long carried a reputation for being “tricky” – a shade that clashes with others and flatters only certain skin tones. Yet this year, a particular apple green has been steadily gaining popularity. It has appeared on catwalks and even on the red carpet, defying the old adage that red and green should never be seen.
Arriving at the Berlin film festival, Pamela Anderson wore an apple-green wrap by Carolina Herrera over a dress in tonal pinks and greens. Amal Clooney chose a green gown by Versace for a Golden Globes afterparty, while Rose Byrne wore green Chanel for the ceremony itself. With award season in full swing, there is speculation the shade could make a strong showing at the Baftas this Sunday.
Taking inspiration from Chile’s traditional borgoña, this red-wine cocktail makes for a great aperitif
A Chilean twist on a wine cocktail: elegant, vibrant and built on the balance between the depth of pinot noir and the bright sweetness of cherries. It takes inspiration from Chile’s traditional borgoña, a drink where red wine meets fruit (usually strawberries), but layers in cherry liqueur and soda for a modern, effervescent edge. I sometimes add a few drops of fresh lime juice to sharpen the sweetness and make the fruit flavours really pop. It’s refreshing yet sophisticated, and a great aperitif.
In a university ecosystem that breeds hunger for status, Epstein made scholars feel like celebrities
The Jeffrey Epstein story is often told as the intersection of two obsessions: sexual abuse and money. The recently released emails certainly contain significant evidence of both. But after more than two decades as a professor at Harvard, Cornell, and Cambridge, I am most struck by the limitation of that frame – in part because it fails to explain why academics show up so consistently in these files.
Certainly, money played a role in Epstein’s university connections. A rich man using donations and access to burnish his ego and legitimacy is a well-worn script, from Andrew Carnegie’s libraries more than a century ago to Bill Gates’s more recent global health philanthropy. As a college drop-out, Epstein clearly craved “respect” from high-profile academics. Universities, meanwhile, are perpetually fundraising and institutions that rely on donations often avoid asking hard questions about where the money came from. As the Bard College president, Leon Botstein, put it when defending his Epstein connections: “Among the very rich is a higher percentage of unpleasant and not very attractive people.” Institutions sometimes learn to stop asking hard questions about where the money came from.
Christopher Marquis is theSinyi professor of management at the University of Cambridge and author of The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs
She might have the same producer as Graham Norton, but will Claudia Winkleman’s new series succeed? Seasoned pros from Esther Rantzen to Kirsty Wark for the tips and tricks of creating interview gold
Claudia Winkleman’s new chatshow will land next month, and its enthusiast army are already excited. Winkleman herself, who doesn’t come off at all breathy, said: “I can’t quite believe it and I’m incredibly grateful to the BBC for this amazing opportunity.” Kalpna Patel-Knight, who commissioned The Claudia Winkleman Show, observed: “Claudia is a true national treasure – warm, witty and endlessly entertaining.” Graham Stuart, long-term producer/buddy of Graham Norton, who runs So Television, which produces both, said of his new venture: “How can you possibly follow [Graham Norton]? By booking a host equally as brilliant. So we have.”
And if anything proves how hard it is to create great chat, it’s those quotes. If anyone was ever that bland and blow-hard on one of their chatshow sofas, most TV people would punch themselves in the head. No wonder so many chatshows struggle when they first come out – it’s not that the expectation is too high, exactly, so much as the fanfare is too boasty. Brilliant as she is, then, the success of Claudia’s new series is far from given. But how exactly do you go about creating chatshow magic?
Yin Xiuzhen builds cities from donated clothing while Chiharu Shiota weaves found objects into vast webs of thread. Now the two are exhibiting their massive, moving installations in two parallel exhibitions
These clothes are not “secondhand”, says Yin Xiuzhen, the Beijing-born artist known for creating large-scale installations out of found garments and keepsakes. “I prefer to call them ‘used’ or ‘worn’,” she explains. “Clothes that have been ‘worn’ carry a lot of information … like a second skin, imprinted with social meaning.” In some of Yin’s works the clothes are her own, telling a personal story. In others, the clothes are collected, stained and stretched across towering steel frames resembling planes, trains or organic forms.
