The hosts and favourites got off to a winning start after goals from Brahim Diaz and Ayoub El Kaabi
The teams take to the field in Rabat, the stadium looks close to full, the home fans are expectant. Can Morocco set a standard?
On the field at Rabat, at the Complexe Sportif Prince Moulay Abdellah, CAF President Dr Pratrice Motsepe has takes to declare the AFCON open. Sadly, UK coverage of the opening ceremony has been non-existent.
Presidential spokesperson says all those abducted from a Catholic school in Niger state last month are now free
Nigerian authorities say they have secured the release of a further 130 schoolchildren kidnapped from a Catholic school in November, after 100 were freed earlier this month.
“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare said on X, in a post accompanied by a photo of smiling children.
MPs and next of kin of prisoners Amu Gib, 30, and Kamran Ahmed, 28, call for immediate government intervention
Two Palestine Action-affiliated prisoners taking part in a hunger strike have been taken to hospital, as their next of kin and MPs expressed concern over prison conditions and called for immediate government intervention.
Amu Gib, 30, who was being held at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey while awaiting trial, is on day 50 of the hunger strike and 28-year-old Kamran Ahmed was being held at Pentonville prison in London and on day 42 of his hunger strike. The two are the latest of eight prisoners who have been admitted to hospital since the hunger strike action began on Balfour day, 2 November, according to Prisoners for Palestine.
The England and Wales Cricket Board is eager to avoid a mass clearout of England’s senior leadership in the wake of another humiliating away Ashes series defeat.
England’s hopes of winning the urn were expunged inside 11 days for just the fourth time in the contest’s 143-year history with Sunday’s 82-run defeat in Adelaide, and a fourth Ashes whitewash is on the cards in Melbourne and Sydney, unless the tourists can arrest a dismal 18-match run without a win in Australia that stretches back to 2011.
Saturday’s arrivals were the most on a single day in December and take the annual total to 41,455
More than 800 people crossed the Channel in small boats on Saturday, a record for a day in December, according to the Home Office.
December is traditionally one of the quietest months for Channel crossings, as a combination of low temperatures and stormy weather makes the journey particularly difficult. Poor visibility and less daylight have also been cited as factors influencing the crossings.
There is simply no stopping this Aston Villa machine, cylinders pumping, exclusively handcrafted by Unai Emery, the manager who reacted to Morgan Rogers’ winning goal against Manchester United by launching his jacket into the night sky. “Birmingham, are you listening?” came the chorus from the home support but this was another victory with wider implications.
For now Villa, third and three points behind Premier League leaders Arsenal, are firmly in the title race, two more brilliant Rogers goals earning a 10th straight win in all competitions and rendering Matheus Cunha’s well-taken equaliser nothing more than a consolation. A frustrating defeat for Ruben Amorim was compounded by his captain, Bruno Fernandes, being forced off through injury at half-time.
All the incentives in Westminster politics militate against confronting difficult issues, but a failing government may as well try honesty
The formula for stable government, according to Britain’s constitution, is a big parliamentary majority and divided opposition. Sir Keir Starmer’s predicament proves that those conditions are not sufficient.
The prime minister’s inability to convince voters that he has an agenda for national renewal, and the demoralising effect that has had on the Labour party, make a leadership challenge look plausible after local elections next May. Maybe sooner.
2 min United win a throw-in on the right, and then a free kick, which comes to nothing.
We have a minor celebrity in the tunnel! Kelly Osbourne, daughter of the late lamented Ozzy, is there and she’s wearing a Villa shirt. Is she playing? No, her son Sid is a mascot today. He’s not holding hands with John McGinn in the traditional fashion – he’s in his arms.
Well they were off to a slow start. The running back quickens matters with a mazy run through to the left then back across the field to avoid two free defenders. They just can’t quite bring him down and Cook levels it up.
Photos suggest former Duke of York served as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s pass to British high society
The former Prince Andrew at Sandringham lying across the laps of five elegantly dressed women as Ghislaine Maxwell looks on; Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein on a shoot near Balmoral; the three of them peering down from the royal box at Ascot.
The images are just some of the “Epstein files” released by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
Survey adds to experts’ concern about addiction risk and highlights support for plan to ban sales to under-18s
One in eight teenagers aged 14 to 17 have used nicotine pouches, a survey has found, adding to health experts’ concern about their growing popularity.
Users hold the small sachets, which look like mini-teabags and are often flavoured, in their mouths to enjoy the release of the nicotine they contain. They are also known as “snus”.
Kane scores again in Bayern’s 4-0 rout of Heidenheim
Barcelona secured a composed 2-0 La Liga victory at Villarreal on Sunday thanks to goals from Raphinha and Lamine Yamal in a match that tilted firmly in the visitors’ favour when the hosts were reduced to 10 men just before the break.
It took just 12 minutes for Barcelona to take the lead from the penalty spot after Santi Comesana blocked Raphinha with his back as the winger tried to break through and the Brazilian calmly converted the spot-kick.
Official indicates vessel is subject to sanctions after Trump’s ‘blockade’ on sanctioned tankers in and out of Venezuela
US Coast Guard officials said on Sunday that they are tracking an oil tanker in international waters close to Venezuela, according to Reuters, marking the second such action over the weekend – and the third within the past week.
