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This comment tickled me. Are there any West Ham fans out there with some remaining hope or optimism for today (or the rest of the season)?
Back to Manchester United and Rio Ferdinand has been speaking some sense in the past 24 hours, biting back at Roy Keane over the latter’s comments about Sir Alex Ferguson and Michael Carrick’s backroom staff choices.
Mark Davis, running in Florida, says he bought domain because Republican party had gone ‘full fascist’
A Florida congressional candidate says he bought the online domain nazis.us and set it up to redirect visitors to the US Department of Homeland Security, under whom federal agents have been carrying out brutal immigration crackdowns at the behest of the Trump administration.
Mark Davis, who says he is running as a Democrat for Republican Vern Buchanan’s seat in November’s midterms, took responsibility for the ploy in a Friday X post – as polling showed most Americans believe the killing of Minneapolis woman Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent demonstrated problems with the way ICE has been operating.
Rocco Commisso, the outspoken owner of Italian soccer club Fiorentina and chairman of New York-based Mediacom Communications, has died. He was 76. Both Fiorentina and Mediacom announced Commisso’s death early Saturday without providing a cause. “After a prolonged period of medical treatment, our beloved president has left us, and today we all mourn his passing,” Fiorentina said....
Sinner is the Spaniard’s clear rival but Swiatek, Rybakina, Bencic, Gauff and others are in Sabalenka’s way
Everyone wants to know exactly why Carlos Alcaraz split up with Juan Carlos Ferrero. It was, by some margin, one of the most surprising coaching separations in the history of tennis, a decision that came with no clear warning immediately after the greatest season of Alcaraz’s career. The discourse has since ranged from his alleged determination to reside exclusively at home in El Palmar, Murcia and train in his home academy, to potential discontent at Ferrero’s absences from numerous tournaments last year.
The coach has offered his own perspective in interviews, repeatedly expressing his sadness at a split he did not want. Alcaraz, however, has opted for silence. His mandatory pre-tournament press conference at the Australian Open on Friday marked his first time publicly speaking about the split, and the 22-year-old offered as little information as possible on the reasons behind it.
Goaded by my colleague into a half-marathon, I can’t say I’m enjoying the training but I’m slowly improving, and at least Great Ormond Street benefits
My name is Barry and I’m a runner. As a clinically obese 52-year-old Irishman who regularly binge drinks (the NHS’s joyless definition, not my own), I would love to be able to say I took up running for health reasons but that would be a lie. Truth be told, I was railroaded into it by my Football Weekly associate Max Rushden, who publicly challenged me to run the London Landmarks Half-Marathon after I had belittled the efforts of a friend who completed it by asking: “How hard can running 13 miles be?” To cut an already short story shorter, in April I hope to plod from Whitehall, past Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament across Westminster Bridge, along Victoria Embankment and on to Trafalgar Square in the company of more than 20,000 fellow runners, most of whom should finish in front of me if they have so much as a modicum of shame.
I will be running for Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity, not because of any particularly heartwarming or tragic link I have to this wonderful hospital, but because the bloke in charge of their fundraising heard the gauntlet being thrown down and asked me first. Presumably, that’s why he’s the boss. In return for the £25,096 raised thus far due in no small part to the astonishing generosity of the Football Weekly audience, the charity has sent me a 100% recycled polyester men’s turquoise running singlet bearing a teardrop-shaped logo in which a small and presumably unwell child is smiling and crying simultaneously. It’s 2XL, the biggest size they had available. I don’t think it’s supposed to be skintight.
Yes, ‘corridor care’ horrors persist, yet statistics show my timely, efficient treatment wasn’t a matter of fortune but quite ordinary
It was a bad start to the new year. Slipping on ice, I fell and broke my right wrist, so now I can’t hold a pen with my writing hand. But my experience of the NHS was a good reminder of a few facts.
Heading to the nearest A&E, I expected one of those 12-hour waits and corridors lined with trolleys of the near-dead, rowdy with drunken and psychotic mayhem. The Guardian recently found that violent incidents recorded by 212 NHS trusts in England rose from 91,175 in 2022-23 to 104,079 in 2024-25, the equivalent of about 285 cases reported every day. So I was ready for whatever. Notices warned that there would be zero tolerance of abuse of staff.
The casting comes more than two years after Mulvaney’s partnership with Bud Light sparked a nationwide boycott and a steep decline in sales for the beer brand.
My jaw was left agape by this rich, moving spinoff. Its two lead characters have the making of a classic comic double act
The Game of Thrones franchise has fruited again, like an abundant oak. Where’s left to go? A startling opening, in which a lumbering oaf takes a dump behind a tree, gives us a clue. Chronologically, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Monday 19 January, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) sits between the juggernaut original and its courtly prequel, House of the Dragon. Tonally, it’s in a world of its own.
