Welcome to the beginning of the business end of the Lions tour 2025. All of the performances, incredibly awkward and forced social media content, and speculation about who will be selected for the big one has led to this: Australia vs British & Irish Lions in Brisbane.
All of the talk in the build up has focused more on the margin of the expected Lions victory with the result an apparently foregone conclusion. The Wallabies are currently ranked 6th in the world, and have only climbed from 8th due to losses by Argentina and Scotland in recent weeks, while the visitors are pulling from a fuller stock of four nations.
Slovenian lawmakers pass historic bill allowing medically-assisted suicide with 50 votes in favor, joining countries like Canada and Switzerland in legalizing death with dignity options.
Designer Nigel Brooke spent thousands to restore a vintage Metropolitan Railway carriage from 1895, which now serves as a popular luxury Airbnb at his converted railway station home.
King Charles III, the 76-year-old monarch, has changed the rules at Buckingham Palace by relaxing the traditional all-white tennis dress code that has been in place since 1919.
The New York mayoral candidate has piqued the interest of South Asian Americans and Muslims – not only because of his identity, but his platform, too
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor has a group of Pakistani American aunties and uncles so excited that they are wondering if they should have given their own children more freedom in choosing their careers. “What if we let our kids become politicians, and not just doctors and engineers?” a member of the grassroots political organizing group, DRUM Beats, asked at a small celebration held at an Islamic school last month in south Brooklyn.
DRUM Beats, which represents New York City’s working class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean populations, was one of the first grassroots groups to endorse Mamdani, when he launched his campaign in October – long before he became a household name. More than 300 volunteers, who spoke near a dozen languages, knocked on at least 10,000 doors to support him. DRUM Beats says these efforts helped increase voter turnout by almost 90% among Indo Caribbean and South Asians in some neighborhoods.
When he left the Soviet Union for a new life in America, the novelist never imagined he would live under another authoritarian regime. Then Trump got back into power ... Is it time to move again?
Oh, to have been born in a small, stylish country with good food and favourable sea breezes. No empire, no holy faith, no condescension, no fatal ideologies. The fish is grilled, the extended family roll in on their scooters, the wine looks amber in its glass as the socially democratic sun begins its plunge into the sparkling waters below.
This was not my fortune. I was born to one dying superpower and am now living in another. I was born to an ideology pasted all over enormous granite buildings in enormous Slavic letters and now live in one where the same happens in bold caps on what was once Twitter and what purports to be Truth (Pravda?) Social. America, Russia. Russia, America. Together they were kind enough to give me the material from which I made a decent living as a writer, but they took away any sense of normality, any faith that societies can provide lives without bold-faced slogans, bald-faced lies, leaders with steely set jaws, and crusades against phantom menaces, whether Venezuelan or Ukrainian.
A new true-crime documentary examines Amy Bradley's disappearance from a Royal Caribbean cruise 27 years ago and her family's search amid claims she was trafficked.
UK government will give £35m to help push for event
Previous successes leave city in strong position for bid
London is in prime position to stage the 2029 World Athletics Championships after finally securing a substantial government funding commitment for the bid.
It is understood that the UK government has agreed to give £35m to help bid for the championships, which would be the first to be staged in London since 2017, with the mayor’s office expected to commit around £10m.
Beachgoers knew something was wrong when they heard a loud boom ring out as a paraglider spun out of control, killing its only occupant, extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner
In a social media trend, the airline’s joyful advert jingle is being played over cheerless summer holiday footage
You’re the boss of a travel company, it’s early summer and your brand is going viral. Millions of people are watching and sharing social media clips of people on holiday, the soundtrack to which is your company jingle.
Conservative movement leader Edwin J. Feulner, who built the Heritage Foundation into a prominent Washington think tank and remained active in Project 2025, has passed away at age 83.
The Swedish striker has become more meme than man but he is the very good thing fans asked for, on a tray, ready to go
The current edition of France Football magazine has a photo of Viktor Gyökeres on the cover. Not that I’ve looked at it much, or pored over its details searching for meaning, but the photo shows Gyökeres half in shade, half in sun, displaying his famously shredded physique, not so much the standard male musculature, more a selection of lines and bulges, like he’s made entirely from giant walnuts, like a perfect human challah loaf designed by a robot.
In the photo Gyökeres is smiling with a kind of fervour, as though he’s about to sell you a miracle muscle powder. And I for one would buy this powder. Make me into a cyborg, Viktor. Maximise my hidden hyper-potential. Basically, I want Viktor Gyökeres to hold me brusquely in his arms while he talks about good proteins and explains the blockchain, in a way that isn’t sexual. Not for me anyway, but that definitely is for him.
The foam footwear is selling fast at the high-end store in London but the price remains controversial
Rounded, cushioned and with a thick strap, foam sliders have been a familiar sight on feet this summer. While they are available for £30 from Adidas or £3.49 on the online marketplace Temu, a high-fashion version is now also on offer. The Ama sliders, in a choice of black, red or white, were launched by the American fashion brand The Row this week. They cost £600.
