England’s Tommy Freeman has revealed the extent of his mental struggles after the victorious British & Irish Lions tour of Australia at the end of a season when he exceeded the player welfare limits for the number of appearances.
Freeman played in 34 games last season – 19 for Northampton, nine for England and six for the Lions – and has spoken of a “built-up anxiety” as a result of the workload. The mandated limit is 30, but players were given dispensation for the Lions tour on the proviso they were allowed five weeks off on returning from Australia and missed the first two rounds of the 2025-26 season.
Rayo had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. But they still managed to upset Atlético Madrid
One day in November, the coach of Rayo Vallecano decided that was it: he was out. The captain in whom he finds strength had reached a similar conclusion long ago, handing in his armband as an act of protest and dignity. Two Fridays ago, the squad signed a statement saying they couldn’t carry on like this. And last Friday, the fans who’ve been through it all before decided they too would walk away. Yet 48 hours later, after another week that proved them right, resisting everything, there they were still, celebrating another implausible success, another day when they had stuck it to The Man. If not, admittedly, the man they’d like to stick it to.
Actually, ‘there’? Not all of them were in the same place, even if that was a way of showing they were in this together. Because Rayo fans were out on the streets of the self-styled independent republic of Vallecas with their banners and scarves and songs on Sunday, while their team and coach were 10km south, playing in a different city. With their training ground unusable and their home home ground declared to be so too, they had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. Where, in front of 9,000 empty seats, and kicking off in the relegation zone, they only went and beat Atlético Madrid 3-0, three days after Diego’s Simeone’s side had battered Barcelona 4-0.
Vienna turns into a playground of camp, cruelty and aristocratic disdain in a blackly comic take on the Báthory legend – with Huppert gloriously suited to the title role
From the dark heart of central Europe comes a midnight-movie romp through the moonlit urban glades of Euro-goth and camp from German director Ulrike Ottinger. As for the star … well, it’s the part she was born to play. Isabelle Huppert is Countess Elizabeth Báthory, 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, legendary for having the blood of hundreds of young girls on her hands and indeed her body, in an attempt to attain eternal youth. The “blood countess” has been variously played in the past by Ingrid Pitt, Delphine Seyrig, Paloma Picasso, Julie Delpy and many more, but surely none were as qualified as Huppert who importantly does not modify her habitual hauteur one iota for the role.
Her natural aristocratic mien and cool hint of elegant contempt were never so well matched with a part. She gives us the classic Huppert opaque gaze – part dreamy, part coldly assessing – and the politely bemused half-smile of concealed distaste, merging into a pout, at the absurdity or ill manners of someone to whom she cannot avoid being introduced. Unlike the other mere mortals in this film, Huppert’s face is lit like that of a Golden Age Hollywood star, giving her impeccable maquillage a ghostly sheen of profane sainthood.
Police confirm suspect is one of dead in incident at boys’ hockey game that injured four in Pawtucket
At least two people are dead in an apparent mass shooting at an indoor ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on Monday afternoon, officials told the WPRI local news outlet.
Police confirmed to the outlet that the suspect is dead. A local sports reporter, Branden Mello, said that one of the shooting victims also died.
State’s governor had demanded impartial inquiry into the shooting of the VA nurse by federal immigration agents
Minnesota law enforcement authorities have said the FBI is refusing to share any evidence on its investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal immigration authorities in late January.
Pretti was shot on 24 January by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement operations in the city. His killing came just two weeks after an immigration official shot and killed Renee Good and 10 days after the shooting of Julio C Sosa-Celis.
Abbas Araghchi is steeped in more than a decade of nuclear dealmaking with a book on the art of negotiations
If the US and Iran are to avoid a regional war, both sides need to start to make concessions at talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and also to accommodate one another’s very different bargaining styles.
The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces.
A United States women’s hockey team already being hailed as one of the best ever assembled is right where they expected to be: playing for Olympic gold. The Americans brushed aside Sweden 5-0 in the first of Monday’s semi-finals, setting the stage for a potential seventh gold-medal showdown with Canada.
Twenty years ago, almost to the day, the USA women absorbed one of the great Olympic shocks when Sweden stunned them in a shootout just down the A4 autostrada in Torino, ending a streak of 25 straight losses to the Americans during which they’d been outscored 187-29. There would be no such ambush this time, even if Sweden coach Ulf Lundberg had suggested the US team were “just human beings” and might not have been overly keen on facing his team in the semi-finals.
President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London
Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.
“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”
Keir Starmer was challenged on Monday morning over the list of U-turns he has made since entering government less than two years ago, including on cuts to winter fuel payments, cuts to disability benefits and hikes in inheritance tax for farmers.
“I am a pragmatist. I am a common-sense merchant,” he told the BBC presenter Jeremy Vine in his defence.
Experts say the detention centres were a breeding ground for extremism and a new generation of IS members
Humanitarians warned for years that the camps in north-east Syria holding tens of thousands of family members of suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters would have to be dealt with. Calling them a “ticking time bomb”, relief groups said the women and children could not just be left to rot in squalid desert camps indefinitely, because eventually they would come home.
Despite the warnings, most states ignored the problem, refusing to repatriate their citizens. At least 8,000 women and children from more than 40 countries have been stranded in the camps of north-east Syria since 2019.
In Instagram post, TV host whose mother disappeared 15 days ago in Arizona says ‘you’re not lost or alone’
The TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie issued a fresh appeal to anyone who knows the whereabouts of her missing mother, saying that “you’re not lost or alone” and “it is never too late to do the right thing”.
