The hosts enjoyed plenty of opportunities during the first half but the former Arsenal player Caroline Weir sent the visitors ahead on the stroke of half-time with a brilliant volley.
JMW Turner left behind some 37,000 sketches when he died, many of which have rarely been seen. Do they – including a huge collection of explicit sketches – reveal truths about the elusive man?
The hook for Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks is meant to be that many of the 37,000 sketches left behind by the great British painter JMW Turner have rarely been seen and never been filmed; therein may be hints at the nuances of his elusive character that his main oeuvre kept hidden. Equally remarkable, though, is the documentary’s bold choice of contributors. As well as the art historians and present-day British artists who would dominate a standard art film, there are famous laymen, from the obviously somewhat qualified – Timothy Spall played the artist in Mike Leigh’s biographical film Mr Turner; Chris Packham is well placed to comment on Turner’s reverence for the natural world – to the more surprising hire of Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones.
Neither the sketchbooks nor the celebs turn the documentary format upside down, but they add something to a distillation of Turner’s life and legacy that balances accessibility with analytical muscle. Will a previously uninitiated viewer now be more likely to attend a Turner exhibition? Yes. Can existing Turner experts finesse their knowledge? Yes. Job done.
Turkey will host the Cop31 climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event in Adelaide at the last moment – despite having invested in a more than three-year campaign.
Independent sources confirmed to the Guardian that the fortnight-long event would be held in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort city of Antalya in November 2026.
Saad Almadi’s family thanks Trump and state department as announcement comes after meeting with crown prince
Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.
Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.
Autocrats like Prince Mohammed are eager to benefit from Trump’s brazen effort to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, visited the US this week for the first time in seven years – and Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for his favorite Arab autocrat. On Tuesday, Trump hosted the prince for lunch and talks at the White House, followed by a black-tie dinner that included members of Congress, business leaders and top administration officials. The next day, Trump and the prince appeared together at a US-Saudi investment summit at the Kennedy Center.
It’s all part of a rehabilitation tour for Prince Mohammed, years after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who dismembered his body with a bone saw. For a time, the killing turned Prince Mohammed into an international pariah. But Trump never wavered in his support of the Saudi leader, and during his first term protected the prince from US sanctions and pressure from Congress.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University
New York Jets coach Aaron Glenn says he has spoken to Kris Boyd and is confident the cornerback and special teams standout will be OK after being shot in midtown Manhattan early Sunday morning.
Glenn said the hospitalized Boyd was “upbeat” in their recent conversation.
Manchester United succumbed to the first defeat of their inaugural Women’s Champions League campaign, losing 5-2 against Wolfsburg after braces from Ella Peddemors and Lineth Beerensteyn and a late finish by Vivien Endemann. It was a result that sent Stephan Lerch’s side two places above United into third in the table.
The temperature in Wolfsburg may have been close to freezing but the players on the pitch did their bit to warm up the 3,817 spectators in the Volkswagen Arena. Five first-half goals raised the temperature as momentum swung between the two teams before Wolfsburg opened up a gap after the break.
Can Ben Stokes really lead England to victory in Australia? Set your alarms and gird your loins, this one’s not just big, it’s positively Brobdingnagian
Exclusive: A top official in Beijing’s Cop delegation says China is committed to clean energy – but US’s absence is a problem
China is committed to the energy transition needed to avert climate breakdown – but does not want to take the lead alone in the absence of the US, one of the country’s senior advisers has told the Guardian.
Wang Yi said China would provide more money to vulnerable countries, but the EU’s climate commissioner has warned Beijing is not doing enough to cut emissions.
3 min: … so having said that, Kelly advances down the right and crosses. It’s a slight mishit, and nearly loops over Rodríguez’s head and into the top left! But the Real keeper adjusts to the situation quickly, backpedaling and plucking the ball from the sky, just under her crossbar.
2 min: Arsenal haven’t really had a sniff yet. Real are pressing hard and keeping the hosts in their own half. “There is chatter among the Arsenalati as to how soon Kyra Cooney-Cross will displace Kim Little,” begins Charles Antaki. “The latter is no youngster, though retiring from international football has kept her going for a while yet. But it’s stating the obvious that Arsenal have missed her composure and problem-solving in midfield these last games while she’s been injured. Cooney-Cross is always tidy and firm in her passing, but doesn’t seem to be so much of a schemer as Little, and inevitably Arsenal have certainly suffered from a lack of guile recently. Some smartness needed tonight.”
Pam Bondi speaks after US Senate passes bill to release files – but agency may hold back material that could affect a Trump-ordered investigation
One quick note, there haven’t been any changes to Donald Trump’s schedule today, per the press pool. Which means, as of now, the president doesn’t have any time allotted to sign the bill forcing the justice department to release the full batch of Jeffrey Epstein files.
We’ll keep you updated if things change throughout the day.
