• WCL updates from Meadow Park; kick-off 8pm GMT

• Scores | Table | Read Moving the Goalposts | Mail Scott

3 min: … so having said that, Kelly advances down the right and crosses. It’s a slight mishit, and nearly loops over Rodríguez’s head and into the top left! But the Real keeper adjusts to the situation quickly, backpedaling and plucking the ball from the sky, just under her crossbar.

2 min: Arsenal haven’t really had a sniff yet. Real are pressing hard and keeping the hosts in their own half. “There is chatter among the Arsenalati as to how soon Kyra Cooney-Cross will displace Kim Little,” begins Charles Antaki. “The latter is no youngster, though retiring from international football has kept her going for a while yet. But it’s stating the obvious that Arsenal have missed her composure and problem-solving in midfield these last games while she’s been injured. Cooney-Cross is always tidy and firm in her passing, but doesn’t seem to be so much of a schemer as Little, and inevitably Arsenal have certainly suffered from a lack of guile recently. Some smartness needed tonight.”

Pam Bondi speaks after US Senate passes bill to release files – but agency may hold back material that could affect a Trump-ordered investigation

One quick note, there haven’t been any changes to Donald Trump’s schedule today, per the press pool. Which means, as of now, the president doesn’t have any time allotted to sign the bill forcing the justice department to release the full batch of Jeffrey Epstein files.

We’ll keep you updated if things change throughout the day.

Company set to beat Wall Street expectations but analysts await projections for future demand for firm’s AI chips

All eyes are on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry, as analysts and investors hope the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.

A great deal will ride on how confident Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appears in his forward-looking guidance. Analysts and experts say that although they are largely confident Nvidia will beat Wall Street expectations, they’re anxiously awaiting news on the status of industry demand for the firm’s AI chips.

David Maltinsky, a 16-year veteran, says in lawsuit agency retaliated against him for engaging in protected speech

A longtime FBI employee has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for displaying a Pride flag at his desk, naming FBI director Kash Patel, the justice department and attorney general Pam Bondi as defendants.

According to David Maltinsky, an intelligence specialist who had served with the bureau for 16 years, his wrongful termination earlier this year was “unconstitutional and politically motivated”.

Unclear if Trump administration backs deal that would mean Kyiv giving up territory and slashing size of military

US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday as Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 25 people in the city of Ternopil.

The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty and is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv.

The rollout of reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir has led to Ryan Lizza airing out her alleged affairs – and is fueling a dangerous stereotype about journalists

This week, Olivia Nuzzi – the US star political reporter known for her cozy access to top Republican figures – dropped an excerpt of her memoir, American Canto. In it, she detailed what she describes as an emotional affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who she calls “the politician”.

Not to be outdone, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance and former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza self-published an essay dishing on the day he found out Nuzzi was cheating on him, he claims – not with RFK Jr, as one might have expected, but with another former presidential candidate, Mark Sanford.

With students terrified and arrests rising, educators turn activists – scanning streets, sharing alerts and defending the right to feel safe

Three teachers drove through a quiet neighborhood in southern San Diego, the sun not yet fully up over the horizon. They drank coffee and talked about their jobs. The start of the school day was still an hour or two away.

Suddenly, mid-conversation, they spotted something: what appeared to be an undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, driving right past them.

Alert says Beijing trying to recruit British sources in parliament, even if potential gains may be unclear

An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.

It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful ministry of state security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.

A fixation on reducing numbers leaves no room for rational discussion of what that means for the economy and society

British political debate has long been dominated by public anxiety about rising levels of immigration. How might that change if the population tide were to turn? Not at all, would appear to be the answer. Net migration has in fact been falling since before Labour came to power last July, and yet there has been no end of demand for ever tighter controls and no end of government acquiescence.

New figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), adjusting historical data for methodological changes, show that net migration was 944,000 for the year ending March 2023 – about 40,000 higher than had previously been thought. The drop since then has also been steeper. The number for the year ending December 2024 is now thought to be 345,000 – lower than the earlier count by 86,000.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Whether by leveraging Russia’s frozen assets, or other means, the EU must deliver the cash necessary to withstand Putin’s war of attrition

In the early part of this year, as the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated European leaders in Munich, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was subjected to a televised mauling in the White House, it became starkly apparent that the bonds of solidarity between the European Union and Ukraine would need to be strengthened to cope with a new geopolitical reality. As 2025 draws to a close, a moment of reckoning has arrived.

