But even for a country as wary of outside influences as North Korea, it appears unable to resist the lure of Premier League football – the most-watched sport on the nation’s TV screens. Just don’t expect to see any live action, let alone Gary Lineker presenting in his underpants.
Prime minister addresses nation to pay tribute to those ‘who wanted to contribute to a better society’
Most of the people killed by a gunman in the Swedish city of Örebro last week had an immigrant background, police have said, after the prime minister paid tribute to the victims as “people who wanted to do something good, who wanted to contribute to a better society”.
Among those understood to have been killed in Sweden’s deadliest mass shooting, which took place at an adult education centre on Tuesday, were two Syrian men, both refugees, an Eritrean woman, an Iranian woman and a female teacher from Kurdistan.
European stock markets have opened fairly calmly, despite the latest tariff threat lobbed by Donald Trump from Air Force One yesterday.
In London, the FTSE100 share index has risen by 0.2% or 16 points to 8716 points.
There could be a problem - you’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem.”
“It could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought.”
Can a small-screen spin-off ever better the original? From Daria to Endeavour, here are the 10 that came closest – and a few that actually managed it
Sometimes on TV, the second time’s a charm. If the broadcasting stars align, a spin-off can breathe new life into familiar intellectual property and become beloved in its own right. Or else it can be Joanie Loves Chachi. Or HolbyBlue. Or Baywatch Nights. Or insert any number of best-forgotten flops.
Whether it’s a sequel or a prequel, creating something new from a previous hit is a risky business, but it can reap rewards. In the week that the BBC successfully launched Amandaland, an offshoot of Motherland, and the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul celebrated its 10th anniversary, we’ve selected the 10 best TV spin-offs of all time.
Mateo Retegui and Moise Kean are firing Atalanta and Fiorentina up the table and themselves into Spalletti’s plans
It feels like only yesterday that Roberto Mancini was lamenting the scarce selection of centre-forwards available to him as Italy manager. He returned to the theme repeatedly through his final few months in the job, highlighting how few domestic players were even starting up front for the nation’s top clubs. “It makes things difficult for us,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s not an irreversible phenomenon.”
Luciano Spalletti has not dwelled on this subject since he succeeded Mancini in the role, but plenty of others were ready to say it for him as Italy crashed out early from Euro 2024. Starting up front in their last-16 defeat to Switzerland was Gianluca Scamacca, making his 20th appearance for Italy and yet to score his second goal. The only other recognised No 9 in the squad was Mateo Retegui, who had struck a modest seven times in his first Serie A season with Genoa.
NFL confirmed person was part of the 400-member cast and ‘will be banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events’
A performer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time show was detained on the field and could face charges after unfurling a combination Sudanese-Palestinian flag with “Sudan” and “Gaza” written on it.
The NFL confirmed the person was part of the 400-member field cast. The New Orleans police department said in a statement that “law enforcement is working to determine applicable charges in this incident”.
Charismatic lead aside, a sketchy script and surfeit of stereotypes blight this tale of a secret gay love affair among New York’s Latino community
The opening scenes of this film, written and directed by Dennis Shinners, have the sensorial feel of a city symphony; the sights and sounds of New York’s Brooklyn are all here. From the gentle chugging of a cargo barge along the East River to the clanking jingle of an ice-cream truck, the rhythm of life in this diverse neighbourhood bursts with vibrancy.
From this panoramic view of the city, Barrio Boy closes in on a hair salon, where Quique (Dennis Garcia) works as a barber. The place is charming: airy, full of light, yet also witnesses the paradoxes that exist in the local Latino community. Quique shares a strong camaraderie with his male peers, but as a closeted gay man is forced to put on a macho front, especially to his homophobic, drug-dealing cousin (Keet Davis). A love affair with Kevin (James Physick), a handsome stranger from Ireland, threatens to send Quique’s life into chaos.
Delicious, chewy, cheesy, crisp on top … slam it in the oven and it’s ready in half an hour
Baked gnocchi is my go-to for a hassle-free dinner, and this version with leeks and a fiery kick from the harissa is a simple, store-cupboard win. You could just as easily use your favourite goat’s cheese or feta instead of mozzarella, if that’s what you have in the fridge. Either way, this is dinner in about half an hour.
