The opener is in line for an Australia debut after twice taking time away from cricket to protect his mental health and piling on the runs for Tasmania

Jake Weatherald and Justin Galeotti travelled separately on the short journey from the coffee shop to the nets for their scheduled hit. They trained as usual and with Galeotti oblivious to the fact Weatherald had just fielded a life-altering phone call from Australia’s chair of selectors, George Bailey, telling him his baggy green dream had almost arrived. The uncapped Weatherald was in the 15-player Ashes squad for the first Test.

“It lasted about two minutes,” Weatherald says about the call with Bailey. “I didn’t want to bring it up [with Galeotti] because I felt like it would distract from the net session. I didn’t want to make it all about me. We’d have been talking about it the whole time and not training.”

Revelation comes as LNP accused of ‘intimidation’ after demanding sensitive medical details from parents of transgender children

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The Queensland government released private information about the mother of a transgender teenager – information she says potentially “outed” her child – to a stranger.

The revelation came as the state government was accused of “intimidation” and “an invasion of privacy” after demanding confidential medical information from parents of transgender children who are considering a further legal challenge to its controversial ban on puberty blockers.

Officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez dead after she accidentally went to a wrong property

Authorities in Indiana are considering whether to charge a homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman after she mistakenly went to the wrong address where she thought she was turning up to clean a property.

Police officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, 32, dead just before 7am Wednesday on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people.

My job and my disordered eating have long fed each other. Talking publicly about my experience helps lift the veil of secrecy surrounding it

Nothing in my life sparks greater joy and deeper shame than food. Publicly, I live and love to eat. As a food writer my livelihood depends on it. But privately, I live with a binge-eating disorder, and it can feel like what I’m devouring is actually devouring me.

My family is Italian, and their love language is food, so food is also the portal to all my memories, good and bad. Nonna’s lasagne at Easter, her zeppole at Christmas, were the best of times. The worst: foil trays piled with fried food at funerals, the liquorice allsorts I ate – and now hate – after my infant brother choked and paramedics rushed him to hospital. Emotional eating has always been so normal for me.

Administration has long accused South Africa of allowing white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked

Donald Trump said Friday that no US government officials would be attending the Group of 20 summit this year in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.

The US president had already announced he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the globe’s leading and emerging economies. JD Vance had been scheduled to attend in Trump’s place, but a person familiar with Vance’s plans who was granted anonymity to talk about his schedule said Vance would no longer travel there for the summit.

• Arne Slot: ‘Florian needs time to adapt to teammates’

• Head coach hopes to have Isak available for City clash

Arne Slot has rejected Arsène Wenger’s theory that playing Florian Wirtz as a No 10 has “destroyed Liverpool’s midfield” and insisted the £116m signing will prove a special talent wherever he operates for the Premier League champions.

Wirtz impressed when playing off the left in the Champions League defeat of Real Madrid on Tuesday, having previously struggled to make an impact in a central attacking role. The Germany international’s difficult start in the Premier League – where he is yet to score or assist before Sunday’s visit to Manchester City – prompted a withering assessment by Wenger before the visit of Real.

• Manager: striker ‘works so hard and wants to succeed’

• Amorim will rotate Fernandes if United return to Europe

Ruben Amorim has conceded Benjamin Sesko is struggling for form at Manchester United and wants the striker to learn to accept criticism so it becomes like a “normal Monday”.

Sesko has scored only twice in 11 appearances for United since joining the club from RB Leipzig for £73.7m in August. That has brought inevitable pressure on to the 22-year-old’s shoulders with Amorim revealing that while he is relaxed about the situation, the player himself is not. “I understand how things are in football, and he’s going to struggle,” said the head coach. “He has no experience here, and when everyone says that you are the next big thing, you hear that. If you don’t perform every week, you are going to hear from club legends, from pundits, the media, and sometimes they are right.

• World No 1 triumphs 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in epic semi-final

• Rybakina battles back to defeat Pegula 4-6, 6-4, 6-3

Aryna Sabalenka will attempt to close out one of the greatest seasons of her career by winning the WTA Finals for the first time as she rekindles her rivalry with Elena Rybakina in the final of the season-ending championships.

In the final stages of a tournament that has spectacularly produced both drama and quality, semi-final day in Riyadh further underscored the fierce competition at the top of women’s tennis today with two excellent three-set contests.

President asks justice department to open an investigation but provides no proof to support his allegations

Donald Trump on Friday accused foreign-owned meat packers of driving up the price of beef in the US and asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation.

The Republican president announced the move on social media days after his party suffered losses in key elections in which the winning Democratic candidates focused relentlessly on the public’s concerns about the cost of living.

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing

Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.

We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.

‘The defense acquisitions system as you know it is dead,’ Hegesth says in a speech to industry leaders, military commanders and officials

Andrew Roth in Washington and Flora Garamvolgyi in Budapest

Viktor Orbán will visit the White House today as Hungary’s far-right prime minister tries to broker another summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Orbán’s advisers claim could help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Nobel prize winner shaped medicine, crimefighting and genealogy, but later years marred by racist remarks

James Dewey Watson, whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953 helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine, crimefighting, genealogy and ethics, has died, according to his former research lab. He was 97.