The Today anchor, who is stepping away from NBC’s morning broadcast, urged “whoever has her or knows where she is” to come forward, but did not make reference to any ransom demands or communication with any abductor.
Offsetting Charli xcx, Chaney’s take on 19th-century ballad Dark Eyed Sailor accompanies Margot Robbie on the moors – but it’s just a tiny part of her culture-crossing, history-vaulting musical catalogue
An hour into Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Margot Robbie is in a gauzy wedding dress, gliding forlornly across the moors towards the man her character feels she has to marry. A lone female English voice appears to accompany her, high and pure against the buzzing drone of a harmonium, singing about a woman roaming alone, and a man who, for “seven years, left the land”, before his eventual return.
Long before Emerald Fennell found Olivia Chaney’s version of 19th-century ballad the Dark Eyed Sailor online, Chaney was preparing to sing it for a 2013 live session on Mark Radcliffe’s BBC Radio 2 folk show, in the midst of her own Brontë-esque love triangle. “I was at the beginning of my relationship with the man who is now my husband and the father of my two children – he nearly married someone else, and I nearly had kids with someone else.”
Former Rochdale defenderLuke Matheson actually scored against Manchester United as a 16-year-old in 2019. After playing for a number of clubs, including Wolves, Matheson finds himself at Macclesfield. Speaking before tonight’s game he said:
To give back to the fans of this town is the proudest thing you can do as a footballer. For us to be able to give them moments like the Palace game and then another against Brentford brings us such joy as players.
Wrexham and Mansfield host big guns in the fifth round while Newcastle face Manchester City and Liverpool go to Wolves
TNT have kicked off with a walk-and-talk around a packed Macclesfield dressing room, the only problem being that the camera lens keeps steaming up. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
Three minutes until the draw, according to an on-screen countdown that will inevitably prove to be inaccurate. I think the fifth round is my personal favourite round of the Cup; close enough to Wembley but still with plenty of room for surprises.
La Penna wrongly sent off Juve’s Kalulu against Inter
Official could face one-month ban following incident
The referee Federico La Penna has received dozens of death threats after wrongly sending off a Juventus player at Inter on Saturday. Italian police have reportedly advised him not to leave his home.
La Penna sparked fury among Juventus fans after dismissing Pierre Kalulu, showing the defender a second yellow card for a challenge on Alessandro Bastoni. Replays showed Bastoni had clearly simulated the fall. Juventus officials and fans argued that the decision heavily influenced the game, which Inter won 3-2, despite the Bianconeri having fought back to level the score with 10 men.
From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast in Apocalypse Now, just to see him on screen made me smile
Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Duvall was famously bald (the rare roles needing hairpieces always looked artificial on him) and so he looked the same age almost all his acting life: forever in his vigorous fortysomething prime – though often playing figures complicated with tenderness and woundedness.
Duvall had a long, rich career, starting out with notable roles in To Kill a Mockingbird, M*A*S*H, The Conversation and Network, but it was destiny to be chiefly known for two sensational and very different roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola at either end of the 1970s. One was Tom Hagen, the quiet, self-effacing consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather (1972), with a complex relationship both with the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando, and his youngest son and heir, the coldly imperious Michael, played by Al Pacino. And the second was his extraordinary turn as the surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgorein Apocalypse Now (1979), who with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a gigantic attack on a Vietnamese village in broad daylight, with speakers blaring The Ride of the Valkyries – in theory to airlift Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, and his boatful of men into the river’s strategic entry point. But all too clearly, it’s because he just wants an excuse for a whooping and hollering cavalry attack.
Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.
“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook.
Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networks
UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems.
The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur.
More than 170,000 seek compensation after UCL Covid settlement opens door to claims across university sector
Dozens of universities are facing legal action from more than 170,000 students seeking compensation after their studies were moved online during Covid-19.
Pre-action claim letters have been sent to 36 universities in England and Wales, including Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool and Warwick, on behalf of aggrieved students.
Quentin Deranque, 23, who was on sidelines of a protest, died from a brain injury after attack that has fuelled political tensions
French police have launched a murder inquiry after a far-right activist died in hospital having been beaten up in an attack that has fuelled political tensions in France.
Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old mathematics student, died from a severe brain injury at the weekend. The Lyon prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said Deranque was assaulted by at least six masked individuals. Police were working to identify suspects and no arrests had been made, Dran said.
Referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate this weekend
VAR was not used in fourth round of FA Cup ties
The referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate in the next round of Premier League fixtures after a series of high-profile errors during the FA Cup tie between Aston Villa and Newcastle on Saturday.
Kavanagh has been stood down by Professional Game Match Officials, alongside one of his two assistants at Villa Park, Nick Greenhalgh. The second, Gary Beswick, will run the line at Nottingham Forest v Liverpool on Sunday.
Actor shouted down and pelted with fruit during Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists
An actor at a theatre in Germany was at the weekend shouted down, pelted with fruit and subjected to an attempted stage invasion as he delivered a final monologue in character as a far-right activist.
The violent scenes came on Saturday during the German premiere of the Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues’s work Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Stunning ton by Pathum Nissanka seals hosts’ run chase
Australia need Ireland to beat Zimbabwe on Tuesday
Australia could be out of the T20 World Cup before they even play their final first round group match after a stunning fightback by Sri Lanka in Pallekele.
Returning captain Mitch Marsh and a revived Travis Head looked to have set Australia on course for a victory that would have kept their tournament hopes alive as they smashed a century-plus opening stand at more than two-runs-a-ball.
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