Victor Montagliani’s compensation is thought to be among the highest in the world for a non-club soccer official

Concacaf president Victor Montagliani is paid over $3m per year for what the organization claims is just five hours per week of work, according to the latest tax filing made to the Internal Revenue Service.

Publicly available filings, first reported by ProPublica, show that the Canadian was paid $2.1m in base compensation and an additional $893,750 in unspecified bonus and incentive compensation for the 2024 tax year. An additional $15,780 was paid in deferred or retirement compensation.

⚽ The latest football news heading into the weekend
⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail Niall

This weekend’s Premier League games are the reverse fixtures of the season openers, back in sun-soaked August. Looking back, the most jarring result was Nottingham Forest 3-1 Brentford, with the teams taking very different trajectories since then.

“It was certainly a tough day for us all, but it is pretty obvious to see the development that we have made in the months since that, and I am delighted with the progress we have made,” Brentford manager Keith Andrews said yesterday.

With talks of a confrontation over Greenland receding, attention turns back to ending the four-year war between Ukraine and Russia

Meanwhile, the Kremlin repeated its demand that Kyiv must withdraw its forces from the eastern Donbas region for the war to end, showing it had not dropped its maximalist demands ahead of trilateral talks with the US and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, AFP reported.

“Russia’s position is well known on the fact that Ukraine, the Ukrainian armed forces, have to leave the territory of the Donbas. They must be withdrawn from there,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding: “This is a very important condition.”

The Super Bowl match-up will be set this weekend as a weakened Denver take on New England and two NFC West rivals clash in Seattle

What New England need to do to win: Clean up their act. Last week against the Houston Texans, Drake Maye was blindsided too often by edge rushers Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter. The pair wreaked havoc, sacking Maye five times and forcing him into three of his four fumbles. The Los Angeles Chargers also forced two from him in the wildcard round. Denver led the league in sacks (68) in the regular season, and will be intent on causing similar damage on Sunday. But Maye can mitigate that threat if he sharpens his awareness in the pocket and takes the sack rather than rushing into impossible passes. New England’s left tackle Will Campbell is very likely to lose a couple of duels with edge defender Nick Bonitto, so Maye needs to be ready for a helmet sandwich while holding on to the ball for dear life. Simply punting and giving Denver’s second-string quarterback, Jarrett Stidham, tough field position may be all it takes to reach the Super Bowl.

This month the president was reelected for his seventh term, devastating the hopes of many who fear a future of stagnation and unemployment

When Uganda’s electoral commission declared President Yoweri Museveni the winner of the 2026 general election this month, there was little surprise among the country’s younger voters. Those aged under 35 make up more than three-quarters (78%) of Uganda’s population – the second youngest population in the world – and for many, the news of Museveni’s victory confirmed what they had expected. For some, it also crushed the fragile hope inspired by the rise of the opposition leader, Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine.

Sarah Namubiru, 21, a university student hoping to be a teacher, says she did not vote for Museveni because of the low salaries in the teaching profession.

The Scottish author on a masterclass from Toni Morrison, the brilliance of Simone de Beauvoir and the trim novel by Tove Jansson containing everything that really matters

My earliest reading memory
Apparently I taught myself to read when I was three via the labels on the Beatles 45s we had: I remember the moment of recognising the words “I” and “Feel” and “Fine”. It took a bit longer to work out the word “Parlophone”.

My favourite book growing up
Sister Vincent taught primary six in St Joseph’s, Inverness, and was a discerning reader with very good taste, plus the kind of literary moral rectitude that meant she removed Enid Blyton from the class library because she believed Blyton’s books were written by a factory of writers. In 1972 she and I had a passionate argument when the class was choosing a book to be read out loud to us and I championed Charlotte’s Web by EB White, with which I was in love. Sister Vincent put her foot down. “No. Because animals speak in it, and in reality animals don’t speak.” I recently reread it for the first time since I was nine, and it moved me to tears. What a fine book, about all sorts of language, injustice, imaginative power and friendship versus life’s tough realities. Terrific. Radiant. Humble.

Today’s rumours have a northern feel

Casemiro’s decision to leave Manchester United when his contract expires at the end of the season will intensify the club’s search for a midfielder. The Brazilian’s exit will also knock £350k a week off their outgoings, which should bring a smile to Sir Jim Ratcliffe as United look to follow up last week’s derby win when they travel to … oh … Arsenal this weekend.

Not exactly like for like but stories are circulating that Wythenshawe lad Cole Palmer is homesick at Chelsea and pondering a return to Manchester this summer. The twist is that he wouldn’t be heading back to City as Palmer prefers the red of United – the club he, wait for it, supported as a boy. United scouts were also reportedly in Spain last weekend to discuss on-loan Marcus Rashford’s future and check out Real Sociedad’s versatile midfielder/forward Mikel Oyarzabal. Fun fact: both Palmer (equaliser) and Oyarzabal (winner) scored in the final of Euro 2024.

