AFC prize pot stagnates amid global women’s football boom
Tournament is now world’s lowest-paying continental competition
It has been billed as the most successful Women’s Asian Cup to date, yet prize money at the upcoming tournament in Australia will not increase from what was offered by the Asian Football Confederation at the last edition four years ago.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the world’s oldest women’s national team competition introduced prize money for the first time in 2022, distributing US$1.8m among the nations who finished in the top four.
Sundance film festival: the story of the Marion County Record and the forces that tried to destroy it is expanded for a charming, and concerning, look at freedom of the press
On 11 August 2023, police officers executed a search warrant on the offices of the Marion County Record, a small, family-owned paper in central Kansas. Local law enforcement seized the computers, cell phones and reporting materials from all staff, as well as from the homes of one city council member and paper co-owner Eric Meyer, without incident – though they met the impassioned resistance of Meyer’s 98-year-old mother Joan, the paper’s other co-owner, who threw her walker to the ground and declared the raid “Nazi stuff”.
“This is illegal,” Eric Meyers warns the officers, as seen in a new documentary on the episode. “You’re going to be on national news tonight.”
Celtic race into 3-0 lead inside 19 minutes and win 4-2
O’Neill’s side now face either Stuttgart or Ferencvaros
This was only briefly a little more fraught than it needed to be and looked as if it would be for Celtic. Martin O’Neill can focus on the most important factor in that he has guided the Scottish champions into the Europa league’s playoff phase. Job done, once again, for the effervescent O’Neill. Ferencvaros or Stuttgart lie in wait after Celtic closed in 21st place.
Celtic were fully deserving of their win in what unexpectedly developed into an entertaining clash with Utrecht. O’Neill, thought to be a managerial yesterday’s man not so long ago, continues to do his bit for 70-somethings everywhere. The Irishman will know Celtic must improve to make meaningful, further progress in this competition but such detail can wait. Even continuation in the Europa League had looked a long shot at one point. Utrecht will be delighted to see the back of a tournament which yielded just a single point from eight grisly fixtures.
Nottingham Forest cruised into the Europa League playoffs with a one-sided victory against Ferencvaros, Igor Jesus maintaining his impressive goalscoring form to cap a fine few days for Sean Dyche.
The last time Forest won three successive home games in a European competition, in 1979, it culminated in them lifting their first European Cup under Brian Clough. While there is a long way to go in this competition, these are the kind of nights that foster hope of at least reaching the showpiece in Istanbul in May. James McAtee completed the scoring from the penalty spot to condemn Robbie Keane’s side to a 4-0 defeat.
Met Office issues yellow rain alerts in south-west, with 66 flood warnings – indicating expected flooding – in force
Nearly 150 flood alerts remain in place across England as communities continue grappling with the aftermath of Storm Chandra.
A yellow rain alert spanning from noon to midnight on Thursday has been issued for parts of south-west England, with the Met Office warning that more flooding could hit roads, homes and businesses.
38-year-old faces recent nemesis at Australian Open
Djokovic rested after only 11 completed sets in Melbourne
Novak Djokovic has insisted that he will not “walk out with a white flag” as he prepares for his latest battle with one of the ATP’s dominant top two in a grand slam semi-final, this time against the two-time defending champion Jannik Sinner on Friday in Melbourne.
“I’m creating my own history, and I think I’ve been very clear when I say that my intention is always to … get to the championship match in every tournament, particularly slams,” Djokovic said. “Slams are one of the biggest reasons why I keep on competing and playing tennis. So that’s all I can say.
Senator says she is running ‘for every Minnesotan who wants ICE and its abusive tactics out of the state we love’
Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic US senator and one-time presidential candidate, announced she will run for governor of Minnesota, an expected move after the incumbent governor, Tim Walz, dropped out of the race in early January.
Klobuchar’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after Walz said that he would never run for public office again.
