A reminder that this is what CFG’s chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, said back in 2019 when they bought Mumbai City:
We believe this investment will deliver transformative benefits to Mumbai City FC, to City Football Group and to Indian football as a whole. City Football Group is committed to the future of football in India and to the potential for Mumbai City FC within that future. We are very much looking forward to playing an active role in Mumbai City FC’s fan and local communities, and working with our co-owners to further develop the club as quickly as possible.
Temperatures plunge below -50C in the Yukon, while swaths of US experience springlike weather
Northern Canada has been gripped by an intense and prolonged cold spell, with temperatures hovering between -20C and -40C for weeks. On Tuesday, Braeburn in the Yukon recorded -55.7C, its coldest December temperature since 1975.
Meanwhile, Mayo and Dawson endured 16 consecutive nights below -40C, with Mayo plunging to -50.4C on Monday. Whitehorse also recorded 10 nights when temperatures dropped below -30C.
Imran Ahmed of Center for Countering Digital Hate files complaint against senior Trump allies
A US judge has blocked US authorities from detaining or deporting a British anti-disinformation campaigner who is among five European nationals targeted by the Trump administration because of moves to push back against hate speech and misinformation.
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), filed a complaint on Thursday against senior Trump allies including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, in an attempt to prevent what he says would be an unconstitutional arrest and removal.
Forest great was loved in Nottingham but under-appreciated in Scotland before going on to thrive as a coach
On the eve of a Celtic European tie 25 years ago, Stiliyan Petrov cut an increasingly agitated figure. The young midfielder, soon to shoot to prominence under Martin O’Neill, was finding it impossible to snatch the ball from a rotund, wizened coach during a possession drill. Petrov’s teammates were cackling with laughter. John Robertson’s brilliance was understated enough in Scotland. Word of his talent in the game was never likely to reach Petrov as he grew up in deepest Bulgaria.
Petrov is part of a recent generation who owe a debt of gratitude to Robertson the coach. More of them later. When news of Robertson’s death filtered through on Christmas Day, the prevailing sense was that his country had lost one of a kind. He was also an individual who, for reasons associated with his own modesty, really never received the kudos he deserved in the land of his birth.
From shock Strictly news to shock flatulence, plus a roundup of the most hilarious news fails, here are the year’s wildest bits of television
One of the most critically acclaimed and most watched shows of the year was Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s staggering Adolescence. At the heart of the plot: why did an innocent-looking kid called Jamie (Owen Cooper) commit such a brutal murder? The third episode lifted the lid. As Jamie is interviewed by psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty), we see him slowly reveal that he’s not an innocent kid, but warped by misogyny and a twisted sense of entitlement. The episode was captivating in its acting, but it stayed with you: from Jamie’s sudden switch from vulnerability to manipulation, to the moment the camera zooms in on Briony’s face as she registers who Jamie really is. Horrifying.
Our circadian cycle doesn’t just affect our sleeping and waking, but our motivations, mood, behaviour and alertness. Whether you are a lark or an owl, here’s how to recognise your own rhythm
It’s easy to hate clocks. Their unstoppable forward churn wakes us up and shames us for running late. They are a constant reminder that every enjoyable moment, just like life itself, is ephemeral. But even if we rounded up all our time-telling devices and buried them deep in the earth, we could never escape clocks. Because we are one.
We don’t need to have studied the intricacies of circadian rhythms to know that we are ravenous at certain times and not others, that the mid-afternoon slump is real, and if we party until 4am we’re unlikely to sleep for eight hours afterwards, because the body clock has no sympathy for hangovers. But to better understand this all-encompassing daily cycle is to truly know our animal selves.
At this time of year, I like to stay home, shut off from the world and do as little as possible for as long as possible. Eat all the food, embrace all the leftovers and be creative with whatever’s in the kitchen. After the big day, I like to turn leftovers into some sort of pie: they’re forgiving and malleable and work with whatever you have hanging about. This leftovers pie from Tom Hunt and this turkey and ham pie from Felicity Cloake are great places to start. You could absolutely make your own pastry, as Tom does, or use shop-bought if you want to keep things as simple as possible (I always store a few rolls of pastry in the fridge over Christmas for precisely this reason). If it’s cheese that you have in abundance, meanwhile, then Rosie Birkett’s decadent-sounding lazy cheeseboard tart is a perfect way of using up the odds and ends of any remaining festive fromage.
