Daniel Levy has stepped down as the chairman of Tottenham with immediate effect.
A statement on the club’s website read: “Tottenham Hotspur announces that Daniel Levy has today stepped down from his role as executive chairman after nearly 25 years.
Spain’s Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) outsprinted compatriot Javier Romo (Movistar) to win stage 12 of the Vuelta a España on Thursday, his second stage win of this year’s race, with Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) retaining the overall lead.
Palestine flags were in evidence again after protests had brought Wednesday’s stage to a premature end but the race passed without serious incident while the Israel-Premier Tech team have said pulling out of this year’s Vuelta would “set a dangerous precedent in the sport of cycling” in reaction to the incidents on stage 11.
In 1980 when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union and Donald Trump was a property developer, the nine leaders of the then European Community made their first major foray into joint diplomacy. The cause: the Middle East, including a Palestinian state.
“The time has come to promote the recognition and implementation of two principles universally accepted by the international community: the right to existence and to security of all states in the region, including Israel … [and] recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” stated the Venice declaration calling for Palestinian self-determination.
All in yellow Kazakhstan, 114th in the Fifa rankings, represented a banana skin on an artificial surface in Astana. Their last World Cup qualifying victory was almost 12 years ago, a narrow success against the Faroe Islands, but this was anything but a straightforward win for Wales.
By the end the chances were totting up, Craig Bellamy’s side clinging on with the Kazakhstan substitute Serizkhan Muzikov cracking the bar with a 95th-minute free-kick. The visitors were ultimately grateful for Kieffer Moore’s first-half winner, which was sufficient for a victory that keeps alive their hopes of automatic qualification from Group J.
Aid agencies plead for funds as rough terrain hinders relief effort and 98% of buildings in one province are damaged
Hundreds more bodies have been recovered from houses in mountain villages destroyed by a major earthquake in Afghanistan early this week, pushing the death toll to more than 2,200, a Taliban government spokesperson said Thursday.
The shallow, magnitude-6.0 quake struck the mountainous and remote eastern part of the country late on Sunday, levelling villages and trapping people under rubble. Most of the casualties have been in Kunar province, where people typically live in wood and mud-brick houses along steep river valleys separated by high mountains.
Leaning on lies is feels easy to get out of sticky social situations, but it can quickly become a nasty habit
I never lie. Except when declining an invitation – then I always lie.
Once, my fiance, Jared, and I were invited to a dinner we didn’t want to attend. We were worn out from traveling, and some of the other guests required a lot of energy to be around. I replied in the group text that we already had plans – but we were “so sorry to miss!” Jared, sitting next to me on the couch, gawped.
Neil Hopper took nearly £500,000 from insurers after falsely claiming he needed amputation because of sepsis
A surgeon who froze his legs so they would require amputation to satisfy a sexual obsession before making nearly £500,000 in insurance claims has been jailed.
Neil Hopper, a 49-year-old vascular surgeon, was given 32 months after he pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud by false representation. This related to claims made to insurance companies that his legs had been amputated because of sepsis rather than self-inflicted injury.
Weapon valued up to $3m and items from movies including Alien and Armageddon for sale in three-day online auction
Iconic movie props from a galaxy far, far away, and from a search for the Holy Grail much closer to home, are for sale in a blockbuster auction in California featuring a trove of silver screen history.
Darth Vader’s lightsaber from the final two films of the original Star Wars trilogy is the most valuable lot in the three-day online auction hosted by Propstore, a Los Angeles company specializing in movie memorabilia.
Striker in squad for Friday’s match with Manchester City
Kerr missed 20 months because of a serious knee injury
Sam Kerr is poised to make her long-awaited return for Chelsea on Friday night after 20 months out because of a serious knee injury, when the Women’s Super League season gets under way.
The Chelsea head coach, Sonia Bompastor, said on Thursday that the Australia striker would be in her squad when the defending champions host Manchester City at Stamford Bridge.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against two 14-year-old girls and another against a woman
A man who became the focus of far-right demonstrations outside a hotel in Epping, Essex where he and others were housed has been found guilty of sexual assault against two 14-year-old girls.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, an asylum seeker from Ethiopia, was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against the girls and another against a woman.
Studio versions of the stark, home-recorded album have never been issued, but will appear alongside new Springsteen biopic
One of the great lost albums in rock history is to finally see the light of day, as Bruce Springsteen announces the release of the electric version of his 1982 album Nebraska.