That oaf eventually gets a name: Dunk. Contrary to expectation, Dunk is a knight. Specifically, a “hedge knight”, a lower-status category whose kind cannot afford their keep and must sleep under trees. “Any knight can make a knight” we are reminded, by simply dubbing them. This lack of gatekeeping has resulted in a class system in which highborn valiants scorn their ignoble brethren. They are knights in name only, and only just. Of course, there’s nothing just about this.
Being able to understand the comedian talking in French in his Dress to Kill show led to me learning several languages and working on the continent
Until the age of 13, I had never taken much interest in school French lessons. I had visited the country a couple of times, on family driving holidays to Brittany and Normandy, but my parents did all the talking and I didn’t see the point of learning le and la, soixante-dix or quatre-vingts. It was just something on the curriculum that I had to do.
Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard’s standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I’d caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny. I was young and some of the material was probably too rude but I enjoyed the surreal and absurd comedy, impressions and mad tangents.
From Clarissa Strozzi and Charles V to Tom Parker and Walt Disney, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 What did LA plumber George Holliday videotape on 3 March 1991? 2 Named after a Greek god, what is Earth’s largest land biome? 3 Abigail, in November 2015, was the first what? 4 Which literary character says, “Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books!”? 5 Which Play School presenter sits in the House of Lords? 6 What cricket fixture was played from 1806 until 1962? 7 Which rescue organisation is based in Poole, Dorset? 8 The Kanneh-Mason siblings are famous names in what field? What links:
9 Babington; Parry; Ridolfi; Throckmorton? 10 Bleu; saignant; à point; bien cuit? 11 Basilisk lizard; fishing spider; jacana; pond skater; Clark’s grebe? 12 Virginia (8); Ohio (7); New York (5); Arkansas, California, Hawaii (one each)? 13 Enhanced Fujita; Modified Mercalli; Saffir-Simpson; Torino? 14 Ben Bradlee; Walt Disney; Jim Lovell; Colonel Tom Parker; Chesley Sullenberger? 15 Clarissa Strozzi; Charles V with a dog; Philip II; Pope Paul III and his grandsons?
In historic speech to mark UN’s 80th anniversary, secretary general makes impassioned plea for multilateralism and international law amid drastic US funding cuts
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, will warn on Saturday of the peril posed by “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in an address to mark the 80th anniversary of the UN’s first major meeting.
Speaking in London’s Methodist Central Hall – the site where eight decades earlier delegates from 51 countries came together for the inaugural session of the general assembly – the UN head will make an impassioned plea for the virtues of multilateralism and international law to prevail during a period of deepening global uncertainty.
Food critic comes under fire after suggesting health and safety rules ‘don’t really apply’ to elite restaurants
According to a critic who has eaten at every three-star Michelin restaurant in the world, Gareth Ward, the star chef and owner of Ynyshir, on the southern edge of Eryri national park, is a groundbreaking visionary.
“He knows which rules to break and when,” Andy Hayler wrote. “He’s like Picasso; if you look at his early still lifes, they’re unbelievably perfect.”
Nets rookie Nolan Traore logged a career-high 27:57 in Friday’s 112-109 win over Chicago. He got the nod down the stretch over lottery pick Egor Dëmin.
The murder case against a former television news anchor accused of killing her mother is now on hold after a judge ruled she is not mentally competent to stand trial.
Horses galloped through towering flames on Friday in a centuries-old annual tradition in the Spanish village of San Bartolome de Pinares to honor St. Anthony the Abbott, the patron saint of animals.
As international treaty comes into force, bill to make it law in Britain is moving at ‘glacial pace’ through parliament
The UK risks being shut out of a historic oceans summit because parliament has failed to ratify the UN’s high seas treaty, environmental charities and campaigners have warned.
The high seas treaty, formally known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, comes into force on Saturday, after two decades of talks.
A warming, scoop-it-up tomato and egg dish a bit like shakshuka, but the zippy lemony yoghurt and harissa give away its Turkish roots
I am not the type of person to say, “These eggs will change your life”, but these eggs changed my life, so they may also make a sizeable dent in yours. The recipe is based on (but not authentic to) the Turkish dish menemen. There is much to love about these eggs, not least how magnificently delicious they are and how fun it is to scoop them up with hot flatbread. On a practical note, meanwhile, they can be eaten at any mealtime and, if not finished, reheated later. Which, if you love eggs and leftovers as much as I do, is a (small) dream come true.
Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journey
Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.
The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Bruised and tainted by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the Labour peer still has admirers – and the drive to go again
The BBC’s interview with Peter Mandelson had offered ample evidence of the Labour peer’s “formidable political brain”, according to Louis Mosley, UK head of the US data firm, Palantir Technologies.
An indefensible error of judgment had been made by Mandelson, Mosley said in a panel discussion with Laura Kuenssberg after the airing of some of the 30-minute interview on her Sunday morning political show, but “he is a masterful interpreter of Trump and we now live in a world where that man will determine much of what happens, and we need people who can be that translation function”.
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