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Here we are – the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations final four. Our first semi-final: Senegal, the 2022 winners, take on the seven-time champions, Egypt.

Ranked second in Africa behind the hosts Morocco, Senegal will be hoping to reach their third Afcon final in the last four editions. Egypt are desperate for an eighth continental title, and are hoping to go one better thus year after final losses in 2017 and 2022 (the latter against Senegal).

Six puppies were revived and treated by first responders and are now being monitored at a local animal shelter

Six puppies in rural Washington state will soon be up for adoption after being revived after a suspected drug overdose – and some of them might go home with the fire-station staff who saved them.

Two people dropped off three of the sickened puppies at Sky Valley Fire, about an hour’s drive north-east of Seattle, on Sunday. Officials believe the animals either breathed or ate fentanyl.

Qatar says it ‘continues to implement all necessary measures to safeguard the security and safety of its citizens and residents as a top priority’

For the first time in days, Iranians were able to make calls abroad from their mobiles on Tuesday, according to reporting by Associated Press. Texting services have not been restored, however, and nor has the internet.

Although Iranians were able to call abroad, they could not receive calls from outside the country, several people in the capital told Associated Press. The internet remained blocked, they said, though it is possible to access some government-approved websites.

Cloudfare - an internet infrastructure provider, and one of several companies and monitors tracking the status of internet traffic in Iran – said traffic volumes have remained “at a fraction of a percent of previous levels”. Its latest update as of 01:00 UTC (which is about three hours and 30 minutes ago), shows a continued widespread blackout. Iran has been under an internet shutdown since Thursday night.

Brief windows of connectivity were observed on Friday, but these did not last, according to Cloudfare.

Netblocks, an independent global internet monitor, also notes that while some phone calls from Iran are connecting, there is “no secure way to communicate” and the general public remain cut off from the outside world.

TikTokification of the sport brings in crowds with Tennis Australia as big a winner as new millionaire

A 29-year-old tennis coach from Sydney won the inaugural One Point Slam at the Australian Open and its A$1m prize on Wednesday, after upstaging a field which included Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff.

It is Tennis Australia, however, which won the jackpot, after the new concept – despite its near three-hour duration, often confusing format and awkward exchanges between players – attracted a full house to Rod Laver Arena during opening week as organisers look at non-traditional ways to attract fans to Melbourne Park.

Israel’s war in Gaza has caused high numbers of maternal and neonatal deaths, say two reports

Israel’s war in Gaza has led to a 41% fall in births in the territory, and high numbers of maternal deaths, miscarriages, newborn mortality and premature births, two reports into the impact of the conflict on pregnant women, babies and maternity care reveal.

Two reports by Physicians for Human Rights, in collaboration with the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel document how the war has led to high figures for maternal and neonatal mortality and forced births in dangerous conditions and systematically dismantled health services – consequences of “a deliberate intention of preventing births among Palestinians, meeting the legal criteria of the Genocide Convention,” researchers said.

Sarah Porter was running 108-mile Montane Winter Spine Challenger South race when security team had to disable tracking device

A woman was pulled out of Britain’s most gruelling ultramarathon after receiving death threats over her fundraising for Afghan women and girls.

Sarah Porter was nearly a third of the way through the 108-mile Montane Winter Spine Challenger South endurance race when organisers made the “difficult decision” to withdraw her due to threats to her life in relation to the foundation she runs helping women and girls in war zones.

French interior ministry issues ‘territorial bans’ after reports of anti-migrant activities by members of Raise the Colours movement

France’s interior ministry has announced a ban on 10 British anti-migrant activists who travelled to the country.

Officials said they took action after reports that members of the Raise the Colours movement had conducted anti-migrant activities in France.

• USA mainstay in move from Portland Thorns

• ‘I couldn’t be more ready and happy about everything’

Manchester City have signed the USA midfielder Sam Coffey on a three-and-a-half year deal.

The 27-year-old won gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics and has accrued 42 caps and scored five goals for the USA, becoming a key part of Emma Hayes’ national team. After graduating she joined Portland Thorns and lifted the 2022 NWSL Championship in her debut season.

Agents searched Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials case

The FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter early Wednesday in what the newspaper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move by law enforcement, and press freedom groups condemned as a “tremendous intrusion” by the Trump administration.

Agents descended on the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. The Post is “reviewing and monitoring the situation”, a source at the newspaper said.

Critics call move to cut payments after 1 February for number of Democrat-run states ‘unconstitutional’

Donald Trump has revived his stalled push to cut federal funding for a number of Democrat-run states, announcing that any with a perceived “sanctuary city” will not receive payments after 1 February.