The Oscar-nominated star of The King’s Speech will check in for the new season of hit comedy drama set in France
Oscar-nominee Helena Bonham Carter has joined Steve Coogan for the fourth season of HBO’s comedy drama The White Lotus.
Bonham Carter is one of three new cast members officially announced today alongside Chris Messina and Marissa Long. Messina is known for roles in Sharp Objects, The Mindy Project and Julie & Julia, while Long is a model with only a short film to her name as an actor.
Federal transportation regulator to investigate after child in Santa Monica sustained minor injuries from incident
The US’s federal transportation regulator said Thursday it had opened an investigation after a Waymo self-driving vehicle struck a child near an elementary school in southern California last week, causing minor injuries.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the child in Santa Monica ran across the street on 23 January from behind a double parked SUV towards the school and was struck by the Waymo autonomous vehicle during normal school drop-off hours. The agency said there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity.
Apple released its first quarter earnings on Thursday exceeding Wall Street’s expectations, seeing its revenue skyrocket 16% from the same time last year.
“Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion,” Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment.”
Anthony Kazmierczak faces federal assault charges after he appeared to spray the congresswoman with liquid from a syringe
The Department of Justice has filed federal charges against the man accused of attacking Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar at a town hall in Minneapolis on Tuesday. In newly filed court documents, a “close associate” told investigators that the alleged attacker previously said that someone “should kill” the Minnesota lawmaker.
Local police arrested and booked Anthony James Kazmierczak, 55, for third-degree assault after he appeared to spray Omar with an acidic-smelling liquid from a syringe as she addressed constituents from a lectern.
US president says he made appeal to Russian leader, but no ceasefire has been confirmed by Moscow or Kyiv
Donald Trump has claimed that Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for one week after he issued a personal appeal to the Russian leader due to the extreme cold in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, did not immediately confirm the ceasefire was in place, but said that Trump had made an “important statement … about the possibility of providing security for Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during this extreme winter period”.
Avaaraq Olsen tells content creators to think before making jokes after German tried to raise Stars and Stripes in Nuuk
The mayor of Greenland’s capital has called on media professionals and content creators to act responsibly after a German comedian’s failed attempt to hoist the US flag.
Maxi Schafroth, 41, a Bavarian comic, tried to run up the Stars and Stripes on a flagpole near the cultural centre in Nuuk but was confronted by angry passersby.
Agency updates guidance after increase in reports of condition to its yellow card scheme
Patients on weight-loss jabs and diabetes injections should be aware there is a small risk of developing severe acute pancreatitis, the UK medicines regulator has said.
About 1.6 million adults in England, Wales and Scotland used GLP-1 medication, such as semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro), between early 2024 and early 2025 to lose weight, according to recent research.
Order allows direct flights from US to Venezuela, as major oil companies already on ground to assess potential operations
Donald Trump has ordered the immediate reopening of commercial airspace over Venezuela, weeks after US military forces toppled the dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Speaking at the White House during his cabinet’s first meeting of the year, Trump said he had just concluded a telephone conversation with Venezuela’s acting president (and former vice-president), Delcy Rodríguez, in which he informed her of the decision to restore flight access.
Protesters need support following the bloody crackdown by a ‘zombie’ regime – not wild threats or worse from the US president
The brutality of Iran’s crackdown on protesters is almost unfathomable. Despite the authorities cutting off communications and destroying evidence, it is clear that a regime never reluctant to shed its citizens’ blood has done so with unprecedented zeal, sensing an unprecedented threat from unrest across the country, challenging not only its policies but its very existence.
Officials have reported 3,000 deaths, but human rights groups have tallied many more, and a network of medical professionals has estimated that 30,000 could have been killed. Security forces shot people dead as they fled a fire and are arresting doctors for helping the wounded.
New study into ‘heritability’ shows that 50% of the variation in human lifespan could be down to genetics
Some people who live to a great age put it down to an evening tot of whisky, others to staying out of trouble. Now scientists think they may have unlocked a key secret to long life – quite simply, genetics.
