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Littler v Ratajski, Humphries v Van Veen from 7pm GMT
*Searle (1) 2-0 (0) Clayton Another break of throw for Searle! Clayton missed a dart at D16, a terrible effort, and Searle took out 116 on tops with the air of a man strolling to the paper shop on a brisk winter morning. His finishing has been outrageous.
Afghanistan and Yemen excluded from list of 17 priority countries chosen by Trump administration to receive aid laden with demands
The $2bn (£1.5bn) of aid the US pledged this week may have been hailed as “bold and ambitious” by the UN but could be the “nail in the coffin” in changing to a shrunken, less flexible aid system dominated by Washington’s political priorities, aid experts fear.
After a year of deep cuts in aid budgets by the US and European countries, the announcement of new money for the humanitarian system is a source of some relief, but experts are deeply concerned about demands that the US has imposed on how the money should be managed and where it can go.
From CMAT and the Carpenters’ fresh starts to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun and Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, starting again is a rich theme in pop. Here are some of the best examples
It’s hard to imagine anyone’s heart not being lifted a little by Right Back Where We Started From: the euphoric rush of new love rendered into three minutes of cod-northern soul (performed, unexpectedly, by various ex members of ELO, the Animals and 60s soft-poppers Honeybus). Avoid the 80s cover by Sinitta at all costs.
I wasn’t sure journalism was for me until I ended up in a bar with a group of lawless, funny co-workers who complained long and hard about the panther suspended above us in a cage
In the mid-90s, I was working as an admin assistant on the listings magazine of the London Evening Standard, and was about to be fired. OK, I wasn’t that good at the job, but I was also done with it. It was on my mind that I needed an actual job, one that you could describe to someone: “I’m an X.” At what point did you get to say: “I’m a journalist”? And was that even a real thing? A lawyer friend had told me: “I see mine as a profession and yours as more of a trade.” I ruminated on that a lot.
Anyway, some time between my latest misdemeanour and my inevitable disciplinary letter, someone from the main paper, let’s call him Pete Clark because that was his name (everyone else will go by initials, but Pete’s dead now, and he would want to be named, I think), asked if I wanted to go to a party. It was no special occasion, just the launch of a bar; this happened every night in the 90s, even Mondays. He was 43, but all old people look the same when you’re 23, so I felt as if the viscount owner of the paper had noticed me from the top of his gold mountain and invited me to a ball.
If you don’t fancy the last warm finger or two of beer in your can, save it to bake into these fluffy, flavourful rolls
I often don’t finish a large bottle or can of beer, leaving a bit in the bottom that barely seems worth saving. When I remember, I’ll pop it in the fridge and save it to add to a stew or batter, but today’s rolls are my new favourite way of using it up.
When I look at Mamdani, I don’t see some radical departure. I see him an heir to the Yiddish socialism that helped build New York
Billionaires raised fortunes against him. The president threatened to strip his citizenship. Mainstream synagogues slandered him as the spawn of Osama Bin Laden and Chairman Mao. But today, Zohran Mamdani became the first socialist mayor of New York City.
For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York.
Analysts attribute increase to kingdom’s ‘war on drugs’ as authorities kill 356 people by death penalty
Saudi authorities executed 356 people in 2025, setting a new record for the number of inmates put to death in the kingdom in a single year.
Analysts have largely attributed the increase in executions to Riyadh’s “war on drugs”, with some of those arrested in previous years only now being executed after legal proceedings and convictions.
Our friend Bridget is serious about Christmas, and she does it spectacularly: come 1 December, her tree will be up, beautifully lit and decorated, her nearest and dearest (us included, thankfully) will get their bespoke Advent calendar (this year it was a cheesy one for me and a puzzle for Sarit – perfect) and a month of fun activities will ensue, culminating in a magnificent day. She is so serious about it, in fact, that her planning for next year starts now: she hits the January sales for everything that’ll keep for the next Christmas holiday – stocking fillers, festive candy, decorations, jumpers and socks – and it’s all stored neatly in a cupboard in anticipation of another gloriously executed December.
We may not be quite as organised and foresightful as Bridget, but we are looking ahead to the coming year with the usual mix of excitement and angst, and starting to mentally put things in the calendar: maybe you have a spring holiday, or an autumn baby? Maybe there’s a visitor from abroad you’re looking forward to, or tickets for a once-in-a-lifetime gig? Even if there is nothing planned yet, summer is something we are always excited about, and the coming year starts to slot into place, as plans become experiences and, before we know it, memories. Time rushes forward, and suddenly it’s gone.
Italian departs Stamford Bridge role after 18 months
Tensions behind the scenes damaged relationships
Enzo Maresca has left his job as Chelsea’s head coach. Maresca’s relationship with the club’s board has broken down and the split has led to a parting of the ways.
It had seemed Chelsea would give the Italian time to turn around his side’s form but events have moved quickly during the past 24 hours. There was deep dissatisfaction with the 45-year-old’s decisions during games but the bigger issue was his conduct away from the pitch. The situation has been volatile ever since Maresca made cryptic comments about experiencing his “worst 48 hours” at the club after the win over Everton on 13 December.
