It’s important to express your disagreement: for their sake as much as yours, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But first decide on what you aim to accomplish Read more Leading questions How do I respond to someone who contributes to a conversation with “I’m not racist, but … ” and then inevitably proceeds to say something racist, such as talking about immigrants on benefits or getting priority for housing? I’m referring to social occasions with people that I am not necessarily close to but rather acquaintances I may bump into semi-regularly. I feel myself getting simultaneously angry and tongue-tied and I mostly sit with my frustration to maintain some sense of harmony in the group. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Cherries fans wait on word of Semenyo, Gueye’s red card could leave Everton blue and Nuno needs new plans With Thomas Frank, Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa, Christian Nørgaard and Mark Flekken leaving Brentford in the summer, the Bees looked the established club most likely to go down, thereby allowing a promoted one to stay up. In the event, though, they’ve made a solid start to life under Keith Andrews, more or less alternating wins and losses to sit 13th in the table, five points above the relegation zone. Burnley, on the other hand, find themselves roughly where most people thought they’d be: second-bottom having lost three games in a row. As it happens, they’ve not been that bad, asking difficult questions of more exalted opponents with tidy midfield play, before succumbing to defeat anyway. Ultimately, conceding two goals a game is not sustainable, but it’s worth noting that one of Burnley’s three league victories came against Sunderland, a side whose physical, intense and forward-thinking style is not dissimilar to Brentford’s. If they can get their passing going, they’ve a chance. Daniel Harris Brentford v Burnley (Saturday 3pm, all times GMT) Manchester City v Leeds, Saturday 3pm Sunderland v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm Everton v Newcastle, Saturday 5.30pm Continue reading...

One other member of the guards, Andrew Wolfe, is still fighting for his life, according to the president One of the national guard troops shot in an attack on Wednesday near the White House has died, Donald Trump said on Thursday. “Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we’re talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person … She’s just passed away. She’s no longer with us,” Trump said in his first live remarks since the shooting. Continue reading...

“Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that,” came the chant as Nottingham Forest supporters, not for the first time, enjoyed getting one over on Malmö. A lot has happened since Trevor Francis’s stooping header to clinch the European Cup in Munich in 1979 but Forest still cherish those days. A lot has also changed in the five weeks since Sean Dyche took the reins, Forest reinvigorated and a comfortable win thanks to goals by Arnaud Kalimuendo, Ryan Yates and Nikola Milenkovic enhanced their hope of qualifying for the Europa League knockout phase. For Forest, this victory – against a Malmö side that had not played for almost three weeks after finishing sixth in their domestic league – represented a third straight win in all competitions and further built on the momentum gained from last weekend’s success at Liverpool. This was a re-run of Forest’s European Cup triumph in name but the game itself was free of any jeopardy or jitters. Continue reading...

Love hits four TDs, including two on fourth down Packers sweep Lions and strengthen division tiebreaker Kansas City Chiefs v Dallas Cowboys – live Jordan Love converted a pair of fourth downs with touchdown passes in the first half and finished with a career-high-matching four TD throws, leading the Green Bay Packers to a 31-24 win over the Detroit Lions on Thursday. The Packers (8-3-1) swept the season series to earn a potential tiebreaker in the NFC North and are in second place in the division behind Chicago (8-3), who play at Philadelphia on Friday. Continue reading...

Report by Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission says Thompson leaked confidential council documents to an unnamed ‘adviser’ Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The former Townsville mayor Troy Thompson misled the electorate about a cancer diagnosis, his military history and university qualifications, according to a report by the Crime and Corruption Commission. The CCC also found that, as mayor, Thompson leaked numerous confidential documents to an unnamed “adviser”, sending them 8,741 encrypted WhatsApp messages in a five-month period. Continue reading...

Administration said ‘awareness is not a strategy’, but here is a short list of orders the president has signed to do just that For the first time since 1988 the US government said it will no longer commemorate World Aids Day, which honors those who have lost their lives to the disease, celebrates efforts to combat the epidemic and raises awareness. “An awareness day is not a strategy,” a state department spokesperson, Tommy Pigott, told the New York Times. Continue reading...

