“Celebrating the resurgence of West Ham is a bit premature, chides Eric Peterson. “They’re on a three-game winless streak, with those games against: a sinking Bournemouth, a floundering Manchester United, and an imploding Liverpool. Facing Brighton, which hadn’t lost since October before running into an irresistible Aston Villa, will provide a sterner, and truer, test.”
They’re much better than they were; United battered Brighton; and Villa were not irresistible in midweek. I don’t think West Ham will go down, do you?
It should have been a night for Crystal Palace supporters to savour. About 1,500 officially made the trip to Strasbourg for their second away match of the Conference League group stage last week, although plenty more had gathered in the pretty Alsatian city famous for its expansive Christmas market.
Yet while most were enjoying being part of Palace’s first European campaign after May’s FA Cup win, “a tiny minority” – as the club’s statement the following day described them – had different ideas. Footage of bottles and chairs being thrown as two rival groups of supporters of the same club clashed before the game in one of the city’s squares went viral on X. “Palace fans fighting each other in Strasbourg,” read the message, not surprisingly sparking widespread confusion.
At least eight MEPs elected for Ukip or Brexit party now known to have been focus of efforts by jailed Nathan Gill
Three more British MEPs from Nigel Farage’s bloc are alleged to have “followed the script” given to a colleague who was being bribed by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors, as a police investigation into the affair continues.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has named Jonathan Bullock, Julia Reid and Steven Woolfe, saying they followed the script provided to Nathan Gill by Oleg Voloshyn when giving interviews to 112 Ukraine, a pro-Russian TV channel in March 2019.
After blows in mid-season the British driver rallied to hold off the challenge of teammate Oscar Piastri and a stunning late run from Max Verstappen to make history in Abu Dhabi
“Just want to go have a burger and go home,” was the disconsolate entreaty from Lando Norris when he felt his Formula One world championship hopes had taken a mortal blow after he failed to finish at the Dutch Grand Prix in August. Yet it was testament to the resolution he has shown all season that while down, he was far from out as he proved in going on to claim the title that he felt had slipped away.
When Norris took the world championship with his third place in Abu Dhabi on Sunday he became the first British world champion since Lewis Hamilton took his last title in 2020 and, similar to Hamilton’s first in 2008, he had to show his absolute determination to close it out in what has been a rollercoaster ride for the 26-year-old.
Government faces setback after judge said it likely violated Comey ally’s protections from unreasonable searches
A federal judge has temporarily blocked prosecutors from accessing materials from a key ally of James Comey on Saturday, making the already uphill criminal case against the former FBI director even more difficult.
Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law school professor who has also represented Comey as an attorney, sued the government in November, saying that the government had unlawfully accessed materials from his computer as they charged Comey with lying to Congress. Richman is a close friend of Comey who worked at the FBI.
Israeli PM to discuss next steps with Donald Trump this month but timetable for lasting peace remains unclear
Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the first phase of the UN-endorsed Gaza ceasefire plan is close to completion, and that the second phase must involve the disarmament of Hamas.
The Israeli prime minister said he would discuss the next steps later this month in Washington with Donald Trump, whose Gaza proposals were codified in a UN security council resolution on 17 November.
Norris is 11th Briton to win title after tense third place
Max Verstappen second in title race, Oscar Piastri third
Lando Norris has won his first Formula One world championship with a gutsy, nerveless drive of no little bravery to seal it with third place at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. A podium was enough for the 26-year-old British driver despite Red Bull’s Max Verstappen winning and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri taking second.
Norris did exactly what was required of him in an enormously intense and high-pressure contest at the Yas Marina Circuit, including making a series of bold overtakes, with a flawless execution by himself and by his McLaren team.
From nascent policy idea in one state to passing federal parliament in just days, it’s been a whirlwind journey for the world-first legislation that will take effect from 10 December
In late 2023, the South Australian premier’s wife put down a book she had been reading. It was Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.
“[She] said to me you better bloody do something about this ... and then we got to work,” Peter Malinauskas later recalled in an ABC interview.
Back in 2006, I went to Canberra for a medical school interview. I figured I would book accommodation when I arrived but when I arrived, there was a big convention in town and all the backpackers hostels and budget accommodation were fully booked.