At 50, I find myself in a gazing-up-at-trees phase. What does it all mean? It’s not completely clear – but it’s certainly bothering my kids
According to research undertaken by Stanford Medicine in 2024, adult human beings are subject to two “massive biomolecular shifts” – spikes in ageing, in other words – one at 44 and another at 60, confirming what most of us instinctively know to be true: that we get older in jagged bursts – not with gentle, steady progression. As the new year issues its annual invitation to stocktake, the thing I keep thinking is where we might place the equivalent emotional pivot points, those periods in which, after years of – God willing! – pottering along feeling roughly the same, suddenly, one day, there’s a change.
I bring this up because I seem to be in the middle of one, an inflection point that manifests in the number of times on the walk back from the school drop-off I stop to look at a bird in a tree, or a snail on a wall, or any number of other overwrought visual metaphors that allow me to feel momentarily like I’m inside a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hard to put one’s finger on what’s going on, but it has to do with the sense of an ending, which, if it’s sad at all, isn’t sad-sad; rather, it occupies that category of sadness I think of as the anticipation of future nostalgia.
(4AD) The standout act in the sprechgesang wave, the four-piece’s newly expansive sound carries singer Florence Shaw’s distinctive tales of mundane lives spiralling out of control
Dry Cleaning’s third album features a lot of strikingly odd lyrics. Take your pick from “alien offshoot mushroom, going the gym to get slim”; “my dream house is a negative space of rock”; or, indeed, “when I was a child I wanted to be a horse, eating onions, carrots, celery”. But it’s an ostensibly more straightforward line, from Cruise Ship Designer, that seems destined to attract the most attention. “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work,” says vocalist Florence Shaw as the track draws to a conclusion, the muscular guitar riff that’s driven it along devolving into a janky, trebly scrabble.
Initially, the lyric appears to characterise what Dry Cleaning do, and Shaw in particular. From the moment they first appeared with the 2018 EP Sweet Princess, the south London quartet have attracted adjectives such as “surreal”, “enigmatic” and “inscrutable”. Most of the British bands who emerged around the same time bearing a roughly equivalent blend of post-punk guitars and spoken-word vocals sounded angry or sarcastic or straightforwardly comedic. Dry Cleaning, on the other hand, seemed mysterious. Shaw’s lyrics were collages of overheard remarks, recycled YouTube comments, lines from adverts and non sequiturs, delivered in a voice that was too icy to sound whimsical. It’s variously been characterised as “anhedonic” and “achromatic”, but might more straightforwardly be described as sounding politely bored. She occasionally shifts from speaking into singing in an untutored voice that brings to mind Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants’ line about their understated vocalist Alison Statton sounding “as if she was at the bus stop or something”. It was all intriguingly confusing: here were songs that could indeed contain hidden messages, that seemed like puzzles to be unpicked.
Polling indicates strong public backing for a much less permissive approach to promotion, including sponsorship
Ministers will come under mounting pressure to introduce curbs on gambling advertising this year, as MPs and campaigners latch on to polling that indicates widespread public support for tougher restrictions.
Policies affecting gambling have been the subject of fierce debate over recent years, leading to stricter regulation of the £12.5bn-a-year sector and higher taxes announced in November’s budget, despite intensive lobbying by the industry.
Today’s newsletter looks at 10 superlative talents who are ready to take the next step in the coming 12 months
Alara Sehitler, Bayern Munich and Germany (19): Sehitler’s transition into Bayern Munich’s first team has come as little surprise and the creative midfielder has established herself as a strong impact player for José Barcala’s side. She has three Frauen Bundesliga goals this season and sparked Bayern’s comeback against Arsenal in the Champions League. After making her senior debut for Germany in November 2024, she will be looking to establish herself as a regular for their upcoming 2027 World Cup qualifiers.
Giulia Galli, Roma and Italy (17): Galli is widely regarded as one of the best young Italian talents to emerge for a long time and became Roma’s youngest player to make her Serie A debut in May 2024, aged 16 and one month. Establishing herself in the senior squad this season, she scored her first club goal in September and has featured in the Champions League. After starring in Italy’s sensational run to the semi-finals of last summer’s Under-17 Euros, the talented forward played a significant role at the subsequent Under-17 World Cup, picking up the bronze boot. She will surely feature at this autumn’s Under-20 World Cup.
It was assumed that Reform would sweep all before it – but locals rejected the party’s campaign of ‘lies and hate’
Yuliia Bond works two jobs, raises two children and is studying at university. In the autumn, she also found time to take on Reform UK when it tried to win the Caerphilly byelection.
Bond, a Ukrainian refugee who has settled in south Wales, said she could not remain silent as Reform tried to win the seat in the Senedd (Welsh parliament ).
Country’s largest women’s health organisation says case of Marius Borg Høiby encouraging people to seek help
Staff at Norway’s largest women’s health organisation have seen a rise in the number of women reporting abuse and sexual assault at the hands of their partners ahead of the rape trial of a member of the royal family, saying they hope the case helps to “break taboos”.