The president made the statement during a freewheeling address at the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday night, shortly after he flipped off a heckler at a Ford plant in the city.

Apparent suicide of Alexei Panov comes after disappearance of oligarch Vladislav Baumgertner and amid corruption scandal

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Authorities in Cyprus are investigating the “unnatural death” of a diplomat at the Russian embassy.

“The incident at the embassy is being treated as an unnatural death because it seems, based on the autopsy, it was a suicide,” said Cyprus’s police spokesperson, Vyron Vyronos.

If you’ve ever refused to knock down a game’s difficulty level, or chased a purposefully pointless achievement, you might have this pernicious but pleasurable affliction

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Studies on gaming’s effect on the brain usually focus on aggression or the cognitive benefits of playing games. The former topic has fallen out of fashion now, after more than a decade’s worth of scientific research failed to prove any causative link between video games and real-world violence. But studies on the positive effects of games have shown that performing complex tasks with your brain and hands is actually quite good for you, and that games can be beneficial for your emotional wellbeing and stress management.

That’s all well and good, but I’m obsessed with the concept of “gamer brain” – that part of us that is drawn to objectively pointless achievements. Mastering a game or finishing a story are normal sources of motivation, but gamer brain is inexplicable. When you retry the same pointless mini-game over and over because you want to get a better high score? When you walk around the invisible boundaries of a level, clicking the mouse just in case something happens? When you stay with a game longer than you should because you feel compelled to unlock that trophy or achievement? When you refuse to knock the difficulty down a level on a particularly evil boss, because that would be letting the game win? That’s gamer brain.

‘Huge parts of the city were being destroyed. This was part of my attempt to preserve the whole damn thing. The area became a juvenile prison’

I landed in America in 1965 from Chile. I literally arrived on a banana boat. I went to the University of Notre Dame in the midwest and then to Columbia in New York. I had a teacher – also a photographer – who taught foreign students to write and speak better English. I would try to write poetry, which he thought was terrible. I’d never taken a picture before but he encouraged me to try photography and offered to lend me the money for a Pentax Spotmatic he’d seen for sale downtown. After that, I would just walk around New York with it and take photos. It quickly became clear to me how divided the city was. Half was white and the other half was Black and Latino. There was tremendous segregation.

Columbia was very prosperous. The students were well off and many were the sons of extremely rich people. I felt out of place. Also, there’s just a huge sense of loss when you leave your country and you don’t know anybody and are on your own. It made me want to look at what else was going on: to see the other side and the underside of the city. I found it easily because, in the late 60s and early 70s, deindustrialisation was going on. Big companies and car plants were shutting down and there were huge job losses and store closures. That contrast resonated with me. My family had lost a lot of money. The first part of my life was about seeing things disappear and having to make do with less and less. I was interested to see that in the US.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

In a weekend where most favourites triumphed, Paris FC beating the holders was a welcome win for the underdogs

By Get French Football News

This year’s Coupe de France was in need of a spark and Paris FC were on hand to provide it. Their league match against Paris Saint-Germain last weekend – the first derby between the clubs in 43 years – was somewhat anticlimactic. The rivalry between is tepid, bordering on amicable, and the difference in quality was stark as PSG ran out fairly comfortable 2-1 winners. Stéphane Gilli’s men are a long way off challenging the reigning European champions over a full season but, on Monday night, that was irrelevant. Paris FC returned to the Parc des Princes and won 1-0, progressing to the last 16 of the Coupe de France at their neighbour’s expense.

It was a derby once again lacking in derby feel. Jonathan Ikoné scored the winner but did not celebrate against the club from whose academy he graduated. Luis Enrique even wished Paris FC “all the best for the rest of the competition” after the match – all very cordial. The PSG manager was left ruing his side’s wastefulness as he succumbed to his first defeat in the competition since arriving in France in 2023. As far as the cup is concerned, though, PSG’s slip-up was a welcome one.

Bring your ostracised wardrobe items in from the cold by forgetting about whether they go with each other. Instead, let them shine in all their glory

Fashion is a dance between rules and rebellion. Great style requires a bit of both. The rules are essential, because one of the key emotional benefits that a great wardrobe can deliver is a sense of control in a chaotic world. The rules are there to simplify and clarify, lighting our route to a well put-together outfit. That well put-together outfit has the power to help you feel calmer, simply because you look in the mirror and see a competent person and therefore feel like a competent person. Style rules also come in useful for making sense of the world around us. Dress codes, style tribes, the signals we send – whether as blatant as the slogan on a T-shirt, or as subtle as the brand of your rucksack – hold an important social function, making other people legible to us.

