74th over: Australia 379-6 (Carey 47, Neser 15) Stokes starts around the wicket to the left-handed Alex Carey. Two slips in place. The first ball is defended for a dot and the next is guided behind point for a single that brings up the fifty partnership between Carey and Neser. It’s a wounding one for England.
Stokes bustles through the over, finding a good length and four dots to Neser. Brydon Carse is going to start from the other end, he had a bruising day yesterday, a couple of wickets here would take the edge off.
Clémentine Autain believes only a leftwing alliance united behind one leader can fend off the threat of a far-right president
At a busy market in Sevran, a low-income suburb north of Paris, the local MP, Clémentine Autain, was shaking hands and posing for selfies, arguing that only a left alliance could stave off the threat of a French far-right president being elected in less than 18 months.
“The French far right is high in the polls and riding an international Trumpian wave,” said Autain, 52. “Without the left uniting behind a radical project, we can’t beat them.”
Whether using frozen Russian assets, ramping up defence production or deepening the relationship with the EU, it is up to us to secure Ukraine’s future – and our own
Europe, you have been warned. President Vladimir Putin has waged a full-scale war against Ukraine for nearly four years and this week threatened that Russia was “ready right now” for war with Europe if need be. President Donald Trump has demonstrated that the US is ready to sell out Ukraine for the sake of a dirty deal with Putin’s Russia. His new US National Security Strategy prescribes “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. How much more clarity do you need?
Now it’s up to us Europeans to enable Ukraine to survive armed assault from Moscow and diplomatic betrayal from Washington. In doing so, we also defend ourselves. For a year now, people have been telling me that Trump will eventually get tough on Russia. It’s been the geopolitical version of Waiting for Godot. Then his personal real-estate emissaries come up with a 28-point “peace plan” that is a Russian-American imperial and commercial deal at the expense of both Ukraine and Europe.
The 29-year-old star is getting his best reviews ever for the upcoming film Marty Supreme – but he’s also making waves with his idiosyncratic approach to celebrity and maintaining his status as the internet’s boyfriend
Everybody’s talking about Timothée! The gen-Z French-American heart-throb and original “internet boyfriend” is receiving the best reviews of his career for Josh Safdie’s frenetic ping-pong flick Marty Supreme, while also making waves for his idiosyncratic approach to celebrity in an age somewhat lacking in star power. He has even got Gwyneth Paltrow’s seal of approval. Here are seven reasons why “Chalamania” is back.
December can bring huge stress, as people struggle with budgetary pressures, organisation and what to give the person who has everything. Here’s a guide to getting it right, every time
The festive shopping season is upon us and there is usually someone who is hard to buy for on the list. How can you avoid the stress of last-minute panic buying? Personal shoppers share their tips on how to treat your loved ones to something that they will cherish.
US and Ukraine to hold third day of discussions in Florida as Emmanuel Macron says there is ‘no mistrust’ between Europe and White House. What we know on day 1,382
Ukrainian and US officials will hold a third straight day of talks in Miami on Saturday, with Washington saying the two sides agree that “real progress” would depend on Russia’s willingness to end the war. Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have been meeting top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and Andrii Hnatov, the chief of staff of Kyiv’s armed forces. “Both parties agreed that real progress toward any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps toward de-escalation and cessation of killings,” said a summary of the talks.
The US and Ukrainian officials “also agreed on the framework of security arrangements and discussed necessary deterrence capabilities to sustain a lasting peace”. The talks in Florida come after Witkoff and Kushner met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday to discuss a US plan to end the conflict but the Russian president rejected parts of the proposal and threatened that Russia was “ready” for war if Europe started it.
Emmanuel Macron has said there is “no mistrust” between Europe and the US, a day after a report claimed the French president had warned privately there was a risk Washington could betray Ukraine, reports Oliver Holmes. “Unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential,” Macron said during a visit to China on Friday. “And I say it again and again, we need to work together.”
