At a meeting at the White House with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, on Monday, Trump said an unnamed country was ready to immediately provide “17 Patriots” as he said a “very big deal” had been agreed for European allies to buy weapons from the United States and then ship them to Ukraine.
If we believe her parents, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, a baby girl was born on Christmas Eve, 2022, in the upstairs bedroom of Woodcutters Cottage in Haltwhistle, Northumberland. Her mother knelt against the double bed and gave birth without assistance or complication. The baby spent the first days of her life in the small stone-terraced cottage and then began her travels, mostly carried by her mother in a sling, hidden under a burgundy puffer jacket. She travelled far for a newborn, passing through bus stations and port towns, hotels and cafes, cities and fields, from north to south, west to east. We know she lived for at least two weeks, but we don’t know, and can never know, precisely how she died. She was called Victoria.
Giving up alcohol changed my life, but I wanted to know whether cannabis cocktails were too good to be true
Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire, has said he avoids substances like caffeine because he likes “rawdogging” reality. I, on the other hand, do not. I mean, have you seen reality lately?
For most of my adult life, alcohol has been my preferred way to take the edge off. But, like a lot of other people, I got older and realized regular drinking was not doing me any favours. Last year, I experimented with “intermittent sobriety”, taking months off here and there. It helped, but it was also easy to slip back into bad habits.
Wehrmacht officer gave relic to German citizen whose family contacted Italian heritage officials after his death
An erotic mosaic panel stolen from Pompeii by a German Nazi captain during the second world war has been returned to the site of the ancient Roman ruins.
The relic, which depicts a pair of lovers and dates from between the middle of the last century BC and the first century AD, had been among the heirlooms of a deceased German citizen who received the mosaic as a gift from a Wehrmacht captain responsible for the German military supply chain in Italy during the war.
Pat McFadden reacts over concerns foreign powers could use untraceable money to affect British democracy
Election officials should consider banning political donations made in cryptocurrency, a minister has said, amid concerns that foreign powers are using untraceable money to influence British politics.
Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister and close ally of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, told MPs on Monday he thought there was a case for preventing crypto donations given how hard it is to trace their source.
Crime occurred after dispute over renovation project
Former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2021 shooting that claimed the life of his father-in-law and left his mother-in-law injured.
The attack took place in June 2021 in North Lake Tahoe, California. Serafini was found guilty of killing Robert Gary Spohr, 70, who was found dead in a house from a single gunshot. Serafini was also found guilty of shooting Spohr’s wife, Wendy Wood, then 68, twice in the head. She recovered from the injures but took her own life one year later. Her family said the trauma of the attack led to her death.
Tory peer Tariq Ahmad denies contact while in office with King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence
A former UK Middle East minister has been accused of breaching transparency rules over a paid advisory role with an influential Bahraini centre that has links to the Gulf state’s government.
The Conservative peer Tariq Ahmad, who denies wrongdoing, was cleared by a watchdog to take up his role as a paid adviser to the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence (KHC).
My father wanted me to feel satisfied with my purchase. He also thinks I’m stupid with salespeople, liable to say and pay too much
I was nine when Dad first gave me the advice that would be a golden thread, a parable of wisdom conveying all his hard-earned knowledge in a few words.
He had just finished a long week at the mixed business we owned in the city, and we were at Menai Marketplace in Sydney’s south for a very special purchase. I was desperate for a PlayStation 1. I pointed at the Big W price tag and asked: “Dad, is this expensive?”
Flash flood warnings were issued for parts of New York and Pennsylvania and an emergency was declared in New Jersey
At least two people were killed Monday evening in New Jersey amid heavy rain and flooding in that state and New York, according to authorities.
The pair died in the city of Plainfield when the car they were in was swept into Cedar Brook during flash flooding, local officials announced on Facebook.
It may not be completely anatomically accurate, but the Victorian copy of the Bayeux tapestry is as much an emblem of its time as the 11th-century original
‘We’ve already got one,” sneers a snotty French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With that holy grail of British history, the Bayeux tapestry, about to be lent by France to the British Museum, we could say the same. In 1885, Elizabeth Wardle of Leek, Staffordshire, led a team of 35 women in an extraordinary campaign to embroider a meticulous, full-scale replica of the entire early medieval artwork. With Victorian energy and industry they managed it in just a year and by 1886 it was being shown around Britain and abroad.
Today that Victorian Bayeux tapestry is preserved in Reading Museum, and like the original, can be viewed online. Are there differences? Of course. The Bayeux tapestry is a time capsule of the 11th century and when you look at its stitching you get a raw sense of that remote past. The Leek Embroidery Society version is no mean feat but it is an artefact of its own, Victorian age. The colours are simplified and intensified, using worsted thread, as Wardle explains in its end credits, “dyed in permanent colours” by her husband Thomas Wardle, a leading Midlands silk dyeing industrialist.