But style also needs friction. Fashion dies if it stops moving, because moving with the times is what makes it fashion rather than just pretty clothes. The restless forward energy that moves hemlines and invents new silhouettes is what drives the plot and keeps us interested.

From not treating your rectum as a storage facility to weight lifting, experts offer advice on how to maintain a healthy pelvic floor for longer

Pelvic floor health has long been relegated to whispered conversations about pregnancy or aging, often reduced to vague instructions to “do your kegels”.

But according to experts, daily maintenance of the pelvic floor is important.

In 1994, Bowie and Brian Eno spent a day with ‘outsider’ artists. Intimate photographs, showing in Australia for the first time, reveal the effect it had

From the Thin White Duke to Ziggy Stardust, the Berlin recluse to the late-career elegist, David Bowie’s oeuvre is defined by reinvention. As an artist, he was relentlessly attuned to the conditions that might provoke the next creative rupture. One defining moment, however, has largely slipped from the popular imagination: a day spent inside a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Vienna – one that would prove unexpectedly formative.

In September 1994, Bowie and Brian Eno – who had recently reunited to develop new music – accepted an invitation from the Austrian artist André Heller to visit the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic. The site’s Haus der Künstler, established in 1981 as a communal home and studio, is known internationally as a centre for Art Brut – or “Outsider Art” – produced by residents, many living with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

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The integrity of the flat white is being diluted by size inflation. It’s a sign that most people have no idea what they really want at all

• Read more petty gripes

A flat white, as any self-respecting coffee drinker will tell you, should be a short, strong, balanced drink – espresso, a small amount of milk, minimal microfoam, absolutely no fluff. But a disturbing trend is sweeping Australia. Even in Melbourne – where people treat coffee with near-religious reverence – I’m now routinely asked: small or large flat white? I find myself regularly wincing into my keep cup.

A large flat white is an oxymoron – a bastardisation of the drink Australia claims to have given the world. The moment it takes a larger form, it stops being a flat white and becomes something else entirely: a milky latte, ordered by those too afraid to admit that’s what they really want.

Research finds no evidence heavier social media use or more gaming increases symptoms of anxiety or depression

Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to a large-scale study.

With ministers in the UK considering whether to follow Australia’s example by banning social media use for under-16s, the findings challenge concerns that long periods spent gaming or scrolling TikTok or Instagram are driving an increase in teenagers’ depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.

The world No 7 on his teenage trip to west Africa, his fundraising efforts and finding his form ahead of the Australian Open

“Well, imagine you’re 13,” Félix Auger-Aliassime says, smiling. “I had been to Europe. I had been to America. I live in Canada. And then you go to Togo; it’s a little different, you know?”

Auger-Aliassime, the seventh best tennis player in the world, was describing the homecoming he enjoyed 12 years ago as he first caught a glimpse of Togo, the country his father, Sam, was born in and emigrated from to Canada before his son’s birth. It was a significant moment in his life.

Opposition figure says she denies any accusations against her and suggests office raid is linked to election speculation

Anti-corruption investigators have reportedly accused Yulia Tymoshenko, the prominent Ukrainian opposition figure and former prime minister, of organising a scheme to bribe MPs – said to include figures from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own party – to undermine him.

Tymoshenko rose to international prominence during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004 and was jailed in 2011 on politically motivated charges by her arch-rival Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin president, before being released during the Euromaidan protests.

Country joins EU neighbours in demographic crunch of ageing population and falling birthrate

For the first time since the end of the second world war, France has recorded more deaths than births, suggesting that the country’s long-held demographic advantage over other EU countries is slipping away.

Across the country in 2025, there were 651,000 deaths and 645,000 births, according to newly released figures from the national statistics institute Insee.

Ahead of high-stakes talks, people tell of alarm, thoughts of fleeing and lack of information on what to do if US invades

• Europe live – latest updates

When she was living in Denmark, the seemingly unshakeable safety of Greenland was a comforting source of reassurance for Najannguaq Hegelund. Whenever there was any instability in the world, she would joke with her family: “Well we will just go to Greenland, nothing ever happens in Greenland.”

But in the past two weeks – during which Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action on the largely autonomous Arctic territory the US president claims he “needs” for national security purposes, despite it being part of the Danish kingdom – Hegelund, 37, has realised this is suddenly no longer true.