Yin is showing a selection of these works in Heart to Heart, an exhibition occupying the lower floor of London’s Hayward Gallery. “Worn clothing acts as a narrator in my work … the lived experience is embedded in the fabric,” she says.
A group of largely authoritarian world leaders and a few observers joined Donald Trump in Washington for the inaugural meeting of the newly established Board of Peace. Guardian Europe reporter Jakub Krupa looks at who attended the organisation's first meeting and what it means for the future world order. The body was created to implement the US president's vision for Gaza’s future after the territory was destroyed by Israel, but Trump has widened its scope, calling it 'the most consequential international body in history'
Mayor says Japanese city will respect donor’s specification that £2.7m gift must be used to repair dilapidated system
Osaka has received a hefty gift of gold bars worth 560m yen (£2.7m) from an anonymous donor and a request for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city’s dilapidated water pipes.
The gold bars, weighing a total of 21kg (46lb), were given to the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau in November by the donor who wants to help improve ageing water pipes, the mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, told reporters on Thursday.
We want to hear people who have been through the process of renouncing their US citizenship and how they found it
Are you an American living abroad who has tried to renounce your citizenship? We want to hear from you!
We want to hear about what triggered it, how hard it was, whether you encountered any issues or have concerns about returning home in the future – as well as any fun encounters you had while doing it. How has it all made you feel?
What were once a DVD postal service, an online bookstore and an American cable channel renowned for showing B movies in motel rooms are now heavyweights in the sports broadcasting market. Netflix and Amazon have changed the global landscape, leaving TNT Sports under pressure to hold on to its subscribers.
I spent the last Super League off-season living in a stable (true story) with no access to satellite or cable, but still got my sports fix via free-to-air networks and subscriptions to Premier Sports, Prime Video and Netflix. I was fully sated on a diet of live rugby union, football, cricket, NFL and NBA – all for less than a Sky Sports or TNT subscription. So how will the increased competition between broadcasters affect league and union viewers?
The instrument has strengthened community ties, but some organizers say whistles can create panic or confusion
Over the past year, whistles have become a symbol of the collective resistance of ordinary people standing up to federal immigration enforcement. As the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown to cities and towns across the US, people are relying on whistles to warn their neighbors about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
But not all activists agree on their efficacy. Some organizers, including those in rural areas of the US, say that whistles can heighten panic in the communities they serve. Others say they can create unnecessary confusion for children, the elderly and those with disabilities.
When a few grassroots organizations across the country, from Washington state to Maryland, posted on social media about their decision to keep whistles out of their activism, a debate exploded online. But scholars of social movements say that tactical adaptability is a healthy part of organizing, as coalitions emerge, coalesce and continue to transform to meet the needs on the ground.
Captain’s moment must be celebrated at Twickenham on Saturday, as should Edwin Edogbo’s first Ireland cap
I was struck by Tommy Freeman’s comments this week when he said he had struggled mentally on the back of the British & Irish Lions tour to Australia last summer. It struck me because it was a very similar sentiment to that expressed by Maro Itoje earlier in the season, and it was a feeling with which I could sympathise. After the 2009 tour of South Africa, I was wrecked.
All but one of the England lads who went on that tour needed major surgery within a year of it finishing but, even if the body is holding up, you just don’t quite feel right. You’re back at your club, expected to be one of the best performers and don’t want to admit you’re tired, but sometimes you need someone to intervene and tell you to take a breather. There’s endless data these days but, for all that, mental fatigue can be hard to quantify and there can be no doubt that is something the Ireland squad is wrestling with at the moment.
