Donald Trump’s libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch has been assigned to Darrin P Gayles, a US district judge for the southern district of Florida.
Trump’s lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami.
Yostin Andres Mosquera took Albert Alfonso and Paul Longworth’s body parts in suitcases to bridge in Bristol
A man has been found guilty of murdering two men in London whom he decapitated and dismembered before taking their body parts in two suitcases to the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.
Yostin Andres Mosquera, 35, was convicted at Woolwich crown court of the murders of Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71, on 8 July last year in the flat the civil partners shared in Scotts Road in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.
England’s victory over Sweden at the women’s Euros came after one of the worst penalty shootouts in history (or at least, worst in terms of how many penalties were missed; in terms of drama, it was arguably one of the greatest ever). Of the 14 penalties taken, only five were scored. That led, predictably, to the usual tedious criticism of the women’s game and suggestions that the penalty spot should be moved closer to the goal.
Which is, of course, nonsense. Four of the five penalties that were scored were excellent, hit firmly into the corners, and the other, the kick that turned out to be the winner, was smashed sensibly and without fuss, straight down the middle by Lucy Bronze as the goalkeeper Jennifer Falk dived out of the way. Two nights later, as Germany beat France in a shootout, 12 of the 14 penalties were scored. In the Women’s Super League last season, 90.32% of penalties were converted. Nobody has used those examples to suggest moving the penalty spot further away to give goalkeepers more of a chance.
Authorities interviewed Israeli pair after they were seen at Tomorrowland music festival near Antwerp
Belgian authorities have said they briefly held and questioned two Israeli citizens who attended an electronic music festival last week, after pro-Palestinian groups accused them of war crimes.
Prosecutors said they had received legal complaints alleging that two Israeli soldiers responsible for “serious violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza were spotted at the Tomorrowland festival near the northern city of Antwerp.
‘I broke for lunch before everybody else and all the animals I had been working with were on the table – cut up, fricasseed, roasted and seared’
Chris Noonan, the director, had been in a battle with producer George Miller, who wanted an all-Australian cast for Babe. Thankfully, a wonderful casting director believed I was right for farmer Hoggett and pushed for me to get a meeting.
Farrell to captain Lions in final midweek tour match
‘I’ve come back to make the most of what I am doing’
Owen Farrell is considering making himself available for England again despite the social media “poison” that contributed to him stepping back from Test rugby last year. Farrell, who has been picked as captain of the British & Irish Lions in their final midweek tour game, now says he would love to emulate Johnny Sexton and keep playing at the highest level for as long as possible.
Farrell, who will turn 34 in September, has not played for England since the 2023 World Cup but has loved his involvement on the current Lions tour of Australia and sounds more open to the idea, if selected, of rejoining the England fold than at any stage since announcing his intention to take a break from international rugby “to prioritise his and his family’s mental wellbeing.”
Bird strikes cause fatal crashes and cost airlines money. Experts have tactics for chasing away these errant fowl
My tone wavered between enthusiasm and concern. “Is that a great black-backed gull,” I asked.
It was a cold December morning, and I was cruising along the interior roads of Boston’s Logan international airport in a white pickup truck. At the wheel was Jeff Turner, who, among other duties, oversees efforts to control wildlife at the airport, including making sure that errant gulls and other birds don’t stray into flight paths and cause an accident. He glanced toward the harbor and confirmed that a lone great black-backed was indeed mixed in with a few herring gulls.
Technology happens because people make it happen. We can choose otherwise
“Technology happens because it is possible,” OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, told the New York Times in 2019, consciously paraphrasing Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
Altman captures a Silicon Valley mantra: technology marches forward inexorably.
A student-led petition against a bill that would reintroduce a banned insecticide is spreading like wildfire. Will the government listen?
A million petition signatures in 10 days? That should tell a government something: that a huge number of citizens aren’t happy with what it has just done, but also that they still believe in their democracy and its ability to course-correct.