Marius Borg Høiby, the 28-year-old son of the Norwegian crown princess, is due to stand trial in February on 32 charges including four counts of rape, the domestic abuse of a former partner and the illegal filming of a number of women without their knowledge or consent.
As young people take on a messy dating landscape, they’ve created their own lexicon to match. Here’s like what phrases ‘bird theory’ and ‘monkey branching’ mean
This year marked a decade since the term “ghosting” hit the mainstream. At the time, the idea that someone could abruptly cease communication with a lover without explanation seemed like the peak of indignity. How naive we were. In the 10 years since, finding a partner has only become more confounding – an oftentimes fruitless exercise in humiliation that is increasingly pigeonholed by social media jargon.
Gen Z, a cohort who came of age during a loneliness epidemic, a masculinity crisis, and a coordinated attack on the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, faces a far messier landscape than their millennial predecessors could ever imagine. And so their dating glossary has grown longer and more deranged, with phrases like “Shrekking” and “monkey branching” testing the limits of your sanity.
Red flags – Behavioral quirks indicating a potential partner is bad news. Examples include calling their exes crazy, subpar tipping habits, a love of Woody Allen films, a burgeoning DJ career …
Green flags – These quirks validate your decision to pursue a mate. Examples include checking in to make sure you got home safe after a date, low screen time, owning a bed frame …
Beige flags – These usually describe niche, mostly benign quirks. Examples include being an enthusiastic birdwatcher, still carrying around a pen in their purse, paying rent in cash …
From freezing rents to free buses and municipal grocery stores – a recap of the policies that won Mamdani the office
Zohran Mamdani was sworn into office as New York’s 111th mayor at the stroke of midnight, the first Muslim mayor as well as the first to take office as a Democrat bearing the credentials of a democratic socialist.
The 34-year-old was sworn in by Letitia James, the state attorney general, in a disused subway station beneath city hall that acts as turnaround for the local 5 train, to be followed by a first-of-its-kind public block party along Broadway’s “Canyon of Heroes”.
Swap chicken for beans and avoid cheeze … From a MasterChef finalist to a maker of ready meals, high-profile vegans give their favourite recipes and tips
This new year, you may be embarking on Veganuary, or have resolved to eat less meat and dairy in 2026. What are some of the simplest switches to make and most nutritious dishes to try with minimum fuss? Vegans share their tips on how to eat a balanced plant-based diet.
Having a routine but not overplanning, getting them involved with chores and making sure you have time just for you can all help you stop being overwhelmed
My four-year-old is in the living room playing with a dinosaur, a pig and Jessie the cowgirl from Toy Story. I’m trying to cook dinner. “Mama, mama, pllleeease can you play with me?” I hear a pot lid rattle. The broccoli is starting to smell burned; I dash back to the kitchen. “Help! Quickly come! I’m falling!” I rush through. She’s dangling from the sofa pretending to fall off the side of a volcano. “HEEELP!” The broccoli is definitely burning. And there goes the door. “Muuuuuum, I need a poo!”
This wild ride of five minutes is one most parents will recognise. Getting through the day is to feel like you’re being pulled in a solar system’s worth of directions, and by turns defeated, happier than you’ve ever felt before, like a husk, in control and like you’re careening off a cliff. It throws up a need to get very good at planning, and prioritising what demands to acquiesce to, when to say no; when to sit down and play, when to say: “Sorry, I need to sit down, or go for a run.”
No, your communications don’t make me feel valued as an individual. A ‘Dear’ or ‘Sir’ wouldn’t hurt once in a while
How do you feel when big corporations address you directly? (In other words, when they use the second-person pronoun “you” in their communications.) Do you feel like you’re valued? That you’re being treated as an individual? Or does it make you want to grab their CEO by the scruff of the neck and tell them to shut up?
It’s impossible nowadays to buy food, walk down the street or even open your emails without businesses trying to chat you up. A carton of Alpro oat milk shouts “Hey you!” from the dairy aisle. A restaurant you visited once sends a circular with “We miss you!” in the subject line. You get a bill from Octopus Energy with 41 uses of this cursed pronoun, but it never once addresses you with “Dear”.
On the heels of another sports year that was chock full of surprises, Guardian US contributors make their bold predictions for the months to come
Here are our bold predictions for 2025 in sports. Please note the bold (or should that be bold?) in bold predictions: these are mostly to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Streaming’s algorithms make it easy to avoid whole discographies – so in the interest of deeper listening, our writers dedicate time to the ones who might have got away
The first time I heard Joni Mitchell, in 1997, she was looped across the chorus of Janet Jackson’s single Got ’Til It’s Gone. The song’s credits would educate me on the sample’s origins; I had previously assumed Big Yellow Taxi was an Amy Grant original. The second time I heard a Mitchell song was when Travis covered the beautiful River as a B-side.
About 100 people were injured in the bar early on Thursday morning, but police have ruled out an act of terrorism
Officials at the press conference are asking for “prudence” from those in the town, reminding them not to make unnecessary demands on hospitals, which are overwhelmed.
Please leave investigators to do their work, they say.
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