The $5tn firm handily beat expectations, but analysts are awaiting projections for future demand for firm’s AI chips
Nvidia shares are rising in after-market trading after the company posted third-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates.All eyes were on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry and the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, as analysts and investors hoped the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings would assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.
“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia in a press release. “Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference – each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast – with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries, and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”
David Maltinsky, a 16-year veteran, says in lawsuit agency retaliated against him for engaging in protected speech
A longtime FBI employee has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for displaying a Pride flag at his desk, naming FBI director Kash Patel, the justice department and attorney general Pam Bondi as defendants.
According to David Maltinsky, an intelligence specialist who had served with the bureau for 16 years, his wrongful termination earlier this year was “unconstitutional and politically motivated”.
It is unclear if Trump administration backs deal that would mean Kyiv giving up territory and slashing size of military
US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday as Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 25 people in the city of Ternopil.
The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty. The plan is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv.
The rollout of reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir has led to Ryan Lizza airing out her alleged affairs – and is fueling a dangerous stereotype about journalists
This week, Olivia Nuzzi – the US star political reporter known for her cozy access to top Republican figures – dropped an excerpt of her memoir, American Canto. In it, she detailed what she describes as an emotional affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who she calls “the politician”.
Not to be outdone, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance and former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza self-published an essay dishing on the day he found out Nuzzi was cheating on him, he claims – not with RFK Jr, as one might have expected, but with another former presidential candidate, Mark Sanford.
With students terrified and arrests rising, educators turn activists – scanning streets, sharing alerts and defending the right to feel safe
Three teachers drove through a quiet neighborhood in southern San Diego, the sun not yet fully up over the horizon. They drank coffee and talked about their jobs. The start of the school day was still an hour or two away.
Alert says Beijing trying to recruit British sources in parliament, even if potential gains may be unclear
An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful ministry of state security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.
A fixation on reducing numbers leaves no room for rational discussion of what that means for the economy and society
British political debate has long been dominated by public anxiety about rising levels of immigration. How might that change if the population tide were to turn? Not at all, would appear to be the answer. Net migration has in fact been falling since before Labour came to power last July, and yet there has been no end of demand for ever tighter controls and no end of government acquiescence.
New figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), adjusting historical data for methodological changes, show that net migration was 944,000 for the year ending March 2023 – about 40,000 higher than had previously been thought. The drop since then has also been steeper. The number for the year ending December 2024 is now thought to be 345,000 – lower than the earlier count by 86,000.
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Whether by leveraging Russia’s frozen assets, or other means, the EU must deliver the cash necessary to withstand Putin’s war of attrition
In the early part of this year, as the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated European leaders in Munich, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was subjected to a televised mauling in the White House, it became starkly apparent that the bonds of solidarity between the European Union and Ukraine would need to be strengthened to cope with a new geopolitical reality. As 2025 draws to a close, a moment of reckoning has arrived.
According to EU estimates, Ukraine will need more than €70bn in extra financial assistance next year to keep defending itself against Vladimir Putin. That money won’t be coming from Washington, where Donald Trump has refused to seek new funding for military aid from Congress. Yet Kyiv’s ability to negotiate an acceptable peace depends on its capacity to withstand Mr Putin’s relentless war of attrition, which is designed to drain Ukraine of the resources necessary to resist, and to weaken the resolve of its European allies.
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Unsealed indictment says Ryan Wedding tracked down witness who was then murdered before he could testify
US authorities have charged a fugitive former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin with the murder of a witness who was prepared to testify against him.
The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said on Wednesday that Ryan Wedding was accused in a newly unsealed indictment of tracking down a witness in Colombia who was then murdered before he could give evidence.
Manager wants youth to dream of playing for Scotland
Clarke uses missed chances as player to inspire team
Steve Clarke hopes Scotland’s long-awaited qualification for a men’s World Cup will inspire the country’s young footballers.
Against a backdrop of euphoric scenes at Hampden Park on Tuesday night, the Scots defeated Denmark 4-2 to seal a World Cup spot for the first time since 1998. Their manager was delighted to end that long wait, especially as he believes it has harmed the nation’s football development. “This should stimulate or motivate young players to go out and become Scotland internationals in the future,” said Clarke. “Hopefully there is a legacy from this group of players to the younger generations and we don’t wait so long to go to the next tournament and the next tournament.
It had been a fun sleepover at Nigel Farage’s house and Jean-Pierre Lihou, a teenager with an appetite, was delighted with his schoolfriend’s mother’s hospitality. “I remember the fantastic cooked English breakfast, as opposed to what you get at a boarding house on a morning,” Lihou recalled. “I was a boarder and he was a day boy,” he said of their education at Dulwich college in south-east London.
Farage was a great mimic, and funny with it, Lihou said. But over time he found there was a darker side to his 14-year-old friend.
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