In response to pressure from farmers’ unions and the agricultural lobby, on 8 July, the French legislature passed a bill named the loi Duplomb, which contained numerous measures to boost large-scale industrial agriculture – among them, the reauthorisation of a previously banned insecticide, acetamiprid. Beet farmers in particular say they have no alternative to fighting pests. However, there is a growing scientific consensus around acetamiprid (enough, it should be pointed out, for use of the substance to have been banned in France since 2018): it is linked to highly negative effectson bee populations, and, according to the European Food Safety Authority, may adversely impact learning and memory in humans. Studies also show that the whole class of chemicals to which acetamiprid belongs, neonicotinoids, could cause birth defects and reduce male fertility.
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist
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Human rights officials demand Peter and Barbie Reynolds be moved to hospital and out of ‘degrading’ jail conditions
UN human rights experts have warned that an elderly British couple detained in Afghanistan may die in “degrading conditions” as they demand they be moved to hospital for medical treatment.
Peter and Barbie Reynolds, aged 80 and 75, have been detained by the Taliban without charges in Afghanistan, where they lived, since February and their health has rapidly deteriorated.
Italy’s No 9 has been pivotal to their run to Euro 2025’s semi-finals and is finally getting the recognition she deserves
The clock showed 89 minutes and 18 seconds. That was how close a weary Italy were to extra time against Norway in a tense quarter-final in Geneva. It was clear from the frayed nerves and unusually dishevelled appearance of the coaching staff on Italy’s bench that they were concerned those on the field did not have much left in the tank. All their stamina and emotions had been left on the pitch after almost 90 energy-sapping minutes of a game they knew they should be winning.
What they seemed to forget for a minute, however, was that they have Cristiana Girelli. Their talismanic centre-forward can do many things on a football pitch but nothing is more certain than her scoring goals. They only needed one chance, one delivery and the odds were on that their captain would take it. That moment came: a pinpoint Sofia Cantore cross, an intelligent run by Girelli to lose the full-back and an angled header that had one destination.
It started out as promo for an insurance company and ended up powering an entire industry. As the Opry strikes out for London, can it stay relevant for another century?
It’s the only American radio show that’s been on the air for 100 years, an institution that launched the country music industry as we know it and a stage production that made country fans flock to Nashville in the first place – and keeps them coming for a singular experience today. “I somehow understood the weight of what I was stepping into,” says Marty Stuart of the Grand Ole Opry, specifically the first night he played in 1972 as a mandolin-playing prodigy sitting in with bluegrass star Lester Flatt’s band.
Stuart went on to become a country star, and Opry member, himself, and has now embraced the role of elder on the show: on 26 September, he along with Luke Combs, Darius Rucker, Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce will take part in the Opry’s first-ever overseas broadcast at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of a year-long 100th birthday celebration. “A hundred years of anything, especially in show business, it’s just unheard of,” he marvels.
Another 164 injured when training jet had technical problem after takeoff, with pilot said to be among the dead
At least 19 people were killed and 164 injured after a Bangladesh air force training jet crashed into a college and school campus in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday after experiencing a technical problem shortly after takeoff.
The F-7 BGI jet took off at 1.06 pm (08.06 BST) from the Bangladesh air force base in Kurmitola, Dhaka, as part of a routine training mission, but encountered a mechanical failure, said the military spokesperson Lt Col Sami Ud Dowla Chowdhury.
The US vice-president has chosen to holiday among the Chipping Norton set, which includes Boris Johnson and Jeremy Clarkson, in a country he says has gone to the dogs. It feels like he is trolling the UK …
You have to let politicians go on holiday, I guess. You have to accept the existence of world leaders with whose views you disagree, especially now that it’s almost all of them. So why does it feel like a particular provocation for JD Vance to be planning a trip to the Cotswolds? His itinerary isn’t yet known, but its bare bones are that, sometime in August, the Vances will visit London, Oxfordshire and Scotland.
For a recap on what, exactly, is wrong with the US vice-president, there is nothing more evocative than February’s press conference with Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Of course, many of Vance’s more extreme views – calling Democratic politicians a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”, claiming that staying in an abusive relationship was preferable to getting divorced, and saying that abortion should be banned – were already well known, from a combination of his voting record and his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. But Republicans say a lot of things, particularly while seeking election. You may have been able to infer Vance’s drive to dominate and control others, but it wasn’t until that exchange with the Ukrainian president that you could witness it.
