Updates from the T20I cricket at Adelaide Oval Start time is 7.15pm local/1.45pm IST Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email 2nd over: India 14-0 (Smriti 5, Shafali 3) Gardner comes in for the second over to open from the other end. Shafali attacks immediately, coming down the pitch and attempts to drive it back over Gardner’s head, but the ball catches the edge instead. It falls safely, just past Litchfield and Shafali is off the mark. It’s a fairly tight over from Gardner, just four runs from it. Continue reading...

⚽ Buildup to the weekend’s football action ⚽ Follow us over on Bluesky | And mail us here As always, feel free to email in with any thoughts, feelings, predictions and all that jazz ahead of today’s games. You can also leave a comment below the line. matchday.live@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Amid the triumphs, failures and broken medals in Milano Cortina, here’s our countdown of the outstanding moments that will live long in the memory Cheating has been part and parcel of the Olympics since at least Eupolus of Thessaly in 388BC. But crooked boxers from ancient Greece never confessed their indiscretions on live television. Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid did exactly that after winning bronze in the men’s 20km biathlon for his first individual Olympic medal, publicly admitting he’d two-timed his girlfriend three months earlier and calling it “my biggest mistake” in an overshare for the ages carried live by national broadcaster NRK. Lægreid’s shot appeared to have missed the target one day later when the wronged party, wishing to remain anonymous, told the Norwegian paper VG it was “hard to forgive” what he did. Continue reading...

Although the weather in Kandy looks precarious, England have been dealt a good draw and can make the last four with a fair wind Late on Friday morning, after the entire playing surface had spent most of the preceding few days shrouded in plastic sheeting, the sun broke out. The covers were peeled back and the ground staff – a huge team of about 70 people, those covers don’t move themselves – set about trundling their roller slowly across a fresh pitch at Pallekele International Cricket Stadium. The bad weather had lifted and, finally, work could begin. England were training at the time, hoping their own clouds are about to break and that after progressing awkwardly through the World Cup’s opening group stage they will, finally, in the words of Jacob Bethell, “go out there and give it the full shebang”. Continue reading...

Everything I still need to know after two weeks of the sublime and sometimes bizarre in Milano Cortina Having avoided the horrific February weather by staying on my sofa for two weeks, I have embraced the Winter Olympics as a quadrennial extra Christmas holiday. It offers pine trees, baubles and the chance to gather around the TV while someone with an RP accent tells us how determined and courageous the British are. The Olympic Games have always presented something of a paradox – on one hand, they are the peak of human athleticism, and on the other, they can look like an elite school sports day. There’s normally at least one activity that reminds you of your youth, whether it’s table tennis or trampolining. Presumably the skiing and snowboarding on display this month have felt very relatable to swathes of Surrey. Continue reading...

Daniela Maier and Fanny Smith did not need a courtroom to decide their fate at these Winter Games They say if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. On day 14 of Milano Cortina, the slopes of Livigno proved that theory in spectacular fashion. Four years ago at Beijing 2022, Daniela Maier of Germany and Fanny Smith of Switzerland were the unwilling protagonists of a convoluted medal dispute. Smith had crossed the finish line in third ahead of Maier in fourth. But the race jury flipped the result after ruling Smith had interfered with Maier, despite both skiers disagreeing. Smith appealed against the jury’s decision to the court of arbitration for sport (Cas), which overruled the officials’ decision and deemed that bronze medals should be awarded to both skiers. Smith got her bronze a year later in Switzerland. Continue reading...

Court in Madrid will soon decide whether developers are using construction to force people out of their homes When the Madrid building where Jaime Oteyza had lived since 2012 was sold to an investment fund two years ago, a local tenants’ union swiftly warned him what to expect. First the tenants would be told that none of their rental contracts – regardless of their expiry date – would be renewed, the union said. Then, as the 50 or so families in the building grappled with what to do next, a series of construction projects would probably be launched in the building to ramp up pressure on them to leave. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Project Giving Back, set up in 2022 to help charities exhibit show gardens, says this year will be its last Chelsea flower show is looking for new charity sponsors after the mystery philanthropic couple who have spent more than £23m on show gardens end their support. Project Giving Back was set up by two anonymous donors in 2022, and since then it has paid for 63 gardens at the most prestigious horticultural event in the world, held each summer at the Royal Hospital gardens in south-west London. Continue reading...

