Tourists resume on 231-8, still trailing by 158 runs
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Enough talk, Scott Boland is about to bowl the first over of day three. It’s much cooler in Adelaide, around 26 degrees.

“Honestly, it’s not England’s batting – that’s pretty much on par with Australia’s,” writes Andy Roberts. “The glaring difference is the bowling. If Australian batters look better, it’s because they are getting a lot more bad balls to hit. England couldn’t score any faster yesterday because the bowling was consistently accurate and tested the batter’s technique and concentration over after over, with no weak links. Compare that to England, with Jacks and Carse sending down rubbish time and time again.

Deal with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, confirmed in internal memo, will allow app to continue operating in US

TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US business to three American investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX – ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States.

The deal is expected to close on 22 January, according to an internal memo seen by he Associated Press and Reuters. The TikTok chief executive officer, Shou Zi Chew, said in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors.

• Players vote overwhelmingly to authorize strike

• Revenue sharing and salaries remain key issues

• CBA deadline set to expire on 9 January

WNBA players have authorized their union’s executive council to call a strike if necessary, the union announced Thursday as it continues to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the league.

The WNBPA and league have been negotiating a new agreement for the past few months, extending the deadline a couple of times with the latest one set to expire on 9 January. The move gives union negotiators another tool to use in talks.

Drone footage shows huge circle of swimmers and surfers in the ocean in latest outpouring of grief

• Victims of Bondi beach shooting

• Ten minutes of terror: how the Bondi mass shooting unfolded in real time – video

• Follow the latest live updates

Hundreds of surfers and beach goers have returned to Bondi’s waters to pay tribute to those killed in Sunday’s mass shooting.

Australia’s most famous beach has gradually reopened after gunmen opened fire on Hanukah celebrations, killing 15 people.

Sources say person of interest identified in attack at university and death of prominent physicist 50 miles away

Authorities said Thursday that they’re looking into a connection between last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University and one two days later near Boston that killed a professor at another elite school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That is according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss an investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Two of the people said investigators had identified a person of interest in the shootings and were actively seeking that individual.

• Cessna jet crashed during attempted return to airport

• Police say Biffle and family among seven fatalities

• FAA and NTSB responding to North Carolina crash

A business jet carrying seven people, including retired Nascar driver Greg Biffle and his family, crashed Thursday at an airport in North Carolina, killing everyone aboard, authorities said.

The Cessna C550 erupted into a large fire when it hit the ground. It had departed Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles (72km) north of Charlotte, but soon crashed while trying to return and land, North Carolina highway patrol said.

The bad news for Oliver Glasner is that Crystal Palace’s marathon season is about to get even longer. A thrilling draw against Finnish side KuPS in their 27th game of the campaign means that they must now contest a two-leg playoff at the end of February after finishing just outside the top eight in the Conference League table.

Having selected an entirely different starting lineup including four teenagers from the side who lost to Manchester City at the weekend, the Palace manager saw his second string impress as Christantus Uche gave them a deserved half-time lead.

Change will loosen limits on research and certain regulations but stops short of making marijuana legal

Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to move cannabis out of the most restrictive drug category, a change that would loosen limits on research and certain regulations but stop short of making marijuana legal nationwide.

“I’m pleased to announce that I will be signing an Executive Order to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance with legitimate medical uses,” the president said from the Oval Office.

Proposal would prohibit Medicaid funds from being used to cover puberty blockers, hormone treatments or surgical procedures

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration unveiled new actions aimed at eliminating transition-related medical care for minors across the US on Thursday, referring to such treatments as “sex-rejecting procedures”, a term used by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

As part of the effort, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will initiate a rule-making process that would prevent hospitals from offering puberty blockers, hormone treatments, or surgical procedures to minors if they wish to participate in Medicare or Medicaid.

People who signed up for a US ‘self-deportation’ scheme say their payoffs were delayed, misdirected or never arrived – leaving them empty-handed in their home countries

Germán Pineda, 32, just wanted to go home.