As well as comfort food, I also find I need a change of pace after the 25th; I start craving spice and less hearty meals, too. Yotam Ottolenghi’s Boxing Day fried rice with garlic and spring onion sauce is the perfect way to be resourceful with leftover roast veg, as is Meera Sodha’s Christmas veg penang curry, a real treat of a dish that I enjoy year-round, and especially after the indulgence of December. Nigel Slater’s roast parsnip and stilton soup with beetroot crisps is another great addition to your leftovers repertoire, not least because it is a recipe that needs very few ingredients, very little work and is immensely adaptable. If I don’t have beetroot kicking around, I just leave it out. And if I have leftover comté instead of stilton, I’ll chop and stir that in instead.
How our two-bedroom terrace become something of a cat rescue centre is illustration of nationwide crisis
How many cats is too many cats? I can’t tell you exactly, but a couple of weeks ago, I had 11 cats living in my terrace house. And I can say with confidence this is absolutely, definitely too many.
The best plots are the ones that dare to change, and the start of a new year is the perfect time to move around your plants
Something I’ve noticed in gardens that have been tended by the same person – or people – is that the best ones never stay the same. People who truly love their plots shuffle things around all the time, with the same confidence and curiosity as those restless interior design lovers who change their curtains twice a year with the clocks.
The longest I’ve ever had a plot is five years, but even in that time I feel as though I made several different gardens. The suck-it-and-see approach of lifting something that isn’t terribly happy has been a stalwart of mine since I started container gardening on a tiny balcony.
Feted birth of bambina Lara in Pagliara dei Marsi highlights sticky national debate over country’s ‘demographic winter’
In Pagliara dei Marsi, an ancient rural village on the slopes of Mount Girifalco in Italy’s Abruzzo region, cats vastly outnumber people.
They weave through the narrow streets, wander in and out of homes, and stretch out on walls overlooking the mountains. Their purrs are a consistent hum in the quiet that has come with decades of population decline.
After a debilitating illness, they’ve given me a reason to get out of bed – and I now have TikTokers who love me back
After spending a large proportion of this year in hospital and coming out with a feeding tube, life felt completely upside down. I’d gone from running a busy home, juggling work, family and the everyday chaos that comes with it, to suddenly being ripped out of normality and forced to slow down in ways I never expected. When I finally returned home, I felt fragile – physically and emotionally. Getting dressed felt like climbing a mountain some days, never mind feeling remotely like myself.
So I decided to try something small but surprisingly powerful: I started sharing my “fits of the day” on TikTok, which basically means I started sharing my outfits. My most-liked video is a simple one of me in an unremarkable cord skirt, oversized collar blouse and knee-high boots.
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As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave
Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.
There was no shortage of fun and video games in the Diamond household in the last 12 months. Which ones did we play so much our thumbs hurt? And which one saved my soul? Let the ceremony begin … • The 20 best video games of 2025
So, how was 2025 for your household? Was it really all as good as you pretended it was on Facebook? Full of A-grades for the kids and riotous themed fancy dress birthday parties for the grownups? Or was it a sea of disappointment with only occasional fun flotsam? And was any of it actually real, or are we all now seven-fingered AI slop beings with Sydney Sweeney’s teeth?
I have gathered my thoughts (and the Diamond household) together, whether they wanted to or not, to reflect on the most important thing in any given year: which video games we enjoyed the most. Without further ado:
Heartbreak and humour combine in the Danish duo’s appealing blend of balladry, shoegaze and miminalist pop
From Copenhagen, Denmark Recommended if you like Alex G, Dido, Astrid Sonne Up next Playing Primavera and Roskilde in summer 2026
In the hands of Andrea Thuesen and Vilhelm Strange, the band name Snuggle feels more than a little ironic. The Danish duo’s debut album Goodbyehouse, released on the cultishly adored label Escho, derives from a period when the pair’s lives were in a state of major upheaval, and comfort was in short supply. “We had fun – you can hear humour a bit on the album – and we went through some tough times, existential crisis, and you can hear that too,” says Theusen over a video call from her home in Copenhagen.
