At least 40 killed and hundreds missing after huge blaze at the Wang Fuk Court residential apartment complex in Tai Po district on Wednesday. Follow the latest updates live
The death toll has risen again to 44, fire officials say.
Officials said they are still having difficulties proceeding into the upper floors in some of the buildings in the residential complex as the fire continues.
Nine defeats in 12 games. A 75% loss rate since Eddie Nketiah scored a stoppage-time winner for Crystal Palace on 27 September and instigated a collapse that no one at Liverpool, no one in football in fact, could have seen coming. Unbelievable indeed. Arne Slot’s team are stuck in reverse.
PSV Eindhoven became the latest grateful recipients of woeful Liverpool defending and aimless attacking play to inflict a comprehensive and damaging Champions League defeat on the Anfield side. Liverpool have suffered three successive defeats by a three-goal margin and show no signs of conjuring the recovery that Slot desperately needs to prevent a crisis undermining his hold on the job. There were boos around Anfield as the final whistle sounded on another terrible defeat for the Premier League champions.
Filing contained errors known as ‘hallucinations’, with attorneys arguing prosecutors’ office used AI in other cases
A California prosecutors’ office used artificial intelligence to file a motion in at least one criminal case, which contained errors known as “hallucinations”.
A prosecutor at the Nevada county district attorney’s office in northern California “recently used artificial intelligence in preparing a filing, which resulted in an inaccurate citation,” district attorney Jesse Wilson said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. “Once the error was discovered, the filing was immediately withdrawn.”
This was billed as a clash of two of the best teams in Europe and for most of a cold evening in north London it felt like it. An absorbing game which ebbed and flowed throughout saw Bayern Munich’s rising star Lennart Karl cancel out Jurriën Timber’s opening goal from a corner before Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli sealed a deserved win for Mikel Arteta’s side to maintain their 100% record in the Champions League so far and go top of the table. A place in the knockout stages now seems a mere formality.
Harry Kane let it slip in the buildup to this match that scoring against Arsenal gives him “a bit more joy” than any other club. But the England striker barely had a sight of goal as a Bayern side that had also won their first four matches in the Champions League group stage were taught a lesson. Arteta resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes before Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. He opted to start Cristhian Mosquera in central defence rather than Piero Hincapié as Myles Lewis-Skelly came in at left-back, while there was a welcome return for the captain, Martin Ødegaard, on the bench.
Reform UK leader has again denied allegations about his behaviour as a schoolboy but what are the facts?
Nigel Farage has again denied allegations of racism as a schoolboy and repeated his claim that some had been concocted because people disliked his politics.
During a press conference, he snapped at one reporter who asked about the issue, saying: “I think we’ve gone quite a long way towards answering all this, don’t you?”
State prosecutor dismisses charges against US president and others in election interference case
The case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia ended on Wednesday with a filing for dismissal by the state prosecutor who took over after the removal of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney.
Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, confirmed to the Guardian that “it’s over”after superior court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page order on Wednesday dismissing the 2020 racketeering case. Skandalakis said he would be making no further comments about the matter.
In a Truth Social post, the president lashed out at journalist Katie Rogers after an article questioned whether he was slowing down
Donald Trump lashed out on Wednesday against a New York Times reporter, calling her “ugly inside and out” in his latest personal insult against female members of the media after last week calling another “piggy”.
In a Truth Social post, Trump criticized the newspaper for an article suggesting he was running low on energy in his 80th year, insisting he had “never worked so hard in my life”.
In dozen of cases officers have used Marsy’s Law, which gives victims of crime anonymity, to shield their names
For months, Ohio police officer Connor Grubb and his department attempted to hide his identity following an incident in which he shot and killed Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn daughter in a Kroger parking lot outside Columbus in August 2023.
Grubb, who on 21 November was acquitted of murder and other charges, claimed that Young, who was stopped for allegedly stealing, attempted to drive over him – which would make him a victim of a crime and eligible to protect his identity from public view through a legal provision called Marsy’s Law. Police footage of the killing shows Young slowly driving the car forward and to the right before Grubb fires through the windshield and into Young’s chest.
All across the continent, teams line up to hear Zadok the Priest get his usual Uefa-sanctioned kicking. Poor Zadok’s a-cold! All of which is a roundabout way to say that we’ll be off in a minute. Big night coming up.