Mia Lucas, who died in Sheffield after being sectioned, had undiagnosed condition causing ‘acute psychosis’ A 12-year-old girl who took her own life after being sectioned was failed by medical staff who failed to spot her underlying brain disorder, an inquest has found. Mia Lucas was found unresponsive in her room at the Becton Centre, which is part of Sheffield children’s hospital, on 29 January last year. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Continue reading...

Stern, credited with designing 15 Central Park West, sought to design buildings that invoked pre-war splendor Robert AM Stern, an architect who fashioned the New York City skyline with buildings that sought to invoke pre-war splendor but with modern luxury fit for billionaires and movie stars, has died at the age of 86. Dubbed “The King of Central Park West” by Vanity Fair, Stern was credited with designing 15 Central Park West that, in 2008, was credited as being the highest-priced new apartment building in the history of New York. Continue reading...

Donyell Malen has a cut to the head and two more goals to his name after leading Aston Villa to the verge of automatic qualification for the last 16 of the Europa League against a backdrop of more crowd violence from Young Boys supporters. The Netherlands striker exemplifies Villa’s strength in depth but this 10th win in 12 games was marred by visiting fans ripping up seats, throwing missiles at stewards and Villa players – one striking Malen – and fighting with police. Continue reading...

Judge warns he will not permit case ‘to descend into a wide-ranging public inquiry’ The former editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, is to be called as a witness in the legal action brought by the Duke of Sussex and six other household names against the newspaper’s publishers over allegations of unlawful information gathering, the high court was told. Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), said Dacre, 77, now the editor-in-chief of ANL’s DMG Media company, and Peter Wright, a former editor of the Mail on Sunday, could be called as early witnesses in the trial, scheduled to begin on 19 January. Continue reading...

Pedro Castillo was sentenced by the supreme court for trying to disband Congress and rule by decree in 2022 Peru’s supreme court on Thursday sentenced the former leftwing president Pedro Castillo to 11 years, five months and 15 days in prison for trying to disband Congress and rule by decree in December 2022. Labelled Peru’s first poor president, the former rural schoolteacher, who had never held elected office before winning the presidency, was impeached by Congress and jailed on the same day after his attempted power grab. Continue reading...

Masters champion in 1979 and US Open winner in 1984 Post-career reputation marred by remarks about Woods Trump pays tribute to ‘remarkable person and player’ Fuzzy Zoeller, the two-time major champion whose genial public persona was overshadowed by a racially insensitive joke about Tiger Woods that came to define the latter part of his career, has died aged 74. No cause of death was immediately available. Brian Naugle, tournament director of the Insperity Invitational in Houston and a longtime colleague, said Zoeller’s daughter notified him of the death on Thursday. Continue reading...

⚽ Europa League updates from all the 8pm GMT kick-offs ⚽ Live scoreboard | Latest table | And you can email Michael Villa are coasting towards victory over Young Boys thanks to two goals from Donyell Malen. With leaders Midtjylland losing 1-0 to Roma, that means Villa will go level on points at the top of the league phase standings, should the scores stay this way. Martin O’Neill is on the verge of signing off as interim Celtic manager in style with a 2-1 win away at Feyenoord. Just 25 minutes to go for what would be a very impressive victory. Continue reading...

Health secretary responds to speech given by GP committee leader accusing Labour of ‘gaslighting’ behaviour Wes Streeting has accused the British Medical Association (BMA) of being “impossible” and issuing “misleading” information in an escalation of tensions with the doctors union. In an unusual move, the health secretary wrote on Thursday to England’s 50,000 GPs to convey his frustration with the BMA over recent changes that from last month made it easier for patients to contact them online between 8am and 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Continue reading...

The 99th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, one of the largest in the world, dazzled crowds in Manhattan, New York, on Thursday. Thirty-two balloons, three giant balloons, 27 floats, four special units, 33 clown groups, 11 marching bands, performance groups, and music stars parade to welcome ‘Santa Claus and the holiday season’ Continue reading...