After his arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June, Pineda, a Honduran immigrant, spent four miserable days in immigration detention at Federal Plaza in Manhattan, sleeping on a concrete floor without sufficient food or a shower. Next, he was transferred to a detention center in Brooklyn, where staff treated him like a criminal, he says, though he’d lived in the country, working as a delivery driver, for 14 years. He couldn’t even call home.

TMTG, which owns president’s Truth Social platform, unveils link-up TAE Technologies to respond to AI boom

Donald Trump’s loss-making social media business has announced plans to merge with a fusion power company.

Trump Media and Technology Group, owner of the US president’s minnow Truth Social platform, unveiled an extraordinary merger worth more than $6bn with TAE Technologies, combining its social media operation with a vast bet on the AI boom driving a surge in energy demand.

Images, undated and uncaptioned, include Nabokov lines written on woman’s body and show Bill Gates and Noam Chomsky

• US politics – live updates

• What we know so far about the Epstein files

Democrats on the House oversight committee have released a new batch of photos from the estate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the deadline for the justice department to release its files related to Epstein looms.

The images, released on Thursday, are undated and lack captions or context. Among them are photographs of what appear to be lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita written on different parts of a woman’s body.

Intelligence service says attacks were work of groups connected to Russian state in ‘clear evidence’ of hybrid war

The Danish government has accused Russia of being behind two “destructive and disruptive” cyber-attacks in what it describes as “very clear evidence” of a hybrid war.

The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) announced on Thursday that Moscow was behind a cyber-attack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Danish websites in the lead-up to the municipal and regional council elections in November.

• ECB and Cricket Australia could bring in UltraEdge

• Snicko hit by more bad decisions on day two in Adelaide

The England and Wales Cricket Board has held talks with Cricket Australia about the possibility of replacing the decision review system (DRS) technology Snicko with an alternative UltraEdge for the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne after controversy on the opening two days of the Adelaide Test.

In bilateral series, DRS technology is the responsibility of the home board, which in practice is passed on to the main domestic broadcast rights holder, in this case Fox Sports. However, the Guardian has learned that Cricket Australia’s free-to-air rights holder, Channel 7, has a DRS contract with Hawk-Eye Innovations, the company behind UltraEdge, so there is an alternative available should the hosts seek to make a change amid unhappiness from players on both sides.

Turner, appointed ambassador to UN in May, now replaces Peter Mandelson who was sacked over Epstein links

Keir Starmer has appointed the career diplomat Christian Turner as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, replacing Peter Mandelson who was sacked over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Turner, who was appointed ambassador to the UN in May, had previously been political director at the Foreign Office and had brokered a close relationship with the new Labour administration before taking up his UN role in New York.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, spoke candidly about Trump’s inner circle and the piece made even bigger waves with its unsparing photos

• US politics live – latest updates

Critics of the Trump administration have praised Vanity Fair’s interview with the White House chief of staff, and particularly the unvarnished photographs of Trump’s inner circle that accompanied it, as overdue scrutiny of a controversial cabinet even as his allies rallied to dismiss it as a hit piece.

Over what the magazine said was 11 separate interviews by reporter Chris Whipple, Susie Wiles spoke candidly about her colleagues, describing Trump as having “an alcoholic’s personality”, JD Vance, the vice-president, as being a “conspiracy theorist for a decade” and Russell Vought, the budget chief, as a “right-wing absolute zealot”.

Report on Kamala Harris’s loss to Trump would be a ‘distraction’ as party is ‘putting our learnings into motion’

The Democratic National Committee won’t release a review of its election loss in 2024, saying it would be a “distraction” from helping the party win going forward.

The party has been working on a so-called autopsy of 2024 since Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump.

The plan to mobilise Russia’s frozen assets is morally compelling and ingenious. The problem is that its enemies will never see it that way

Morally, the decision facing the European Council in Brussels this week has been a no-brainer. Russia invaded Ukraine illegally and unilaterally. Moscow shows no sign of wanting peace. It actively threatens other countries too, including Britain. Ukraine is running out of money. Yet £184bn worth of Russian assets remain frozen in Europe, notably in Belgium. That money should therefore be mobilised to fund Ukraine. To many, this would be the enactment of a clear and present duty, proof positive that Europe can still be a heavy hitter.

