Another Ben, this time Mimmack, wins the early nod for the most exotic place – and the ideal timezone – to be following along from, as he wishes us all “Happy Ashes Day!”. Right backatcha, Ben.
“There are many good things about living in Texas (yes, really) but right now, the best must be that the first ball will be bowled at 8.10pm and I can conceivably watch the whole first day and still get a few hours sleep. My boys have been promised they can stay up late to watch the first few overs. These are the good times before all the optimism gets crushed. Happy days.”
They probably underestimate the cost to you of keeping this secret, writes Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Before you tell the husband, could you talk to your ex?
I left my ex-husband two-and-a-half years ago. He told me the day we broke up that he had feelings for a married woman and she for him. I knew. It was part of the reason I wanted to leave him, along with a very long list of ways in which our marriage was no longer serving either of us.
A few months later he started actively (but covertly) pursuing this woman, who is a mum in my son’s sports team. Apart from my ex and this woman, I am pretty sure I am the only person who knows.
Exclusive: Clinical guidelines should change to avoid exposing young people to potentially harmful side-effects, researchers say
Clinical guidelines should no longer recommend Prozac for children, according to experts, after research showed it had no clinical benefit for treating depression in children and adolescents.
Poverty rate jumped from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023 in state, Tipping Point Community report finds
Newly released data found that the San Francisco Bay Area’s poverty rate soared from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023, with an approximate total 1.02 million residents in this six-county region considered impoverished by year’s end.
Another 12.5% of residents – about 790,000 people – hovered on the brink of poverty, meaning that about three in 10 Bay Area residents struggled to cover basic expenses.
The spoils were shared at Stamford Bridge between Chelsea and their Champions League torturers Barcelona, but Sonia Bompastor’s side will be the more frustrated of the two.
It was a battling performance from the home team and two late attempts – Ellie Carpenter’s failure to add her second goal from close range and the substitute Catarina Macario’s narrowly offside effort – could have given the Blues all three points.
All the bleak tenderness from the musician’s novel makes it into this heartbreaking screen adaptation of a father-and-son road trip where the dad relentlessly pursues sex. It will undo you
The travelling salesman used to be a stock figure – a centrepiece for jokes about man’s priapism, the untameable wanderlust of the peen once free of its domestic shackles. The Death of Bunny Munro, adapted from Nick Cave’s 2009 book of the same name by Pete Jackson and keeping all its bleak tenderness and unforgiving brutality, gives us the tragedy that lies the other side of any comic character worth its salt.
Cosmetics salesman Bunny (Matt Smith, a brilliant and still underrated actor, plus the best Doctor of modern times, please send an SAE for my monograph on this subject) is out on the road, sampling another young lady’s wares, when we meet him. His wife, Libby (Sarah Greene, perfectly cast as a fierce, loving woman broken by depression and her husband’s choices) calls him. He dismisses her and returns to his sampling. When he returns the next day he finds that she has killed herself. They have a nine-year-old son, Bunny Jr, played by Rafael Mathé, who gives an absolutely wonderful, heartbreaking performance, treading the thinnest of lines between knowing everything and nothing about his father and about his own likely future. At first, Bunny Sr tries to palm him off on Libby’s mother (Lindsay Duncan), who, in a harrowing post-funeral scene, refuses. But when social services arrive to take the boy into care, Bunny’s pride or conscience is pricked. The pair light out of the window and head off on a road trip along the south coast, and a father-son bonding experience. Traditionally, these are good things. But Cave is not a traditional writer and this is not a traditional tale.
Leading US stock markets tumble less than 24 hours after strong results from chipmaker Nvidia sparked gains
Fears of a growing bubble around the artificial intelligence frenzy resurfaced on Thursday as leading US stock markets fell, less than 24 hours after strong results from chipmaker Nvidia sparked a rally.
Wall Street initially rose after Nvidia, the world’s largest public company, reassured investors of strong demand for its advanced data center chips. But the relief dissipated, and technology stocks at the heart of the AI boom came under pressure.
World’s No 1 ranked skier will compete in Olympics
Will finish career in World Cup finals on home snow
Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier of all time, has revealed that she will retire at the end of the season, calling time on a 15-year career that redefined what US athletes could achieve in a sport long dominated by European nations.
Diggins will race the full World Cup calendar and compete in her fourth Olympics at Milano-Cortina before finishing her career on home snow at the World Cup finals in Lake Placid. She announces her departure as the world’s No 1-ranked skier, the owner of three overall World Cup titles and three distance globes, and a four-time Olympic medalist – including the famous 2018 team sprint gold she won with Kikkan Randall that marked the first Olympic title in US cross-country skiing history.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has told Cop30 delegates that he will take his fossil fuel transition roadmap to the G20 in Johannesburg this week to campaign for it, despite reports that petrostates have said they will not accept the plan.
Before leaving Cop30 in Belém, the figurehead of the global south told civil society representatives he was ready to fight for the proposal to phase out oil, coal and gas in whatever forum was necessary.
I’d love to hear from you and if you have read one of my blogs before you will know I love a bit of snack chat. Let me know what you’re digging into while this box office match plays out.