The original was famously recorded in the bedroom of his New Jersey home, unaccompanied, on a four-track tape recorder rather than a multitrack studio setup. Springsteen attempted to work the songs up into more fleshed-out versions but felt the studio versions lacked the ghostly drama of the originals, and – to some confusion in his fanbase and record label – insisted on releasing the stark four-track takes.
Thieves make off with ‘particularly important’ Chinese works dating back to the 14th century
Thieves snatched three porcelain works worth millions of euros in a night raid on a French museum.
The robbers triggered the alarm at the Adrien Dubouché institute in Limoges early on Thursday. They smashed a window to gain entry, said a source, who asked not to be named.
A 2024 study believes that regenerative braking technology – where the motor converts the slowing car’s kinetic energy into electricity that then is stored in the battery – results in low-frequency deceleration, meaning that the vehicle slows down gradually and steadily, over a relatively longer period, rather than rapidly or in quick pulses. Such low-frequency deceleration tends to be associated with higher levels of motion sickness.
The chancellor has said she has “full confidence” in Angela Rayner as more details emerged about when the deputy prime minister became aware she had underpaid tax.
Rayner has referred herself to the government’s independent ethics adviser and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after making the admission.
The Red Wall: Wales are expected to bring around a thousand supporters to Astana today but the odyssey undertaken by one bucket hat-wearing fan to get to his seat in the away end has really captured the public imagination.
John McAllister left his home in Barry over five weeks ago and on a largely overland journey of 5,000 kilometres involving 17 train journeys and 11 bus trips, has taken in 11 different football matches, an ice hockey game, some random Irish bloke’s stag do and a heavy metal festival en route while compiling a fascinating YouTube travel vlog.
Ahead of her debut in London’s West End with the musical Hadestown, Roberts answers your questions on navigating overnight fame as a teenager and why she would drop everything to work with Kate Bush
How does it feel to finally be making your West End debut in Hadestown, after City of Angels was cancelled due to Covid? LucyHampton6 Super exciting. It feels like I’m experiencing a new way of performing. I said to the director when we first started that I wanted to throw myself into this and to be pushed as far as I can. When you’re in a band, or you’ve been perceived a certain way for a very long time, it’s nice to go into something where you can shake off the Post-it notes that have been put on you by yourself, or by other people.
If there was to be a musical made with the Girls Aloud soundtrack like Mamma Mia!, or Here & Now, what do you think the plot should be? Sophieeh Our experience of going from complete normality into a talent competition and becoming somewhat famous overnight, and then the trials and tribulations that follow with teenagers trying to navigate new national fame, is enough of a plot. I don’t need to drum up some new far-fetched stories, because I feel like the things that were happening were far-fetched enough.
On the heels of their debut album Now Would Be A Good Time, the Melbourne indie band open up about life on the road, their global aspirations and ‘the pathetic little tragedies’ that occur in your 20s
As Folk Bitch Trio tell it, the music industry is a sadly predictable place.
“It’s exactly what everyone says it is, and exactly what everybody warns you about when you’re 18 and want to start working in music,” says vocalist and guitarist Jeanie Pilkington. “No one makes much money. The artist often ends up getting the shitty end of the stick. You have to work really, really, really hard, and sometimes it feels impossible.”
Trump’s health secretary faces tough questions on about department layoffs and budget cuts amid scrutiny over his plans to ‘make America healthy again’
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will appear before a congressional committee on Thursday, where he’s expected to face questions about turmoil at federal health agencies.
The US Senate finance committee has called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again”.
Prosecution tells hearing Father Ted writer’s posts about Sophia Brooks, 18, were ‘oppressive and unacceptable’
Graham Linehan, the co-creator of Father Ted, “relentlessly” posted abusive and vindictive material on social media about an 18-year-old transgender activist, a court has heard.
Linehan’s posts about Sophia Brooks were “oppressive and unacceptable”, the prosecution told a hearing at Westminster magistrates court.
Venice film festival In an audacious move, director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of the five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army
There can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.
The result was greeted with a 23-minute standing ovation at Venice, about a quarter of the film’s running time, with journalists and festival attenders reportedly sobbing in the auditorium. Since that passionate reception, others have wondered if there is not something questionable or exploitative in presenting this authentic shattering recording in a Hollywoodised suspense drama, getting actors to cry and rage alongside a kind of docufictional hologram, almost instructing the audience in how they too should be responding. I wonder. Perhaps Ben Hania’s high-concept idea is debatable, and it might have been just as moving to present this extraordinary real-life recording in the straightforward documentary context of interviews with the responders and emergency workers. This might have made clearer what happened from their point of view, why they were impeded from helping Rajab and what continues to hinder them.