TNT have a quick word with Thomas Frank before kick-off. “There is one game in front of us, that’s PSG … if you look too much in the past you forget to look forward and do everything you can to perform now … that is all about performing tonight … make sure we compete … are brave … we are playing against a very mobile team … we have to match that … be aggressive … we need mobile, front-footed midfielders … a big night for us … we need to put a fight in.”
Two US national guard soldiers were shot on Wednesday near the White House and their conditions aren’t immediately known.
“Please join me in praying for the two National Guardsmen who were just shot moments ago in Washington DC” Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, posted on X, adding that the agency is working with local law enforcement to gather more information.
Mike Arteta, Arsenal manager, speaks to TNT about his selection choices:
The headaches are going to be a little bit harder. Cristhian Mosquera and Myles Lewis-Skelly deserve to play. We have to manage the squad and the load that we have. We have a game every three games.
Mark Damazer says over-assertive board and executives feeling ‘embattled’ played into departures of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness
A “toxic mix” of over-assertive BBC board members and executives feeling under siege contributed to the resignations of its two most senior editorial leaders, an influential former BBC figure has warned.
A bitter row is still raging over the events that led up to the resignations of the director general, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News.
Rachel Reeves has declared her budget will slash living costs for millions including ending the two-child benefit limit and cutting energy bills, but taxes are set to soar by £26bn to plug a gaping shortfall in the public finances.
Major measures in the budget leaked early in a shock accidental release by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), triggering an instant bond market reaction an hour before the chancellor was on her feet in the House of Commons. After months of speculation, Reeves said her measures would put the public finances on a sustainable path while building “a fairer, a stronger, a more secure Britain” by tackling inflation and investing in large infrastructure projects.
Current chief Andy Cowell to become strategy officer
Adrian Newey, regarded as one of the best engineers in Formula One history, will become Aston Martin team principal next season,
Newey committed his long-term future to Aston Martin in September 2024 after his departure from Red Bull sparked a bidding war for the Brtion’s services.
Palmer is training with squad despite toe fracture
Forward out since September with groin injury
Chelsea are hopeful that Cole Palmer can give them a major boost by declaring himself fit to face Arsenal at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. The forward has been out with a groin injury since September and his return to action was delayed when he fractured a toe in a freak domestic accident last week.
That forced Palmer to sit out Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Barcelona in the Champions League on Tuesday but there is optimism that his fitness issues are close to an end. The 23-year-old has trained with the squad this week and may be ready to play some part against Arsenal.
It gets into its twentysomething characters’heads in a way that’s fresh and real.Youeither get it, or you don’t
It’s been a while since a TV show came along that people leaned into losing their minds about, but finally, and after a year of otherwise mediocre programming, we have one. I Love LA, the HBO comedy set among wannabe gen Z influencers, is only halfway through its eight-episode run, but it is already comfortably the best show of the year. And more importantly, it has triggered all the signifiers of event TV: obsessive repeat viewings, line-by-line coverage, big platform profiles of its stars and weekly recaps on Vulture, New York magazine’s website. Within days of each episode airing, people have transcribed and uploaded the entire script, which – with the best will in the world – no one’s doing for Riot Women.
The surprising thing about this is not the fact that it’s the first show by Rachel Sennott, the show’s 30-year-old creator and star, or that the action takes place in a tiny world in east LA, but that content about influencers can be watchable at all. To date, millennial and older writers have tended to use social media as a lumbering plot device – oh my God, something’s gone “viral!” – or as a stand-in for the collapse of all known standards. You probably haven’t watched these because nobody did, but take your pick from: HBO’s one-season disaster The Girls on the Bus, in which an old-media reporter covers a US election race only to find that influencers – those pesky kids! – have stolen her patch. Or the equally horrific Netflix flop Girlboss, loosely based on the memoirs of Sophia Amoruso, the early influencer, and which not even a cameo by Cole Escola could save. Or Flack, the deathly Anna Paquin-fronted show about publicists trying to manage their clients’ social media, and an early red flag for which was the use of the word “maven” in the show’s publicity.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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If you aren’t getting the quality time or intimacy you need, try these connection experiments to shake up interactions
Lately, life has felt like Groundhog Day: work, gym, sleep, repeat. Between a punishing work schedule, the grim weather and my desire to hibernate, my social life has suffered. I feel dissatisfied, restless and isolated. But I have plenty of friends and active group chats – I can’t be lonely, surely?
