Two Torres Strait community leaders are shocked and devastated after the federal court dismissed a landmark case arguing the Australian government breached its duty of care to protect the Torres Strait Islands from climate change.
Pre-season trips to Asia may not be new for English clubs, but they remain a huge global engagement opportunity
Fifty years ago, Arsenal lost 2-0 to Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, with jet-lagged players struggling to deal with frogs bouncing around the Merdeka Stadium pitch as well as the legendary local striker Mokhtar Dahari.
Since then, however, many aspects of Asian tours by English clubs have changed. They have become, mostly, slick affairs. This summer, Arsenal will visit neighbouring Singapore for games against Newcastle and Milan. Then to Hong Kong for an unusual north London derby against a Tottenham team that will also travel to South Korea to face Newcastle. Liverpool visit Japan and Hong Kong just weeks after Manchester United were in action there on a post-season tour, which they finished in Malaysia.
Port of Antwerp-Bruges figures show 15.9% drop in export of cars, vans, trucks and tractors to US
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges has been turned into a giant car park with thousands of cars, vans, trucks and tractors bound for the US sitting idle as manufacturers try to avert the worst of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Figures released by the port show a 15.9% drop in the transport of new passenger cars and vans to the US in the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period last year, with a sharp decline emerging in May – one month after the US president announced his “liberation day” tariffs.
In the fevered environments within sporting arenas, anything that can help an official has to be a good thing
We are all suckers for a good story. And there was certainly a cracking two‑parter at Wimbledon this year. First came the news that 300 line judges had been replaced by artificial intelligence robots. Then, a few days later, it turned out there were some embarrassing gremlins in the machine. Not since Roger Federer hung up his Wilson racket has there been a sweeter spot hit during the Wimbledon fortnight.
With claims of 2bn TV views, $2.1bn revenues and a push for it to go every two years, Infantino’s pet project is here to stay
All that can be said with certainty about the future of the Club World Cup is that it is not going away. The 24-carat gold Tiffany trophy presented to Reece James by Donald Trump in New York, in one of the most surreal scenes seen in a sports stadium, will be up for grabs again in four years. The event could well be bigger, Fifa intends it to be better and the presentation will surely not be as brash.
Gianni Infantino was widely criticised for imposing the Club World Cup on an indifferent sporting public, against a backdrop of hostility from players’ unions and domestic leagues, but his belief that top clubs would back his vision has been vindicated, albeit largely because of the $1bn prize fund. With Chelsea banking £85m for winning seven matches, others are keen for a slice of the pie.
Media casts Trump's second term as a destructive force in contrast to Biden, highlighting his attacks on elite institutions and implementation of divisive policies.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is trying to deepen ties with China, his country’s biggest trading partner, while being under pressure from the United States.
America can lead the AI revolution by using its abundant natural gas to power data centers, as Trump brings leaders to Pittsburgh to address this national security challenge.
This illuminating account of Toni Morrison’s time at Random House reveals her determination to relate the ideas and words of black America
While a great deal has been written about Toni Morrison’s fiction, her work as a senior editor at Random House is less well known. Dana A Williams, professor of African American Literature at Howard University, sets out to fill this gap, offering an impeccably researched account of Morrison’s stint at Random House between 1971 and 1983, against the backdrop of the Civil Rightsand the Black Arts movements. Reflecting ideas generated by that convergence, Morrison’s novels – described by the Nobel committee, when they awarded her the prize in literature in 1993, as giving life to an essential aspect of American reality – were driven by an unwavering belief in the possibility of African American empowerment through self-regard. Williams’s interest lies in showing how Morrison’s editorial career was informed by the same invigoratingly insular ethos. Whether writing or editing, her work was aimed at producing “explorations of interior Black life with minimal interest in talking to or being consumed by an imagined white reader”.
Morrison saw early on how that kind of insularity could be wielded as both a weapon and a shield. Addressing the Second National Conference of Afro-American Writers at Howard in 1976, she urged the audience to recognise that “the survival of Black publishing, which […] is a sort of way of saying the survival of Black writing, will depend on the same things that the survival of Black anything depends on, which is the energies of Black people – sheer energy, inventiveness and innovation, tenacity, the ability to hang on, and a contempt for those huge, monolithic institutions and agencies which do obstruct us”. These words could well have been repurposed as a mission statement for her editorial career, which, as Williams points out, consisted of “[making] a revolution, one book at a time”. Change was coming in America. Morrison’s contribution would be to work towards change in the overwhelmingly white world of publishing: “I thought it was important for people to be in the streets,” she said during an interview for the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, released in 2019. “But that couldn’t last. You needed a record. It would be my job to publish the voices, the books, the ideas of African Americans. And that would last.”