The breakthrough – made when the brash, Chicago-born Watson was just 24 – turned him into a hallowed figure in the world of science for decades. But near the end of his life, he faced condemnation and professional censure for offensive remarks, including saying Black people were less intelligent than white people.

Ticket sales at about 40% unsold compared with before president made himself chair of US performing arts center

The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971.

The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello. The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.

Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen battle for the title, just as Juan Manuel Fangio, Nino Farina and Luigi Fagioli did 75 years ago

With no little pleasing symmetry, 75 years on from a three-way fight for the inaugural Formula One title, the championship is entering its decisive phase once more with three protagonists in the running and the promise of an enthralling denouement of the kind that has graced some of the sport’s greatest seasons.

Heading into this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen all remain in the hunt. Norris leads Piastri by one point, with the defending champion, Verstappen, 36 points back, after a late-season resurgence.

• Trump grants full pardon to New York Mets great

• Strawberry hit 335 HRs and was eight-time All-Star

• US president cites faith, sobriety, ministry work

Donald Trump has pardoned former New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry on past tax evasion and drug charges, citing the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year’s post-career embrace of his Christian faith and longtime sobriety.

Strawberry was an outfielder and eight-time All-Star, including seven with the Mets from 1983 through 1990. He hit 335 homers and had 1,000 RBIs and 221 stolen bases in 17 seasons.

• Premier Tech pulls out despite rebranding pledge

• Team’s participation in Vuelta was dogged by protests

The main sponsor of the Israel-Premier Tech (IPT) team of the four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome has pulled out of funding the team, despite a pledge to rebrand and distance itself from its Israeli identity. The Canadian company Premier Tech, in a statement issued on Friday, said that it had decided to “step down as co-title sponsor of the team, taking effect immediately”.

“Although we took notice of the team’s decision to change its name for the 2026 season,” the statement said, “the core reason for Premier Tech to sponsor the team has been overshadowed to a point where it has become untenable for us to continue as a sponsor.”

Student, national and local groups across US organized day of action to condemn Trump’s assault on academic freedom

Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students’ and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.

The day of action was organized under the banner of Students Rise Up, a network of students including both local groups and national organizations such as Sunrise Movement and Campus Climate Network. Students were joined by faculty and educational workers’ unions like the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United.

Tamahori was the outstanding director of Along Came a Spider and Die Another Day – but his first film was his greatest work

In 1994, the New Zealand film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Economic concerns felt by Americans of different ages, incomes and political affiliations, survey finds

The federal government shutdown dragged consumer sentiment in the US to a near record low in November, according to a monthly survey conducted by the University of Michigan.

Consumer sentiment fell about 6% in November, with the consumer sentiment index for November 2025 at 50.3, down from 53.6 in October, nearly three points below expectations. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected a 53.0 index reading.

In Marana, residents crowded into a town hall recently to learn the fate of a building that’s been closed for two years

In an Arizona town where farmers have long wrested a living off the arid land, reports that a former prison complex may be turned into an immigration detention center have sparked a fierce backlash, with residents seeing the potential transition as the latest undesirable symbol of the Trump administration’s massive escalation of immigration enforcement.

The facility in Marana, a town of about 63,700 people located north of Tucson, sprawls across a flat expanse of desert studded with scrubby bushes and hardy trees. It was shuttered almost two years ago, and the Management and Training Corporation, the private company that owns it, informed the town manager of company plans to operate a detention center in the prison.

Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill focused their messages on the economy, but structural problems endure

On Tuesday, Democrats won right, left and center.

In purple Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the staunchly anti-socialist former CIA official won handily over her Republican counterpart. Meanwhile, Mikie Sherrill, a poster child for centrist Democrats, won big in light-blue New Jersey. And in ultra-progressive New York, the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, predictably, took the mayoralty. With such varied success, what could be the common lesson?

Dustin Guastella is the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics

After nearly 40 years in the Congress, the former House speaker is stepping down, reigniting interest in the race

Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.

The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.

In documentary Coexistence, My Ass!, Noam Shuster Eliassi uses humor and honesty to turn a one-woman show into something politically radical

In the late 2010s, Noam Shuster Eliassi was working at the United Nations, the latest step in a lifelong effort to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians, when she had an epiphany. In Ukraine, a Jewish comedian named Volodymyr Zelenskyy had made the improbable leap from sitcom about accidentally becoming president to actually becoming president. Perhaps, if she were to take her political career seriously, she should start writing jokes.

It worked. As an Israeli Jew fluent in Hebrew, Arabic and English, Shuster Eliassi could nimbly weave between different audiences, and what started as short comedic videos on social media soon became an invitation from Harvard to develop a full-on stand-up routine skewering the idea of coexistence as it’s often used in the Israeli-Palestinian context. The show would riff on her upbringing in one of the only joint Israeli-Palestinian communities in the country, threading a fine needle with self-deprecating humor and an activist’s edge. The aim, she told the Guardian, was to “unpack” the idea of coexistence, “and say, like, ‘this is how I grew up, there are so many funny kumbayah moments, and I propose something else.’”

Israeli PM, ministers and army chief accused of crimes against humanity ‘perpetrated systematically’ in Gaza

Turkey has issued arrest warrants for alleged genocide against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and senior officials within his government.

Among 37 suspects listed were the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the army chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, said a statement from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office, which did not publish the complete list.