City minister Lucy Rigby acts after woman faced repossession of house burned down by controlling husband A woman who was nearly killed by her abusive husband has been invited to advise the government on measures to support victims of financial abuse after the Guardian highlighted her story last weekend. Francesca Onody was left homeless and penniless when her husband doused their cottage with petrol while she and her two children were inside. Her husband, Malcolm Baker, died when the property exploded. Continue reading...

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes ​Submit a question Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World. Continue reading...

Tax authorities warn sole traders and landlords to act, as the biggest change to self-assessment in decades looms Spring is “the time of plans and projects”, wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. For hundreds of thousands of self-employed people and property owners, those words are ringing true – and have never felt more daunting. This spring, HM Revenue and Customs is introducing the biggest shake-up of the self-assessment tax system in decades. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The race to crown a new 007 has become its own long‑running spectacle, turning the search for​ Bond into an event as big as the films themselves • Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Callum Turner’s turn as James Bond lasted at most a couple of weeks. No sooner had he been enshrined as frontrunner to succeed Daniel Craig, than he was nudged from the DB5 driver’s seat by the latest heir apparent, Jacob Elordi, installed as the new bookies’ favourite after his smouldering, highly profitable performance in Wuthering Heights. Smarting somewhere in the background is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who seemed locked in for the job a couple of years ago, enjoying the backing of former 007s Pierce Brosnan and George Lazenby, but now seems to have fallen out of favour. And don’t forget the succession of other dead cert Bonds now banished to the back of the odds market: the long-rumoured likes of Tom Hardy and Idris Elba (both now likely to have aged out of the role); Theo James; James Norton; Josh O’Connor; Harris Dickinson; Bridgerton’s Rége-Jean Page; and approximately 5,000 other predominately British actors who have enjoyed box office success/led a successful TV drama/look good in a tuxedo. On and on the hunt goes. Five years after Craig’s final outing, one that left absolutely no wriggle room for his return, and not far off a year since Denis Villeneuve was pegged as director of the next, still-untitled instalment, the next 007 has still not been found. Or if he has (and it seems certain to be a he), everyone involved in the Bond operation is keeping characteristically tight-lipped about it. Continue reading...

From thorn, seat, shout and stew to Bruno Mars and Bette Midler, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz 1 What, in Spain, is the world’s largest Renaissance building? 2 Which rock group’s name was inspired by a label on a sewing machine? 3 The body produces about 2 million what every second? 4 What is the only non-US team to win baseball’s World Series? 5 Who did Violet Gibson try to assassinate in Rome in 1926? 6 Financially, what rose from £85,000 to £120,000 in December 2025? 7 Which bird can dive to depths of more than 500m? 8 The Sonderbund civil war in 1847 was what country’s last military conflict? What links: 9 Thorn; seat; shout; stew? 10 Nicole Kidman; Bruno Mars; Bette Midler; Jason Momoa; Barack Obama? 11 Circular orders; rectangular information; triangular warning? 12 Hannah Montana: The Movie; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; On Golden Pond; Paper Moon? 13 Argentina; Mexico; New Zealand; Qatar; Senegal; Spain? 14 Black; brown; Philippine forest; Polynesian; ricefield? 15 John Flamsteed (1675) and Michele Dougherty (2025)? Continue reading...

Images include Mountbatten-Windsor with Virginia Giuffre, Jeffrey Epstein and an unknown female lying on a floor Allegations about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein have unfolded over several years – and in several pictures. Here is how they have dripped into the public’s consciousness and kept the pressure on the royal family. Continue reading...

A cricket match kindled my love affair with the Greek island, inspiring both a literary festival and my new novel This is not where you would expect an article about one of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful islands to start. It’s the tail end of winter, 2021. Kensal Green Cemetery in west London: the imperial mausolea canted and crumbling, low clouds dissolving into rain. We are still  in that  strange phase of the pandemic when we are masked, newly aware of our bodies and the space around them. We are here to bury Nikos, a man who for me, for many, was the incarnation of Corfu. I had spent my 20s trying to find the perfect Greek island, hopping from the well-trodden (Mykonos, Santorini, Cephalonia) to the more obscure (Kythira, Symi, Meganisi). None quite matched the vision I had dreamed into being as a child, when I segued from Robert Graves to Mary Renault, then to Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles. Greece was an idea before it was a place: freedom and deep thought, a constellation of sand, salt and thyme. Continue reading...