Writing in the journal Science, the researchers described how previous studies that had attempted to unpick the genetic component of human lifespan had not taken into account that some lives were cut short by accidents, murders, infectious diseases or other factors arising outside the body. Such “extrinsic mortality” increases with age, as people often become more frail.
International sporting events don’t often see teams refuse to participate for a cause – but when it’s happened, it hasn’t been effective
It was probably fitting that the first call from someone with genuine power should emanate from Germany, long one of soccer’s moral centers. “The time has definitely come,” German soccer federation vice-president Oke Göttlich told the Hamburger Morgenpost, “to seriously consider and discuss” a boycott of the 2026 World Cup.
“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” added Göttlich, who is also the president of FC St. Pauli, Hamburg’s earnestly countercultural club. “By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.”
After the American’s venting went viral, players’ privacy has become a serious issue and deserves to be respected regardless of their income
The court access corridor at Melbourne Park is buried inconspicuously underneath the tournament grounds. A long, spacious walkway, it connects the east and west points of the vast Australian Open venue, allowing competitors to move unaccosted between the courts, player areas and media facilities. Right in the middle of the corridor, a large pair of automatic doors open up to the various private player areas.
Those same doors also lead straight to the entrance of Rod Laver Arena. On Tuesday, in the immediate aftermath of her excruciating 6-1, 6-2 loss to Elina Svitolina, Coco Gauff removed a racket from her bag, exited the double doors into the vacant corridor and up a ramp that she believed was hidden by a wall. She then proceeded to obliterate her racket on the concrete floor. Two days later, the force of that racket smash continues to reverberate around the tour.
“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that – and that word is treason,” David Eby told reporters.
PM says trip to China has put relationship in stronger place, but possible return visit angers British critics
Keir Starmer has taken a big step towards rapprochement with China, opening the door to a UK visit from Xi Jinping in a move that drew immediate anger from British critics of Beijing.
During the first visit by a UK prime minister to China in eight years – a period which Starmer has described as an “ice age” – he said talks with the Chinese president had left the bilateral relationship in a stronger position.
Sundance film festival: there are some effective early moments in this ultra low-budget, audio-first horror but deja vu soon replaces intrigue
There’s a swirl of creepy noises in A24’s new hyped-up horror Undertone – screaming, gargling, singing, banging – but nothing is quite loud enough to drown out the swirl of films it’s cribbing from. The debut feature from writer-director Ian Tuason, about horror podcasters who receive a set of mysterious recordings, has elements of Paranormal Activity, Session 9, Hereditary, The Ring, The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist, enough sighs of familiarity to give horror fans a scary case of deja vu. It’s not that total originality is expected at this particular moment (this weekend’s Send Help has been touted as Misery meets Castaway), but given the genre’s overcrowd, it’s hard to see what pushes Undertone above the noise.
What it does do is make for an impressively resourceful use of a low budget, the whole thing costing about $500,000. It’s all shot in one house (Tuason’s actual home) and for the most part, any sinister goings on are restricted to audio footage, heard through the headphones of our lead Eva (Nina Kiri, who reminds me of a young Alice Eve). She’s living back home with her terminally ill mother, fending calls from a thoughtless boyfriend and patiently awaiting those from her friend, and maybe one that got away, Justin (the voice of White Lotus breakout Adam DiMarco, replacing the original voice after the A24 acquisition). The pair co-host a podcast that analyses creepy tales, Eva as the skeptic and Justin as the believer, the pair’s flirtatious pitter-patter positioning them as the Mulder and Scully of the audio world.
Critics worry that heckling, such as that at a recent Royal Opera performance, is becoming more common
Opera audiences pride themselves on knowing when – and how – to make noise. Cries of “bravo”, “brava” and “bravi” have become a celebrated part of the tradition, with shouted approval seen as evidence of connoisseurship.
Booing, too, has a long history, and as a brave stand-in at the Royal Opera House found out on Tuesday night, its impact may sometimes seem a little blunter.
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