Coming from Singapore, I thought perhaps I could just sleep at the airport – but quickly found Canberra airport, unlike Singapore’s, is not open 24 hours. Not knowing quite what to do and getting a bit desperate, I caught a bus into town, then started wandering towards the casino, thinking I might spend the night in a place that was open all night. That wouldn’t put me in the ideal condition for nailing an interview the next morning, but as a broke student, I couldn’t afford a pricey hotel.
Questions about the Corn Laws and habeas corpus are abstruse and unrelated to modern life – as my French husband is finding. The test should instead ask about soap operas and sandwiches
What medal did Mary Peters win in the 1972 Olympics? How many Scottish ski resorts are there? Where was Florence Nightingale born? Until I got these questions as exasperated screenshots from my husband, I had no idea, like any normal Briton (it’s gold, five and Italy, apparently). They came from an app he downloaded to revise for his Life in the UK test, a prerequisite for applying for citizenship. Other recent questions have featured the divine right of kings, Hadrian’s Wall fort names and trying minor crimes in Scotland. Can the test itself possibly be this hard? We’ll soon find out: he’s taking it next week, if he doesn’t give up and go back to France instead.
Much has been written about the absurdity of the Life in the UK test – it’s inaccurate, partial and sloppily worded, unfit for purpose, a “bad pub quiz” – and now it’s ruining my life (in the UK). Home is tense: my husband is tetchy because he has spent years here (he works, volunteers, pays taxes, can identify both Mitchell brothers and responds appropriately when asked “You all right?”), but now needs to prove he is assimilated by answering multiple-choice questions on the repeal of the Corn Laws. I’m mortified, partly because we’re making people pay £50 to take an absurdly hard exam – you need 75% to pass – and partly because it keeps humbling me. I’m a history graduate, but couldn’t tell you the date of the Habeas Corpus Act with a gun to my head.
Kyiv may be approaching its last chance to end the war with its sovereignty intact. If a peace deal includes two key elements, it should accept
The negotiations over the war in Ukraine are frustrating and tragic. On the one side, a victim of aggression whose plight is more and more desperate. On the other, a brutal aggressor, willing to go to extraordinary lengths to win the war. In the middle, a transactional American president eager for a deal.
It’s no surprise that so many observers have railed against the proposals recently put forward by President Donald Trump and his emissary Steve Witkoff. These proposals appear to offer much to Russia and little to Ukraine – other than an end to the violence. If the negotiations produce a plan that offers Ukraine no hope of security after the war, no Ukrainian leader will accept it. Security is the core of sovereignty, and it would be political suicide to trade Ukraine’s sovereignty for peace.
Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American statecraft program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The actor on being an introverted extrovert, performing as a pearly queen, and becoming a single mother when her husband died
Born in Beverley, East Yorkshire, in 1977, Anna Maxwell Martin studied at the University of Liverpool and trained at Lamda. She made her name with a Bafta-winning performance in the BBC’s Bleak House and has since starred in Line of Duty, Motherland and Midwinter of the Spirit, as well as numerous stage productions. She lives in London with her two daughters. Their father, the director Roger Michell, died of a heart attack in 2021. Maxwell Martin is an Action for Children ambassador and stars in their Christmas short film, Santaland. To donate, visit iamsanta.org.uk.
I am five and having my picture taken at school. On my eye is a medical patch. That’s what they did to you in the 1980s if you had a squint. My dad cut my hair using a bowl, which is why it is such a tragedy.
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
What are the biggest life lessons? Things like how to navigate uncertainty, or what clothes never to wash together? What are the best life-enhancing secrets – big or small – that took years to discover and now need to be shared? Campbell Norris, by email
Eldest son of Donald Trump makes speculative comments during tirade against Volodymyr Zelenskyy and EU
Donald Trump may walk away from the Ukrainian war, the US president’s oldest son has said in comments to a Middle East conference.
In a lengthy tirade against the purpose of continued fighting in Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr also said Ukraine’s “corrupt” rich had fled their country leaving “what they believed to be the peasant class” to fight the war.
