3 h. ago LIVE M6 traffic updates as crash closes busy motorway with police at scene

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Events

3 h. ago LIVE M6 traffic updates as 'serious' crash closes busy motorway with police at scene

This is a live news story, follow below for updates

Events

7 h. ago We Bury the Dead review – Daisy Ridley tackles the undead in solid zombie twist

Star Wars alum gives an impressively modest performance in this slightly smarter-than-average survival taleUnlike some other less resilient horror subgenres, the zombie movie is, fittingly, never going to really die. Neither will film-makers attempting to add their own twist, understandable given how repetitive the die, wake up, lumber, bite and repeat formula has become. Australian director Zak Hilditch’s attempt, the rather buried We Bury the Dead, is therefore not quite as striking as it might have seemed a decade and change ago. Using words such as “contemplative” and “mournful” to describe a film that includes its fair share of gnarly head-smashing has become something of a cliche, so much so that last month’s meta-comedy Anaconda reboot had its characters joke that these days, even a film about a giant snake needs “intergenerational trauma” to work.But Hilditch mercifully avoids drowning his film in drab self-seriousness. Yes, it’s a zombie survival thriller that’s also about ...

Events

9 h. ago Fresh bone analysis makes case for earliest ‘ancestor of humankind’, but doubts remain

Scientists argue ape-like Sahelanthropus tchadensis that lived in Africa 7m years ago is best contender but more fossils are neededIn the murky first chapters of the human story is an unknown ancestor that made the profound transition from walking on all fours to standing up tall, an act that came to define us.The odds of stumbling on the fossilised evidence of such an evolutionary prize are slim, but in new research, scientists argue that an ape-like animal that lived in Africa 7m years ago is the best contender yet. Continue reading...

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11 h. ago Death in Paradise shares major series announcement as new detective confirms return

Death in Paradise fans will see Commissioner Selwyn Patterson return to the BBC series for series 15 in 2026

Events

11 h. ago BBC Death in Paradise return confirmed as new detective shares major series update

Death in Paradise's new detective, Mervin Wilson, has addressed the return of a fan favourite, who made a surprise return in the Christmas special

Events

13 h. ago Coronation Street Glenda star's love life from 'dating prats' to finally finding love

Coronation Street star Jodie Prenger plays Glenda Shuttleworth on the cobbles, but her real-life love story with her fiancé is very different to her character's romances

Politics

14 h. ago Youssef Chermiti set for starring Rangers derby role as Danny Rohl demands 'special story' against Celtic

Rohl is hoping Chermiti can repay his faith by becoming a derby hero on Saturday afternoon

Politics

14 h. ago Mexico earthquake: Huge area rocked as tourists in Guerrero say 'the shaking woke us up'

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the state of Guerrero in Mexico on Friday, according to the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) - this is a breaking news story

Politics

14 h. ago The extraordinary story of a woman who moved her home brick by brick

When the council threatened to demolish her historic home in Hertfordshire, May Savidge, dismantled it herself and then rebuilt it 100 miles away in Norfolk.

Politics

14 h. ago Ingrid disappeared on an Indonesian island in 1976. Now we know what really happened

The first surfers at Nias were joined by a backpacker who got sick and vanished. When a film about their ‘discovery’ of the spot screened in Australia, the woman’s remarkable story finally came to lightWhen Ingrid LeFebour woke up on a concrete slab, covered in a sheet in the morgue on the remote Indonesian island of Nias in 1976, she had no idea how she got there.Nor did anyone else know her fate – some believed she had died in bizarre circumstances. Continue reading...

Events

16 h. ago Ian Balding, Clare Balding's legendary horse trainer father, dies aged 87

Clare Balding's horse trainer father Ian Balding has died aged 87. This is a breaking news story. More to follow.

Events

17 h. ago Will Smith accused of ‘predatory behaviour’ and ‘grooming’ by tour violinist

Brian King Joseph claims the rapper and actor was ‘priming’ him for ‘sexual exploitation’. Smith’s lawyer has called the allegations ‘false, baseless and reckless’Will Smith is being sued by a violinist from his 2025 tour, who claims the rapper and actor exhibited “predatory behaviour” and was “deliberately grooming and priming” him for “further sexual exploitation”. Brian King Joseph is also pursuing the performer and his company Treyball Studios Management for wrongful termination and retaliation in a suit filed in the superior court of California.Joseph alleges that he was hired for the tour in support of Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, after first appearing on stage with Smith in December 2024. The suit claims that Smith once told Joseph, “You and I have such a special connection that I don’t have with anyone else.” Continue reading...

