CATEGORIES

Meeting of minds: Cricket societies keep faith during testing times for domestic game

\"Is this the right place for the cricket meeting?\" I enquire. \"It is,\" one of them replies. \"And I'm guessing by the fact you're half the age of anyone else coming tonight that you're the guest speaker.\"

'Salads don't win scrums' Nché is icing on the Boks' front-row cake

A member of South Africa's 'Bomb Squad', loosehead was crucial to World Cup win in 2023 and is a hero back home

Klarna to float in New York in another snub to London stock market

The buy now, pay later company Klarna has filed for a flotation in the US, a move that marks another blow for the London market.

Debt-stricken P&O Ferries spent £47m on mass sackings in 2022

P&O Ferries spent more than £47m on sacking hundreds of UK seafarers in 2022, according to its long-overdue accounts that will be published in the coming days.

Just Eat to sell US arm Grubhub for loss of more than $6.5bn

The food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway is selling Grubhub to the delivery-focused restaurant chain Wonder for $650m (£510m), only four years after buying the US app in a multibillion-dollar tie-up.

Reeves to lay out plans to merge pension pots of local authorities

Rachel Reeves will announce plans to merge local government retirement schemes into \"megafunds\" as she tries to revive long-running efforts to reform the public pension system.

Thames Water should explain its murky logic on fundraising

Congratulations to Thames Water: it is not going bust early in the new year. Probably.

Creditors back £3bn package designed to save Thames Water from collapse

Thames Water has gained support from its top-ranking creditors to proceed to the next stage of securing a £3bn emergency funding package intended to stave off its collapse for at least a year.

Thousands of jobs at risk as Homebase collapses into administration

The struggling DIY chain Homebase has collapsed into administration, leaving thousands of workers facing an uncertain future, despite the purchase of the bulk of its stores by the owner of the homeware retailer The Range.

Trump's win will hit offshore wind investment, firm warns

Donald Trump's election victory has increased the risks of investing in offshore wind projects, a German energy company has warned, even as a UK developer said his return to the White House could help bolster Britain's renewables sector.

Key measure of inflation in US rises for first time since March

A key measure of US inflation has risen for the first time since March, underlining its bumpy ride down to lower levels.

Darknet dealing Russia's click and collect drugs industry

At any one moment in towns and cities across Russia, thousands of drug packages lie buried in the ground, attached by magnets to lamp-posts or taped underneath window sills, waiting to be picked up by their intended customers.

Naval officer accused by Kyiv of war crimes killed in Crimea car bombing

A senior Russian naval officer was killed in a car bombing in Crimea yesterday, marking the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures in occupied Ukrainian territory and inside Russia.

Macron to visit Notre Dame before cathedral's reopening

As firefighters doused the embers of the blaze that threatened to destroy Notre Dame Cathedral on 16 April 2019, Emmanuel Macron promised that the church would be restored and made \"more beautiful than ever\" within five years.

Schools shut and people evacuated as torrential rain returns to Spain

Authorities in eastern and southern Spain have closed schools and begun evacuating residents as the country was hit by further torrential rains two weeks after catastrophic floods killed at least 215 people and unleashed a bitter political blame game.

Swedish firm rebuked for using C-word in vaginal health advert

The Swedish advertising ombudsman has criticised a company for using the C-word in posters to promote vaginal nutritional supplements, saying the use of the \"gross profanity\" is offensive to consumers.

'I've lost everything Drought fuels hunger in southern Africa

Emmanuel Himoonga paced his dry field, picking up stalks of maize that had been bleached almost to bone white. The 61-year-old chief of Shakumbila, a mainly agricultural community of about 7,000 people roughly 70 miles west of Zambia's capital, Lusaka, had seen droughts before. But since 2010 they have been happening once every three to four years, instead of every five years.

Chinese ask questions over delayed reports of fatal attack

After a 63-year-old man rammed his car into a sports centre on Tuesday in Zhuhai, killing 35 people and severely injuring 43 others, questions have swirled on Chinese social media about why it took the authorities so long to reveal the details.

South African farms breeding tigers for sale in Asia, says report

The largest tiger farms outside Asia are operating freely in South Africa, facilitating the illegal smuggling of tiger parts, according to a report by the animal welfare charity Four Paws.

Top Unrwa official says plan to shut agency is unrealistic and would add to suffering

Israel's plan to close the UN Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, within three months is impossible and unrealistic without causing further untold suffering to Palestinians, its director of operations in Gaza has said.

Scholz delivers plea for German unity ahead of confidence Vote

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has defended his decision to oust his finance minister, which has led to the breakup of his government, arguing that to have kept the alliance going would have been at the expense of national stability and international security.

Apple faces near-£3bn lawsuit over cloud storage 'monopoly'

Apple is facing a near-£3bn lawsuit over claims it breached competition law by effectively locking millions of UK customers into its cloud storage service at excessive prices.

Windmill and 15th-century school added to register of at-risk sites

In April 1913, two women broke into the 15th-century Old Grammar School in Kings Norton near Birmingham with the intention of burning it to the ground in a protest for the cause of women's suffrage.

Fayed accuser files claim in US to force brother to give evidence

A woman who claims to have been raped and trafficked while working for Mohamed Al Fayed has filed a legal claim in a US court to oblige his surviving younger brother to give evidence about his alleged knowledge of the crimes.

'Put yourself in my hands' Manet is revealed as world-class mansplainer

Almost 140 years before a term was belatedly coined for the practice of men patronisingly setting women right on how certain things ought to be seen or done, it seems that a certain French painter had already become adept at the art of what must be called Manetsplaining.

Undercover police officer set fire to Debenhams store, public inquiry told

Evidence has emerged to suggest that an undercover police officer set fire to a high street department store while posing as a committed animal rights activist, causing damage worth £340,000, a public inquiry has heard.

Delaying climate finance till 2035 'damaging' to poor countries - study

Poor countries need $1tn (£787bn) a year in climate finance by 2030, five years earlier than rich countries are likely to agree at ongoing UN climate talks, a new study has found.

'I was so hot' Weather that ended a longed-for pregnancy

Mariama, not her real name, is a Burkinabe musician who lives in Ouagadougou. During the heatwaves earlier this year she went into early labour, and lost her baby.

Music review Freewheelin' Dylan keeps band on alert

You could infer a lot from the way Bob Dylan's backing band arrange themselves on stage.

Will written on boxes of mince pies and frozen fish is valid, court rules

A will written on the back of cardboard food packaging has been found to be valid by the high court, meaning a charity stands to inherit £180,000.