Russian state has tolerated parallel probiv market for its convenience but now Ukrainian spies are exploiting it
Russia is scrambling to rein in the country’s sprawling illicit market for leaked personal data, a shadowy ecosystem long exploited by investigative journalists, police and criminal groups.
For more than a decade, Russia’s so-called probiv market – a term derived from the verb “to pierce” or “to punch into a search bar” – has operated as a parallel information economy built on a network of corrupt officials, traffic police, bank employees and low-level security staff willing to sell access to restricted government or corporate databases.
England all out for 110 but Tongue marks career high
Neser swats aside criticism of pitch after 20 wickets fall
England may have been bowled out for 110 in Melbourne, another revolution of the unceasing wheel of pain that is the current Ashes tour, but for Josh Tongue day one of the fourth Test was also a career high.
“Dreams come true,” Tongue said at the end of a day when 20 wickets fell, five of them to him in Australia’s first innings. “I’ve always wanted to play in the Ashes, if it’s home or away, and this obviously feels very special. Being here at the MCG with all my family in as well makes it even better.”
Risks from secondhand tobacco smoke are well known and the effect is perhaps best seen by comparison of health data before and after indoor smoking bans. A study of 47 indoor smoking bans in public spaces found hospital admissions for heart attacks decreased by an average of 12%, but people are less aware of other indoor pollutants and how to minimise them.
The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live in
The sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in a much more vivid and emotional society than as mere victims of an indifferent nature that is economical at the expense of compassion.
To say they come to the feeding station sounds a bit grand for a small bird table, a few hanging fat balls and a scattering of seed and mealworms in a back yard in Oswestry. The first adventurers edge in, not just to explore the food source but to play in a space of subtle changes that have happened in their place. When the whole host, quarrel or ubiquity move in, there must be over 30 birds. The energy of their performance is contagious.
Interest in Wet Ink by Abigail Avis is part of a trend for works by female authors among streamers and production companies
A much-hyped novel about a housewife who uses Tupperware parties to secretly smuggle erotic stories to her friends and neighbours is causing a stir in the television world, igniting a fierce bidding contest over the right to adapt it for the small screen.
Wet Ink, a novel by the 33-year-old London-based author Abigail Avis, is not scheduled to be published until the spring 2027, but industry insiders said a fierce auction between six major production companies had already taken place for the TV rights.
Whether it was pop stars, athletes and Hollywood A-listers baring all or real-life heroes and fearless campaigners … Guardian photographers captured the people behind this year’s biggest stories and most revealing profiles
The four-time women’s world champion, ranked the No 2 all-time woman after the retired Judit Polgar, showed that she retains her skills
Hou Yifan, the all-time No 2 woman grandmaster after the retired Judit Polgar and currently ranked women’s world No 1, showed that she retained her brilliant skills when she made a rare appearance in the Global Chess League for Alpine SG Pipers, who defeated the reigning league champions, Triveni Continental Kings, 8.5-3.5 in the 2025 final at Mumbai on Tuesday. The Global Chess League, now in its third season, is planned as the chess equivalent of cricket’s Indian Premier League.
The final qualifying match, in which Alpine barely secured the six game points needed to edge their opponents, proved a triumph for Hou, who studied at Oxford and is semi-retired from chess in favour of a professorship at Peking University. She scored four wins in a row, including a 20-move miniature which took her team into the final.
Exclusive: Analysis of NHS data shows rates of most serious tears are nearly double those for white and black women
Asian women in England are almost twice as likely to suffer the most severe birth injuries during labour, with many healthcare professionals unaware of this greater risk, analysis has found.
Third- and fourth-degree tears, also known as obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI), are the most severe forms of vaginal tearing during childbirth.
Cláudio Valente and one of victims, Nuno FG Loureiro, both studied at notoriously challenging Técnico in Lisbon
As investigators in Massachusetts work to piece together a motive for the murders of two Brown University students and an MIT physics professor, former classmates of the suspected gunman and one of the victims have been asking if the roots of the tragedy lie in their shared experience at a top university in Portugal.
The suspected gunman, Cláudio Valente, and one of those killed, Nuno FG Loureiro, studied at the prestigious and notoriously challenging University of Lisbon engineering and technology school, known locally as Técnico, both graduating in 2000.
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