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said they held “very constructive” talks with the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, on Friday over an EU plan to use Russian frozen assets to fund Ukraine, which Belgium has so far refused to endorse. The EC, along with most European governments, prefers a “reparations loan” using Russian state assets immobilised in the European Union due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We agreed that time is of the essence given the current geopolitical situation,” von der Leyen said after the meeting in Brussels. Moscow’s ambassador to Germany, meanwhile, warned that the plan to use frozen Russian assets would have “far-reaching consequences” for the EU. “Any operation with sovereign Russian assets without Russia’s consent constitutes theft,” Sergey Nechaev claimed.
Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery. In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone attack overnight to Friday destroyed a house where the boy was killed and two women injured, said the head of the regional military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko. In Russia, Ukrainian drones attacked a port in the Krasnodar region on the border with Ukraine, sparking a fire at the Temryuk seaport and damaging port infrastructure, officials said. Ukrainian drones also aimed deeper inside Russia, attacking the city of Syzran on the Volga river, said the mayor, Sergei Volodchenkov, without providing more details. Unconfirmed media reports said Ukrainian drones hit an oil refinery in Syzran.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said a Ukrainian drone struck and damaged a high-rise building in Grozny, capital of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, and vowed to retaliate within a week. The drone had caused no casualties, he said on Friday.
Vladimir Putin has told the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, that Russia is ready to continue “uninterrupted” shipments of oil to India, signalling a defiant stance to the US as the two leaders met in Delhi and affirmed that their ties were “resilient to external pressure”. The statement, made on Friday after the annual India-Russia summit, appeared to be directed at western countries – particularly the US – that have attempted to pressure New Delhi into scaling back its ties to Moscow, reports Hannah Ellis-Petersen.
Now China’s highest-grossing foreign animation, the films, known as Zootropolis in some countries, comes amid a boom for domestic productions
A comedy about animal cops investigating a reptilian mystery has become the highest-grossing foreign animated film ever in China, bucking the trend of declining interest in overseas productions that has resulted in Hollywood films struggling in the Chinese box office.
Zootopia 2 (called Zootropolis 2 in some European countries), a hotly anticipated and widely marketed sequel to 2016’s Zootopia, was released in China last week. In its first seven days, it made about 2bn yuan (£213m) in ticket sales, making it one of the best-performing films of the year.
Michael Jeffrey Jordan, as he cordially introduced himself to the federal courtroom in Charlotte on Friday, admitted it was his competitive side and novelty within the sport that emboldened a push for 23XI Racing to “challenge” Nascar over what he perceived were violations of antitrust rules.
Jordan shared financial and corporate details of his 23XI team and said he invested $40m of his own funds in the success of the Nascar Cup series team launched along with business partner Curtis Polk and longtime driver Denny Hamlin.
Marvel Stadium, Melbourne The pop star’s first Australian show in a decade comes after years of physical and mental pain – so it’s a great relief to see her having a good time again
As Lady Gaga is carted on stage atop a crinoline structure that resembles both a red velvet cake and a toilet roll doll cozy she states her dictum: “Dance or die”.
Mother Monster’s ruling sets into motion an operatic 150-minute show – her first in Australia since the artRAVE in August of 2014. For the entirety of the Mayhem Ball, Gaga careens between dancing and dying in what she calls her “gothic dream” – although it often reads more Halloween. Skeletons abound – no doubt a homage to the late Gaga muse Rick Genest, otherwise known as Zombie Boy. At times it’s downright Hitchcockian, Gaga a veritable Kim Novak as she switches between blond and brunette selves with each wig change.
Former Perth curator Mark Harvey is one of the few people on Earth to have described 1,000 new species, many of them arachnids. Colleagues say his legacy is ‘unquantifiable’
Tāme Iti’s colourful memoir covers his decades-long fight for Indigenous rights in New Zealand and takes aim at ‘saboteurs’ in the government
There are so many ways to begin telling the story of Tāme Iti, arguably New Zealand’s most recognisable Māori rights activist, who was once branded a terrorist by the state and is now considered by many a national treasure.
