



Tara Warren is recused from Independent Football Regulator investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct A nonexecutive director of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) will not be involved in the inquiry into allegations of sexual misconduct against David Sullivan to avoid a conflict of interest over her links to West Ham. Tara Warren was executive director of West Ham and the club’s women’s team before joining the football regulator. Continue reading...
Deal still under UK scrutiny with new investigation, and could face lawsuit from state attorneys general Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has decided to approve the $111bn merger of Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellison family, and Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company of networks like CNN and HBO. The deal was approved by the justice department’s anti-trust division after months of review, and despite the concerns of many people in the entertainment and media industries who believe it will hurt competition by reducing the number of film studios and – most likely – merging two news networks, Paramount’s CBS News and CNN. Continue reading...
Technique that examines fragments of foetal DNA in mother’s bloodstream could limit need for invasive screening, according to researchers A new maternal blood test that can detect thousands of serious genetic conditions in the developing foetus could limit the need for invasive screening during pregnancy, according to scientists. The test, to be described at the European Society for Human Genetics conference in Gothenburg on Saturday, relies on detecting tiny fragments of a foetus’s DNA that circulate in the mother’s bloodstream during pregnancy. Using advanced sequencing techniques, scientists were able to identify a very high proportion of genetic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, that are currently only reliably diagnosed using amniocentesis or other invasive tests. Continue reading...
⚽️ Kick-off at 9pm EDT/2am BST/11am AEST ⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Beau “I was talking with a good friend that won the World Cup in 1986 with Argentina,” said Mauricio Pochettino yesterday. “He said to me, ‘in relaxation, you become concentrated and focused.’ I think we try to be very professional in every single aspect of our preparation by creating a very good atmosphere where the player can feel comfortable and to embrace and, not to learn, but to understand what we expect” Continue reading...
Rugby league great given accolade for MND fundraising Has raised more than £11m in memory of Rob Burrow Kevin Sinfield has promised to continue his quest to support those living with motor neurone disease after being awarded a knighthood in the king’s birthday honours list. The 45-year-old rugby league great has been recognised for his incredible fundraising efforts and becomes the second former player from the sport to be knighted, after Billy Boston’s elevation this time last year. Continue reading...
Footballers, charity founders, actors and musicians among those celebrated for service to Britain Six members of the Lionesses’ victorious Euro 2025 squad have been made MBEs in King Charles’s birthday honours list, while the actor Dame Helen Mirren has been made a Companion of Honour for services to drama. They are joined by the former rugby league player Kevin Sinfield, who has been knighted for his campaigning and fundraising to tackle motor neurone disease. Continue reading...
England, 219-1, beat Sri Lanka, 132, by 87 runs Wyatt-Hodge unbeaten on 105 for hosts in opener England got their World Cup campaign off to a flyer with an 87-run win against Sri Lanka at Edgbaston on Friday evening, thanks to a thundering century from Danni Wyatt-Hodge. This was a statement win by England, whose batting firepower has recently been questioned but who powered their way to 219 – the highest total by any team in the history of the tournament – for the loss of just one wicket. Sri Lanka then sunk to 132 all out, with Freya Kemp taking a career-best four for 22. Continue reading...
British No 3 produces her greatest performance Emma Raducanu finds her best tennis to defeat Cirstea Katie Boulter battled hard with Elena Rybakina and she emerged from the longest day of her career with her greatest victory, a special performance from the British No 3 yielding a 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 win over the world No 2 and Australian Open champion. Emma Raducanu was also a winner on Friday, defeating Sorana Cirstea, the seventh seed and one of the most in-form players in the world this year 6-4, 6-2 to return to the quarter-finals on the grass courts of the Queen’s Club. However, the winner of her quarter-final match against Uzbekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova will be forced to play two matches on Saturday after the congested, rain-delayed schedule ran out of time on Friday afternoon and their match was postponed at the end of the day. Continue reading...