According to EU estimates, Ukraine will need more than €70bn in extra financial assistance next year to keep defending itself against Vladimir Putin. That money won’t be coming from Washington, where Donald Trump has refused to seek new funding for military aid from Congress. Yet Kyiv’s ability to negotiate an acceptable peace depends on its capacity to withstand Mr Putin’s relentless war of attrition, which is designed to drain Ukraine of the resources necessary to resist, and to weaken the resolve of its European allies.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Unsealed indictment says Ryan Wedding tracked down witness who was then murdered before he could testify

US authorities have charged a fugitive former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin with the murder of a witness who was prepared to testify against him.

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said on Wednesday that Ryan Wedding was accused in a newly unsealed indictment of tracking down a witness in Colombia who was then murdered before he could give evidence.

• Manager wants youth to dream of playing for Scotland

• Clarke uses missed chances as player to inspire team

Steve Clarke hopes Scotland’s long-awaited qualification for a men’s World Cup will inspire the country’s young footballers.

Against a backdrop of euphoric scenes at Hampden Park on Tuesday night, the Scots defeated Denmark 4-2 to seal a World Cup spot for the first time since 1998. Their manager was delighted to end that long wait, especially as he believes it has harmed the nation’s football development. “This should stimulate or motivate young players to go out and become Scotland internationals in the future,” said Clarke. “Hopefully there is a legacy from this group of players to the younger generations and we don’t wait so long to go to the next tournament and the next tournament.

A former friend and others who were at Dulwich college with the now Reform UK leader speak of his behaviour

• ‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school

It had been a fun sleepover at Nigel Farage’s house and Jean-Pierre Lihou, a teenager with an appetite, was delighted with his schoolfriend’s mother’s hospitality. “I remember the fantastic cooked English breakfast, as opposed to what you get at a boarding house on a morning,” Lihou recalled. “I was a boarder and he was a day boy,” he said of their education at Dulwich college in south-east London.

Farage was a great mimic, and funny with it, Lihou said. But over time he found there was a darker side to his 14-year-old friend.

Agriculture minister calls for investigation over marketing of carbonara sauce containing wrong type of cured meat

Italy’s agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, has called for an immediate investigation after coming across what he claimed were jars of “Italian-sounding” pasta sauce on the shelves of the European parliament’s supermarket.

Lollobrigida, of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, was particularly vexed by a carbonara sauce made with “Italiaanse pancetta” – the classic Roman pasta dish is made with a different cured meat, guanciale – and a tomato sauce containing “oignons de Calabria”, or onions from Calabria.

• WCL updates from Germany; kick-off 5.45pm GMT

• Live scores | Read Moving the Goalposts | Mail Taha

4 min: … Zigotti’s ball in finds the safe hands of Johannes. United have begun well, though, taking control of possession.

3 min: Malard drops deep to get involved in United’s build-up play before Sandberg finds space to dribble down the left. Corner to the visitors …

No one suffers a cold like I do. Drops and brandy don’t touch the sides – but thanks to a friendly singer, I’ve learned a more extreme regime for countering the snuffles

This time last year, I was on a TV programme with three singers. There was a rapper of Ghanaian heritage, a big pop star, and a famous mezzo-soprano. It was deep midwinter. The night before, I’d been at an old friend’s 60th birthday, crammed into the function room of a pub somewhere in Surrey. It had been a good night, but now, just for something to say, I wondered how it was possible to avoid catching a cold when half the people at the party were players in a symphony of coughs, sneezes, snuffles and nose-blows. By the way, how come some people have nose-blows like trumpets, and others don’t? A question for another day.

At mention of my night out, this trio of troubadours in the TV green room did two things. First, they shrunk away from me slightly. Second, they engaged in a feverishly enthusiastic discussion on how to avoid catching colds which, naturally enough given their line of work, was something of an obsession for them. I get that, but I have skin in this game too – I must avoid colds at all costs because the colds I get are worse than anyone else’s. I don’t have a medical certificate to confirm this, but I know it to be true. My colds last longer. My nose is more blocked, my throat is scratchier, my coughing fits are louder, barkier and apparently endless. My family, wise to the couple of quick throat-clearances which herald the coming storm, either kick me out of the room, or clear the room themselves. Back when I presented football on ITV, my poor colleagues in the studio gallery grew attuned to the warning signs. “Cans off!” the studio director would holler to his team, before I deafened them all, blowing the wiring in their headphones.