(Columbia Records)
Styles is wonderfully loose and unhurried on the lead single to his new album, taking a bold path away from the rest of today’s mainstream pop

Now the proud owner of six Brits, three Grammys and seven UK Top 10 singles, it’s fair to say Harry Styles has elegantly sidestepped the potholes that pepper the route from ex-boyband member to solo superstar. His well-earned confidence means that rather than fill the gap between 2022’s Harry’s House and last week’s announcement of his fourth album – the confusingly-titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – with various one-off releases, spurious anniversary variants or curated social media moments, Styles basically disappeared. In fact, the only sliver of excitement for his fanbase to grab on to came last September when he ran the Berlin marathon in a very respectable 2hr 59min.

Having endured the music industry at the height of its #content-heavy obsession in One Direction, there’s something old-fashioned about Styles’ absence between album eras. That’s unlikely to be accidental: since launching his solo career with 2017’s muted, 1970s soft-rock-indebted self-titled debut, Styles has cast himself as a cross-generational throwback beamed into the present, albeit one sporting fashion choices that rile gender conformists. Each album has arrived with a list of influences more akin to the lineup on the Old Grey Whistle Test than the current TikTok algorithms, while 2019’s Fine Line, Styles told us, was crafted under the influence of those vintage psychedelics, magic mushrooms.

(Tiny Tiger)
Moving from dream pop to acoustic clarity, the Dutch-British songwriter delivers her most personal record yet where loss is transformed into something quietly powerful

The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to REM to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.

The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in The Bricks That Make the Building, a sweet, psych-folk jewel which meditates on “the earth that feeds the garden / The breath that helps the child sing” and Gently Now, which begins in soft clouds of birdsong, then tackles how growing older can cosset the process of grief. Her approach to the subject is inquisitive, poetic and refreshing.

Feigel uses her own experience as a starting point to examine the past, present and future of separation

This book about child custody is, unsurprisingly, full of pain. The pain of mothers separated from their children, of children sobbing for their mothers, of adults who have never moved on from the trauma of their youth, and of young people who are forced to live out the conflicts of their elders. Lara Feigel casts her net across history and fiction, reportage and memoir, and while her research is undeniably impressive and her candour moving, at times she struggles to create a narrative that can hold all these tales of anguish together.

The book begins with a woman flinging herself fully clothed into a river and then restlessly walking on, swimming again, walking again. This is French novelist George Sand, driven to desperate anxiety as she waits to go into court to fight for the right to custody of her children. But almost immediately the story flicks away to Feigel’s own custody battle, and then back into the early 19th century, with Caroline Norton’s sons being taken away in a carriage in the rain by their father.

(Interscope)
On her third LP, Lennox balances jazz-soaked tradition with flashes of unruly humour and a surefire viral hit

Ari Lennox is one of contemporary R&B’s premier sophisticates, preferring a palette of lush jazz, soul and 90s hip-hop over the more genre-fluid sound pushed by contemporaries SZA and Kehlani. But a few songs into her new album, Vacancy, she makes it eminently clear that tradition and wildness can coexist, with fabulously sparky results: on Under the Moon, she describes a lover as “vicious / Like a werewolf / When you’re in it” and proceeds to howl “moooooooooon” as if she is in an old creature feature.

Vacancy, Lennox’s third album, is far and away her most fun, and if it isn’t quite as ingratiating as her 2022 Age/Sex/Location, it makes up for it with canny lyrics and an airy, open sound. Cool Down is a reggae/R&B hybrid that practically feels as if it is made of aerogel, and which pairs its summery lightness with witty lyrics telling a guy to chill out. On Mobbin in DC, she pairs lounge-singer coolness with withering come-ons (“You know where I be / This ain’t calculus / No ChatGPT”), while the strutting Horoscope, with its hook of “That boy put the ho’ in ‘horoscope’,” is as surefire a future viral hit as I’ve ever heard.

Oasis, Macca and Radiohead made Help a smash for War Child in 1995. A new reboot packs comparable star power – and was partially produced from a hospital bed

When Kae Tempest was asked to contribute to a new track by Damon Albarn, which would also feature Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten, Tempest says he jumped at the chance. It wasn’t just the artists involved, nor the fact that it was for a new compilation benefiting War Child, called Help(2): a sequel to the charity’s hugely successful 1995 compilation Help. After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn’s studio and wrote their verses together, “responding to each other”. It seemed to work really well, he says: “A true collaboration.”

Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire. “Johnny Marr was on guitar, Femi [Koleoso] from Ezra Collective was drumming,” he laughs. “Plus, there was a children’s choir.”