Northampton 45-31 Leicester Saints await winners of Bath v Exeter in final In recent years the semi-finals of the English Prem have been a reliable home banker. Not since Harlequins famously overturned a 28-0 deficit to beat Bristol after extra time in 2021 has any away side prospered, and that trend continues. Northampton are into next week’s final after a ripper of an East Midlands derby that reflected well on all involved. A first half-hat-trick by the Saints centre Tom Litchfield ultimately gave the hosts the edge in a frequently see-sawing encounter. It was a breathless game from start to finish, reflecting a campaign in which attack has frequently held sway, and it was only when their young scrum-half Archie McParland touched down his side’s sixth try with 15 minutes remaining that the balance of power appeared to have shifted decisively. Continue reading...
“History is about to be made,” the understandably giddy stadium announcer said in the seconds before kick-off and while this was not the perfect start, Canada will not forget Cyle Larin’s equaliser against Bosnia and Herzegovina in a hurry. Trailing to Jovo Lukic’s first international goal, the Southampton striker Larin stepped off the bench and pulled the co-hosts level with his first touch, lashing in 121 seconds after his entrance. A draw in their Group B opener already trumps their last World Cup outing, when they finished pointless in Qatar. Jesse Marsch’s side always looked capable of scoring, though Juventus’s Jonathan David missed a golden opportunity in the first half and a preposterous Sead Kolasinac block that saw the ball cannon on to the crossbar prevented Richie Laryea finding the net in the second. Bosnia, though, were always playing with fire, holding dear Lukic’s first-half header on his first competitive start for his country. It was a goal that tested the foundations of the south stand, where 7,000 temporary seats were erected to increase the stadium’s capacity, many of them occupied by Bosnia’s most ardent supporters. Continue reading...
Crowds gather around big screen in Seoul with commuters and schoolchildren alike ditching their daily routine to back the Red Devils By 9am on Friday, the morning commute in central Seoul looked different. The usual tide of suits and briefcases was broken by a sea of red shirts and red scarves, worn by thousands who had come out to cheer on the national team. Scattered around, people clutched coffees, bottled teas, and pastries. Families had mats spread for a picnic. Nobody looked as if they were thinking about work. Continue reading...
The story behind the grainy footage of a dummy filled with butcher’s off-cuts is an extraordinarily eccentric and knotty joy – with the hoaxers resembling Scooby-Doo baddies You will, no doubt, be familiar with the 1995 footage of a supposed alien autopsy. Since its yikes-inducing TV debut, the jittery black-and-white film is estimated to have been viewed by a billion people. Still, for better or worse, here it is again: a scrum of faceless hazmat suits hover over the corpse of a pot-bellied humanoid. Its forehead? Bulbous. Its expression? Pensioner outraged at price of bark chippings in local branch of Wickes. Over the next 18 minutes the suits proceed to dissect this appalled sod, slicing it open to reveal what appear to be various organs, condiments and splodgy, flopping … things. “Those were lambs’ brains,” chuckles Trevor the butcher as The Alien Autopsy Scandal zooms in on a quivering hillock of the aforementioned horrors. Trevor was one of the individuals involved in the titular film, its production taking place not, as initially claimed, in a US military facility in 1947, but a Camden living room in 1995. Trevor had been approached by a sculptor to supply “guts” with which to stuff the “alien” mould that would, the latter had explained, be appearing in “a film”. Hmm. Nevertheless, guts – in the form of knees, hearts and miscellaneous entrails – were duly supplied. Anything else? “Pig eyes, ’cos they look like human eyes,” guffaws Trevor, before taking a hacksaw to the remains of a decapitated pig. Disgusting? Yes. But fascinating, too. And certainly no stranger than anything else in John Dower’s exquisitely directed documentary; a thing of great playfulness and eccentricity that, over three increasingly extraordinary episodes, unknots the tale behind the notorious film. Or at least does its best to do so. But the truth proves slippery and its gatekeepers are … well. Enter Ray Santilli (tinted glasses; deep shiftiness) and Gary Shoefield (tracksuit; air of one comfortable with the phrase “it is what it is”). Continue reading...
Wakefield 10-48 Wigan Warriors dismantle hosts for sixth win in seven games Wigan Warriors are four points shy of the Super League summit, but there is no doubting who the best side in the competition are at present. The Challenge Cup winners delivered another masterclass against a title rival, dismantling Wakefield Trinity with some style. Wigan were magnificent at Wembley a fortnight ago and the odds on them adding at least one more trophy this year should really be shortening by the week. They were at their brilliant best again in dispatching a Wakefield side who beat the reigning champions, Hull KR, last week and sat third going into this round. Continue reading...