One official indicated that the tanker is subject to sanctions. The officials, who requested anonymity, did not disclose the precise location of the pursuit.
Cutting-edge therapies exist, but the market cannot deliver them cheaply. Britain must build NHS capacity so that cures become collective goods, not expensive products
Just a small fraction of our 20,000 genes can cause disease when disrupted – yet that sliver accounts for thousands of rare disorders. The difficulty is: what can a doctor do to treat them? In a common condition such as type 2 diabetes, the underlying biology is similar for millions of patients. The doctor can prescribe metformin. But with a genetic disorder, the mutation might only affect a small number of people worldwide. In many cases, doctors won’t even know which mutation is responsible, let alone how to fix it.
Novel gene-editing breakthroughs are making headlines. But therapies are expensive and complex to develop. The cost of bringing any new drug to patients is now around $2bn, in part because, as Brian David Smith notes in New Drugs, Fair Prices, the “success rate, from discovery to market, is tiny” and there are approved treatments for “less than 10% of the 8,000 diseases that affect humans”. Commercial incentives, he argues, skew innovation towards lucrative cancer drugs and long-term treatments for large populations. Complex gene therapies for very rare conditions are seen as too costly to develop and too small to profit from.
2018 champion talks mental health following 3-1 win
‘I’m guilty of not expressing myself to people I trust’
Rob Cross doesn’t want to say what he saw at the children’s hospital in Cologne a couple of weeks ago. Some of the stories were “horrific”, he confides, but in any case they’re not his stories to tell. All he knows is that he went along with a few other players, after appearing in an exhibition the previous night, and it changed him.
“You see what people are going through,” he says. “And it puts life in perspective for people whose lives are sort of OK. Whose kids are OK. Sometimes we have to find a bit of good. It made me realise how lucky I am in life. There’s always someone out there going through something worse than what you’re going through. That’s why you need to talk.”
Putin’s top foreign policy aid says proposals could prolong conflict as talks with US negotiators are held in Miami
Russia has renewed its criticism of efforts by Europe and Ukraine to amend US proposals to end the war in Ukraine, saying they did not improve prospects for peace.
Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters on Sunday that the proposed tweaks to Washington’s plan could prolong the conflict.
Striker hurt by Van de Ven tackle when opening scoring
MRI scan results to reveal length of spell on sidelines
Liverpool fear their record signing Alexander Isak has sustained a significant injury and is facing a lengthy period on the sidelines.
The league champions are waiting on the results of an MRI scan after the £125m man was injured against Tottenham in Saturday’s Premier League game. The 26-year-old sustained the problem while scoring the opener against Spurs – his second league goal of an already injury-hit debut season – in the 2-1 win after defender Micky van de Ven slid across and caught his leg as the striker planted it on the ground.
Decision takes the total number of new settlements to 69 in past few years as construction binge continues
Israel has approved a proposal for 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as the government pushes ahead with a construction binge in the territory that poses a further threat to the possibility of a Palestinian state.
It brings the total number of new settlements over the past few years to 69, a new record, according to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has pushed a settlement expansion agenda in the West Bank. The latest include two that were previously evacuated during a 2005 disengagement plan.
The telling moment was not Stuart Findlay’s header to open the scoring. It was not Lawrence Shankland battering the ball beyond Jack Butland. Instead, the latest indicator that this is a Hearts team of proper substance arrived as they conceded a 95th-minute and ultimately immaterial goal to Youssef Chermiti.
Frankie Kent, who had misjudged a through ball, was enraged. The Hearts goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow soon threw his gloves on the turf in anger. Derek McInnes, the manager, later only half joked that neither player was as furious as he was. Even losing a clean sheet is a cause for concern at Tynecastle nowadays. A year ago, they were rumbling around in the lower echelons of the league.
New Africa Hub confronts colonial-era silences by asking visitors to share insights on 40,000 objects
It’s a rare thing for a museum to talk about what it doesn’t know. But unanswered questions and archival silences are at the heart of the new Africa Hub at Manchester Museum, north-west England, which is inviting people around the world to help fill the gaps.
The museum holds more than 40,000 items from across Africa, many of which were traded, collected, looted or preserved during the era of the British empire.
The Irish singer-songwriter does what the best musicians do: perfectly crystallising their time while inspirationally taking a stand against it
What has it felt like to be alive in 2025? The basic answer probably touches on a few aspects of the 21st-century experience. One is the horror and conflict that seem to define the news almost every day. Another centres around the material pressures that increasingly grip supposedly peaceful countries: the never-ending cost of living crisis, and the impossibility for millions of people of a secure job, a dependable home and some halfway viable idea of the future.
Something else demands a mention: the all-pervading mixture of absurdity, nastiness and anger fostered by the internet. Bigotry runs rampant. What we still rather laughably call social media now seem to operate on the basis that the ideal story mixes wildly improbable elements with the kicking-up of moral outrage (witness that ghoulish “online content creator” Bonnie Blue, who, having claimed to have had sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours, ended the year by announcing her support for Nigel Farage). You can check your feed in a mood of mild curiosity, but find yourself instantly pulled into what this results in: great storms of mockery, loathing and polarised shouting.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist. His book Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs is available from the Guardian bookshop
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