You could begin with his formative school years at the foot of Te Urewera ranges, where he was made to write the lines “I will not speak Māori” as punishment for speaking his language – lines that have since become a prominent feature of his art and activism.
Carlos Portugal Gouvea, charged with firing a pellet gun on eve of Yom Kippur outside a synagogue, has said he was not aware of the holiday or that he was shooting next to one
US immigration authorities arrested a visiting professor at Harvard law school after he was charged with discharging a pellet gun outside a Massachusetts synagogue the day before Yom Kippur, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Thursday – and he agreed to leave the country.
Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a Brazilian citizen, was arrested on Wednesday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after his temporary nonimmigrant visa was revoked by the state department following what the Trump administration labeled an “anti-semitic shooting incident” – a description at odds with how local authorities have described the case.
Frank up against former club Brentford on Saturday
Dane urges team to ‘be calm’ if they concede first
Thomas Frank has admitted he is still to decide on his best Tottenham team but promised his players would not panic should they concede another early goal in Saturday’s meeting with his former club Brentford.
Spurs suffered their record-equalling 10th home defeat of 2025 against Fulham last Saturday after going 2-0 down in the sixth minute and a section of supporters booed the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario after his mistake for the second. But a spirited performance at Newcastle in midweek in which Cristian Romero equalised with an overhead kick in added time has lifted spirits after three successive losses.
Alex Sanderson’s injury-hit side in worrying slide
Losing is in danger of becoming a habit for Sale after a stellar Glasgow side headed back north with a bonus-point win in this Champions Cup opener.
Alex Sanderson’s hosts, beaten here by Exeter a week ago and already off the pace in their Prem campaign, let slip an early 14-0 lead to a Warriors team packed with some of Scotland’s finest talent.
It had about as much drama and suspense as reading a dictionary or watching election results come in from North Korea.
To the surprise of no one, Donald Trump won the inaugural Fifa peace prize on Friday at a cheesy, gaudy and gauche World Cup draw expertly designed to flatter the world’s most precious ego.
So good in the first innings in Perth, England’s bowlers were dismal in the opening session on day two to let Australia off the hook
Jofra Archer’s first ball zinged towards Jake Weatherald and screamed just past the bat. His second arrowed into his pads, knocking him off his feet, and after a review the umpire raised his finger.
Forty-five overs later, Australia were all out for not many. But that was Perth, a bowling performance that started with a statement of intent from England’s premier fast bowler and a lead followed by his teammates.
Period drama parody has some decent and often smart gags and benefits from a game cast including Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie
Perhaps it’s the feeling of end times in the air: after years of inactivity, spoofs are making a comeback. This summer saw the resurgence of the lighthearted genre, which at its best sends up the pretensions of overly serious genre with a barrage of pitched cliches, sight gags and stupid-clever puns. The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in a spoof of a buddy-cop spoof, opened to moderate box office success; the hapless rock band dialed it back up to 11 in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Reboots of the horror spoof gold-standard Scary Movie and the Mel Brooks Star Wars rip Spaceballs were greenlit, and there were rumors of a return for international man of mystery Austin Powers. Unserious times, it seems, beget appetite for knowingly unserious, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.
The latest of these goofy parodies, which premieres on the beyond-parody day that Fifa awarded Donald Trump an inaugural peace prize and Netflix announced its plan to buy Warner Bros, is Fackham Hall, a Downton Abbey spoof that pokes at the very pokeable pretensions of gilded British period dramas. (Yes, Fackham rhymes with a crass kiss-off to the aristocracy.) Co-written by British Irish comedian and TV presenter Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O’Hanlon, Fackham Hall has plenty of material to work with – the historical soap’s grand finale just premiered in September, 15 years after Julian Fellowes’s series started going upstairs-downstairs with ludicrous portent – and wastes none of it. From ludicrous start (servants rolling joints for the household and responding to calls from the “masturbatorium”) to ludicrous finish (someone manages to marry a second cousin rather than a first!), this enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich satire.