Galway-born fighter died after intercranial haemorrhage
Calls to make sports such as boxing and rugby safer
John Cooney, the young Irish boxer who has died after a title fight in Belfast, has been described by the former world champion Barry McGuigan as a “lovely sweet kid” whose life was “snapped away”.
As a condolence book was opened at Belfast’s Ulster Hall, his manager Mark Dunlop said the death was “a complete tragedy”.
The impact of artificial intelligence on the environment and inequality has dominated the opening exchanges of a global summit in Paris attended by political leaders, tech executives and experts.
Niko Kovac faces a tough task after BVB’s Waldemar Anton and Serhou Guirassy aided their former club Stuttgart
It had to be him. Waldemar Anton can’t have relished changing ends at half-time on Saturday. The performance of Borussia Dortmund’s big summer purchase had already captured the defender’s time so far in Nord-Rhine Westphalia in microcosm, as his blind backpass led to former teammate Deniz Undav going one-on-one with Gregor Kobel Only a swift intervention from Emre Can preventing Anton’s error from leading to a Stuttgart goal.
When BVB moved from defending the Südtribune in the second period, it became even more uncomfortable for Anton. He was that bit physically closer to the away Stuttgart fans in the north-eastern corner of Signal Iduna Park and their jeers and boos became more audible. They had been furious when the Uzbek-born centre-back had left, not so long after Anton had extended his contract and spoken of his pride at becoming Stuttgart’s captain. If the move north had come with a hefty bump in pay and status for Anton, it has so far been far from a resounding success and in a game in which Stuttgart created little of substance, his next inadvertent intervention felt almost inevitable.
American suffered puncture wound in crash last year
Shiffrin says she will still ski in slalom and team event
Mikaela Shiffrin says she is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder following a crash in November and will not defend her gold medal in giant slalom at the Alpine skiing world championships.
From seeing things to hearing voices, there’s a finer line between hallucination and reality than you might suppose
When did you last hallucinate? “The visionary tendency is much more common among sane people than is generally suspected,” wrote the 19th-century psychologist Sir Francis Galton. Setting aside the vivid, often emotive, cinema of our dreams, we are all more vulnerable to “seeing things” than we might at first suppose.
Around four fifths of people who have recently been bereaved report an encounter with their loved one: most commonly a lively sense of their presence, but some hear, see or speak with them. Up to 60% of people who lose sight in later life see things that aren’t there, sometimes extravagant images such as the “two young men … wearing magnificent cloaks … their hats … trimmed with silver” who appeared in the first reported case of Charles Bonnet syndrome, as this phenomenon is known, before “dissolving” away. A 20-year-old woman blindfolded for 12 hours saw “cities, skies, kaleidoscopes, lions and sunsets so bright she could ‘barely look at them’”. After losing a limb, most people carry a “constant or inconstant phantom of the missing member”, as Weir Mitchell, the American neurologist who coined the term phantom limb after studying 90 cases from the American civil war, put it. Pilots on long flights, travellers through snowstorms and deserts, prisoners and hostages held in darkness; their restless brains are all prone to see the things of which they’re being deprived.
In Dearborn, a largely Arab American town where Trump made gains, his plan to take over Gaza is met with ‘disgust’
For Palestinian Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, like Zaynah Jadallah and her family, displacement and loss have become central elements of her family heritage.
Her family members were teachers in Al-Bireh in what is now the occupied West Bank during the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes and land by Zionist paramilitaries, and then the Israeli army, in the war surrounding Israel’s creation.
On the podcast today; Liverpool finally meet a tough opponent as the team bottom of the Championship, Plymouth Argyle, deservedly beat them 1-0 at Home Park to halt Liverpool’s hopes of achieving a quadruple.
Khadija Shaw returns with a goal, Arsenal avoid an upset and Rugby and Wolves make the most of fifth-round ties
Khadija Shaw provided a defiant response to those who subjected her to horrific racial and misogynistic abuse last week - by scoring an important goal on her return to the Manchester City squad. The striker withdrew from Gareth Taylor’s squad before Thursday’s League Cup semi-final against Arsenal to protect her mental wellbeing. Shaw, who had been out with injury for over a month until the end of January, came off the bench at half-time and scored City’s third in the 3-1 win against Leicester less than 15 minutes later – her first goal since 8 December. “I think that will give her a lot of confidence,” said Taylor, who knows his side’s season will hinge on a remarkable four meetings with Chelsea in the space of 13 days next month – starting with the League Cup final on 15 March, and followed by a two-legged Champions League quarter-final either side of a WSL meeting. Emillia Hawkins
A former UK supreme court judge has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “grossly disproportionate” and said there was “at least an arguable case” that it was genocidal.