The parallels are imperfect but, as with Michael Vaughan’s Ashes winners, hyper-aggressive cricket with a tweaked approach in the second Test is the 2025 cohort’s only chance of winning Twenty years on, a montage of the 2005 Ashes still tingles the spine. Close your eyes and you can probably make your own, with an Embrace soundtrack if you want to be right on the nose. Chances are you’ll see Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff belting sixes with lusty abandon; Geraint Jones wheeling away after winning the epic Edgbaston Test; Ashley Giles calmly patting the winning runs at Trent Bridge; Flintoff’s messianic dismissal of Ricky Ponting at Edgbaston; Simon Jones detonating Michael Clarke’s off-stump at Old Trafford. All those moments came in England victories or winning draws. But no 2005 montage is complete without images of Ponting being cut below the eye or Justin Langer’s right elbow ballooning in real time. Both wounds were inflicted by Steve Harmison on the first morning at Lord’s, a game that Australia won emphatically by 239 runs. When the story of the series was written, those blows – and the way England duffed Australia up in the first innings – were an essential chapter. Continue reading...

Study shows small changes to tone of posts in ‘for you’ feed increase unfavourable feelings towards political opponents Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found. A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side. Continue reading...

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The NGO’s chief says last month’s ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal’ Amnesty International has said Israel is “still committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire agreed last month. The fragile, US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October, after two years of war. Continue reading...

Airlines accused of joining ‘actions of state terrorism promoted by US’ after they suspended flights to Venezuela Venezuela has banned six international airlines, accusing them of “state terrorism” after the carriers suspended flights to the country following a warning from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Venezuela’s civil aviation authority announced late on Wednesday that Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s Tap, Colombia’s Avianca, Chile and Brazil’s Latam, Brazil’s Gol and Turkish Airlines would have their operational permits revoked for “joining the actions of state terrorism promoted by the United States government and unilaterally suspending air commercial operations”. Continue reading...

The criminal cases backlog requires radical action, but the problem has been caused by government cuts, not by an ancient and fundamental liberty Abolition of trial by jury in England and Wales in all but the most serious cases is not the official policy of Sir Keir Starmer’s government – yet. All the signs, however, are that it soon will be. The leak of a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) briefing this week suggests that the lord chancellor, David Lammy, has signed off a plan restricting jury trial to a narrow band of serious offences – murder, manslaughter, rape and cases passing a public interest test. An announcement could come soon, with legislation in the new year. If Mr Lammy has his way, a new lower tier of juryless crown courts would hear most cases now heard by juries. Those involving criminal charges carrying a maximum sentence of up to five years would be heard by judges in the planned crown court “bench division”. Juries would no longer hear fraud and financial crime cases either. This would mean a large majority of the more than 30,000 jury trials each year in England and Wales being heard instead by judges alone, at an estimated saving of 20% of trial time. Continue reading...

UN figures show that four-fifths of the global population now live in major settlements. We’re still figuring out how to cope Cities have existed for millennia, but their triumph is remarkably recent. As recently as 1950, only 30% of the world’s population were urban dwellers. This week, a United Nations report suggested that more than 80% of people are now urbanites, with most of those living in cities. London became the first city to reach a million inhabitants in the early 19th century. Now, almost 500 have done so. Jakarta, with 42 million residents, has just overtaken Tokyo as the most populous of the lot; nine of the 10 largest megacities are in Asia. The UN report revealed the scale of the recent population shift to towns and cities thanks to a new, standardised measure in place of the widely varying national criteria previously used. The urbanisation rate in its 2018 report was just 55%. Continue reading...

Primark, Currys and Boohoo have criticised government for 2029 deadline to phase out exemption on customs duties British retailers including Primark, Currys and Boohoo have criticised the government for waiting until 2029 to end a tax break on low value imported goods which has allowed them to be undercut by the likes of Shein and Temu. The British Retail Consortium, which represents all the major retailers, said there were now 1.6m parcels arriving in the UK every day, double the number from last year, and “businesses cannot afford any delay on scrapping the existing rules”. Continue reading...

Agency warns shoppers to be vigilant online and on the high street, with counterfeit items often posing health risks More than 8m fake and harmful toys have been seized from shops and markets across the EU in a pre-Christmas crackdown, Europol has said. Hauls of fake dolls, building bricks, toy cars, colouring sets, cuddly toys that could pose fire hazards and educational games were removed across 26 countries. Continue reading...