After tech billionaire Peter Thiel and others donated to Jace Yarbrough’s campaign, Donald Trump endorsed him
A rookie congressional candidate in a nine-way Texas primary has received the imprimatur of wealthy hard-right donors including tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Claremont Institute board chair Thomas Klingenstein and Charles Haywood, who once expressed a desire to be a “warlord”, according to new Federal Election Commission filings showing early donations to his campaign.
In a recent candidate forum, Jace Yarbrough unapologetically staked out a series of extremist positions, saying that critics may call his approach to politics “bigoted and backward and oppressive and Nazi-ish”, but that he is “past trying to placate that in any way, shape or form”.
The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey; A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver; A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford; Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo; A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston
The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Most of the action in Godfrey’s second novel takes place during the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985, at a barbecue hosted by the Gordon family in a new-build cul-de-sac in an unspecified part of England. As neighbours arrive and music plays, we gradually learn the backstories of the main characters, from teenage Hanna, who is planning to run away from her pale, preoccupied father and house-proud, socially ambitious mother, to mysterious Rita, newly arrived from Australia to begin a new life, and shell-shocked ex-soldier Steve, whose paranoia is exacerbated by the shadowy figure watching the street. Like Godfrey’s debut, The List of Suspicious Things, this is not so much a whodunnit as a wonderful slow-burn story about friendship, community, and secrets within families, the choices we make and the lies we tell to protect ourselves and others, with the bonus of a terrific built-in soundtrack and a nostalgic vibe.
A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver (Hemlock, £16.99)
Former headteacher Oliver’s first novel centres on yummy mummy Lalla Rook, who lives with her banker husband Stephen and their young children Nelly and Nathan in the leafy north London suburb of Muswell Hill. It’s a privileged existence, but Lalla, who is not only admirably resourceful but also manipulative and utterly lacking in empathy, has her eye on a larger house in considerably pricier Hampstead as well as a place at an exclusive school for Nelly, who is already demonstrating that the antisocial apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Murder, body disposal, blackmail – Lalla will stop at nothing to achieve her ends, but things get complicated when it begins to looks as if the intruder she dispatched with a kitchen knife minutes before the start of four-year-old Nathan’s birthday party was trying to uncover her murky past. Told with gusto, plus wonderfully twisty plotting and lashings of lifestyle porn, this satirical thriller is the perfect antidote to the winter blues.
The enigmatic Bradford producer is moving into eerie new territory informed by folklore and delivered with a tangibly menacing low end
From Bradford, UK Recommended if you like Adrian Sherwood, Kris Baha, Guerilla Welfare Up next New EP Don’t Forget the Ritual released on 28 February
Miles J Paralysis maintains a low profile, with just a handful of releases available on Bandcamp and a sparse, faceless Instagram presence. The enigma suits the music he has been making and sharing under the alias since early last year: dark, dubby and complete with obscure vocal samples and titles such as Always Liked Scarecrows and Cursed Moor.
Struggling British carmaker says earnings for 2025 will be worse than City forecasts as US tariffs hit sales
Aston Martin has warned that its losses will be worse than expected and sold its permanent naming rights to its Formula One team, as the struggling British carmaker battles to stabilise its finances.
The luxury carmaker, majority-owned by the Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, said its earnings for 2025 would be worse than City forecasts, its fifth profit warning since September 2024.
At 7pm on Thursday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was snapped in the back of a car by Phil Noble for Reuters, and the photo is now the defining image of the former prince's arrest. Guardian Australia's picture editor Carly Earl explains why the 'viral' photo of Mountbatten-Windsor is a masterclass in news photography, and why getting this kind of picture is notoriously difficult
As the film-makers behind the seemingly neverending river of Tolkien adaptations seek to wring every last drop of story from Middle-earth, it risks running the whole thing into the ground
Now in his 80s, Ian McKellen appears to have taken a strategically sedentary route for his appearance as Gandalf the Grey in the next year’s Lord of the Rings weird-quel The Hunt for Gollum. You’ve probably heard about this thing: it’s the new movie that’s based on bits and pieces of JRR Tolkien’s esteemed high-fantasy epic that were only mentioned in passing during the three original three-hour movies, and didn’t get much more of a mention in the extended cuts that came out later.