Lord Sumption, who served on the UK’s highest court from 2012 to 2018, was one of the highest profile signatories of a letter last year warning that the UK government was breaching international law by arming Israel.
Hawa Hunt’s detention a month ago was politically motivated, say daughter and rights groups, who also raise concerns about her treatment in jail
Fears are mounting over the mental and physical health of a social media influencer who has been in prison in Sierra Leone for more than a month after she was arrested on live television.
Hawa Hunt, a dual Canadian and Sierra Leonean citizen, was arrested on 22 December while starring in House of Stars, a reality TV show, for comments she made on social media about the president of Sierra Leone and the first lady in May 2023.
A liberal arts community finds itself hosting the closely-watched trial of man accused of stabbing novelist in 2022
The author Salman Rushdie will this week come face-to-face with the man accused of trying to take his life in a frenzied knife attack during a 2022 literary festival near the snowy, lakeside New York community that finds itself hosting the closely-watched trial.
Hadi Matar’s twice-delayed trial kicks off with opening arguments on Monday in what may prove to be a face-off between the religious forces that sought to destroy Rushdie, 77, since a fatwa was issued by Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988.
Report published before international summit suggests US is moving away from a global leadership role
Donald Trump’s proposed “land grabs” mean the US is no longer perceived as “an anchor of stability, but rather a risk to be hedged against”, the organisers of the Munich Security Conference have said in their pre-summit report.
The report, which takes as its theme the shift from a US-led, unipolar post-cold war era towards a multipolar world in which no single ideological outlook dominates, will form the backdrop to this year’s conference.
Now in 2025, as a “special government employee” heading up the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is going to war with those kinds of government diversity and inclusion programs and slashing whatever he sees as a “waste” of public coffers.
Working in finance, I was unhappy and surrounded by greed. Then I embraced my passion for cooking, produce and nature
Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora
As I wandered out of my New York apartment, the snow compressing on to the sidewalk in that warming dusk light gave my walk to Citarella’s on Third Avenue a rhythmic glow. It was 1999 and Christmas was a few weeks away. In the northern hemisphere, December is the season for vibrant citrus, bitter leaves and pumpkins, yet behind me someone called out: “Where can I find peaches?” I turned around to see an affronted woman standing outside the greengrocer’s. The absurdity of the moment struck me – why would someone crave peaches in the middle of winter? It is just as absurd as sitting by the pool on a blistering summer day and reaching for a warm, woolly jumper.
I was already aware of the issues facing the food system; industrialised farming destroying our soils, the stomach of our planet, opaque supply chains leaving citizens powerless in making the right buying decisions, and the dominance of ultra-processed foods with zero nutritional value in supermarkets, schools and hospitals, to name a few. But this moment underscored our grave disconnect with nature and its seasons. We had normalised the idea that food can and should be eaten any time of the year. I couldn’t escape from this realisation, but little did I know that seemingly innocuous encounter in New York was to change my life for ever.
Franco Fubini is the founder and CEO of Natoora, and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach
The Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement is the best way to show solidarity with our liberation struggle
Egyptian and Greek mythologies mention a phoenix rising from ashes. Palestinians in Gaza have shown this is not entirely a myth. With the shaky ceasefire barely holding, hundreds of thousands of genocide survivors have emerged from the carnage in this land, whose civilization goes back 4,000 years, marching to north Gaza with hope, despite knowing that almost all their homes, roads, services, schools and hospitals have been wiped out. The real aspiration of most of them is to keep marching home, to where their families had been ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba. Palestinians, it seems, have presciently responded to “Donald Trump’s plan” even before he spat it out.
Despite his sinister side, the US president has mastered the skill of dominating the airwaves and cyberspace through manufacturing dissent. With one outrageous statement after another, he has managed to preoccupy the minds of most nations, leaving almost everyone guessing what his next “unhinged” move may be. But he is not the first to indulge in pretending he is “crazy.” Richard Nixon did too. They subscribe to a “madman theory”, creating the perception of insanity, to achieve two simultaneous goals: throwing friends and foes alike off balance, to the edge, as a means of extracting from them prized concessions and normalizing the patently abnormal: an unmasked might makes right order.