The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformity

A movie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility.

The Ken Kesey novel that the movie is based on was published in 1962, chronicling some of what Kesey saw as a hospital orderly and anticipating some of the coming pushback against postwar American conformity. The major change in Miloš Forman’s film is to shift the narrative away from Chief (Will Sampson), a towering Native American who presents himself as deaf and mute. Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence. Though the doctors don’t seem entirely convinced by his ruse, his behavior is apparently erratic enough for him to stay at least a little while. His attempts to bring more individualism and fun to his cohabitants runs afoul of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who exercises tight control over the ward.

Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in a Saudi consulate. The president says ‘things happen’

“Things happen.” Just two words. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is probably the most infamous journalist killing of the last decade – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for journalism – and for the truth.

The US president’s dismissal of the murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi came in a press conference with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA found in a 2021 report had orchestrated the kidnap and killing of the Washington Post columnist in 2018. (Prince Mohammed has denied involvement.)

Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists

Health organisation is to lose almost a quarter of its workforce in 2026, reducing its ability to help countries facing disease outbreaks

The loss of more than 2,000 jobs at the World Health Organization (WHO) “will leave the world less healthy and less safe”, experts have warned.

The global health body said it expected to lose 2,371 posts – nearly a quarter of its workforce – by June 2026 as it deals with budget cuts after the US withdrawal from the organisation in January. At that point the WHO had 9,401 staff members.

• Sporting director Ernst Tanner was subject of Guardian investigation

• Complaint to MLS alleged racist, sexist, and homophobic comments

• Tanner denied allegations, which initial MLS investigation did not corroborate

• Read our full investigation | Summary of our findings

Major League Soccer announced on Wednesday that it is re-opening its investigation into Philadelphia Union sporting director Ernst Tanner. The Union said in a statement to the Guardian that they have placed Tanner on administrative leave. The move comes a day after the Guardian published an investigation into Tanner’s conduct.

Tanner had previously been under investigation by MLS after the league received a complaint from the MLS Players Association in late January. In it, the MLSPA outlined a wide range of alleged issues surrounding Tanner, which included the use of racist, sexist and homophobic language and instances of inappropriate physical contact with a staff member.

Made multiple misogynistic comments, including saying “women don’t belong in men’s soccer” about a female MLS referee and telling a gathering of academy players that they “should never worry about a referee, unless she’s a woman.”

Directed a homophobic slur at an MLS referee in 2023

Spoke about Black players “like they were subhuman” and suggested that Black referees “lack intelligence and capability.”

Touched a co-worker inappropriately “numerous times,” an allegation for which he was reported to the Union’s HR department.

Hired an underqualified coach who was allegedly abusive toward players on the Philadelphia Union II, the club’s reserve team that is used as a proving ground for young players from its thriving academy.

Move comes after French scientists issued urgent appeal to prevent La Pascaline from leaving the country

A rare example of the first functioning calculating machine in history looks likely to stay in France after Christie’s withdrew it from auction pending a definitive ruling from a Paris court on whether or not it can be exported.

La Pascaline, developed by the French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642, when he was just 19, and billed as “the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction”, had been expected to fetch more than €2m (£1.8m).

Proposed legal case understood to allege that app has breached data protection law varying driver pay rates

Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have been blamed for significantly reducing the incomes of the ride hailing app’s drivers.

A letter before action – sent to the US company by the non-profit foundation, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), on Wednesday – is understood to allege that the ride hailing app has breached European data protection law by varying driver pay rates through its controversial algorithm.

Excitement is palpable as Tartan Army to head to football’s biggest stage for first time in 28 years

The prognosis from the north Glasgow primary schools squad had been bleak. “Everybody says Scotland are going to get pumped,” my eight-year told me as he left football training on Tuesday evening, with a realism born of experience even over his short life.

But three hours later, Scotland fans across the nation and beyond were catapulted beyond euphoria as their team qualified for the men’s football World Cup for the first time in more than a quarter of a century after a bum-squeaking, breathtaking 4-2 win against Denmark at Hampden.