Player ingested a banned stimulant from rubber crumb
She has been exonerated but talks of ‘terrible moment’
The Norwegian club Vålerenga have called for anti-doping regulations to be strengthened after an extraordinary case in which a player from their women’s team was found to have ingested a banned stimulant from rubber crumb in an artificial pitch.
A seven-month saga concluded on Wednesday when the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) chose not to appeal against the decision of Anti-Doping Norway (Adno) that the player was faultless. But the landmark case has highlighted the risks to footballers of environmental exposure to banned substances and opened up the possibility of further controversies emerging around the thousands of synthetic pitches across Europe.
Officers say they are closing borders and suspending poll as president and main rival both claim victory
Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau have announced they are taking “total control” of the west African country, three days after elections that both the two main presidential contenders claim to have won.
Military officers said they were suspending Guinea-Bissau’s electoral process and closing its borders, in a statement read out at the army’s headquarters in the capital Bissau and broadcast on state TV. They said they had formed “the high military command for the restoration of order”, which would rule the country until further notice.
Commission president says undermining of sovereign European nation would ‘open the doors for more wars’
The European Commission president has warned against “the unilateral carving up of a sovereign European nation” as Europe scrambles to assert influence over the US’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to European lawmakers in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen said Russia showed “no signs of true willingness to end the conflict” and continued to operate in a mindset unchanged since the days of Yalta – the much-criticised and misunderstood 1945 summit to settle the postwar order.
When the great artist saw a shocking play by Martin McDonagh about the torture of children, she asked him for more dark stories. As the vivid, extraordinary works they triggered go on show, the playwright looks back
In the summer of 2004, Paula Rego wrote to Martin McDonagh asking for permission to name some pictures after his play The Pillowman. His shocking investigation into the relationship between art and life featured two brothers under interrogation for the torture and murder of children. One is a writer whose stories are summarised by an investigator as: “A hundred and one ways to skewer a fucking five-year-old.”
Rego, then a 69-year-old grandmother as well as a world famous artist, had been taken to see the play at the National Theatre in London by one of her daughters, who knew it would resonate with her. “The brutality and beauty and humour rang very true and like something I had known all my life,” she wrote to McDonagh. “I am actually Portuguese, although I have lived in London for 50 years, and our stories are brusque and cruel like yours.”
MEPs pass resolution to help parents tackle growing dangers of addictive internet platforms
Children under 16 should be banned from using social media unless their parents decide otherwise, the European parliament says.
MEPs passed a resolution on age restrictions on Wednesday by a large majority. Although not legally binding, it raises pressure for European legislation amid growing alarm about the mental health risks to children of unfettered internet access.
It is measure of just how much more shameless and obsequious Fifa has become under the presidency of Gianni Infantino that news of its decision to unsuspend Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal’s first two group games at next year’s Geopolitics World Cup has been greeted with little more than an amused, weary eye-roll at the brass neckery of it all. Issued with a straight red card for violent conduct during a defeat at the hands of the Republic of Ireland, the preening Portuguese showpony was issued with a standard three-match ban, the first game of which he spent on the Naughty Step during his side’s subsequent 9-1 demolition of Armenia. His was an absence that didn’t so much make the heart grow fonder, as the team grow in stature and confidence.
Surely the benchmark for ‘lamping’ your teammate (yesterday’s Football Daily) was set in January 1979 by ‘Killer Hales’ and Mike ‘Flash’ Flanagan at the Valley. Without the benefit of today’s array of camera angles and pundits to know-it-all, it was difficult to judge who started it, but the football reasoning was that Killer thought Flash had delayed a pass and prevented him scoring. However, there were some mutterings about off-field tensions and they went their separate ways. Five years later, amazingly, they were both back in the Addicks’ front line” – Geoff Williams.
I found it interesting that a slap to the head did not cause Michael Keane to fall to the pitch and roll around in apparent agony. Surely Keane should have been booked for his embarrassingly flagrant act of simulated stoicism?” – Ian Potter.
Idrissa Gueye’s straight red might turn out to be the least of his worries. Apparently his reward for winning this eliminator is a crack at the title against local favourite, Duncan Ferguson” – Allastair McGillivray.
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