That’s 30g of protein within half an hour of waking, then a spot of “low-intensity” cardio. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Don’t be fooled
In my continued quest for self-optimisation via silly wellness stuff, I was intrigued by a Vogue article on a new morning routine: 30/30/30. That’s 30g of protein within 30 minutes of waking, then 30 minutes of “low-intensity” cardio. Apparently, it has “gained serious traction on social media”.
Why not try it out? Well, for a start – and in fairness, Vogue mentioned this – it was devised by Gary Brecka, a “biohacker” (sigh) and Make America Healthy Again (Maha) enthusiast, who recently called Robert F Kennedy Jr “a true force of nature”. I suppose he is, like a tornado or a plague of locusts.
A traditional Italian cake-tart that uses crumble as both a base and a topping, sandwiching a delectably wobbly lemon filling
Apparently, when behavioural scientists conduct salivation experiments using lemons, they hide the fruit. The reason for this, according to Margaret Visser in her impeccably researched book Much Depends on Dinner, is that subjects who see a lemon as well as taste one are liable to react in a manner that ruins the saliva measurements. Simply reading this had an enormous effect on my own saliva production, but I also tried to set up an experiment at home. My attempts, however, were sabotaged by family members showing me lemons, which did confirm something we already knew: perfectly packaged, handy in size, readily available, inexpensive, long-lasting and multitalented, lemons bring joy, even before you scratch or squeeze them.
While northern India, with its warm, humid climate that almost never gets colder than 10C, is where lemons very likely originated, Visser also notes that the first clear mention of lemons is, as far as we know, an Arab document from the early 10th century, in which the laimun tree is said to be sensitive to cold. Lemon cultivation in the Mediterranean was certainly the consequence of Arab initiative and the creation of orchards in north Africa, Spain and Sicily; it also seems likely that Arab traders sailed the lemons eastwards to China, where they met the bitter oranges and mandarins that originated in Assam and Myanmar. From China, citrus radiated to Malaysia, which seems to have been a producer of limes and pomelos. The very definition of fruitful encounters and exchange.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”
This is something more profound than resilience. It is the part of us that comes alive when we feel we have nothing left
In 2023, I was in the top 0.05% of Spotify listeners of Manic Street Preachers. It was one song on repeat. I would bet good money that there is no one in the world who has listened to their cover of Burt Bacharach’s and Hal David’s Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head as much as me.
No one except my daughter, who was also there as it played through the night, and through every nap, too, for the first 15 months of her life. Some babies need white noise to soothe them to sleep; mine needed my arms and James Dean Bradfield’s voice. Astonishingly, despite this, I do not now hate the song – in fact, I quite like hearing it. If this column ever makes its way to you, James: thank you.
Low-budget British film’s attempt to blend psychological drama and extreme horror ultimately falls between two stools
Cara (Elle O’Hara) is a troubled young woman living in a flatshare and engaged in online sex work, for which she earns a meagre living with her webcam via a sleazy site called RedRoomFans. She had previously been institutionalised in a hospital where she was abused, and now experiences episodes of “maladaptive daydreaming” which her therapist is concerned indicate a drift into psychosis. (Spoiler: her therapist is not wrong.) These interludes are rendered through a colourful blue-green filter effect which, like the rest of the film, is not particularly subtle but underlines its point effectively enough.
Cara’s sex work is not viewed through any kind of filter, flattering or otherwise. We see a selection of her customers, of which Jacob Roberts’ character Paul Ashton is the least charming. These guys aren’t an imaginative bunch, on the whole, and while nothing overtly explicit is shown, Cara’s distaste for her work is palpable. But it’s nothing next to her absolute aversion to being sent back to hospital, and we sense from the moment we first hear about Cara’s mysterious plan to protect herself from this fate that said plan will turn out to be a grand guignol affair.
James Howells lost case to force Newport city council to allow him to search for hard drive discarded by accident
A computer expert who has battled for a decade to recover a £600m bitcoin fortune he believes is buried in a council dump in south Wales is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune.
James Howells lost a high court case last month to force Newport city council to allow him to search the tip to retrieve a hard drive he says contains the bitcoins.
