Nieuws wereld

⚽ Champions League news from the 5.45pm GMT kick-off
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Galatasaray get the ball rolling. Liverpool desperately hoping to improve on the events of last September.

The teams are out! And there’s some BREAKING NEWS: the atmosphere is hella hot at the Ali Sami Yen^†. Cim Bom Bom! Galatasaray wear their classic red and yellow halves, Liverpool are in third-choice bottle green, a colour that may send shivers down the spine of the Candy generation. We’ll be off in a couple of Zadok-the-Priest-soundtracked minutes.

The US defence secretary says the military is increasing attacks on the regime

• Pete Hegseth warns of day of ‘most intense’ US strikes on Iran yet
• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Investor hopes for a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict propelled Australian shares higher today, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 finishing the day up 1.1% and recovering about $35bn in value after yesterday’s $90bn plunge.

Oil prices surged to a four-year high early in the week before coming back down below $US90 a barrel after Donald Trump suggested the Iran conflict would end soon, sending global stock markets higher.

NYPD officers responded to the alert, days after two men threw homemade explosives at Gracie Mansion

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The New York police department (NYPD) responded to a reported suspicious device near Gracie Mansion on Tuesday afternoon, days after two men threw homemade explosives during protests outside mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home in what authorities have called an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism”.

The NYPD posted an advisory on X, which said: “Due to a suspicious device, East End Avenue between East 85th and East 87th Street, as well as East 86th Street between York Avenue and East End Avenue are closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Exclusive: Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper concerned about effect of student visa ban on female Chevening scholars from Afghanistan and Sudan

The Home Office rejected an appeal from the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, that would have protected outstanding students in some of the world’s most dangerous countries from changes to the UK’s immigration system, the Guardian understands.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, turned down proposals from the Foreign Office to maintain a carve-out for Chevening scholars, a government-funded programme for “exceptional individuals” to study for a master’s degree at a UK university.

Follow all the latest news from day one of the festival
Greg Wood’s tips | Sean Bowen interview | Email Luke

The first handicap at this year’s festival – promoted up the card after the Mares’ Hurdle moved to later in the week – is often the toughest nut to crack all week, as all bar one or two of the juveniles lining up will be making their handicap debut. That means, in turn – to no-one’s great surprise – that their trainers will have been doing all they can to show just enough form to get them into the race, but not so much that end up with too much weight. The mean price of the winners since the first running in 2005 has been 21-1, and while that is slightly skewed by the 80-1 victory of Jeff Kidder in 2021, there have also been two winners at 40-1, three at 33-1 and two at 25-1.

The last eight winners, meanwhile, have all been trained in Ireland, and the last two were saddled by Joseph O’Brien, who fields Glen To Glen and Dignam this time around. Saratoga, meanwhile, is the mount of JP McManus’s (soon-to-be-ex) No.1, Mark Walsh, and has a very similar profile to the same owner’s Brazil, successful in this race in 2022. Manlaga, the winner of the Victor Ludorum at Haydock last time, is another live contender in the same colours, while Ammes, from the burgeoning James Owen stable, is also worth considering carefully as his excellent trainer has kept him away from hurdles since a strong run at Wetherby in October. My eventual pick in an ultra-competitive heat, though, is Faye Bramley’s Winston Junior, who has been put away since finishing behind my fancy for the Triumph Hurdle, Minella Study, in a strong race at Cheltenham in December.

While it is encouraging to see many people responding to the appeals of strangers in great need, there are fundamental ethical problems with crowdfunding, especially when it becomes a primary method of helping others. Systemic bias and fraud associated with platforms like GoFundMe are only the start.

With American and Chinese behavior causing unease globally, the world's middle powers know that opportunities to defend their own interests will not remain open forever. But whether and how effectively such a diverse grouping can mobilize itself very much remains to be seen.

AI-doom scenarios are going viral because there are no easy public-policy responses to the problem of large-scale but not universal technological unemployment. Society’s best hope is a Goldilocks scenario, where the AI rollout is not too fast, and where the industry is not too oligopolistic.

The globalization to which we have grown accustomed and prospered from has survived recessions, financial crises, and a worldwide pandemic, but it may not survive today's escalating geoeconomic conflict. A book published more than 80 years ago – and all but ignored at the time – explains why.

While the Jeffrey Epstein affair continues to receive global attention, the true scale of human trafficking and modern slavery remains underappreciated, and the perpetrators almost always go unpunished. G20 countries can start cracking down on this scourge immediately by focusing on six priorities.