The longtime chronicler of the spy agency on his Legacy of Ashes follow-up and what keeps him up at night
It may seem perverse to pity the Central Intelligence Agency. The powerful spy organization’s history is rich with failures and abuses – from the Cuban missile crisis to the post-9/11 torture program to its role in the overthrow of a long string of democratically elected leaders. But among the many consequences of Donald Trump’s open hostility toward America’s intelligence community is that no less a CIA critic than Tim Weinernow sounds like a defender.
To understand why, Weiner – author of the unsparing history of the agency, the 2007 bestseller Legacy of Ashes – suggested a thought experiment in a recent interview: imagine spending years as an intelligence officer, working diligently to subvert the Kremlin, only to watch the US stand with Russia, Iran and North Korea, as it did in February when it voted against a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine. In that moment, Weiner said: “You come to the realization, if you hadn’t already: ‘My God, the president of the United States has gone over to the other side. He has joined the authoritarian axis.’”
World No 1 vows to quit sport if it affects family life and asks why winning is so important for an ‘awesome’ two minutes
Since the age of three, when he was given a plastic set of clubs, Scottie Scheffler has wanted to be the best golfer in the world. He has won three majors, been ranked world No 1 since 2023, and is the favourite for the Open this week. But during an extraordinary press conference at Portrush on Tuesday, the American peered into an existential void as he asked himself: what is the point of it all?
Scheffler was clearly happy, and his determination to win this week was clear. He also spoke eloquently on the challenges of links golf. But a hitherto unremarkable press conference suddenly veered into a deeper philosophical search for meaning when the 29-year-old was asked how long he had ever celebrated a victory.
Local and travelling fans have been captivated and most problems could have been avoided with more spending or care
The headline in SonntagsBlick Sport reads: “Lia hier, Lia da, Lia überall.” It is not metaphorical; Switzerland’s Lia Wälti is literally here, there and everywhere. From billboards and tram stops to produce packets and tourism adverts, the Arsenal midfielder is the poster girl of Euro 2025, the captain, the Champions League winner, the fulcrum of a team who captured the heart of the country as they set up a blockbuster quarter-final with the world champions, Spain.
There were raised eyebrows when Switzerland was announced as the host country. The largest stadium is the 38,512-capacity home of Basel, St Jakob-Park, where the opening game and final are being played. It felt like a step back from the 74,310-capacity Old Trafford, which hosted the opening game in 2022, and Wembley, which hosted 87,192 fans for the final between England and Germany.
When threatened with US tariffs, Europe was initially bullish. But the influence of nationalist leaders sympathetic to Trump has caused a split
Donald Trump’s trade policy has been labelled “Taco” – “Trump always chickens out” – by his critics. But when it comes to his latest trade war with the EU, it’s Brussels that risks chickening out. The US and the EU have been negotiating for months on an agreement. This week Trump made the shock announcement that the US would hit the EU with punitive tariffs on goods at a crippling 30% rate from 1 August. This was in addition to separate steel and aluminium tariffs, and cars at even more punitive rates.
Blindsided Brussels negotiators calculated the economic damage, and ministers talked about retaliation. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, warned that “all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests” would be taken. But so far, despite the tough words, the EU is holding back.
It was a week of lows and highs for the tech billionaire after the CEO of X resigned and its AI chatbot declared itself a super-Nazi – followed by scoring a contract of up to $200m
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, saw its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok go Nazi. Then its CEO resigned. In the past three years of Musk’s ownership of the social network, it feels like X has weathered at least one public crisis per week, more often multiple.
It is well known that the birth of two global sportswear companies, Adidas and Puma, was fuelled by a family feud between two German brothers, Adi and Rudolf Dassler. After working together for 30 years, the pair fell out shortly after the second world war; Rudi founding Puma in 1948 and Adi starting, you guessed it, Adidas in 1949. What started the rift is a point of contention. The most common explanation is that Rudi had an affair with Adi’s wife, Käthe, for which he was never forgiven. Other theories suggest it was Rudolf’s increasing suspicion that his brother was behind his conscription into the German army and thus his short imprisonment by the allies.
It’s unacceptable that in the 21st century, people with dwarfism are still used for entertainment at private parties, particularly when public figures are involved. The dignity and rights of our community cannot be a source of amusement under any circumstance” – Carolina Puente, president of the Association for People with Achondroplasia and Other Skeletal Dysplasias, vows to take legal action over the reported hiring of people with dwarfism as entertainment at Lamine Yamal’s recent 18th birthday party, condemning the practice as discriminatory. The player’s representatives are yet to comment.
As an Arsenal supporter for many a decade, I should just like to say that The Auld Triangle pub you referred to (yesterday’s Football Daily), was to those who should easily remember, in fact originally named the Plimsoll Arms. People I knew were always perturbed by its renaming, so despite the fact that it’s now a gastro pub, I’m glad that, name-wise, it’s returning to its roots. Make mine a Guinness!” – Colin Grant (and others).
