2 h. ago Canada prepping response to hypothetical US military invasion for first time in a century, report says

The model is purely theoretical and precautionary, with officials stressing that a U.S. invasion is unlikely

Events

5 d. ago The pub that changed me: ‘The barman banned me – no process, no second chances, no appeal’

The world’s largest Wetherspoon’s has seal-spotting views, a green leather banquette and a grand central staircase. I would do anything for that pub, so imagine my surprise when I was given my marching ordersIn the most prime imaginable bit of Ramsgate beach real estate, right on the sand, stands a handsome, turn-of-the-last-century building that had claimed for the longest amount of time, some years in neon, to be a casino. I’d never been allowed in as a kid. Then in the 90s it was leaning towards defunct, by the 00s it looked a bit haunted, then there was a fire, and wham, 2017, it turned into a Spoons. It had been trailed for a few months ahead, and I’d sworn off it; the living nightmare that was Brexit was only a few months old and Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin was one of its most gracelessly triumphant fuglemen. He could keep his (incredibly cheap) pints and his (superhumanly fast) nuggets. Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago Gamers can get 'best RPG of 2025' at huge discount on PS5 right now

Hop in a time machine and escape to early 15th-century Bohemia with Kingdom Come Deliverance II — available at a cut-price on PlayStation 5.

Politics

6 d. ago The Spin | Nimble or nervous 90s? Cricket maths show best approach to scoring a century

Stats tell us batters have less reason to be anxious in the 90s than common lore suggests, though the pain and fear of falling short is all too realIf you’ve ever been lucky enough to score a century you’ll know how seismic a moment it is when you finally get over the line. Some play the game for a lifetime and never make one, the three-figured kingdom for ever out of reach, a promised land they are destined never to enter. Yet cricket lures you back like a devilish lover. You just can’t quit it. Next time might be your time. It could be you. Why not?In cricket the century is the hallmark of individual success for a batter, the team sport unique in the way that it lauds personal milestones. The Test Match Special statistician Andy Zaltzman says that a century “carves an immutable notch in a player’s history and, at the highest level, an eternal legacy in the annals of the game”. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago £10 for graffiti & £7,000 for MURDER: Putin’s payments to Russian sabotage agents wreaking havoc in UK & Europe revealed

A TENNER for graffiti, £445 for reconnaissance and £7,000 for murder – these are the going rates for Europeans willing to betray their country for Vladimir Putin. A bombshell report released today reveals how devastating "hybrid warfare" operations attributed to Russian military intelligence have tripled across NATO allies since Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russia is...

Economics

9 d. ago Trump orders army chiefs to draw up Greenland invasion plans after Maduro capture success

Donald Trump is so keen to get his hands on Greenland he is looking to pay each islander $100k to convince them to join the US, but has also ordered military chiefs to draw up invasion plans

Politics

1 week ago Donald Trump 'orders army chiefs to draw up plan to invade Greenland': US President emboldened by success of Maduro capture operation

Donald Trump has ordered his special forces commanders to draw up a plan for the invasion of Greenland - but is being resisted by senior military figures, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

Politics

1 week ago Rubio downplays threat of military invasion of Greenland and instead pushes plans to buy the island

In recent days, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have escalated desires to acquire Greenland and refused to rule out military invasion

Events

2 w. ago I knew living in Canada would be cold but nothing prepared me for

Temperatures have plunged to below -5 across Greater Manchester this week - but former M.E.N. writer Paige Oldfield has taken a look back after swapping the UK for somewhere much, much colder

Politics

2 w. ago Donald Trump wants the US back on the moon before his term ends. Can it happen?

After losing a year to havoc and job-slashing at Nasa, the pressure is on billionaire administrator Jared IsaacmanWith astronauts set to fly around the moon for the first time in more than half a century when Artemis 2 makes its long-awaited ascent sometime this spring, 2026 was already destined to become a standout year in space.It is also likely to be one of the most pivotal, with new leadership at Nasa in billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, and the tycoon-led private space industry assuming more than a mere supporting role to help win for the US its race with China back to the lunar surface. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago China fires rockets towards WW3 hotspot island Taiwan after massive military drills fuelling invasion fears

CHINA has ramped up fears of a global showdown after firing nearly 30 live-fire rockets close to Taiwan during its biggest ever military drill around the island. Beijing unleashed the provocative show of force as warships, bomber aircraft and new amphibious assault vessels moved in on Taiwan for a second day of exercises rehearsing a...

Events

3 w. ago Did 2025 mark the end of British parliamentary democracy as we know it? | Andy Beckett

The conventions and rituals that define the way we do politics rapidly eroded this year – setting the UK on a course into the unknownWas this the year that British democracy as we have known it began to turn into something else? Politicians, voters and journalists have made this claim before – when their side has been out of power for a long while, or when an elected government has been unusually dictatorial – and their warnings have usually been overstated. But this time the evidence of a fundamental shift away from a century-old status quo seems stronger.Familiar landmarks have disappeared: Labour and Tory dominance, two-party electoral contests, the decisive power of a big Westminster majority, the patience voters usually show towards a new government, the predictable pendulum swing between right and left, the red lines between mainstream and extreme politics and even the central role of parliament.Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Converts by Melanie McDonagh review – the road to Rome Catholicism’s unlikely 20th

A thought-provoking examination of the literary stars who became Catholic – from Evelyn Waugh to Muriel SparkIn the five decades between 1910 and 1960, more than half a million people in England and Wales became Catholics. Among them were a clutch of literary stars: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and Graham Greene. But there was a whole host of poets, artists and public intellectuals less known to us today, whose “going over to Rome” provoked envy and dismay.In this thoughtful though brisk book, Melanie McDonagh, a columnist for The Tablet, gives us 16 case histories of Britons who went “Poping” during the scariest decades of the 20th century. At a time when reason and decency appeared to have been chased out by political extremism and global warfare, it was only natural to long for something solid. Writing in 1925, Greene confided to his fiancee “one does want fearfully hard for something firm and hard and certain, however uncomfortable, to catch hold of in the g...

Politics

4 w. ago Reward countries that toe the line, punish those that don’t: that’s how Trump is exerting control in Latin America | Jordana Timerman

His interference in the region has been aided by the collapse of the leftist forces that once pushed back against US imperialismFor the past generation, Latin America has been a place of unstable stability. Marked on the surface by protests, political pendulum swings and spectacular scandals, most of the region has, since the democratisation of the 1980s and 1990s, remained firmly democratic and free of war between states. Though scarred by the violence of armed groups and increasingly powerful criminal organisations, it has, by and large, lived up to its self-assumed moniker of a “zone of peace”.Which is why this year has felt so jarring. Throughout 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, analysts have obsessively parsed potential US military incursions into a hemisphere once defined by its unified defence of national sovereignty. But the fixation on whether Washington’s escalating pressure on Nicolás Maduro presages a physical military invasion of Venezuela has distrac...

Politics