Dr Cox is still electrifying, the original cast’s interactions are a joy to watch, and after a couple of episodes it finds its tone – making it just the comfort TV we need right now It is possible to believe contradictory things. For instance, I believe TV’s reliance on reviving old shows is a risk-averse, creative regression. On the other hand, I love it. I particularly love it when fictional characters have visibly aged. There’s a broken humanity that you don’t get with flawless, collagen-rich skin. You sense you could talk to them about your sciatica and they’d get it. I got that feeling with the new series of Scrubs (Disney+, from Thursday 26 February), a show I once mainlined on E4. Scrubs was as comforting as tea and toast. Surprisingly malleable, too. In its bones, it was a coming-of-age workplace bromance between junior doctors JD and Turk, played by then newcomers Zach Braff and Donald Faison. Their chemistry was the show’s anchor, balancing sassy racial harmony with irreverence and heart, as they bore witness to universal human drama. But is it healthy enough to survive resuscitation, more than 15 years after its last episode aired? Continue reading...

A musical number about a woman’s letter to her husband on the second world war frontline unlocked my ability to blub – and made me a happier person I am sure I must have cried as a child, but by the time I was a teenager it had stopped. It was probably a boarding school thing. Very stiff upper lip. My parents are not the most emotionally available human beings, either. I like to tease them by saying: “I love you.” You can see the panic in their eyes. They will normally say: “All right then, bye.” My gran died when I was about 18, and I was sad, of course, but in terms of tears there was nothing, no water. I never cried at movies. I didn’t cry on my wedding day, nor at the birth of either of my daughters. It never alarmed me. I actually thought I might have underactive tear glands. Looking back, it was probably all about control. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy says treating these objects as collectors’ items ‘should be looked at in horror’ An antiques auction selling chains linked to the enslavement of African people in Zanzibar has been accused of “profiting from slavery”. Neck irons dated to the Omani-Arab dominated trade in enslaved people in east Africa, which ended after African resistance and British pressure in the late 19th century, will go on sale this weekend in Scotland. Continue reading...

Wellington’s Josh Oluwayemi heads into his own goal from outside box Auckland FC run out 5-0 winners in New Zealand derby A comical own goal from goalkeeper Josh Oluwayemi has moved Auckland within touching distance of first spot on the A-League Men table after a 5-0 New Zealand derby thrashing of Wellington. Oluwayemi’s 24th-minute howler looks destined to be a permanent feature on goalkeeper gaffe compilations after the Phoenix No 1 completely misjudged a Jake Girdwood-Reich clearance at Sky Stadium in Wellington on Saturday. Continue reading...

Iranian foreign minister says draft could be ready for internal review in coming days while US president says ‘they better negotiate a fair deal’ Iran’s foreign minister has said he expects to have a draft counterproposal ready within days after nuclear talks with the US this week, while Donald Trump said he was considering limited military strikes. Two US officials told Reuters that US military planning on Iran had reached an advanced stage, with options including targeting individuals as part of an attack and even pursuing leadership change in Tehran, if ordered by Trump. Continue reading...

The bestselling novelist brings her beloved Walsh sisters to the screen. Plus: Patrick Dempsey lets loose with Jonathan Ross. Here’s what to watch this evening Sat, 9.15pm, BBC One Continue reading...

Sam Rockwell stars in Gore Verbinski’s madcap sci-fi comedy, and the YBA Goat is back with a new exhibition at the Tate Modern Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Out now If Sam Rockwell materialised in an LA diner dressed like something that escaped from an off-Broadway production of Starlight Express, wouldn’t you hear him out? In visionary director Gore Verbinski’s new film, Rockwell plays a man from the future, who has come back to warn us about the perils of artificial intelligence. Sold. Continue reading...

I’ll have no one to watch Deadwood with any more, but at least we can fix the ceiling in his bedroom For the last couple of months, a dining room table has been squatting over the coffee table in our living room, like one animal threatening another. It’s not in the way exactly, but it’s still a strangely oppressive use of space. Anyway, in a few days it will be gone. The oldest one is leaving home for the third time – or the fourth, if you count going to university, which I do, because I cried that time, my vision blurring as I tried to punch my registration number into a car park ticket machine. Continue reading...

Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home. Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search. Continue reading...

Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone’ When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. “I was aware,” she nods. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.” Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn’t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.” She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn’t to Karen’s taste: “Way too commercialised.” She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.” Her eyes sparkle at the memory. “It was just amazing.” Continue reading...