In the messy reaches of the real world, however, things have not been straightforward. Law, economics and politics all managed to insinuate themselves, sometimes venomously, into the intense buildup to Brussels. Reparations can have lethal political consequences. Seizure of assets will undoubtedly face legal challenge. It is also bitterly opposed by Donald Trump, who wants the unfreezing of assets to form a key part of his pro-Russian peace plan. Mr Trump is pressing hard for a quick deal, and US and Russian negotiators are poised to meet again in Miami at the weekend.

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News organisations fear move could hit newsrooms and other media publishers by stopping users sharing their content

Facebook is testing a system that charges users for sharing web links, in a move that could prove to be a further blow to news outlets and other publishers.

Meta, the social media platform’s owner, said it is carrying out a “limited test” in which those without a paid Meta Verified subscription, costing at least £9.99 a month, can only post two external links a month.

Back at the PDC world championship for the first time since 2022, the women’s world champion means business, starting on Friday against the world No 22

“When I was younger, they thought I was a mute,” Beau Greaves says with a wry smile, thinking about all the ways darts has changed her. “Never said owt in school, really shy. Didn’t really know what to say half the time. I suppose playing darts just brought me out of my shell. When you get popular, people want to meet you and talk. It’s matured me.”

Greaves was 18 the first time she won the Lakeside women’s world championship, thrusting herself firmly into the crosshairs of public adulation. And even if she played like a natural-born star, with her beautiful fluid throwing arc, she didn’t always feel like one. Endless interviews, viral fame, global domination: this was never what she had craved from the sport. She was Beau, and she just wanted to throw.

Latest image drop comes as pressure mounts on Trump’s justice department to release files

Democratic lawmakers will release more photographs from evidence gathered from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein if the Department of Justice fails to meet the Friday deadline to disclose investigative documents, Congressman Robert Garcia told CNN yesterday.

Speaking to Erin Burnett, Garcia said a petition to the federal court by Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s convicted accomplice - to have her conviction on sex trafficking charges thrown out and to obtain a pardon do not trigger an exemption to the law Congress passed mandating a release of documents by the DoJ.

A renowned Kabul cinema that for decades attracted the city’s film fans is being demolished to make way for a shopping mall

Millions will tune in to watch the brash YouTuber get his comeuppance – the fight will likely go on as long as Joshua decides to let it

An undersized loudmouth disruptor arrives in Miami for a no-hope fight with one of history’s most destructive heavyweights, exploiting every available lever of new media to amplify his delusions of grandeur to mass audiences. There are mounting concerns for his mental and physical wellbeing, with doctors, commentators and former fighters openly questioning his soundness of mind and wondering whether he might end up in hospital – or worse. The oddsmakers have made him an 8-1 longshot, a price that feels almost charitable given the epic scale of the mismatch. The buildup revolves less around the favorite than around the smaller man’s mouth: his noise, his presence, and the creeping suspicion that spectacle may finally have outrun sense.

Cassius Clay wound up shocking the world back in 1964 when he made Sonny Liston quit on his stool after six rounds at the Miami Beach Convention Center. But it’s right here, on the eve of Friday night’s scheduled eight-round showdown between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua at the nearby Kaseya Center, where those curious rhymes with the past come to a screeching halt.

Summit divided on idea of loan secured against Russian assets, as Belgium seeks guarantees if scheme goes wrong

• Belgian politicians and finance bosses targeted by Russian intelligence over seized assets

EU leaders are racing to secure a funding deal for Ukraine that has been cast as a choice between “money today or blood tomorrow”, but Belgium continues to oppose a loan secured against Russia’s frozen assets.

At a summit billed as make or break, EU leaders are discussing an unprecedented move to tap some of Russia’s €210bn sovereign assets frozen in the bloc days after the full-scale invasion of 2022.