44 m. ago Strictly Come Dancing's Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink dealt upset before new series

The 2025 cohort of Strictly Come Dancing is coming together as names like Dani Dyer, Ellie Goldstein and Alex Kingston are confirmed for the popular BBC show

Economics

45 m. ago Trump repeats false claims about DC crime and praises order allowing city police to work closer with Ice agents – live updates

Trump says, without evidence, that law enforcement officials who have created ‘fake’ crime statistics, are ‘under investigation’Melania Trump has demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has threatened to sue if he does not.Biden, the son of the former president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that Epstein introduced the first lady to Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Events

1 hour ago Premier League’s big show is back, full of thrills but facing new threat to its power | Barney Ronay

Clubs are spending like the world is on fire but the title looks to be between Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal and ChelseaAnd I heard, as it were, a sound of thunder. I heard multitudes marching to the big kettle drum. Not to mention, it should be said, even larger multitudes talking on the wicked and unholy internet about agent sightings, failed here-we-gos and the Alexander Isak wheel of global conspiracy.Let he that hath understanding count the number! Because, let’s face it, it really is an absolute beast of a number, 215 live Premier League games on Sky Sports alone, an endless rolling debauchery of games, of graphics that go whoosh, of arguments by the lighted dias. Continue reading...

Politics

1 hour ago John Boyne says LGBTQ+ fiction prize backlash brought him ‘close to the edge’

Gender-critical novelist urges writers to re-enter prize they boycotted and may ask judges not to shortlist his novellaThe gender-critical Irish novelist John Boyne has said he has been brought “very close to the edge” by the backlash to his inclusion on the longlist for a literary prize for LGBTQ+ authors.Ten authors and two judges withdrew from the Polari prize and more than 800 writers and publishing industry workers signed a petition calling on Polari to remove Boyne’s novella Earth from its longlist. Continue reading...

Politics

1 hour ago 'Dreadful' 2025 box office bomb quietly added to Netflix that film fans say is 'awful'

The film contains one of Marvel's most successful actors in a lead role

Sport

1 hour ago Trump rails about ‘rampant’ crime and social security fraud without evidence – live updates

Trump also claims his domestic policy bill, which he signed into law last month, enshrines ‘no tax’ on social security for America’s seniorsMelania Trump has demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has threatened to sue if he does not.Biden, the son of the former president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that Epstein introduced the first lady to Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Events

2 h. ago Wallabies and Springboks in identity swap for clash amid thin air of Highveld | Daniel Gallan

The frenemies meet in this year’s Rugby Championship opener at Ellis Park where they are expected to rip pages out of the other’s playbookOne team boasts some of the most menacing forwards found anywhere in the world. The other is developing a scintillating backline capable of tearing apart any defence. Business as usual, then, for a Wallabies versus Springboks clash. Except this time, like the characters of Freaky Friday, the two sides have switched identities ahead of the first round of the Rugby Championship.Australia might have lost the British & Irish Lions series but they were one referee’s decision at the breakdown away from causing a seismic upset. That the margin was so small was thanks largely to the thundering cameos of Will Skelton, Rob Valetini, Taniela Tupou and a handful of other meaty men who provided the front-foot grunt that was absent in the first Test in Brisbane. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Mercedes F1 star Kimi Antonelli suffers mishap on holiday as friends come to his rescue

Like many of his fellow Formula 1 drivers, Kimi Antonelli is making the most of a few weeks off in this packed season to recharge before returning for the 10 rounds that remain in 2025

Events

2 h. ago Republican doesn’t wear seatbelt in DC ‘because of carjacking’ despite data showing decline

Senator echoes Trump’s claims about crime in Washington DC, disputing statistics showing a drop in car thefts and other violationsUS politics live – latest updatesA Republican senator said that he doesn’t wear a seatbelt when he’s driving in Washington DC so he can act more swiftly if he gets carjacked, adding further fuel to repeated rhetoric by the Trump administration that crime is on the rise in the US – despite statistics indicating otherwise.Markwayne Mullin told Fox News on Wednesday that he avoids buckling up, violating local traffic ordinances, so he can “exit in a hurry”. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Eli Lilly ramps up UK price of weight loss jab Mounjaro after Trump demands

The US president had put pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to make drugs cheaper for AmericansThe price of the weight loss jab Mounjaro will rise by up to 170% in the UK, its US manufacturer has said, as Donald Trump ramps up pressure on drugmakers to increase their prices for Europeans so that they can make them more affordable for Americans.Eli Lilly has said it will increase the price of the drug from September, with a month’s supply of the highest dose rising from £122 to £330. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Trump’s DC takeover is a move of staggering hypocrisy | Rebecca Solnit

Donald Trump is concocting a drama in DC because he would like us to really stop talking about the Epstein filesThe most violent day in the history of Washington DC, leaving aside the War of 1812, was 6 January 2021, and the instigator was Donald J Trump, who this week has endeavored to seize control of the nation’s capital, after reports that a former employee of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was assaulted in the city.In a sense the new event echoes the old; both are illegitimate power grabs made on the basis of lies. In 2021 it was a lie about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election; in the summer of 2025 it’s lies about crime levels. Reliable sources – including the Biden Department of Justice in January – have noted that violent crime there is at a 30-year low. Five people died as a result of that 2021 attack on Congress, and dozens of law enforcement officers were injured, some gravely, by the mob Trump incited. On his first day in office in 2025 he par...