Millions of graduates are trapped by ballooning debts, as their repayments are dwarfed by the interest added

Helen Lambert borrowed £57,000 to go to university and began repaying her student loan in 2021 after starting work as an NHS nurse.

Since then she has repaid more than £5,000, typically having about £145 a month taken from her pay packet. But everything she hands over is dwarfed by the £400-plus of interest that is added to her debt every month, thanks to rates that have been as high as 8%.

Exclusive: victims in hiding after attacks involving physical assault, attempted arson and the use of firearms

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command is investigating a series of “highly targeted” attacks on two Pakistani dissidents living in Britain which may bear the hallmarks of states using criminal proxies to silence their critics.

One person has been arrested after a series of four attacks which began on Christmas Eve. One of the attacks involved a firearm.

Experts say climate crisis, corruption and lack or misuse of infrastructure among factors driving water conflicts

Water-related violence has almost doubled since 2022 and little is being done to understand and address the trend and prevent new and escalating risks, experts have said.

There were 419 incidents of water-related violence recorded in 2024, up from 235 in 2022, according to the Pacific Institute, a US-based thinktank.

Rolling coverage of the final day of the World Economic Forum in Davos

Lagarde is also critical about some of the numbers for economic growth being banded around in Davos this week, saying they are usually nominal numbers – the real growth figures (adjusted for inflation) are lower.

It’s important to speak the truth, she says, adding:

“We have to be honest about the numbers we use”.

Updates from the evening session at Melbourne Park
Mboko sets up Sabalenka clash after win | Mail Katy

Norrie and Zverev are going through the pre-match formalities. The umpire tells the players to smile big for the cameras. Not sure how easy that is for Norrie, given the British No 2, the last Brit standing in the singles, has lost to Zverev in all six of their previous meetings. The last time they played at the Australian Open was in 2024, when Norrie was denied 7-6 in the fifth set. But Norrie will at least take something from the fact he was able to push Zverev all the way then, and the fact that this is a night match, with slightly slower conditions, may help Norrie, because the rallies will be longer and more attritional and that’s what he loves.

Up next: we’ve got De Minaur v Tiafoe on Rod Laver and Norrie v Zverev on John Cain and Svitolina v Shnaider on Margaret Court.

James Bord’s consortium is the preferred bidder to take over Sheffield Wednesday but his data-led player recruitment record is mixed, especially with United

Sheffield Wednesday fans will be delighted to hear that one associate of James Bord describes the preferred bidder for their club as “a mini Tony Bloom”, although the professional poker player’s references from the other side of the Steel City are rather less complimentary.

Until it became clear late last year that Bord was planning to buy Wednesday his data company, Short Circuit Science, had a consultancy contract with Sheffield United to assist with their recruitment, which, as their position in the lower reaches of the Championship indicates, has delivered limited success.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Since the end of the second world war, all eyes have been on Russia. Yet Trump’s increasingly erratic, hostile presidency is shattering old assumptions

One of the things that the depleted, often denigrated British state is still pretty good at is persuading the public that another country is a threat. As a small, warlike island next to a much larger land mass, Britain has had centuries of practice at cultivating its own sense of foreboding. Arguably, preparing for conflict with some part of the outside world is our natural mindset.

Warnings about potential enemy countries are spread by our prime ministers and major political parties, intelligence services and civil servants, serving and retired military officers, defence and foreign affairs thinktanks, and journalists from the right and the left. Sometimes, the process is relatively subtle and covert: reporters or MPs are given off-the-record briefings about our “national security” – a potently imprecise term – facing a new threat.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

First round at Wijk aan Zee delayed for over an hour after protesters dump coal at venue and unveil banner reading ‘no chess on a dead planet’

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, the “chess Wimbledon”, has been sponsored for all its 88 years by the local steelworks, either in its previous incarnations as Hoogovens and Corus or under its current Indian management.

Its relations with the local community have previously been good, but this year protesters targeting Tata Steel drew attention to the company’s heavy use of coal by dumping two tons of it in front of the entrance, and draping a banner reading “No chess on a dead planet” over the sports hall. Play in the opening round eventually began one and a half hours late.

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The Free Solo star will attempt to climb the 1,667ft skyscraper without ropes in a live Netflix broadcast, drawing awe, ethical concern and global attention

Alex Honnold has spent the past three months training for this moment: free soloing – climbing without ropes or a harness – one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers, Taipei 101. It is an ambition that began more than a decade ago and is now close to being realized.

The climb will be broadcast globally on Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s latest foray into live sports programming. The star of the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo insists that climbing Taipei 101 will feel no different from any other of his ascents.

Fulham, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool could be making moves before the window closes

By WhoScored

Shock: Chelsea have been linked with another young player. This time it is the Rennes centre-back Jérémy Jacquet, who would offer something the team is lacking.