Sunderland get the ball rolling. What an atmosphere!
… but before kick-off, there’s a moment of silence in honour and respect of the fallen. A wreath of poppies laid by the centre circle. Immaculately observed. Pin-drop perfect. Then the Last Post. And finally a Roker-style roar of gratitude to break the silence. Here we go, then.
6 mins. Fiji exit with little fuss, but Muntz’s kick to touch simply invites another attack from and English lineout. A nice pattern is run in midfield that nearly puts Freeman into space, and a few phases later Cowan-Dickie powers over from short.
Special report: Uniserve was paid £1.4bn for Covid contracts that included supply of £178.5m in never-used equipment
When Mrs Justice Cockerill handed down her judgment in the high court against PPE Medpro, the company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, for supplying unsafe personal protective equipment during the pandemic, her findings were a landmark in a five-year saga that cast the opaque world of government deal making into stark light.
PPE Medpro was ordered to refund the full £122m that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid for unusable gowns in the summer of 2020, as Boris Johnson’s government scrambled to refill the UK’s depleted stocks.
Despair and rancour stalks the concrete corridors of the place that still feels nothing like home for West Ham. Though hope is not yet extinguished. A second home win in succession for Nuno Espírito Santo’s team, the key goal scored by old faithful Tomas Soucek. The defeat of a fellow relegation contender in Burnley may prove vital in the fight against the London Stadium staging Championship football next season. When Soucek’s shot was spilled into Kyle Walker-Peters path for the Hammers’ third, home fans were singing lustily for their team.
They already made it known once again, and in no uncertain terms, what they think of the executives running the club. Following a protest against Crystal Palace, boycotting of the Brentford game, a sit-in against Newcastle, unhappy supporters staged a march. A banner declared “15 years of denying West Ham United”. The service road that surrounds the stadium was filled with thousands of protestors, the entrance for club directors’ luxury cars was blocked off. Black balloons floated, a coffin was carried on shoulders as fans sang West Ham had “sold our soul” by moving to the former Olympic stadium.
A 33rd attempt, a 31st defeat and crucially still no win for Scotland against the All Blacks. And so the search will go on. Let us not resort to that familiar lament, if Scotland could not win it here, will they ever? It is true, they had as gilt-edged a chance as they may ever have, New Zealand forced to play a total of half an hour a man down, having been shown three yellow cards. It is true, Scotland showed remarkable spirit to recover from 17-0 down at the break to level on the hour. But the All Blacks remain deadly, deadlier than Scotland.
This Scotland team is deadly too, but it is a question of deadliness when it matters. That is where they continue to come up short. New Zealand wrote the manual – and did that a long time ago.
The onus is not only on Everton’s goal-shy strikers to turn promising play into points, David Moyes had insisted before Fulham’s visit. “I want more goals from my centre-halves and midfielders as well,” the Everton manager said. Idrissa Gueye and Michael Keane duly obliged to deliver a deserved victory over Marco Silva’s toothless side.
Everton’s second win in nine matches was relatively comfortable as Fulham demonstrated why their leading scorer this season is opposition own goals. A brief flurry in the second half aside, the visitors were subdued throughout by Everton’s greater urgency and quality. Moyes’ team had three goals disallowed for offside too, but a poacher’s finish from Gueye in first-half stoppage time and Keane’s late conversion ensured there would be no reprieve for the former Everton manager.
Danilho Doekhi puts Union Berlin ahead twice in 2-2 draw
Bayern six points clear as RB Leipzig lose at Hoffenheim
Harry Kane headed in a stoppage-time equaliser to prevent a first defeat of the season for Bayern Munich but their 2-2 draw at Union Berlin ended their record winning start across all competitions.
Union thought they had won it with Danilho Doekhi’s second goal in the 83rd minute but Kane headed in the leveller. Bayern top the Bundesliga on 28 points and in fact extended their lead to six, as RB Leipzig lost 3-1 at Hoffenheim.
This match was as dismal as last season’s Europa League final and in a routine league game nerves are no excuse
Never underestimate the haplessness of this Manchester United. Never underestimate the haplessness of this Tottenham Hotspur. Never underestimate the capacity of the Premier League to uncover drama in the least plausible situation. The embers of a game of little quality seemed cold and dead but somehow burst into glorious flame in the final six minutes plus stoppage time.
What it means is anybody’s guess, other than that these are two sides who remain deeply flawed. The shadow of Bilbao and last May’s Europa League final was unavoidable; in purely technical terms, that game was just as bad as the first 84 minutes of this one, but it at least had a sense of edge. Nervousness is permissible if there is something to be nervous about. Such scrappiness in a routine league meeting is far less explicable.
Sabalenka 2-3 Rybakina* (* denotes server): At 15-30, Sabalenka has an opening. Rybakina advances to the net and is so very nearly beaten by a backhand pass … but she gets the ball to drop and level up at 30-all. A whippy forehand moves Sabalenka to break point. She can’t convert before Rybakina delivers a second-serve ace, surprising her opponent with the wide hit. Then comes another delicious serve.
*Sabalenka 2-2 Rybakina (* denotes server): Rybakina’s forehand return goes wild as Sabalenka holds to love.
TikTok video shows woman speaking into camera and reacting to a loud thud before she says ‘I just hit somebody’
Authorities are investigating a newly surfaced video that suggests a woman who hit and killed a man while driving in the Chicago suburb of Zion, Illinois, on Monday night was livestreaming on TikTok at the time of the crash.