Martin Parr, the British documentary photographer who captured the peculiarities of the nation with clarity and hilarity, has died aged 73. He had been diagnosed with cancer in May 2021.
A statement from the Martin Parr Foundation on Sunday said: “It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Parr died yesterday at home in Bristol.
Captain says his dressing room ‘isn’t a place for weak men’
Coach McCullum says England ‘overprepared’
Ben Stokes has admitted that the way England have folded in key moments during the first two Ashes Tests has led him to question the character of his players, and insisted: “A dressing room that I am captain of isn’t a place for weak men”.
After Australia won the second Test in Brisbane by the same eight-wicket margin with which they secured the first, Stokes suggested the telling difference was that the home side had been superior in the “moments in the game where the heat is on and the pressure is really, really cooking” whereas his players “have all been guilty at moments [of] letting the pressure, the occasion, the circumstances, get to us”.
Judiciary says a criminal case has been opened after online images showed a number of unveiled female competitors
Judicial authorities in Iran have arrested two organisers of a marathon held on an island off the country’s southern coast after images emerged showing women taking part in the race without hijabs.
The arrests on Saturday come as the authorities face increasing criticism from ultraconservatives who accuse them of inadequate efforts to enforce a mandatory headscarf law for women amid fears of growing western influence on the Islamic republic.
Last week’s proceedings in murder case of Brian Thompson showed a mix of politics, social comment and drama
The trial of Luigi Mangione is one of the most eagerly awaited cases in recent American criminal history and last week’s court appearances by the accused killer acted as a sort of trailer for the still unscheduled main event.
As a New York court weighed whether evidence was gathered illegally during Mangione’s arrest on charges of fatally shooting a top healthcare executive on the streets of New York, America got a taste of the trial’s potent mix of politics, social comment, conspiracy theory and Hollywood-style murder drama.
Daniel Andreas San Diego, now 47, is fighting extradition from the UK amid accusations he set off three pipe bombs in 2003
Twenty-two years ago, a dark-haired, bespectacled young man vanished off the streets of San Francisco. Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 25-year-old information technology specialist, diehard vegan and animal rights activist, was the FBI’s main suspect in a series of pipe bombings that exploded in front of the headquarters of Chiron Corporation and Shaklee Corporation, two Bay Area companies, in August and September of 2003.
Communiques attributed to the Revolutionary Cells – Animal Liberation Brigade were posted to the website of an animal rights magazine, claiming the attacks were carried out to highlight both firms’ alleged work with Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British research company that conducted tests for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other chemical companies and had drawn the ire of activists on both sides of the Atlantic opposing its tests on animals.
The pistachio-crammed craze makes a superb gift. Our in-house perfectionist tries all the fiddly bits for you …
If you’re asking what on earth chocolate has to do with a city with an average annual temperature of 28C, then you must have been stuck in the desert for the past three years. Because, since its creation in the UAE in 2022, apparently to satisfy chocolatier Sarah Hamouda’s pregnancy cravings for pistachio and pastry, this bar has taken over the world. Though food (among those with the luxury of choice, at least) has never been immune to the absurdities of fashion, the internet has supercharged and globalised the process, so much so that pistachios, which back in January were dubbed “the new pumpkin spice” by this very newspaper, are now everywhere, from Starbucks lattes to Aldi mince pies.
The thing is, however, that whatever your thoughts on green, sugary, coffee-adjacent beverages, Hamouda’s Dubai chocolate developed for Fix Dessert Chocolatier has triumphed, because it really does taste as good as it looks: crunchy pastry, sweet chocolate and rich, slightly savoury nut butter are an incredibly satisfying combination, so a big bar of it is guaranteed to impress under the Christmas tree. Experience demands that I suggest you wrap it in a pet-proof box, however – emergency vet bills are no one’s idea of a great present.
Manchester City completed a ninth WSL win in 10 as Tottenham left it late to sink the 10 players of Aston Villa
Leicester v Man City, Spurs v Villa and London City v Brighton all get off and running. Let’s do this thing.
“We’ve made this a fortress over the past few years,” Leicester boss Rick Passmoor tells Sky Sports before kick-off. “We know the fans here will back us and make a noise.
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