Politics

2 h. ago Ben Jennings on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to London – cartoon

Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Truck Festival 2025 review: A raging indie rock party you don't want to miss

REVIEW: Truck Festival 2025 saw Bloc Party, Nothing But Thieves, Kasabian and Courteeners rule the roost at Hill Farm in Oxfordshire and Daily Star's Sam Huntley was in rock heaven

Events

2 h. ago Hit horror Weapons doesn’t have a deeper meaning but that’s OK | Jesse Hassenger

A frenzied search for answers in the wake of the box office smash has some assuming there’s a weightier allegory but its power is in something simpler and more primalMajor spoilers aheadFor years now, horror fans and critics have grown increasingly and understandably impatient with the tendency of genre films to orient their scares toward a clearly conveyed central metaphor.The real monster in these movies is parenthood, personal trauma or that old horror-movie standby, grief. Writer-director Zach Cregger is no stranger to this line of thinking; his 2022 horror movie Barbarian is very much a spooky-creature-in-the-basement movie for the #MeToo era. Now Cregger has returned with a movie that may well stymie anyone who has been trained by the last decade to search for an easy-to-track allegory within their viscerally depicted fears. His new movie Weapons has received mostly rave reviews and positive audience response. But at least a few critics and fans are pivoting from complaining a...

Events

3 h. ago Newsboy's horse racing selections for Friday's five meetings, including Thirsk nap

Newboy expects his nap, Mystical Storm, to blow away his rivals in the 7.10 at Thirsk for a second career win, and his also fancies Flowerhead at Newbury in the Berkshire card's feature Listed event at 4.45

Politics

3 h. ago Married mother reveals every giddy detail of her night with Zayn Malik and Harry Styles: Zayn said he liked my breasts... how could I say no to their call for 'booty'! Here are the pictures, texts

The identity of the fan who One Direction star Zayn Malik invited up to his hotel room in a leaked phone call has been revealed - and now the woman is speaking out for the first time.

Politics

3 h. ago King Charles to mark 80th anniversary of VJ Day with address

Monarch will pay tribute to military personnel and reflect on horrors experienced in Asia-Pacific regionKing Charles will mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day on Friday with a message paying tribute to the service and sacrifice of military personnel in the second world war who fought and died in the Pacific and far east, saying they will never be forgotten.In an address, Charles will reflect on the horrors experienced by prisoners of war and civilians of occupied lands in the region “whose suffering reminds us that war’s true cost extends beyond battlefields, touching every aspect of life”. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago Putin ready to make Ukraine deal, Trump says before Alaska summit

US president’s comment that Russian and Ukrainian leaders may have to ‘divvy’ things up likely to raise alarmDonald Trump has said he believes Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal on the war in Ukraine as the two leaders prepare for their summit in Alaska on Friday, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” may alarm some in Kyiv.The US president implied there was a 75% chance of the Alaska meeting succeeding, and that the threat of economic sanctions may have made Putin more willing to seek an end to the war. He also said a second meeting – at present not confirmed – between himself, Putin and Zelenskyy would be the more decisive. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago ‘We thought with The Crown: “Is anyone going to watch this?”’ director Benjamin Caron on risk, realism – and royalty

A ‘safe pair of hands’ in high end TV, Caron now reunites with Vanessa Kirby for hyperactive Netflix thriller Night Always Comes about the terror of urban homelessnessIt’s quite a schlep from Buckingham Palace to the mean streets of working-class Portland, Oregon, but it is one that Midlands-born film-maker Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have undertaken with their new thriller Night Always Comes, adapted from the taut novel by Willy Vlautin. Caron and Kirby met nearly a decade ago when he directed episodes of The Crown, in which she played the young Princess Margaret from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.Now Kirby stars as a former sex worker called Lynette, toiling in multiple jobs and living with her disabled brother (Zach Gottsagen) and their wrecked, wayward mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). They have cobbled together the funds to buy their dilapidated house at a snip, only for Lynette’s mother to recklessly blow her half on a new car. Cue one manic night in which Lynette ...

Events

3 h. ago Bargain hunt: the best value signings in the Premier League this summer

Chelsea, Sunderland, Nottingham Forest and Brentford have spent some smart money in the transfer windowBy WhoScoredThe young English striker began his career at Derby before moving to Manchester City as a 16-year-old in 2019. After loan spells at Stoke, Preston and Hull, Liam Delap made a £20m move to Ipswich last summer and proceeded to make a name for himself in the Premier League. Continue reading...

Politics