Britain’s briefest PM kept her fans waiting before launching her latest plea for Maga attention in the form of a ham-fisted YouTube talk show
In the lead-up to the launch of The Liz Truss Show – the hot new YouTube series from Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister – one phrase was repeated time and time again: “They tried to silence her.” Turns out they didn’t need to, because Truss was perfectly capable of doing that herself.
Episode 1, she tweeted, would be available on Friday at 6pm. Except, on Friday at 6pm, it was nowhere to be seen. By 6.05, with still no sign of it, her faithful began to grow itchy. “Where’s your show?” they tweeted at her. A few more minutes passed. “FFS Liz get your act together,” sighed another.
Hundreds driven into Rwanda as M23 militia battles Congolese army and Burundian soldiers for border town of Kamanyola
Fresh fighting in eastern DR Congo has forced hundreds to flee across the border into Rwanda, a day after a peace deal was signed in Washington DC.
Thursday’s agreement was meant to stabilise the resource-rich east but it has had little visible effect on the ground so far, in an area plagued by conflict for 30 years.
England manager happy to ‘focus on what we can influence’ after a draw that will live long in the memory and not for the right reasons
At the end of an extraordinary day in the US capital and a World Cup draw that lurched between the ridiculous and the sublime (with a greater emphasis on the former, if the truth be told), Thomas Tuchel and England now know. Croatia in Toronto or Dallas. Ghana in Boston or Toronto. Panama in New Jersey or Philadelphia. And that is just the group games.
With the excitement running wild and, well, England being England, their determination to bring it home to the fore, it was not long before the permutations were being scrutinised. It could be Mexico at the Azteca in the last 16 – the scene of the Hand of God in 1986. It could be Brazil in Miami in the quarter-finals. Tuchel pulled a face as if to say: “Wow.” There had been a lot to process. And that is before we talk about the Honourable Donald J Trump and his Fifa peace prize glory.
How each team qualified, who will be favourites to progress to the knockout stage and which games to look out for
The opening game in the Azteca will be a repeat of the opener in 2010 when South Africa drew 1-1 with Mexico in Soccer City, Soweto. Mexico have won one knockout game at the World Cup, beating Bulgaria last time they hosted, in 1986. Their manager, Javier Aguirre, was a forward in that side and will be targeting their third quarter-final as hosts. South Africa, coached by the veteran Belgian Hugo Broos, qualified for their first World Cup since hosting, finishing above Nigeria and Benin, despite having a game against Lesotho they appeared to have won awarded against them for fielding a suspended player.
‘Mutual’ decision follows controversy over relationship with presidential candidate and claims of ethical breaches
Vanity Fair is ending its association with Olivia Nuzzi, who had briefly been the magazine’s west coast editor, as the publication distances itself from controversy tied in part to her relationship with the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year,” publisher Condé Nast said in a statement on Friday shared with the New York Times.
Home security videos shows Jacelynn Guzman, 23, telling masked officers following her to ‘leave me alone’
A US citizen who was seen on home security video being chased by masked federal agents outside New Orleans amid the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown says she surmises that she was pursued because “I’m brown”.
“I have no idea why they targeted me,” Jacelynn Guzman told the Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana on Thursday, a day after the video in question was taken and subsequently went viral online.
He has a 12-point lead before Sunday’s Abu Dhabi GP but the British driver vows to ‘crack on’ if the title goes elsewhere
The atmosphere at a season-deciding finale in the Formula One world championship is like no other. The paddock positively hums with a febrile, pulsing excitement and sense of expectation that is impossible to ignore. Amid all of which the title favourite, Lando Norris, finds himself at the moment he has dedicated his life toward, destiny lying in his own hands.
After a gruelling 23-race trek around the world, the conclusion of all the work, sacrifice and effort will be decided in just an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon in Abu Dhabi.
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