4 mins. It’s advantage Scotland as Ramos fumbles a Russell kick forward off his chest. He was under no pressure at all, but the sun is fierce on that side of the pitch and hindered him. Scotland scrum coming in the France half.
2 mins. Some textbook take, recycle, kick periods from both sides; each probing for an opening via the boot and kick chasers. So far nothing doing for either.
Goals from Lucy Bronze and Georgia Stanway made it two wins from two in England’s bid to qualify for the 2027 World Cup, with attention now turning to a hugely important game against Spain at Wembley in April.
England’s aim of avoiding the playoffs by securing top spot in their World Cup qualifying group was never going to be derailed by Ukraine and Iceland. The game against Ukraine in Turkey was a straightforward affair, once they had found their rhythm in the second half to earn a 6-1 win, and at the City Ground in Nottingham, while Iceland are a higher-ranked side than Ukraine, the Lionesses were still overwhelmingly comfortable.
The main stand at the oldest professional football ground in the world shook. It was the moment to ignite Mansfield Town dreams, a goal from the substitute Will Evans early in the second half to hint at something extraordinary.
It ought to have been a mismatch. Quadruple-chasing Arsenal, the top team in England and Europe so far this season, against the one that sits 16th in League One. It was anything but and now Evans had cancelled out Noni Madueke’s first-half opener.
Air strikes have shaken the Middle East after the US and Israel launched an attack against Iran, killing the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guardian looks back at the seven days that ignited a war, which has already claimed the lives of more than 1,500
Tech policy professor who served in US air force explains how a feud between an AI startup and the US military illuminates ethical fault lines
Anthropic’s ongoing fight with the Department of Defense over what safety restrictions it can put on its artificial intelligence models has captivated the tech industry, acting as a test of how AI may be used in war and the government’s power to coerce companies to meet its demands.
The negotiations have revolved around Anthropic’s refusal to allow the federal government to use its Claude AI for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems, but the dispute also reflects the messy nature of what happens when tech companies have their products integrated into conflict. The Pentagon this week declared Anthropic a supply chain risk for its refusal to agree to the government’s terms, while Anthropic has vowed to challenge the designation in court.
The attorney general faces a subpoena over the Epstein files. She won’t say much – but Democrats are calling for her ouster
After spending $220m of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign in which she demanded migrants self-deport, Kristi Noem is now being forced to make a hasty exit of her own. On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that his luxury-jet-loving homeland security secretary was being shipped off to become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a new “security” summit that Trump has dreamed up. Markwayne Mullin, a former mixed-martial artist and Republican senator, will replace her.
Noem’s ouster was a long time coming. But it’s worth stressing that she doesn’t seem to have lost her job because of the many controversies that have plagued her tenure, including the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents. Rather, she committed the cardinal sin of making Trump look stupid. Which, to be fair, isn’t hard.
Labour has accused Kemi Badenoch of scoring “cheap political points” after the Conservative party leader said Keir Starmer was “too scared” to join strikes on Iran.
Al Carns, the defence minister, said “serious politics” was required in response to Badenoch’s speech at the party’s spring conference where she criticised the prime minister’s stance on the US-Israel strikes on Iran a week ago.
Voronchikhina medal is country’s first in 12 years
Bugaev later claims another bronze in men’s event
Russia has won its first Winter Paralympic medals since 2014 as Varvara Voronchikhina and Aleksei Bugaev claimed bronze in the women’s and men’s downhill standing events in Cortina on Saturday morning.
Vorinchikhina, whose success meant Russia appeared on an international medal table for the first time in 12 years, spoke of her pride at being able to compete under her own flag. “It’s a really long time when we were without the flag, and I’m really glad [now],” she said.
Takeshi Ebisawa, sentenced to 20 years in prison last week, believed he was selling weapons-grade plutonium to Iran
A plot to supply Iran’s nuclear weapons program, heroin from the Golden Triangle, Burmese ethnic insurgents and rocket launchers were the subject in courtroom 24A in New York’s federal courthouse last week when a man described as a leader in Japan’s Yakuza organized crime syndicate was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The transnational plot, which the US Drug Enforcement Administration had been investigating since 2019, involved Japanese organised crime leader Takeshi Ebisawa, who along with three Thai men, had been arrested in New York in 2022.
The president of Iran has rejected Donald Trump’s call for the country’s unconditional surrender as a “dream”, while issuing a rare apology for Iranian strikes that had targeted sites in neighbouring Gulf states.
In a prerecorded address broadcast on state television on Saturday, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the country would never capitulate, responding to remarks by the US president, who said on Friday that only Iran’s total submission could bring the war to an end.
Briton is one of three champions scathing of new regulations
Overhaul had made the cars go from ‘best to worst’ in a season
Three world champions – Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris – have delivered a damning verdict on Formula One’s regulations overhaul after qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.
Norris, McLaren’s defending champion, was scathing of the changes, saying that driving the car “sucks” and they were probably the “worst” ever made, while Hamilton criticised the new engine and chassis rules as “completely against” F1’s principles.