Laura Reilly, the writer of the influential fashion newsletter Magasin, called them “The Row’s latest rage bait”, using the name for posts online designed to provoke anger, and go viral in the process.
One is a former child soldier, the other lost 30% of his brain to a boxing injury, and together they’ve built the Briton into fighter who can challenge Usyk
‘We understand human psychology because of what we went through rather than going to university to study it,” Don Charles says as he sits alongside his assistant Kieran Farrell on an old church pew in his gym in Hertfordshire. The contrasting trainers explain how their extraordinary back stories have helped them unlock the reclusive and complex character of Daniel Dubois as he aims to beat Oleksandr Usyk and become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night.
“It’s true because I’ve found a second life after I had a bleed on the brain,” Farrell says as the 35-year-old from Manchester remembers the terrible injury he suffered in 2012 when he fought Anthony Crolla. “I lost 30% of my brain but it’s incredible to now be working with Don who knew me when I was boxer.”
Division between minority populations drag Syria further into cycle of violence and attracts Israeli opportunism
Seven months on from Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Syria is descending into yet another wave of bloody sectarian violence.
A local dispute between a Bedouin tribesman and a member of the Druze minority sparked clashes that drew in Syrian government forces and triggered Israeli airstrikes – leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.
A Belgian man who drove nearly 500 miles to meet his future wife was stunned to find out French model Sophie Vouzelaud and her husband had no idea who he was.
A scene from Sandra Bullock’s 2000 film gave me the courage to intervene at a crucial moment – and eventually led me to a career in journalism
It was a brie and cranberry panini that nearly killed my friend George. Six of us were squashed on to one picnic bench in Edinburgh, nine years ago, on our lunch break at a magazine. I felt an instant click with George when he we first met. I was an intern when I first met George, nauseous with first-day nerves. “Is that a Welsh twang I can hear? Sorry, I’m George!” he’d said, before talking me through the office milk-buying etiquette. We had that frenetic compatibility that makes you assume you’ll be friends for ever.
Within a couple of years I’d become part of the team. That day at lunch, as someone cracked a joke, George mistimed his bite. He cleared his throat while we slapped his back and chuckled. Then the colour drained from his lips. His coughs turned to rattly gasps, his fingers flew to his collarbone and his eyes rolled back.
From Olly Alexander, Simon Le Bon and Karen O to Beatrice and Virgil, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Who used to celebrate the anniversary of his 1658 kidney stone operation? 2 Virgil and Beatrice were whose poetic guides? 3 Which country is currently in its Reiwa era? 4 Who is the only driver to win world titles on two and four wheels? 5 Under what rural-sounding name did Amanda Owen find fame? 6 Which river flows from Black Forest to Black Sea? 7 Who is the Hindu creator god? 8 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg was the US counterpart of which British artist? What links:
9 Lariat; opera; matinee; princess; choker? 10 Olly Alexander; Simon Le Bon; Karen O; Marti Pellow; Katie White? 11 A Room of One’s Own; The Common Reader; Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid? 12 46656; 3125; 256; 27; 4; 1? 13 Image orthicon tube; gramophone; Margaret Herrick’s uncle (possibly); Antoinette Perry? 14 Viv Anderson, 1978, and Kerry Davis, 1982? 15 Buchanan Castle; Tower of London; Spandau prison?
When clients started getting random calls about making personal injury claims, Jan and Michael Reed set out to discover who was stealing data from their family-run garage
Michael and Jan Reed can remember the moment their family business received its first indelible blow. It was 2015 and three of their regular customers were standing in the reception of their accident repair centre in County Durham. It had been a busy period and, unusually, all three had come to collect their cars at the same time.
One had got a call from an accident management company trying to persuade him to make a personal injury claim. Unusually, the caller knew the make and model of the car and the date of the accident. The second man said the same had happened to him. By the time the third customer confirmed he had also got the cold call, the three of them were pulling out their phones.
This action-packed thriller, which sees a mother forced out of retirement to defend herself and her clueless son, is supremely confident TV. It takes the genre somewhere totally new
Telly assassins have many good qualities, as well as one obvious red flag. We admire their prowess, method, patience and improvisation. We may be jealous of their efficiency, or their extraordinarily brief phone conversations, some of which merely involve listening to the words “Is it done?” or “Call me when it’s done.” The Assassin (Friday 25 July, Prime Video) features a supremely confident title and many of these aspects. It is also funny.
The set-up is low-key. Journalist Edward Green visits his estranged mother Julie on a Greek island. Following an attempt on her life, which she settles with brutal efficiency, he discovers she is actually a deactivated hitwoman. Fleeing across Europe, he attempts to learn about her past as they untangle a giant conspiracy threatening their lives. There’s also a mystery around who his father is, so it’s a bit Mamma Mia, too.
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