Author: Darren Smith

Manchester City’s record-breaking £116 million capture of England midfielder Elliot Anderson has thrown fresh attention on one of football’s most extraordinary ongoing sagas — the still-unresolved outcome of the Premier League’s 115 charges against the club, with no verdict in sight more than 19 months after the hearing concluded. Anderson joins from Nottingham Forest in a deal that makes him one of the most expensive midfielders in Premier League history. That City are willing to spend at this level in the first transfer window since Pep Guardiola’s departure is itself significant — it signals that the club’s ambitions and their…

Christian Horner is expected to make his return to the Formula One paddock at this weekend’s British Grand Prix — a year on from the controversy that ended his two-decade reign at Red Bull — as he weighs up a number of options that could see him back in the pit lane in a senior role. The 52-year-old was relieved of his duties at Red Bull just 48 hours after last year’s Silverstone race following a power struggle within the organisation. He received an £80 million severance package and has been free to pursue other employment since March. According to…

Wimbledon has permitted a Turkish tennis player to display a watermelon symbol on her racket — widely recognised as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity — while simultaneously telling her she was not allowed to wear a Palestine pin, in a distinction that has prompted sharp questions about the tournament’s approach to political expression on court. Tournament director Jamie Baker confirmed that the watermelon-shaped vibration dampener used by world number 51 Zeynep Sönmez, 24, did not breach the All England Club’s rules on political messaging. “We don’t allow any kind of political messaging from players on court, certainly that caused any…

Nearly 3,000 people have been evacuated from campsites and homes in southern France as out-of-control wildfires swept through the country, while violent scenes erupted in supermarkets across the nation as desperate shoppers fought each other — in some cases pulling each other’s hair and tackling rivals to the ground — to secure fans and air conditioning units ahead of a fresh wave of extreme heat. The fire broke out at a campsite in Sainte-Marie-la-Mer, near the Spanish border, destroying dozens of mobile homes before spreading to the neighbouring town of Canet-en-Roussillon. Perpignan airport was closed as approximately 2,000 firefighters battled…

A man is fighting for his life in a New York hospital after setting himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in an apparent act of protest over Tibet, in one of the most dramatic demonstrations seen outside the landmark building in recent years. The incident unfolded at around 7pm on Thursday on East 43rd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, directly in front of the UN complex. According to sources cited by the New York Post, UN surveillance cameras captured the man planting a Tibetan flag on the pavement before the self-immolation took place. Emergency services rushed to…

UK coastal waters are on the verge of reaching an “extreme” marine heatwave classification rarely recorded in British seas, with forecasters warning that the English Channel and North Sea are experiencing the kind of conditions not normally expected until August. The Met Office has confirmed that surface waters across north-west European seas are currently ranging from moderate to severe, with widespread conditions classified as “strong” and some areas reaching “severe.” Sea temperatures are already running on average 2C above normal, with some offshore areas along the English and Welsh coasts more than 4-5C warmer than usual. If warm and calm…

A volunteer sorting through naval correspondence at a London archive made one of the most remarkable documentary discoveries in years last May — a surviving early copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, concealed within British state records for more than two centuries. Michael Scurr was working through a collection of 18th-century Royal Navy papers at the National Archives in Kew on what he described as “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he unfolded a document and immediately recognised its opening words. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America…”…

Hope of finding the tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for after Venezuela’s devastating earthquakes is all but gone, a senior charity official has warned, as the country transitions from rescue operations to the grim work of body recovery more than a week after the disaster. Edward de Burgh, a senior global security officer for the nonprofit Project HOPE, which has been distributing supplies and providing emergency treatment in the affected region, told the Daily Mail that survival for those still under the rubble was now biologically implausible. “Just on our ability to survive as a human being without…

The taxi driver who dropped Southport killer Axel Rudakubana at the children’s dance class where he murdered three girls, then waited 50 minutes before calling emergency services, has been stripped of his taxi licence by Sefton Council. Gary Poland, 56, drove away from Hart Space dance studio on 29 July 2024 after hearing what he believed were gunshots and seeing children fleeing the building in terror — but rather than dialling 999, he picked up another fare and returned home first. By the time he called emergency services, Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe,…

Around 100 firefighters and 15 fire engines have been deployed to a major warehouse fire on an industrial estate in Tottenham, with the London Fire Brigade urging local residents to keep their windows and doors shut due to a significant smoke plume rising over the area. The blaze broke out on Watermead Way on the A1055, on the border of Tottenham and Edmonton in north London. The London Fire Brigade confirmed the scale of the response, which represents one of the larger deployments seen in the capital in recent months. Residents and workers in the surrounding area have been advised…