Talks at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil were disrupted on Thursday after a fire broke out in the venue, triggering an evacuation just as negotiators were preparing to try to land a deal to strengthen international efforts to address the climate crisis.
Thirteen people were treated for smoke inhalation, organisers said in a statement, after the fire broke out in the pavilion area of the conference centre in Belém, Brazil.
Oscar-nominated star of two-part musical forced to cancel press stops as film is predicted to deliver year’s biggest box office opening
Ariana Grande has tested positive for Covid amid the whirlwind press tour for Wicked: For Good, precluding some promotional appearances in New York.
The Grammy award winner and Oscar nominee posted an Instagram story on Thursday captioned “moments before Covid” along with a photo from her appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon from earlier this week. Grande, who plays Galinda/Glinda in the second part of Jon M Chu’s film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, will reportedly miss a few upcoming press appearances, including a slot on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Democrats expressed outrage after Donald Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of engaging in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH” and that they should be arrested after they posted a video in which they told active service members they should refuse illegal orders.
The video, released on Tuesday, features six Democratic lawmakers who have previously served in the military or in intelligence roles, including senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and representatives Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan and Jason Crow.
Within hours of Donald Trump signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law, Republican senators were on the ground to issue a pointed message to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi: don’t bury these documents.
The bill’s passage marked a rare moment of bipartisan support in an otherwise ideologically fractured Congress as it now sets a 30-day deadline for the release of Department of Justice files related to the actions of convicted sex offender of minors and financier Jeffrey Epstein, dubbed by a judge “the most infamous pedophile in American history”.
Wright says ‘someone like Jude frightens these people’
‘They cannot get to this guy. He’s a winner’
The former England striker Ian Wright has defended Jude Bellingham, insisting some people are not “ready for a black superstar”.
Bellingham has come in for criticism in some quarters for his reaction to being substituted during England’s World Cup qualifying win in Albania on Sunday, amid some suggestions he is a disruptive influence in the squad. However, Wright says some people are “frightened” of Bellingham’s success.
Liz Kendall and Jo Stevens intervene after about 20 people claim they witnessed or were victims of Farage’s behaviour
Cabinet ministers have described detailed and multiple allegations of racism by Nigel Farage as a teenager as “repulsive” and doubled down on Keir Starmer’s call for Farage to address the claims.
Liz Kendall, the secretary for science and innovation and technology, said she was appalled by the descriptions reported by the Guardian.
Release of documents comes amid conjecture Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuelan president
The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA’s role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report’s publication reveal.
The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report’s significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country.
By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.
In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.
Drenched by floods and abandoned amid the ruins, people in Gaza can draw no comfort from US plans
The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold. The World Health Organization warned last month that the health catastrophe would last for generations.
Food remains in short supply. While displaced families shiver in flooded makeshift shelters, with many facing a third winter of homelessness, aid organisations say they cannot deliver stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins. Israel, which denies blocking aid, has designated tent poles as “dual-use” items that could potentially be used for a military purpose. Save the Children reports children sleeping on bare ground in sewage-soaked clothing.
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Voters need to know if a party leader said racist things at school. Interviewers have a duty to keep pressing for fuller facts
For one contemporary, it is the hectoring tone of today that evokes what it was like to be at school with Nigel Farage. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Gas them’,” Peter Ettedgui recalls when asked about life at fee-paying Dulwich College in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later, he adds: “I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’ and urging them to ‘go home’.”
For others, including some in the college’s combined cadet force (CCF), what lingers is the image of the young Mr Farage in uniform and his renderings of a racist anthem titled “Gas ’em all”. Tim France, a CCF member from those years, remembered Mr Farage “regularly” giving the Nazi salute and strutting around the classroom. “It was habitual, you know, it happened all the time,” he recalls.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Big-name drivers and cutting out the middle man a vital part of the strategy with just over 100 days to go before the 2026 season opener
Twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United Statess, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The UK’s response to Covid was “too little, too late”, a damning official report on the handling of the pandemic has concluded, saying the introduction of a lockdown even a week earlier than happened could have saved more than 20,000 lives.
The document also has stinging criticism of a “toxic and chaotic” culture inside Boris Johnson’s Downing Street – which it said the then prime minister actively embraced.
Senior Security Service officers told Commons speaker in private meeting they can tackle espionage risks
MI5 officers told the House of Commons speaker at a private meeting that they can tackle the risks of a proposed Chinese super-embassy in London, opening the door to its approval.
The Guardian understands that in a meeting held with Lindsay Hoyle in the summer, senior figures from the Security Service indicated they were “very relaxed” about the prospect of a 20,000 sq metre embassy being constructed at Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge.
Club chair Tom Wagner sees it as ‘beacon for excellence’
Birmingham City have unveiled designs of their striking new 62,000-capacity stadium, the Birmingham City Powerhouse, which the Championship club say will open for the 2030-31 season.
The stadium, which features 12 chimney-like towers inspired by the city’s industrial heritage, will dominate the Birmingham skyline and be visible up to 40 miles away. One tower will include a lift to Birmingham’s highest bar, offering city-wide views.
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