On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada’s Yukon coast, scientists are wielding virtual-reality cameras, 3D models and digital archives to protect the island’s history and culture before it disappears
It was early July when the waters of the Beaufort Sea crept, then rushed, over the gravel spit of a remote Arctic island. For hours, the narrow strip of land, extending like the tail of a comma into the waters, gradually disappeared into the ocean.
When Canadian scientists on Qikiqtaruk (also known as Herschel Island), off the coast of Canada’s Yukon territory, surveyed the deluge, they saw a grimly comical scene unfold.
Swapping my phone for an analogue camera, I took inspiration from my family albums and started photographing the things that mattered most
There’s something magical about holding a physical print of a moment you’ve captured. I first experienced this feeling as a teenager, when my aunt gave me a film camera for my 16th birthday. At the time, it felt like an antique. I left it in a drawer, overlooked, while I relied on my phone for photos – quick snaps that were shared but rarely revisited.
Like most teenagers growing up in the digital age, I was obsessed with curating the perfect Instagram feed. My profile was a polished collection of photos intended to impress my peers, designed to fit an idealised version of reality. Each image was meticulously selected, cropped and edited. But something began to shift.
The latest in our series of writers drawing attention to their go-to mood-lifting films is an ode to the hit Abba musical from 2008
Three years ago, I was sitting on the mezzanine of an east London bar when it collapsed. On my way back from the hospital, I called my friend to come over and he asked: “What do you need?” I said I needed a glass of rosé and to watch Mamma Mia!
Since Phyllida Lloyd’s camp jukebox musical came out in 2008, I’ve seen it upwards of 20 times (including three trips to the cinema). Why? Well, let’s start with the basics. The cast: Meryl Streep, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth. The delightfully absurd plot: young woman raised by a single mother about to be married on a Greek island wants to find out who her father is. The music: 20 of Abba’s classic hits. What more could you ask for, really?
Charlie Javice has joined an undesirable club struck by the “Forbes 30 Under 30 curse”, a term for the high-flyers identified by the business title as up-and-comers who ended up in legal trouble. The entrepreneur has joined a list that includes the pharmaceuticals fraudster Martin Shkreli and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.
The strength of the Forbes “curse” will be tested this week in New York as Javice, 31, goes on trial on four counts of fraud relating to the $175m (£141m) sale of Frank, a student financial aid application assistance company she founded aged 24, to JP Morgan Chase. The deal quickly soured, and has descended into a legal wrangle that has been compared to the case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Letter says many of works being sold by Christie’s are made by AI models trained on pieces by human artists, without a licence
Thousands of artists are urging the auction house Christie’s to cancel a sale of art created with artificial intelligence, claiming the technology behind the works is committing “mass theft”.
The Augmented Intelligence auction has been described by Christie’s as the first AI-dedicated sale by a major auctioneer and features 20 lots with prices ranging from $10,000 to $250,000 for works by artists including Refik Anadol and the late AI art pioneer Harold Cohen.
Hadi Matar has pleaded not guilty to attacking the British author with a knife while he was on stage at a festival in 2022
Prosecutors are to lay out their framework of their case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of attacking author Salman Rushdie, on Monday in a case that has attracted the world’s media to the small town of Mayville in western New York state.
Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese-American, is facing charges of attempted murder and assault in the stabbing attack on the author on stage at an arts festival in August 2022. The 77-year-old Rushdie was grievously injured in the attack and lost sight in one eye.
Even the final score is misleading. Late in the third quarter, the Eagles held a 34-0 lead, the largest lead in a Super Bowl since 2014. The Eagles were dunking Gatorade on their head coach Nick Sirianni while the Chiefs were still trying to find a way into the game. By the fourth quarter, there was a sighting of Eagles backup quarterback Kenny Pickett, the human victory cigar.
No details given over status of talks following US president’s remarks over condition of Israeli hostages released at the weekend
The IDF’s raid on the West Bank city of Jenin, which has killed at least 25 Palestinian people, according to officials, is on its 21st consecutive day. The Israeli military says its aim is to rout out what it has described as militants.
Jenin’s refugee camp, one of 19 across the West Bank built in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948 to house displaced Palestinians, is a centre of armed Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.
The occupation soldiers opened fire on the journalists present in the Jenin camp, detained a group of them, interrogated them, confiscated their phones, and prevented them from returning to the camp.
The occupation continues to demolish and burn the homes of citizens in the camp, amid intensive flying of drones.
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