Judge upholds decision to allow club to build 39 new courts, after campaigners called for it to be overturned
A proposed expansion of the Wimbledon tennis site will go ahead after the high court ruled in favour of an original decision to allow a further 39 courts, including an 8,000-seat show court, on the grounds of the old Wimbledon Park golf club.
A judicial review, which started as this year’s 138th championship was under way, came after the campaign group Save Wimbledon Park (SWP) took legal action against the Greater London Authority (GLA) over its decision last year to allow the All England Lawn Tennis Club to almost triple its size.
Sebastian Coe says World Athletics is closely monitoring outstanding athlete payments from Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track series, admitting: “There is no point in pretending this is a satisfactory situation.”
Johnson unexpectedly cancelled the final Los Angeles leg of his new four-meeting series last month following low spectator numbers at the opening three editions in Kingston, Miami and Philadelphia.
Keith McAllister had approached machine after wife called for help, and was sucked in by device’s magnetic force
A man who wore a large weight-training chain around his neck and approached his wife while a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine scanned her knee at a clinic in New York died after the device forcefully pulled him, according to police and media reports.
Keith McAllister, 61, was killed at the Nassau Open MRI clinic in Westbury, Long Island, after he accompanied his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, there on 16 July.
Thousands, including Alexei Navalny’s widow, signed letter objecting to performance by Valery Gergiev, a close ally of Russian president
A concert in Italy by a top Russian conductor with close ties to Vladimir Putin has been cancelled after a widespread outcry.
Valery Gergiev, who has repeatedly expressed support for the Russian president, had been scheduled to lead a local orchestra at a music festival on 27 July at Reggia di Caserta, a former Bourbon palace close to Naples. But the management of the Unesco world heritage site said in a brief statement on Monday that his performance had been cancelled.
American made headlines in highlighting that the winning feeling is temporary and shallow – but others feel the same way
The world’s top athletes can seem a confused bunch. Scottie Scheffler described in a press conference before the Open how he keeps asking himself why he wants to win golf tournaments and can’t find any answers. The world’s No 3 male tennis player Alexander Zverev confessed to feelings of emptiness and a lack of joy in his tennis regardless of whether he wins or loses matches. Wimbledon runner-up Amanda Anisimova took a long break from tennis to save her mental health, was written off by many and unsure what to expect on return, yet ended up in the Wimbledon final.
What’s going on? As the world’s top athletes naturally push the boundaries of what’s possible physically, so they also have to push the limits mentally, and these questions and experiences are a vital part of that process. We’re seeing more and more athletes explore the space beyond winning and losing, a concept many in sport have yet to understand actually exists. But as most athletes find out, some sooner than others, to get caught up with winning and losing is to lose the point, both on the court and in life.
Paid ads hosted on Facebook, Instagram and Threads seem to violate Meta’s stated policies yet remain active
Meta is hosting ads on Facebook, Instagram and Threads from pro-Israel entities that are raising money for military equipment including drones and tactical gear for Israeli Defense Force battalions, seemingly a violation of the company’s stated advertising policies, new research shows.
“We are the sniper team of Unit Shaked, stationed in Gaza, and we urgently need shooting tripods to complete our mission in Jabalia,” one ad on Facebook read, first published on 11 June and still active on 17 July.
A robustly enjoyable story involving a son seeking revenge on a sheriff who framed his father for murder, a fake priest, local thugs and a stash of stolen gold
From the moment he flashes a shit-eating grin at a man on the gallows, Samuel L Jackson makes a fine western antagonist here, if not quite rising to the heights of his blanket-blackmail sex act in The Hateful Eight. The fellow about to swing is Isaac Broadway (Tim Daly), who manages to communicate to his onlooking son Henry (Brandon Lessard) that he should seek revenge on one Sheriff Butler, who framed him for murder. But when Henry corners a different lawman, Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), in a church in the Montana town of Trinity, he learns that someone got to the previous sheriff first.
It turns out that papa Broadway, a maligned patriarch who built most of Trinity, was embroiled in a stolen Confederate gold racket – ripping off his gallows tormentor, the ex-slave St Christopher (Jackson), in the process. Add to that a Blackfoot seeking revenge (The New World’s Q’orianka Kilcher), a fake priest (David Arquette), a smattering of local thugs, and before you can say “sins of the father” (luckily, someone does), we have a bubbling potboiler on the go.
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