61 h. ago Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star breaks down over ‘cruel’ game of pregnancy roulette

Fans branded the game as mean and heartbreaking

Society

3 d. ago Europa League final lineup has been roundly mocked but it still matters

Spurs and Manchester United’s struggles in the league leave this game meaning nothing and everythingGatwick on Tuesday morning was full of Spurs fans. They were in the Pret a Manger, they were in the Pizza Express, they were in the Wagamama, but mostly they were standing gawping at the destination board, which featured a baffling number of Vueling flights to Bilbao, a squeezing of the schedule that led to inevitable delays and confusion.The queue for the three open booths at passport control in Bilbao was a vast python of white shirts, speckled with the occasional tree green or purple. The bus into town was almost entirely Spurs, with a handful of businessmen and a bewildered older couple returning from their holidays, who admitted they had no idea their city was hosting a major European final. Continue reading...

Sport

4 d. ago ‘We are a passionately multiracial team’: Zimbabwe return to England transformed

Visitors have endured political chaos and miserable results over 22 years but cricket is finally a national gameTwenty-two years is a long time, even in a sport that measures its games in days and its history in centuries. The last time England played a Test match against Zimbabwe, in 2003, Rob Key was in the middle order instead of the managing director’s job, Jimmy Anderson was a 20-year-old tearaway playing in his very first series, and the England and Wales Cricket Board was just about to launch the world’s very first professional Twenty20 tournament. Zimbabwean cricket has changed, too. Back then the team was in the earliest stages of a transformation that was meant to turn cricket from a minority game, played by the small white population, into a sport that better represented the whole country.They have been hard years, riven by player strikes, political interference, maladministration, and a miserable drop-off in results. The team temporarily withdrew from Test cricket, suspe...

Politics

5 d. ago Jamie Vardy gets fairytale farewell as Leicester City legend nets his 200th goal in final appearance for the Foxes

Vardy will not feature in Leicester's final game of the campaign at Bournemouth, meaning Sunday's game against Ipswich at the King Power Stadium draws a close to his time at the club.

Politics

1 week ago England expect most players will choose country over IPL for West Indies ODIs

League playoffs clash with international assignmentButtler, Bethell, Jacks could have allegiances testedEngland expect most of the five IPL players picked for their one-day international series against West Indies to report for international duty rather than complete the rescheduled tournament.The IPL’s league phase will now conclude on 27 May, two days before England play their opening game against West Indies at Edgbaston, meaning that Jofra Archer and Jamie Overton, whose teams have already been eliminated from playoff contention, will certainly be free to play for their country. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago The latest Last of Us episode will take years to really make sense

With just two more episodes remaining of season two, the hit drama’s puzzle-box structure has become apparent. It’s clear the series is playing the long game, writes Louis Chilton – but what does that mean for us now?

Politics

3 w. ago Leicester v Southampton may be El Crapico – but it’s a game with meaning

Two worst Premier League teams still have something to play for, not least to recognise the resilience of their fansThey’re calling it the worst Premier League game in history. They’re calling it El Chaffico. El Crapico. The Derby Della Mediocre. They’re calling it the first Premier League game in which both teams somehow manage to lose. They’re posting memes of old men playing walking football and Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes.They’re mentioning the fact that none of the three relegated teams have won more games against Premier League opposition than Paris Saint-Germain have. The fact that since Leicester scored their last league goal at home, Southampton have sacked a manager, appointed an interim, appointed a permanent replacement, sacked the permanent replacement and re-appointed the interim from earlier. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Playing to win: are video game movies replacing superhero blockbusters?

The record-breaking box office for A Minecraft Movie has been followed by a rush of announcements for more films based on gamesMargot Robbie and Sydney Sweeney are two of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood. As such, they’ve both logged their time in superhero movies of recent vintage (though Robbie’s turn as Harley Quinn is probably better-known than whatever Sweeney found herself doing in Madame Web). It feels notable, then, that in recent weeks they’ve both been connected to multiple projects based on video games. Robbie’s Lucky Chap plans to produce a movie based on The Sims; Sweeney, meanwhile, will produce OutRun, based on a 30-year-old arcade game, and has also signed to star in a movie based on the more recent hit game Split Fiction. Score a bunch of points for the gamers. Is the dawn of gamer cinema finally here?Regardless of this Hot Lady defection, superhero movies and other comics-based properties will likely stick around for years to come. Marvel still kicks off the ...

Culture

4 w. ago Atomfall might have been an apocalyptic classic if it wasn’t for all the walking | Dominik Diamond

The Lake District after the 1957 Windscale nuclear disaster is a great setting for a game – and gorgeously rendered. That doesn’t mean I want to endlessly keep traversing it‘Fast travel”. The greatest two words in gaming. Greater even than “infinite lives”, Clive Sinclair or “moustachioed plumber”. It is to go from one location in a game where you are doing something important to another location in the blink of a loading screen, cutting out the repetitive kerfuffle in between. (Trivia break: Repetitive Kerfuffle might have been the working title for Tetris!)We’ve had it since the 80s. Dragon Quest had a Return spell and the original Zelda had the recorder to take you to different dungeons, and even they were preceded six years earlier by a certain big fat yellow mouth who had dots for supper and ghosts for dessert. Because that guy could go out of one side of the screen and appear on the other instantly. That’s fast travel isn’t it? My advocacy for this is however tempered by the d...

Politics