3 h. ago What Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho did as Man United duo reunite

Manchester United loanees Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho reunited on Saturday evening during Aston Villa's clash with Chelsea

Politics

4 h. ago Billionaire Mark Cuban reveals his scathing revelation about Democrats

Billionaire Mark Cuban candidly revealed his biggest takeaway from supporting Kamala Harris in the wake of the 2024 election last year in a scathing critique about Democrats.

Politics

5 h. ago Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio are making the right impression on Unai Emery

The recent arrivals combined to turn defeat into victory for Aston Villa against Chelsea on Saturday.

Politics

5 h. ago Marcus Rashford's new Aston Villa teammates give clear verdict on Man United loanee

Manchester United winger Marcus Rashford was one of Aston Villa's heroes on Saturday night as they came from behind to beat Chelsea in the Premier League

Politics

6 h. ago Marco Asensio doubles up to steer Aston Villa to win over Chelsea

Unai Emery recently graded Aston Villa’s season as a seven out of 10 at best, acknowledging while their progress in Europe has been eye-catching, they needed to kick-start their Premier League campaign. Just as it seemed they would extend their winless run to six matches, the Chelsea goalkeeper Filip Jörgensen made a mess of a routine save, inadvertently giving Villa the leg-up they had been looking for, allowing Marco Asensio’s side-foot volley from Marcus Rashford’s cross after a short corner to slip through his gloves. Rashford’s half-time arrival proved inspired given he also laid the ball on for Asensio to cancel out Enzo Fernández’s opener.Thousands of Villa fans had spent the previous 24 hours plotting their second trip to Brugge in four months but for all of its pluses the Champions League has undoubtedly damaged their league form. Unai Emery has highlighted as much, unable to hide his mixed feelings on their season so far. Villa won six points from a possible 24 after midwe...

Politics

6 h. ago Marco Asensio double leads Aston Villa to fightback victory over Chelsea

Unai Emery recently graded Aston Villa’s season as a seven out of 10, acknowledging while their progress in Europe has been eye-catching, they badly needed to kick-start their Premier League campaign to bank another Champions League adventure. Approaching the 89th minute, Villa’s season appeared to be stalling, a third consecutive draw incoming. Then the Chelsea goalkeeper Filip Jörgensen made a mess of a routine save, allowing Marco Asensio’s lukewarm volley from Marcus Rashford’s cross to squirm through his gloves.Rashford’s half-time arrival proved inspired given he also laid the ball on for Asensio to cancel out Enzo Fernández’s early strike. This was a big result for Villa after taking four points from their previous five matches and one that squeezes the order towards the top. Chelsea can vouch for that. Villa are now seventh, a point behind fifth-placed Bournemouth and sixth-placed Chelsea, though those above and below Emery’s side have at least one game in hand. Continue rea...

Sport

8 h. ago Writer David Szalay: ‘We live in an era of short attention spans – we have to work with it the best we can’

The Hungarian-English author on addressing what it’s like to be a male body in the world, learning the tricks of literature from Frederick Forsyth, and the feeling of nearly winning the BookerDavid Szalay, 51, grew up in London and now lives in Vienna with his wife, having previously moved in 2009 to Hungary, his father’s birthplace. In 2016 he was shortlisted for the Booker prize with his fourth novel, All That Man Is, nine separate stories “self-assembled in the reader’s mind into a sort of collage-novel” (London Review of Books). His new novel, Flesh, follows the fluctuating fortunes of a young Hungarian ex-convict who makes his life in the UK after serving in Iraq.Tell us how Flesh came to be. I decided to abandon a book I’d started in 2017. It just wasn’t working, so it felt like a weight off my shoulders; nevertheless, I was under contract and had to come up with something. Literally nothing in Flesh is directly autobiographical, but it started with my underlying experience of...

Politics

9 h. ago A new branch of photography? Found images of women in trees – in pictures

For 25 years, Hamburg-based collector Jochen Raiß scoured flea markets for historical amateur photographs. After finding a photo of a woman smiling in a tree, he started to notice this was a recurrent theme, especially popular between the 1920s and 1950s. Over the years he accumulated 91 such photos, now collected into a book, Women in Trees. “A number of the photographers have created images that possess a remarkable depth and beauty,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “The women exert a great effort to hold on to these trees without losing their balance. Their Sunday dresses and fashionable shoes stand in stark contrast to the nature around them.”Women in Trees by Jochen Raiß and Johanna Adorjan is out now (Hatje Cantz, £18) Continue reading...

Culture

10 h. ago Marcus Rashford behaviour at Aston Villa, 'ridiculous' text, Man Utd 'swap deal' plan

Marcus Rashford's loan move to Aston Villa has got off to a decent start, but the Manchester United forward's future remains shrouded in mystery for the time being

Economics

12 h. ago The Vatican and UFOs: Is there a secret about aliens hidden in the Pope's mysterious archives?

For centuries, the Vatican's Secret Archive has been the subject of fascination for scholars. They have wondered just what revelations are lying hidden among 50 miles of shelves.