When I first came to London in 1997, I moved into a house on St Thomas’s Road, opposite the Auld Triangle. The landlord was grouchy when it was busy, but really approachable when it was quiet (non-match days). Arsenal fans really sustained that pub, because in the off-season, sometimes we would be the only patrons in the pub. I remember quiz nights with the bullet-headed, no-necked Robbie (‘It’s ahnly a paaaahnd!’), an intimidating figure, but a stand-up comedian in his own right. Happy days” – Paul Chan.
To describe Cole Palmer as scooting through ‘Wythenshawe high street’ (yesterday’s Football Daily) is to misunderstand the type of settlement that Wythenshawe is. As an overspill housing estate on the edge of the Greater Manchester conurbation, its pencil-pushing post-war town planners did not see fit to install anything as grand as a high street, but a civic centre grandly named the ‘Forum’ and pedestrianised shopping area can be found sitting nearish to the middle of this somewhat amorphous suburban mass. I wouldn’t expect a London-centric, anti-northern email to be aware of all this, and this lazy journalism points to a wider decline at the centre of our once great, free press” – Mike Lovelady.
If there’s one thing to be thankful about at the Copa Gianni, it’s that Donald Trump didn’t squeeze his corpulent rump into a full Chelsea strip first, like the last guy to sneak his way into the Blues’ cup-raising celebrations” – Declan Hackett.
Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, sentenced for act of criminal damage that sparked widespread sadness and anger
Two men who carried out a “moronic mission” to fell one of the most loved and photographed trees in the UK have been jailed.
Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were each given prison sentences of four years and three months for an act of criminal damage that caused the Sycamore Gap tree to crash down on to Hadrian’s wall in Northumberland on a stormy September night in 2023.
He broke Hollywood in his early 20s, and found it all extremely scary. Now starring in a beautiful TV romance, Sturgess talks love, Walkmans – and why he might have just found his forever screen partner
Like all good love stories, this one starts with a chance meeting and ends with a reunion. It was 2008, pre-Hardy and Hiddleston, post-Bale and Grant; Jim Sturgess was a rising star and the latest handsome young Brit to break Hollywood. Having landed the lead role in casino thriller 21, Sturgess needed a love interest: cue a slew of chemistry tests with a roll call of beautiful young women, a process Sturgess remembers now as “the most exposed blind date you could ever possibly put yourself through, with five producers watching you from afar”.
Kate Bosworth got the role, but one actor lingered in Sturgess’s mind: an effervescent Australian called Teresa Palmer. “When you do those chemistry tests, they put you through it, so we spent the whole day together,” Sturgess says. “I was really hoping she was going to get the part, because we got on really well. She’s Australian, I’m English, and we were both in Hollywood going, ‘Where the hell are we?’”
A growing number of climate groups are campaigning for the introduction of a wealth tax to ensure the transition to a sustainable economy is not done “on the backs of the poor”.
Last week campaigners from Green New Deal Rising staged a sit-in outside the Reform UK party’s London headquarters as part of a wave of protests targeting the offices, shops and private clubs of the super-rich across the UK.
While Mstyslav Chernov was on the Oscars circuit with his first Ukraine war film, soldiers in his latest – made using bodycams – were dying. He explains why he needed to join them in the trenches
It was in Sloviansk, in the rear of eastern Ukraine’s frontline, that I first met journalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov. It was the autumn of 2023 and he was telling me about the film that would later win him and his team an Oscar: 20 Days in Mariupol, a horrifying documentary assembled from the news footage he and his team had gathered there, in the first month of the full-scale invasion. That September day of our interview, though – amid what would turn out to be Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive of 2023 – he was making his second film, one that took him to the heart of the combat zone, called 2,000 Meters to Andriivka. It is, if anything, even more powerful than its predecessor: a piece of frontline reporting that truly deserves the name, its footage gathered from soldiers’ own bodycams as well as from Chernov and his small crew on the ground among them. He puts the viewer into the trenches alongside the combatants. It is terrifying, bloody and heartbreakingly sad. You will not emerge from this film unchanged.
The soldiers on whom Chernov focuses are members of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade. They have a mission: to liberate the village of Andriivka, in the Donetsk region, and hoist the blue-and-yellow flag above it. Their sole route to this village is through a narrow strip of forest with flat, open fields either side. The wood, with its sketchy cover, is both their protection and, in many cases, their grave. The painful, dangerous advance through this 2km provides the structure of the film. And yet, for all that the film borrows the conventions of a thriller for its propulsive plotline, it is its tenderness, both in its gaze and in the relationships between the men that it depicts, that really destroyed me.
Valery Gergiev, an ally of Russian leader, is due to perform in Europe for first time since full-scale invasion of Ukraine
The widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is leading calls for Italy to scrap a performance by a Russian orchestra conductor with close ties to Vladimir Putin at a music festival in southern Italy.
Valery Gergiev, who has been a close ally of Putin since the early 1990s, will perform in Europe for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine after being invited to Un’Estate da Re festival in La Reggia di Caserta, a former Bourbon palace and Unesco world heritage site in Campania, on 27 July.
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