Prime minister seeks to make best of difficult state visit by US president with package of commitments by US firms

Keir Starmer has sought to navigate a politically treacherous state visit by Donald Trump with an announcement of £150bn of US investment in the UK, as the president was kept safely within the confines of Windsor Castle.

As thousands of protesters voiced their anger in London at a Stop Trump Coalition protest, the US president was escorted by the king and queen through a first day that ended in a state banquet but kept him out of reach of his critics.

It should have been a lot easier than this for Liverpool but the 92nd-minute roar to celebrate Virgil van Dijk’s winner against Atlético Madrid made the hardship worthwhile.

After scoring twice in the opening six minutes through Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah, Liverpool were galloping to victory but were pegged back by two goals from Marcos Llorente, only for their captain to head home a late corner and send Anfield wild in the process.

The Allianz Arena will always hold cherished memories for Chelsea but when they pick through the wreckage of their first night back in the Champions League there will be plenty of moments that they would probably rather not have to think about again.

Back at the ground where they became European champions for the first time, there was the brief prospect of the team in blue pulling off another unlikely heist in Bavaria. Yet while there was defiance after Bayern Munich went 2-0 up, Cole Palmer halving the deficit, the problems at the other end were too great for Chelsea to overcome.

David Pittman to get lethal injection under DeSantis-signed warrant for killing estranged wife’s sister and parents

A Florida man convicted of killing his estranged wife’s sister and parents and setting their house on fire was scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday evening, which would be a record 12th execution in the state in 2025.

David Pittman, 63, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection starting at 6pm at Florida state prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Governor Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor has signed more death warrants this year than any of his predecessors.

With US president hidden from public view, media focuses instead on peripheral sideshow of clowns drawn by state visit

Never in its long and august history has the No 10 bus from Windsor to Staines (via Datchet and Wraysbury) received a welcome like this. Its passage secured by police escort, its progress followed by the world’s media, the orange single-decker trundles regally up Windsor’s high street, while onlookers crane to get a glimpse of the single pensioner conveyed within. “It’s not him,” one man mutters, a little superfluously.

It was that kind of a day on the banks of the Thames: lots of excitement over very little, a sideshow that felt largely peripheral to the pageantry unfolding within the sealed castle grounds. “I’m afraid nothing’s going to happen, madam,” a police officer informed a woman filming a Facebook Live video from the kerb as he shooed her a safe distance back towards the pavement.

• World champion from 2022 is first American man to join

• Kerley provisionally banned by Athletics Integrity Unit

The Olympic 100m silver and bronze medallist Fred Kerley will compete in the inaugural Enhanced Games, the event’s organisers revealed on Wednesday, weeks after the Athletics Integrity Unit handed the American a provisional suspension for whereabouts failures.

The 2022 100m world champion is the first track athlete and American man to join the event that permits athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in official competition.

Trail closes after 29-year-old man suffers non-threatening injuries in backcountry encounter with possible grizzly

A Yellowstone national park trail remained closed on Wednesday after a possible grizzly bear attacked a hiker, leaving him with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

The 29-year-old man suffered injuries to his chest and arm in Tuesday’s attack on the Turbid lake trail north-east of Yellowstone Lake.

• Updates from Allianz Arena | Liverpool v Atlético live

• Live scores | Follow us over on Bluesky | Email Luke

The TNT Sports pundits Cole and Owen Hargreaves, who played in the 2004/05 tie between these sides, are reminiscing about José Mourinho hiding in a laundry basket to give a team talk, due to a Uefa touchline ban.

“This is what it’s all about,” says pundit Joe Cole of tonight’s mouthwatering clash, which is a fair point.

• Latest updates from Anfield | Bayern v Chelsea live

• Live scores | Follow us on Bluesky | Email Simon

Right then, the preambles have been entirely and completely completed, and as soon as Liverpool break from their huddle we can get on with kicking off.

The players are in the tunnel. The crowd have assuaged their lonely-walk-based fears. Not much stands between us and football.

Central bank moves to set rates at range between 4 and 4.25% but decision unlikely to satisfy Donald Trump

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday, its first rate cut since December, as the central bank moved to stabilize a wobbling labor market even as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to push up prices.

Rates are now at a range of 4% to 4.25% – the lowest since November 2022. But the decision is unlikely to satisfy Trump, who has lambasted the Fed for acting “too late” and called for a far bigger cut.

Faustino Asprilla will be in attendance as Eddie Howe aims to prove his side are Champions League contenders

It is only two years since Eddie Howe attended his first Champions League match but now Newcastle’s manager is on a mission to disrupt Europe’s elite.

As Barcelona arrived on Tyneside on Wednesday Hansi Flick’s La Liga champions certainly displayed no sign of complacency. Indeed Flick warned of the “intensity” his players must be braced for at St James’ Park on Thursday night.

Video from ‘unite the kingdom’ rally captured man saying ‘someone needs to shoot Keir Starmer’

A man allegedly captured on video at the far-right rally in London on Saturday threatening to kill Keir Starmer has been arrested by police.

An investigation was launched on Sunday in connection with the video, which was filmed at the event organised by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson.