Politics

15 h. ago ‘The essential ingredient is openess’: Curtis Sittenfeld on the deep joy of midlife friendship

Friendships become closer as you get older argues the novelist, because by middle age everyone has faced dramatic challenges, disappointments and sorrows – and being honest about them is a powerful point of bondingMy ninth book is published this week, and in recent years I’ve described my writing like this: I take care with my sentences, but exquisite prose isn’t my goal. My goal is to give the reader the feeling that you – and by you, I mean me – have when you’re going for a long walk with a close friend, and the friend says: “The craziest thing just happened to me.” What?! You think and possibly say. Tell me immediately! And then what happened, and then what happened? As a writer, this is the urgency I’m chasing, this is the investment, the richness of emotion, the confiding and closeness and caring.A line in Miranda July’s 2024 novel All Fours, a book I’ve discussed with many friends, perfectly captures for me this sense of participating in a bottomless conversation: “I was often...

Events

15 h. ago ‘The essential ingredient is openness’: Curtis Sittenfeld on the deep joy of midlife friendship

Friendships become closer as you get older argues the novelist, because by middle age everyone has faced dramatic challenges, disappointments and sorrows – and being honest about them is a powerful point of bondingMy ninth book is published this week, and in recent years I’ve described my writing like this: I take care with my sentences, but exquisite prose isn’t my goal. My goal is to give the reader the feeling that you – and by you, I mean me – have when you’re going for a long walk with a close friend, and the friend says: “The craziest thing just happened to me.” What?! You think and possibly say. Tell me immediately! And then what happened, and then what happened? As a writer, this is the urgency I’m chasing, this is the investment, the richness of emotion, the confiding and closeness and caring.A line in Miranda July’s 2024 novel All Fours, a book I’ve discussed with many friends, perfectly captures for me this sense of participating in a bottomless conversation: “I was often...

Events

16 h. ago Manchester United get unlikely Marcus Rashford transfer update from Aston Villa

Rashford left United for Villa Park at the end of the winter transfer window.

Sport

16 h. ago Marcus Rashford told what he must do at Aston Villa or face 'huge reality check'

MAC OF THE NET COLUMN: Marcus Rashford will spend the rest of the season on loan at Aston Villa and the Manchester United man needs to make it count

Politics

17 h. ago ‘It allowed us to survive, to not go mad’: the CIA book smuggling operation that helped bring down communism

From George Orwell to Hannah Arendt and John le Carré, thousands of blacklisted books flooded into Poland during the cold war, as publishers and printers risked their lives for literatureThe volume’s glossy dust jacket shows a 1970s computer room, where high priests of the information age, dressed in kipper ties and flares, tap instructions into the terminals of some ancient mainframe. The only words on the front read “Master Operating Station”, “Subsidiary Operating Station” and “Free Standing Display”. Is any publication less appetising than an out-of-date technical manual?Turn inside, however, and the book reveals a secret. It isn’t a computer manual at all, but a Polish language edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s famous anti-totalitarian novel, which was banned for decades by communist censors in the eastern bloc. Continue reading...

Events

18 h. ago Time is running out for England's and Scotland’s Lions hopefuls to state their case | Ugo Monye

All the way across the field there are mouthwatering head-to-heads with players pushing for the tour to AustraliaFor British & Irish Lions hopefuls, time is running out. Three Test matches left to stake their claim, to catch Andy Farrell’s eye and book a place on the plane. Farrell is due to be at Twickenham on Saturday and he will be analysing everything. As a player that’s precisely where you want to be.At this stage of the Six Nations, England against Scotland feels all the more pivotal for Lions hopefuls. We can safely say that there will be a large Ireland contingent and, unless something dramatic happens in the coming weeks, a relatively small group of Wales players. That congested middle is full of England and Scotland players and that makes Saturday’s match all the more mouthwatering. Continue reading...

Politics

18 h. ago Man United have new striker transfer option amid shock Marcus Rashford swap deal

The latest Manchester United transfer rumours as questions remain around whether Aston Villa will exercise a £40million option to sign Marcus Rashford permanently

Events

19 h. ago Trump says he will end the war in Ukraine – but how, and who will benefit? Our panel responds | Olga Chyzh and others

The US president is breaking every negotiating rule in the book, to the bewilderment of his allies. Europe is now at a crossroads Continue reading...

Politics

19 h. ago ‘I forgive the girl and boy for what they’ve done. If I didn’t, the hate would eat away at me’: Esther Ghey on life after the murder of her daughter Brianna

Transgender teenager Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds. The killers had been radicalised on the dark web, while the victim was trapped in an online world of her own. Now her mother has become friends with the parent of one of the murderersThe first thing I notice about Esther Ghey is a blossom tree trailing down her left arm to her hand. There is one pink flower on the tattoo. Pink was her daughter Brianna’s favourite colour. If Brianna had got her way, the whole world would have been pink. And just after she was murdered by two teenage schoolchildren in February 2023, Ghey says, the world did briefly turn pink. The local blossom trees filled with the blossomiest blossom she had ever seen. “It really felt she was with us and that she was sending us a sign she was OK,” she says.Now Ghey has written a book, Under a Pink Sky. It’s a memoir of her and Brianna’s lives, and a manifesto of sorts; a shocking exploration of how deadly smartphones and online spaces can be....

Events

19 h. ago Extremists would not need to create an authoritarian state in Britain: Starmer is doing that for them | George Monbiot

The PM and his ministers are supporting illiberal laws that hard-right authoritarians could apply with zealIf the Trump project implodes, it might take with it the extreme and far-right European parties to which it is umbilically connected. Like all such parties, the hard-right Reform UK poses as patriotic while grovelling to foreign interests, and this could be its undoing.But we cannot bank on it. The UK government must do all it can to prevent the disaster that has befallen several other European nations. If it fails to meet people’s needs and keeps echoing far-right talking points, we could go the same way as Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Austria.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Culture