A simple, terrible and obvious mistake is being made. The more Labour echoes Reform’s talking points, the more it strengthens them
Britain isn’t sleepwalking into catastrophe; it’s charging towards it. Last year, a violent rightwing uprising tore through our streets – an attempted pogrom in which racists tried to burn asylum seekers alive, attacked homes and businesses thought to belong to migrants, petrol-bombed mosques and assaulted people of colour in broad daylight. That disgrace should hang permanently around the necks of the anti-migrant right, a warning of where scapegoating and toxic lies lead.
Instead, the revolt succeeded. Anti-migrant rhetoric in politics and the press has grown more venomous. Reform UK now tops polls by a decisive margin. Its leader, Nigel Farage, raises the spectre of “major civil disorder” unless anti-migrant demands are met. Lucy Connolly – who was jailed after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire and is married to a former Conservative councillor – has been recast as a martyr by rightwing outlets and politicians. I don’t believe in jailing people for such speech, but her canonisation is chilling.
Jean Innes says it is time for ‘new chapter’ at AI research body, after staff revolt and government calls for change
The chief executive of the UK’s leading artificial intelligence institute is stepping down after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul.
Jean Innes has led the Alan Turing Institute since 2023, but her position has come under pressure amid widespread discontent within the organisation and a demand from its biggest funder, the UK government, for a change in direction.
A mother reflects on the breakdown of her marriage as she attends her daughter’s wedding, in a novella that brilliantly depicts family dynamics
At the start of Three Days in June, Gail Baines, a 61-year-old teacher, has a meeting with her school head, who informs her she is about to retire. Gail assumes she is next in line for the job, but the head tells her she doesn’t have the people skills and asks if she has considered retirement herself. Affronted, she walks out of the school and from her job without collecting the photo on her desk of her daughter, Debbie, who is about to get married. After Gail gets home, her ex-husband, Max, arrives. He is staying with her for the wedding weekend and tells her he has forgotten to bring a suit – although he has brought a cat. Not for the first time, Gail wonders “why it was that I had so many irritating people in my life”.
Set in Baltimore, Anne Tyler’s novella spans the before, during and after of Debbie’s wedding. Told through Gail’s eyes, the plot is deliberately slim as it explores subtle family dynamics and the mundanity of everyday life. Thus, we accompany Gail as she collects her outfit from the dry cleaners and visits a hair stylist with whom she declines to make small talk. J Smith Cameron, best known for her role as Gerri in Succession, is the narrator, and adeptly captures Gail’s social awkwardness that, unbeknown to her, can come over as chilly and detached. As she ponders the breakdown of her marriage to Max, we see that the headteacher had a point. Although we root for Gail and her future happiness, it is clear her people skills need work.
(Alpha) Spunicunifait (their name taken from a nonsense word used by Mozart) perform these six quintets with flexibility and easy athleticism
Formed by string players from some of Europe’s leading orchestras and ensembles specifically to give historically informed performances of Mozart’s string quintets, Spunicunifait takes its name from a nonsense word used by Mozart in one of his letters, the meaning of which remains a mystery. “We wanted to make a recording that would approach the quintets with the same reverence that [Mozart’s] quartets receive,” they say, and that approach results in performances of the six works that have transparency, flexibility and easy athleticism. There are the five well-known mature quintets, as well as the early B flat work K174, for which Spuncunifait play two versions of its finale. All are composed for a quintet of strings with two violas (unlike Boccherini’s quintets and Schubert’s famous C major quintet, which employ two cellos).
The players – Lorenza Borrani and Maia Cabeza (violin), Max Mandel and Simon Von Rahden (viola) and Luise Buchberger (cello) – use a mix of 18th-century instruments and 21st-century copies; the recorded sound is close and involving. Not all aspects of the group’s approach will be to all tastes: vibrato is very sparingly used, and its absence can often be starkly effective, but the tendency to link notes in phrases with tiny glissandi can sometimes seem a little overdone. These are minor quibbles, though. The performances reveal the group’s musicality and deep understanding of these under-appreciated works in every bar.
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