Politics

18 h. ago Andrew Miller: ‘DH Lawrence forced me to my feet – I was madly excited’

The novelist on how The Rainbow made him want to write, the strange genius of Penelope Fitzgerald and finding comfort in TintinMy earliest reading memory Sitting on the sofa with my mum reading Mabel the Whale by Patricia King, with beautiful colour illustrations by Katherine Evans. I think it was pre-school. My mother was not always a patient teacher, and I was often a slow learner, but the scene, the tableaux, in memory, has the serenity of an icon.My favourite book growing up Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s a story set in Roman Britain; the Eagle is the lost standard of the ninth legion. I was a boy already obsessed by all things Ancient Roman (the alternative to the kind of boy obsessed with dinosaurs). One of the places I remember reading it is in bed with my dad. On Sunday mornings my brother and I would climb into the big bed. My parents had long since split up. There was a picture on the wall, a modest reproduction of Velázquez’...

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18 h. ago History of Sound review: Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor's romance doesn't sing

This folk music drama has a compelling affair between Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor but falls into monotony

Politics

18 h. ago Boy in Swiss bar fire held crucifix in his hand and raging flames 'went around him'

This is a breaking news story and is being constantly updated by our reporters as the breaking news story develops

Events

19 h. ago Fortnite down as players report server issues with complaints spiking

Gamers have logged 200 reports of server problems around 9am on Downdetector as the massive outage continues - this is a breaking news story

Sport

19 h. ago Chelsea manager latest, transfer updates and more: football news – live

⚽ Read Jacob Steinberg on Maresca’s Chelsea departure⚽ Fixtures | Tables | Follow us on Bluesky | Email TahaSo Enzo Maresca has left the building. It was a very decent stint on paper, one with two trophies, including a Club World Cup victory which may grow in significance if the tournament becomes a properly serious thing in the future. But it was pretty turbulent, too; Jacob Steinberg has the inside story on what went wrong.Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the first Friday blog of 2026. We’ve already had some drama at Stamford Bridge with the departure of Enzo Maresca, and there’s plenty of Premier League action to review/preview. But let’s just ease up before going full throttle and take in this excellent interview with Jess Carter, the Guardian Footballer of the Year.A lot of people don’t like the way I play football and that’s absolutely fine, but then attacking someone because of what they look like? I can’t do anything about that one, and I wouldn’t want to. I could never ...

Sport

19 h. ago ‘No one can know’: Heated Rivalry’s gay love story exposes ice hockey’s culture of silence

The surprise hit series has reopened a familiar debate: why, in the National Hockey League, visibility is still treated as a problem rather than a possibilityAt around the midpoint of the first episode of Heated Rivalry, just after Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov – one Canadian, the other Russian, both hockey’s top prospects – have had their first tryst, Hollander sits at the side of his hotel bed and says: “So. You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?” Rozanov, lying naked beside him, replies sarcastically: “Me? Yes, Hollander, I’m going to tell everyone.” Hollander reinforces the point: “Because no one can know,” he says. Rozanov utters something under his breath in Russian, then: “Hollander. Look, I’m not going to tell anyone, OK?” Hollander replies: “OK.”No one can know. If hockey were to have an unofficial slogan, this might be it. Heated Rivalry, the surprise 2025 hit series from Crave and HBO, is layered drama, prompting timely questions about the barriers to acc...

Politics

19 h. ago Iain Ballamy: Riversphere Vol 1 review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(Babel Label)The 80s sax star leads an A-list quartet, plus a shared trumpet role for Laura Jurd and Ballamy’s son CharlieOpening 2026’s jazz reviews with a story from the mid-1980s might be risking audience restiveness, but that was the decade in which a far-sighted young saxophonist on the UK jazz scene called Iain Ballamy first appeared on this writer’s radar. The cross-generational lineup and captivating ideas of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, testify to exactly why he has stayed there for 40 years.In their 20s, Ballamy and pianist/composer Django Bates frequently joined forces as two mavericks, skilfully respectful of the classic jazz tradition while adventurously and often mischievously transforming it. They were key figures in a gifted UK generation that created some of the sparkiest European jazz of the 1980s and 90s, most influentially in the revolutionary orchestra Loose Tubes, which brought together genres from old-school swing to vaudeville, improv and ava...

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