San Antonio Spurs trail 3-1 in best-of-seven series Team blew 29-point lead to lose Game 4 Victor Wembanyama says the San Antonio Spurs have shaken off the biggest single-game collapse in NBA finals history and are ready to face the New York Knicks on Saturday. The Knicks overcame a 29-point deficit to hand the Spurs a crushing 107-106 victory in Game 4 of the series and can win their first title since 1973 with victory in San Antonio. Continue reading...
Frederic Priestley, 32, falsely advertised property he did not own for rent on Facebook, obtaining payments and deposits A man has been jailed after defrauding more than 30 people out of more than £77,000 in a rental scam, police said. Frederic Priestley, 34, from Southwark, south-east London, falsely advertised a property for rent on Facebook between April and September last year. Continue reading...
Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire thanks to his company SpaceX, which now has the biggest IPO of all time. Public trading in the company has put it's valuation at over $2tn. The eye-watering sums of money pouring into AI are also boosting other tech titans, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies are expected to go public this year with nearly trillion-dollar valuations. The Guardian’s US tech editor Blake Montgomery tells Kai Wright that with these IPOs, all our financial futures are forever tied to AI’s success, and more worryingly, its possible failure Watch on YouTube Continue reading...
Eljay Crisp-Carr was arrested on Thursday, and police are still searching for another suspect in Toledo shooting Police in Ohio have arrested a suspect in a recent shooting that wounded 12 people at a crowded weekend neighborhood street festival. Eljay Crisp-Carr, 20, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with 11 counts of felonious assault. Court documents do not list an attorney for him, and no one answered a call to a phone number associated with him on Friday morning. Continue reading...
Unidentified officer removed from frontline duties in the first known case of its kind in the UK A police officer is under criminal investigation over the alleged use of artificial intelligence and has been removed from frontline duties in the first known case of its kind in the UK. The officer, who has not been named, is being investigated over allegations of using the technology to “create evidential material in a number of cases” and perverting the course of justice. Continue reading...
The Gossip Girl star can recover legal fees and costs arising from It Ends With Us co-actor’s countersuit Blake Lively can recover some legal costs from fellow actor and director Justin Baldoni but not punitive damages and other relief she sought after settling her legal claims over their 2024 film It Ends With Us, a judge ruled on Friday. Judge Lewis J Liman said in a written ruling that Lively can recover legal fees and costs related to her defense against a countersuit Baldoni brought against her after she sued him in December 2024. Continue reading...
President gave ticket to a young female soccer fan ‘I gave it to someone who couldn’t go, who loves football’ The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, explained on Friday why she was absent from the Azteca Stadium during Mexico’s opening match with South Africa, saying that tickets to the match were unaffordable for most Mexicans and that she had given her ticket to a young female soccer fan. “Stadium tickets are very expensive,” Sheinbaum said during her daily morning news conference. “As president it’s better that I give my place to someone who couldn’t have gone, who loves football, especially a young woman, and I can celebrate it with the people for free.” Continue reading...
The American author received ‘thousands of rejections’ over two decades before finally hitting gold with her first published novel Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner, debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted because someone wants to congratulate her. The fan is Richard Curtis. A warm-hearted weepy with a sprinkling of gentle humour, Evans’s prize-winning novel The Correspondent is prime Curtis material. In fact, he is too late. “I think he just wants to be my friend,” Evans jokes modestly – Notting Hill is her favourite movie of all time. A film of The Correspondent is already in the pipeline with Jane Fonda playing 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp, the crotchety correspondent of the title. Evans will be one of the producers and will have a cameo appearance, “walking a dog or something”. Continue reading...
US president dismisses Iranian media reports agreement is close, despite earlier suggesting a deal could be signed this weekend Middle East crisis – live updates Prospects for an immediate end to the war between Iran and the US remained uncertain on Friday amid a chaotic series of conflicting claims and counter-claims by US and Iranian officials about ongoing negotiations. Donald Trump seemed to distance himself from his earlier comments that suggested a preliminary agreement could be signed as soon as this weekend, with a series of angry social media posts describing the Iranians as “very dishonorable people to deal with”. Continue reading...