British film about the relationship travails of a 30-year-old would-be actor falls flat and feels dated
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there was some drop-off in quality between the first incomparable Bridget Jones film and its sequels, but this cheap would-be spiritual successor will have you crawling after even the worst Bridget film begging for forgiveness. Ghosted hews close to the template, to the point of feeling like a tribute act – but unfortunately not the kind of tribute act that sells out arenas but the kind that plays down the Dog & Duck of a Saturday night.
Mercy (Jade Asha) is unhappily single, on the hunt for Mr Right, and hoping to improve her career (ideally from waitress to international acting superstar). Part of the film’s problem is that Bridget Jones’ Diary is of its time, and to hear a 30-year-old supposedly modern and progressive heroine in 2025 complain that she is a decade older than the majority of singles definitely feels dated. Thirty in 2025 is not the same as 30 in the 1990s, and it’s peculiar to watch someone today bemoan it as the end of their youth.
Wing in doubt after missing training due to a foot issue
Andy Farrell has privately picked side to face Wallabies on Saturday
The Ireland wing Mack Hansen is expected to miss out on a place in the British & Irish Lions’ team for the first Test against the Wallabies on Saturday with a foot injury. Hansen’s setback comes with the fullback Blair Kinghorn also poised to miss out after both skipped training on Tuesday.
The Lions have not yet officially ruled Hansen or Kinghorn out of contention to face Australia in Brisbane, but coach Andy Farrell has already privately picked his side for Saturday and given neither player was able to train on Tuesday it seems unlikely that either will feature.
The controversial, rabble-rousing strain of punk known as Oi! is once again giving voice to a nation’s working-class and disaffected youth. Luminaries of this new ‘Cold Oi’ scene explain the music’s eternal, anthemic appeal
Wearing washed 501 jeans, buzzcuts, boots and braces, punks and skinheads are packed into a small and sweaty venue. They’re pogoing to power chords and shouting along to the terrace-style chants coming from the stage.
But this isn’t London’s 100 Club in 1978, it’s a gig by French band Syndrome 81 in the suburbs of Paris in 2025. They sound like a surprising but appealing mash-up of Cockney Rejects and the Cult. And they are part of a new wave of French Oi! punk bands who are blending scrappy, working-class angst with a firm nod to the country’s synth-soaked coldwave past.
Tina Barney’s decades-long exploration of the bourgeois set her family belonged to reveals the strange rituals and claustrophobic banality of rich people’s every day lives
The Via delle Valli is a series of 50 trails aiming to tempt mountain-lovers away from the region’s hotspots and towards lesser-charted country
Thick white cloud hangs outside the windows of Rifugio Segantini, a mountain hut 2,373 metres up in the Italian Alps. But it is shifting, revealing glimpses of the majestic Brenta Dolomites before us: a patch of snow here, a craggy peak there. The view is tantalising, and a couple of times I have run outside in a kind of peekaboo farce to see the full display, only for it to pass behind clouds again.
The refuge – cosy, wooden-clad and packed with hikers – is named after the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Segantini, who was inspired by these mountains. His portrait hangs on the walls and his name is embroidered on the lace curtains. A simple stone building with blue and white shutters in Val d’Amola, the refuge is dwarfed by its rugged surrounds, with Trentino’s highest peak, the snow-capped 3,556-metre Presanella, as a backdrop. The entries in the guestbook are entirely by locals.
The Hague Group aims to agree political, economic and legal actions in ‘existential hour’ for Israel and Palestine
The UN rapporteur hit with sanctions by the US last week has vowed not to be silenced as she hailed a 30-nation conference aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine as “the most significant political development in the past 20 months”.
Francesca Albanese will say the two-day gathering in Bogotá, Colombia, starting on Tuesday and including China, Spain and Qatar, comes at “an existential hour” for Israel and the Palestinian people.
Research finds a third of people rarely meet anyone from a different background
The UK is a “powder keg” of social tensions, with a third of people rarely meeting anyone from different backgrounds, research has found.
A report from the thinktank British Future and the social cohesion group Belong Network found that a year on from last summer’s riots, there was a risk of unrest being reignited unless urgent action was taken to address issues of polarisation and division.
McIlroy embraces backing on Northern Ireland return
Masters champion warns field he has regained focus
Rory McIlroy has promised to revel in the Northern Irish love during the Open Championship this week, with the 36-year-old also warning fellow competitors that he has regained focus after claiming the Masters in April. “The story certainly isn’t over,” he insisted.
McIlroy has returned to Royal Portrush for the first time since 2019, when he admitted the scale of ovation on the Open’s first tee contributed to him whacking his ball out of bounds. He later missed the cut.
The fast bowler was to prove his worth on an electric final day of the third Test at Lord’s, with the hosts winning by 22 runs in a nail-biting finale before heading to Old Trafford
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