Many of the Bulgarian seer’s predictions were never recorded, yet her name bolsters conspiracy theories and geopolitical narratives
In some corners of the internet, the Bulgarian mystic Baba Vanga has taken on mythical proportions. Social media and tabloids across the globe credit her with predicting the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Last week, someheadlines went further, asking: “Did she foresee the Israel-Iran war, US interference, missiles and airspace shutdowns?” An earlier article mused on her “predictions for 2026”, which purportedly included the start of world war three and humanity’s first contact with aliens.
A search for the term on Google brings up millions of articles meticulously documenting every aspect of gen Z behaviour – from their finances and mental health, to their food habits and hobbies.
New Zealander denies he’s running a ‘casual operation’
Head coach hails captain Harry Brook’s ‘amazing job’
Brendon McCullum has defended his record as head coach after England’s elimination from the T20 World Cup, insisting the white-ball side will “achieve some special stuff”, but only if their talent is “harnessed the right way”.
The Guardian revealed on Friday that McCullum is to remain in his post despite the disappointment of a 4-1 Ashes series defeat, England’s semi-finals exit and widespread criticism of the New Zealander’s methods.
Senate blocks war powers measure and House follows suit – now president can bomb Iran free from congressional interference
Before US troops invaded Iraq, George W Bush asked Congress to pass a resolution authorizing military force against Washington’s longtime nemesis, a request that lawmakers obliged.
Twenty four years later, the United States is at war with a different Middle Eastern rival – Iran – under a different Republican president – Donald Trump. But this time, the president did not bother to seek permission from the Senate and House of Representatives before joining Israel in launching the air and naval campaign. And far from objecting, Congress’s Republican majorities have simply stepped aside.
The administration has been accused of failing to comply with hundreds of orders. The courts must not be paper tigers
Late last month, a Minnesota federal court judge, Patrick Schiltz, issued an opinion detailing hundreds of instances in which the Trump administration has failed to comply with court orders. He threatened to find it in contempt and to impose penalties.
Schiltz and other federal judges have made such threats before, but they have not followed through. It is time they did, lest they turn their courts into paper tigers.
The mad venture – which my mother nicknamed ‘your father’s ego’ – would swallow my childhood. Years later I went on a quest to understand what really happened to his glittering folly
BBC Television Centre, 2 May 1990. “Who would spend £7m on an egg?” The question echoes around the TV studio. At home, six million people watch as chatshow host Terry Wogan smiles knowingly, his brown eyes twinkling. “Seven million pounds,” he repeats in his Irish brogue.
There was strictly no mention of estranged son Brooklyn, missing from front row
The Beckham empire is a tangled web of family and fortune. After her Paris fashion week show on Friday evening, Victoria Beckham talked backstage about Tamara de Lempicka, the Polish art deco portrait painter from whose palette she took the glowing colours and sinuous lines of this season’s coral and jade party dresses. Strictly no mention of the other story of the night – the absence of her estranged eldest son, Brooklyn, from a front row packed with the rest of the Beckham clan.
The designer’s husband, David Beckham, brought her a fortifying glass of red wine as she spoke to reporters. “I relate to Tamara de Lempicka as a strong woman, and to how she conducted herself. She stuck to what she believed in.”
Mickey says his stint as a handyman transformed into a lucrative sex business due to the region’s ‘self-denial’
A western Texas fracker starring in a podcast about how his attempted moonlighting as a handyman turned into lucrative sex work largely solicited by distracted oil industry professionals’ housewives says he believes his region’s repressive sexual attitudes gave his side gig an opening to flourish.
“There’s an inherent kind of self-denial,” the subject of The Handyman of West Texas, identified only as Mickey, said in a recent interview. “We all have these thoughts. But we lie to ourselves and try to conform to … how you’re supposed to be repressing your own pleasure.”
Seeing people walking their pets in a snowstorm melted the heart of this New York-based photographer
Had Adela Ramirez’s puggle Teddy still been alive, she would have been out walking him in the snow. Instead, she was at home, in the art studio of her New York City apartment, watching from a window. “My view consists of the Empire State Building, which is art deco, the B Altman Building, which is Italian renaissance revival, and the beautiful Church of the Incarnation, which is neo-gothic. I’m originally from Texas, but have lived in New York for 40 years,” Ramirez says. “I always feel privileged when the universe seems to say, ‘Today I am going to present you with a fabulous snowstorm – enjoy the performance!’”
As Ramirez watched, she noticed that there were no cars or pedestrians; only dog walkers were braving the storm. “People were playing chase, carrying them across icy parts, giving them their necessary daily walk. That’s what we do,” she says. “It made me miss Teddy. He was half beagle, half pug, with an underbite and a princess attitude. He loved the snow, and had a winter coat and boots, but made it clear that he couldn’t be expected to walk in it. He would lift his paws and look me straight in the eye, as if to say, ‘Mom, please carry me.’ We had to say goodbye to him last spring. He’d been my loyal boy for 10 years.
Iran’s targeting of commercial datacentres in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare
It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war.
At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.
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