• Alyssa Healy admits side was outplayed in New Chandigarh

• Australia fall well short of 292 target as World Cup looms

Australia’s all-conquering cricket women have been given a wake-up call with their World Cup defence approaching as India handed Alyssa Healy’s side their biggest ever one-day international defeat in Punjab.

Healy admitted the champions had been “outplayed” in New Chandigarh on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) as they suffered a 102-run loss, a thumping so heavy that it even surpassed the Australians’ previous record 92-run defeat to England in Birmingham 52 years ago.

Study finds chimpanzees’ enthusiasm for guzzling ripe fruit puts their ethanol intake at about 14g per day

Someone have a word with the chimps? Observations of the apes in the wild show them imbibing the alcoholic equivalent of a half pint of beer a day through the vast amount of fermented fruit in their diet.

Researchers arrived at the first estimates of wild chimp daily alcohol intake after measuring ethanol levels in fallen fruit that the apes gather from the forest floor in Kibale national park in Uganda and in Taï national park in Ivory Coast.

Gardaí believe body is that of Daniel Aruebose, whose 2022 disappearance was not noticed by authorities until last month

Irish police investigating the fate of a boy who disappeared four years ago but was only registered by authorities as missing last month have found the remains of a child on Dublin wasteland.

Gardaí named the missing boy as Daniel Aruebose, who is thought to have vanished in 2022 aged three, after they discovered the remains on Wednesday in the Donabate area of north Dublin.

The Javier Mascherano-led side has an outside chance of repeating as Supporters’ Shield winners, but MLS Cup remains the ultimate goal

Much about Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale was typical. The weather was sticky and humid. The crowd at Chase Stadium was lively. And on the field, Lionel Messi assisted Jordi Alba, and vice-versa, in a 3-1 win for Inter Miami. That the victory came against the Seattle Sounders, the side that beat Miami in a contentious Leagues Cup final two weeks ago, gave the squad a measure of revenge. But there are bigger factors at play.

“It was important to regain positive feelings,” Miami head coach Javier Mascherano told reporters afterward.

Third option for juries – blamed for country’s lower conviction rates for rape and sexual assault – abolished

The Scottish verdict of “not proven” – a global legal anomaly thought to be a key factor in the country’s significantly lower convictions rate for rape and sexual assault – has been abolished.

MSPs agreed to scrap the unique Scottish verdict as they voted through a series of major changes that Angela Constance, the justice secretary, said “put victims and witnesses at the heart of a modern and fair justice system”.

Former officials testify before US Senate, saying the CDC under Kennedy is ‘supporting policies not based in science’

• US politics live – latest updates

Top former officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of hobbling the country’s ability to respond to outbreaks and disease threats.

The two officials testified at a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) committee. Susan Monarez, the CDC director chosen by Kennedy, was fired after less than a month. Debra Houry, chief medical officer at the CDC, resigned after serving under six CDC directors during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Meta’s former president of global affairs says agreement will leave UK more reliant on US tech firms

A multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement announced to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit represents “sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley”, Nick Clegg, Meta’s former president of global affairs, has said.

The former deputy prime minister said the deals, heralded with great fanfare by the government as it tries to foster growth in the UK, were “mutton dressed as lamb” and would make the country ever more reliant on US tech firms.

EU’s top diplomat concerned after India joins Russian military exercises ‘that are an existential threat to us’

The EU has called for closer ties with India while admitting there was no “mutual understanding” with Narendra Modi’s government over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and lead negotiator on trade, Maroš Šefčovič, outlined an EU-India strategy on Wednesday as part of Europe’s drive to build and strengthen alliances in a world shaken by Donald Trump’s challenges to the postwar order.

Erika McEntarfer says Americans should be concerned about independence of key economic institutions

The former chief US economics data statistics who Donald Trump fired last month called her sudden removal “dangerous” and said Americans should be concerned about the independence of key economic institutions.

“Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated,” said Erika McEntarfer, the former head of the Bureau Labor of Statistics, in her first remarks since her firing. “Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences.”

Career experts warn of decades of progress lost as administration fires staff, slashes budgets and buries data

Donald Trump’s second presidency has spelled upheaval or worse for multiple spheres of US government. But for science – long a key driver of the US’s global pre-eminence – it has heralded the perfect storm.

In public health, climate science, environmental protection and nuclear safety, seasoned career specialists have been left bewildered and often jobless under a ferocious onslaught from the president, apparently aimed at gaining control over a sector about which he has displayed strongly held views, if frequently flawed understanding.

Late-night hosts discuss Maga’s baseless claims about ‘violence’ from the ‘far left’ and Trump’s new $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times

Late-show hosts recap Donald Trump’s chilly reception in the UK, his corrupt business deals with the UAE and Maga’s fearmongering around the “radical left”.

Exclusive: Firm that runs Aberdeenshire resort says it is ‘categorically wrong’ to suggest it has caused environmental damage

Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course has breached sewage contamination limits 14 times since 2019, documents reveal.

The 36-hole golf course, one of two that Trump owns in Scotland, also has a five-star hotel, a whisky bar and two restaurants. Trump International Golf Links, Scotland has a private sewage system that treats wastewater before releasing it into the ground by soaking it through gravel beds in raised filter mounds.