In the original novels, Gandalf reveals to hobbit Frodo Baggins that he and Aragorn, AKA Strider, AKA the future King of Gondor and Arnor, searched for decades for the creature Gollum in an effort to find out what might have happened to the ring he once held. In the new movie, though, things will be different. According to McKellen, Aragorn will take charge of the quest to find Gollum, while Gandalf will operate more like a wizardly mission controller. “The script is designed to appeal to people who like Lord of the Rings,” McKellen told the Times. “It’s an adventure story, Aragorn trying to find Gollum with Gandalf directing operations from the sidelines.”
“Before the Fellowship, one creature’s obsession holds the key to Middle-earth’s survival – or its demise. In The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, we meet young Sméagol – an outsider drawn to trinkets and mischief – long before The One Ring consumed him and began his tragic descent into the tortured, deceitful creature Gollum. With the ring lost and carried away by Bilbo Baggins, Gollum finds himself compelled to leave his cave in search of it.
Gandalf the Grey calls upon Aragorn, still known as the ranger Strider, to track the elusive creature whose knowledge of the whereabouts of the ring could tip the balance toward the Dark Lord Sauron. Set in the shadowed time between Bilbo’s birthday disappearance and the Fellowship’s formation, this perilous journey through Middle-earth’s darkest corners reveals untold truths, tests the resolve of its future king, and explores the fractured soul and backstory of Gollum, one of Tolkien’s most enigmatic characters.
The updated QuickShot II brings retro gameplay into the modern era while preserving the no-frills button smashing and endearing flaws that fans loved
Nostalgia is big in the modern games industry. It’s ironic that the most technologically obsessed art form on the planet is just as watery-eyed about the past as cinema and music. And to prove it here is the new version of the legendary QuickShot II, a plasticky joystick from the early 1980s that wasn’t even that good the first time round. It was, however, cheap and it resembled an actual fighter plane control stick with its multiple fire buttons and ergonomic shaft. If you wanted a rugged and precise controller you’d go for the Competition Pro, but that one didn’t let you pretend to be in Star Wars or Airwolf. Plus, the QuickShot II had suckers on its base so you could stick it to your cockpit control panel – sorry, I mean MDF computer table.
The new QuickShot II from Retro Games and Plaion Replai is almost an exact replica in terms of its dimensions. You can grasp it in your fist and wrap your thumb and forefinger around its large red buttons. Yes, you can stick it to your table; the designers have even included the original auto-fire switch at the rear for players who weren’t prepared to hit the fire button repeatedly while playing Green Beret.
In the latest in a long line of Irish tussles at fly-half, Jack Crowley takes over from Sam Prendergast at Twickenham
In the summer of 1979 Irish rugby jumped off a lower shelf in the nation’s sports shop, landing front and centre. This wasn’t prompted by a dramatic development on the field, rather it was a selection decision. Tony Ward, voted the first European player of the year two months earlier, was dropped. He had won the award largely for his dazzling form in that season’s Five Nations Championship. Then, before the first Test on Ireland’s tour of Australia, he was canned. It made the six o’clock news.
Ward was a gifted footballer. He would go on to play in the League of Ireland for Limerick United FC, starring for them against Southampton in the Uefa Cup. He looked the part: stocky, sallow, not only could he shoot the lights out but he could step off either foot, leaving opponents on their rear end. If Ireland had a catwalk then Wardy would have been a model.
The 2026 MLS season kicks off on Saturday. Our writers discuss the teams, players and story lines they’re watching this year
Messi v Son. The two best players in the league play for the two “glamour” teams on opposite coasts, and each have large and dedicated fanbases. If both stay relatively healthy and perform up to capabilities, there’s no way the race between them for some honor (Golden Boot? MVP? Both?) won’t be fascinating to see unfold. AA
Connexion