The video in question was reportedly taken by a user in Zion, and it shows a woman behind the wheel of a car reacting to a loud thud by saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck … I just hit somebody.”
Using an all-terrain vehicle that’s essentially the Jeep of wheelchairs, a New York tour group helps disabled people get on the trail
Former firefighter Gina Kothe’s right foot was crushed in an aerial-ladder accident during a 2010 blaze in Kingston, New York.
After months of false hope and a failed surgery, doctors decided her foot would have to be amputated. She fell into depression. “I had a slight addiction to painkillers,” she recalled. “I would shower every three or four days, and wear the same barbecue-stained T-shirt for two or three days in a row.”
Republic of Ireland body alleges two statute violations
FAI approved a resolution to submit a formal motion
The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has approved a resolution to submit a formal motion to Uefa urging it to ban Israel from European club and international competitions.
The governing body’s resolution – proposed by the Dublin club Bohemians – cited alleged violations by the Israel Football Association (IFA) of two provisions of Uefa statutes. They are its alleged failure to implement and enforce an effective anti-racism policy and the organisation of clubs in occupied Palestinian territories without the consent of the Palestinian FA.
Liam Lawson has been given a five-second penalty and one penalty point on his super licence for causing a collision with Ollie Bearman during the sprint race earlier. Lawson is now on eight penalty points for the 12-month period. Earlier, Bearman was also handed a five-second time penalty for the sprint race and one penalty point on his licence for “driving in manner deemed potentially dangerous” for his contact with Lawson
There is a delay to qualifying due to repairs required to barrier damage at turns 10 and 11. No confirmation of how long yet …
A wild ride took everyone back where they had started. The one certainty arising from an affair of low quality and, from nowhere, scarcely credible drama was that only a fool would hang their hat on Tottenham or Manchester United right now. The ignominies of last season may be at some remove but it remains anyone’s guess what either of these scratchy, neurotic sides will produce on a given occasion.
It briefly seemed they had conspired to hand Spurs a first league win on home turf since the opening day. That would have been a head-scratcher of its own given they were going nowhere until Mathys Tel, who had only been on the pitch for five minutes, offered a moment of incision they had barely signposted. When Richarlison glanced in Wilson Odobert’s shot early in added time it felt like a potential lift-off: Thomas Frank, so embattled in defeat to Chelsea last week, must have sensed as much as a largely sullen venue erupted around him.
The boos rang out at the Emirates Stadium as the officials exited the pitch at the final whistle, the result of two disallowed Arsenal goals – one for handball and one for offside – the second of which would surely have turned a 1-1 draw into a 2-1 home win if it had stood. Alessia Russo’s late equaliser did at least keep alive the Gunners’ slim hopes of remaining in the title race, the gap between them and Chelsea, the league leaders, remaining at five points, but the question has to be asked: why aren’t we providing the referees with the technological support to ensure they can get big decisions right through video assistant referees (VAR) or VAR lite?
Renée Slegers had warned that her team would “have to be ready from the get go” against defending Women’s Super League champions, but the message had not stuck. It was Chelsea that stepped on to the pitch with an almost unplayable intensity coursing through them and the Gunners couldn’t cope. The Chelsea press was exceptional in the first 20 minutes, with the players alert to every move, heads up, ready to stifle the home side from stringing passes together over and over again.
Volodymr Zelenskyy calls for more sanctions on Moscow after 45 missiles and 450 drones launched at Ukraine
Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least four people and damaging energy infrastructure in three separate regions, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia had launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles, most of which were shot down.
Party was shell-shocked after 2024 defeat but Tuesday night’s coast-to-coast romp signals brighter times ahead
It has been a year of soul-searching, hand-wringing, and self-flagellation for Democrats after a ballot-box rejection so thorough that some had come to believe that the party had lost not only the White House and Congress but the culture itself.
Shell-shocked, Democrats entered Donald Trump’s second term in a political stupor – unsure of who they were or what they stood for. Their base had lost faith in its aging leadership class, and their brand, in Democrats’ own words, had become “toxic”: a party increasingly confined to coastal states, big cities and college towns. And even there, warning signs were flashing.
Premier League: A deflected shot from Mathys Tel has levelled proceedings at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with just six minutes of normal time remaining. Follow the action with Tim De Lisle …
West Ham: Areola, Wan-Bissaka, Kilman, Todibo, Diouf, Fernandes, Potts, Lucas Paqueta, Bowen, Wilson, Summerville.
Many women are afraid to go out, particularly on their own, after religiously aggravated rapes and assaults
Sikh women in the Midlands have told how a spate of religiously motivated attacks have caused fear in their community, forcing some to “change everything” about their daily routines.
Two rapes of Sikh women, both in their 20s, in Walsall and Oldbury, have been reported in recent weeks. John Ashby, 32, has been charged in connection with a religiously aggravated rape in relation to the alleged Walsall attack.
What does the fall of El Fasher mean for the future of Sudan? Kaamil Ahmed reports
By the time Mohamed Douda arrived in El Fasher, a city in the Darfur region of Sudan, the battle between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was already under way.
Over the following months, as the RSF tightened their siege on the city, Douda, a community spokesperson and local activist, updated Guardian journalist Kaamil Ahmed about the deteriorating situation.
2 mins. A very solid receive, recycle and boot drill from Scotland, featuring 0% nonsense, despatches the ball to touch. NZ warm some of their carriers’ hands with the possession won from the lineout, but it comes to nothing before the ball is spilled forward.
Barrett puts his foot through the ball to get the test match underway
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.
But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.
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